> o>' ■"o o< o /; ^ ^B'; ^^ >^ .*-^-'* ^ y/^ ^P/ ^^ "^- ' " i 1 1 \ "■ "e, * -0 -. O ^ I: ^.#' ^^t^CIC^'^ %<^' * 1!1|e- ^\ -^ ^ -Z- * ^ \V -V * » 1 \ ^> . - , ./. .0 N V- ^^l /'' ■- .vO^ .-\.J'' C- N .\^ ";f ^' ^ ,. -a- ^' ^ ^-<^'' .K<^' ^- * . O. ^ 1 N ^ , ' "^ A^ ^ -i-' vOo, ' A- ^0 ' O, ■' ^ .V -^ ,C %^^ .> -r.. i ENGLAND WITHOUT AND WITHIN. RICHARD GRANT WHITE. " For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune. I have some rights of memory in this liingdom, Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. Hamlet. t JUN -23 188^ m.lU.L2h Nc>_ ' Of WASHI?^'^, . BOSTON: HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. Cfjc Miber^ilre prc^^, Camfirttfge. 1881, ^> Copyright, 1881, By RICHARD GRANT WHITE, All rights reserved. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS WASHINGTOH The Riverside Press, Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co, ? ? To CHARLES T. GOSTENHOFER, OF BIRKENHEAD, LANOASHIKK, ESQUIRE. Mt Dear Gostenhofer: I give myself the pleasure of inscribing this book to you, not only in recognition of the friendship between us, which began in early youth, and which you have constantly strengthened, but because your long residence in the United States, your candor, and your wide and generous sympa- thies make you, notwithstanding your love for England, which I share with you, the most competent person that I know to pronounce both upon the merits that it may have and the faults which I can hardly hope that it should be without. Ever most truly vours, R. G. VV. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. PAGE Occasion of this Book. — Feeling towards England, and its Causes. — Presentation of Every-Day English Life. — Literary Men as Com- panions and as Curiosities. — A "Yankee's" View of English So- ciety, but also the English View 1 CHAPTER II. ENGLISH SKIES. Horace's "coelum non animum mutant" true of the English Colonists of America. — Approach to British Shores. — Appearance of the Heavens. — Ireland. — Anglesea. — First Experience of Philistinism. — Difference of Expression between the People in Old and New Eng- land. — Its Cause. — Climate. — Changes of Sky. — Indifference to Rain. — Useless Sun-Dials. — Eating and Drinking. — Mellowing Effect of Climate 13 CHAPTER III. ENGIAND ON THE RAILS. Misapprehension and Misrepresentation of National Character. — Eng- lishmen Great Travelers. — Mistakes and Causes of Mistakes about "Americans " in this Respect. — British Railways, their Excellence and Comfort. — Manners of Railwaj' Officials. — A Comparison. — People seen at Railway Stations. — An Excited and Indignant Beauty. — A Scene. — Railway Vocabu]ar3' Traditional 37 CHAPTER IV. LONDON STREETS. Vastness and Sense of Solitude. — Character of Various Quarters. — Internal Arrangement of Houses. — Absence of Display in Trading Quarters. — A Dealer in Old Pottery. — Trustfulness of Traders. — Absence of Sign Boards. — The Cock and Temple Bar. — Temple Gardens. — St. James's Park and Pall Mall. — London Omnibuses and Conductors. — The Omnibus a Sort of Stage-Coach, and why it is so. — Naming Streets. — Beggars. — A hungry unfortunate Young Woman . . . . ^ 62 Vlll CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. LIVING LN LONDON. A West End London Lodging House. — English Joint Worship and English Mutton. — A Typical English Housemaid. — A Scene in Hyde Park: Lady and Groom. — Covent Garden, and its Dutch Auctions. — Seven Dials. — Pye Corner. — London Ignorance of London. — Seeking a Celebrity 90 CHAPTER VI. A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. The Sense of Sunday. — Charles I. and his Death. — Cows in St. James's Park. — Westminster Abbey. — A Sunday Handbill Dis- tributer; Politics and Religion. — Two Fat Philistines. — Ignorance again. — A Riverside Musing. — A Jump and its Effect. — St. Paul's. — Church-Regidated Eating-Houses. — An Elegant Female Victualler 118 CHAPTER VII. A DAY AT WINDSOR. Autumnal Verdure. — A Little Old Town. — Empty Shakespeareanism. — A Royal Bait House. — Modern English House-Building. — An Eton Boy. — St. George's Hall. — Waterloo Chamber. — Philistine Admiration. — An Irate Showman. — View from Windsor Round Tower. — An Independent Warder. — An Eton Foundation Scholar. — St. Andrew's of Clewer. — Eton Boys, their Games and their Phy- sique. — A Little Prig 142 CHAPTER VIII. RUKAL ENGLAND. Gradual Absorption of Rural England. — Railways. — Growth of Towns. — Beauty of Rural England. — A Peasant's Cottage. — Supper. — Farmers and Cottagers. — Farm-Houses and Cottages. — English Villages. — Names and Places. — Pocket Money. — Another Cot- tage. — Love of Flowers. — Seeking a Cow. — A Stone-Breaker. — A Farmer's Wife. — A Country Walk 164 CHAPTER IX. ENGLISH MEN. Long-Known Beauty of the Anglo-Saxon Race. — A Mistaken Notion. — The English Race in New England. — Extract from a Letter : Com- parisons. — The English " Set Up." — A Mother and Daughters. — A Typical Yankee. — Superiority of Sex. — Traits of English Men . 191 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER X. ENGLISH WOMEN. Distinctive Traits. — Types of Beauty. — Dress. — Intelligence. — Tone of Drawing-Room Society. — Domesticity. — Political English "Women. — A Brilliant Example. —A High-Bred Female Philistine. — Women in Business Positions. — Manners. — The English Wom- an's Nature. — Voice and Speech "• 210 CHAPTER XI. ENGLISH MANNERS. " A Perfect John Bull." — Insolence in Authority Snubbed. — Exam- ple of British Arrogance. — The Result. — Manners and Manner. — Genuineness ; Good Faith ; Warm-Heartedness. — Manner to Women. — Lack of Social Grace and Tact. — Propriety. — Lower-Class People. — A 'Bus Conductor. — Shopmen and Waiters. — Asking Alms. — " Thank You." — Influence of Aristocracy. — General Po- liteness. — Family Intercourse. — A Roman English Woman. — Simplicity of Dress and Manner in English Men. — Dinner and Table Talk. — Some Inconsistencies 236 CHAPTER Xn. SOME HABITS OF ENGLISH LIFE. Domestic Discipline. — Good Nature and Good Manners. — Knole Park. — A Disappointment.— A Firm Porter and a Submissive Peer. — Happiness in Poverty. — Hyde Park ; a Mother and Daugh- ter. — Way of Walking. — A Pistol Pocket. — Ring- Wearing. — Spittoons. — Leisure and Conviviality. — Social Sincerity. — Social Distinctions; Going to Court. — English Breakfasts. — An Unpro- tected Female. — First Class and Third Class. — A Lady's Blunder 265 CHAPTER XIII. "nobility and GENTRY." The Word " Gentleman." — The Thing. — Gentry in England. — Po- sition of English Noblemen. — An English "Gentleman's" Nobil- ity. — The Various Ranks of Nobility in England, and their Origin, etc., etc. — Baronets. — Knights. — Precedence. — Amusing Illus- trations. — Middle Classes. — Character of the Peerages . • . .290 CHAPTER XIV. TAURUS CENTAURUS. Umbrella and Cab. — Refuges. — The Horse in England. — A Young Horsewoman. — The Horse- Worshiping Englishman. — English Rid- ing; "the Seat. — Fox-Hunting. — Hare-Coursing. — Fail* Play. — . The "Best Man." — Shooting. — Hunting- Women 319 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. PARKS AND PALACES. Letters Home. — From Twickenham to Hampton Court. — Pictures and Portraits. — The Beauties of Hampton Court. — Madame de Pompadour. — Walks along the Thames. — Twickenham Ferry. — Kew. — Kichmond Park. — " Great Houses." — High-Sounding Names. — Silence in Regard to Money. — Confidence. — County Peculiarities. — Refuting Slander. —The Sun in England . . . .341 CHAPTER XVI. ENGLISH IN ENGLANt>- British English and "American" English. —Influence of an English Missionary. — The Letter H : History of its Pronunciation. — Words, Phrases, and Peculiar Pronunciations. — The Pulpit and the Stage. — Mrs. Siddons. — French in England. — A Sun-ey Hatter . 364 CHAPTER XVII. A CANTEFvBURY PILGRIMAGE. The Archbishop of Canterbury. — Origin of his Primacy. — An Old- Fashioned Inn. —The Cathedral. — The Crypt. — Henry II. 's Pen- ance. — A Verger. — The Norman Staircase. — St. Martin's Church. — Harbledown. — Lanfranc's Hospital. — Preparations for a Fair. — A Thoughtful Lower-class English Man. — Alone in the Cathe- dral. — A Forgotten Preposition . 393 CHAPTER XVIII. JOHN BULL. A Mistaken Identity. — A Typical Face. — ' ' John Bull " a Pretender. — Philistine Brutality. — Flogging. — Subservience to Wealth and Rank. — Grumbling. — Established Social Customs. — Napkins. — British "Insularity " . . . 421 CHAPTER XIX. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE. A College Town. — Substantial Prosperity. — Absence of "Enter- prise." — Late Morning Hours. — The Bull Inn. — Beauty of Cam- bridge. — Trinity College. — The Butterj^ Hatch. — Cambridge Ale. — The "River" Cam. — "Hall." — Cambridge Latin. — A Ban- quet in the Old Style. — Chapel Service. —Beauty of Oxford — The Colleges. — Roj'al Undergraduates. — Taylorian Museum. — Undergraduate Politeness. — The Union: a Debate. — Boffin's. — Oxford at Night. — Invisible Musicians 438 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XX. A NATIONAL VICE. English " Potting " in the Olden Time. — Free Use of Beer, Wine, and Spirits in Modern Days. — Beer Drinking and Drunkenness in the Lower Classes. — " Blue Monday." — Consequent Misery. — High- Class Drinking in the Last Century. — Modern Drinking among High-Class English Women. — Wine Beggars. — " Standing Some- thing." — Eeasons for the Use of Stimulating Drinks in England. — Signs of Improvement 464 CHAPTER XXI. THE HEAET OF ENGLAND. Warwick and Warwickshire. — Counties and Shires. — East Wind. — English Kindness and Hospitality. — Traits of Old English Towns. — Warwick Castle. — A Female Cicerone. — A Great Portrait. — Leicester Hospital. — Warwick Church. — Fulke Greville. — A Sat- urday Fair. — A Dutch Auction. — Pig, Boy, and Old Gateway. — Guy's Cliff " .489 CHAPTER XXn. A VISIT TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON. Neglect of England by the Traveling "Average American." — War- wickshire Scenery. — Barford. — Charlecote Church. — Sir Thomas Lucy and Shakespeare. — Charlecote. — Intrusive Sight-Seers. — Stj-atford. — Disappointment. — Disappearance of Shakespeare's Stratford. — Stratford Church. — New Place. — Gainsborough's Por- ti'ait of Garrick. — Shakespeare's Father's House. — Making a '• Gen- tleman." — The Hathaway Cottage. — Another William Shake- speare in Stratford 509 CHAPTER XXIII. IN LONDON AGAIN. Home-Like Air of London. — Likeness to Certain Parts of New York. — Formation of London Streets. — Oxford Street. — Crosby Hall. — Guild Hall. — Gog and Magog. — The Lord Mayor and His Coach. — Statues. — The Albert Monument. — Sir Jamsetjee Jee- jeebhoj'. — The Eagle Slayer. — St. Saviour's Church. — Tombs of Gower, Fletcher, Massinger, and Edmund Shakespeare. — Contrast of the Old and the New. — Bolt Court and Dr. Johnson. — Wapping Old Stairs. — A Superior Musician. — A Wedding. — A Pew Opener. — Funerals. — The Garrick Club Portraits. — An Incon- gruity 531 Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXIV. KANDOM EECOLLECTIONS. By-Ways. — A Pleasant Rencontre. — Hotel Discomfort. — English Hospitality again. — South Kensington Museum. — Galileo's Tele- scope ; Newton's. — Stephenson's Locomotive Engines. — Gradually Contracting Measures. — Freethinking Clergymen. — The Church of England. — The Catechism. — Discontent. — Dress of the Lower Classes. — A Ruined Reputation. — English Barristei-s and Judges. — A Trial. — A Town Crier. — Traits of Speech and Manners. — A Hangman's Business Card. — Her Majesty. — Loyaltj'. — Bank- rupt Turkey. — British Journalism and Statesmanship 555 CHAPTER XXV, PHILISTIA. The Atmosphere of Philistinism. — Its General Difiusion. — Its Nat- ure. — Strangeness of It. — A Late Development. — Manifestation in Domestic Art and in Architecture. — In Theological Writing. — The Church of England. — Examples of Philistinism. — Eminent Philistines. — Philistinism a Distinctive Trait. — Greatness and Glory of England . . . .■ 577 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. In the summer of 1876, long rest from work and a greater change of air than can be obtained by usual summer jaunting were needful for me ; and as I had little interest in the Rocky Mountains, which were two thousand miles away from any place where my kindred had ever been, and a great interest in a land beyond the sea, but within ten days' steaming, where my forefathers had lived for about eleven hundred years, I went to England ; to visit which had been one of the great unsatisfied longings of my life. I found there even more to interest me than I had looked for, although I saw less of the country and of my many friends within it than I had hoped to see. It was almost inevitable that a man who had written about matters much less near to him than this was to me should tell the tale of such a journey; and hence this book, which, although an honest one, I believe, and written in a candid spirit, is truly a labor of love. The consideration of the manifold subject thus brought before me was not, however, merely a result of my visit to England. Of this subject I found my- self thinking almost involuntarily, years ago, when- 2 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. ever it was accidentally presented. Indeed, English life and character have long been of such warm and close interest to me that my tour in England is rather the occasion than the cause of much that I have writ- ten about them. To say this is due to myself, if not to my readers. Mr. Ruskin, in his " Fors Clavigera " (No. 42, June, 1874), says to his countrymen, " And yet that you do not care for dying Venice is the sign of your own ruin ; and that the Americans do not care for dying England is only the sign of their inferiority to her." How ruinous England may be, and how sure a sign of her ruin may be found in her apathy towards Venice, I shall not venture the attempt to decide ; but as to the latter clause of this condemnation, I oifer this book as my protest. What the Oxford Graduate who became the Oxford Professor may mean by the vague, non-describing term " Americans " I do not exactly know ; nor do I believe that, with all his skill in word-craft, he could define it in a way that would be quite satisfactory even to himself, upon a little consideration. This, however, I can presume to say, that among Yankees who think about anything but the business and the pleasure of their daily life there is no such indifference as that which he makes the occasion of his reproach. To them England is still the motherland, the " Old Home " of their fathers. To her they look with a feeling, strong and deep, of interest, of affection, almost of reverence, such as they have towards no other country in the world ; and it is for them as well as to them that I have ventured to speak. This feeling in them may be a weak fondness; but it is natural, and a natural weakness of which they need not be ashamed. It is this verv filial bond INTRODUCTORY. 3 between them and the land of their fathers that has made the tone of most Englishmen towards them in time past so hard to bear. We all know the bitter- ness of a man's heart when he finds that his foes are they of his own household. Injustice, misapprehen- sion, and misrepresentation on the part of French- men and Germans touched us lightly. In them ig- norance and pi^ejuclice might be excused, and indeed expected. Them we might flout or even pity ; but to be reviled by our kindred in our own tongue was a sore trial to our patience. The truth was, however, that of all peoples with whom we had intercourse the English people of Great Britain were the most igno- rant of us ; and so as a whole they still remain. And strange to say, the very fact that the two peoples were essentially the same was the chief cause of their mutual misapprehension. Their likeness was so great that differences between them which could be made the subject of remark were to be found only in those trifling points of manners and customs, an unlikeness in which, among those of the same family, has ever been one of the most irritating causes of aversion. This ignorance and this dislike have been fostered and kept alive by writers whose interest and whose inclination joined in leading them to pander to the feeling of a day, rather than to use their pens and their opportunities in the interests of truth and of kindly feeling. With a full knowledge and an often-recurring con- sciousness of all this, I went to England. I had got beyond — if I may not say above — being affected by it in my relations with Englishmen ; and it was swept entirely from my mind by the experience of my visit. 4 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN- My readers need hardly be told that my recollec- tions of that pleasant sojourn include much with which I should not think of wearying them. It is no diary, no expanded note-book, that I have set be- fore them. Indeed, I made hardly any notes when I was in England ; all my memorandums being con- tained in two tiny books which would go into my waistcoat pocket, and having been hastily scrawled as I was walking or riding. My purpose has been to put England and English folk and English life be- fore my readers just as I saw them. To do this, it was not necessary to write either an itinerary or an account of all my personal exjDeriences, including the valuable information that I daily rose and break- fasted and walked, or rode and dined and slept, well or ill as the case might be. But of that experience I have here recorded only such incidents and facts as I thought characteristic. I have described such persons and such conditions of life as seemed, not, be it remarked, strange, striking, or amusing, but fairly representative of the country and the people. Because of a contrary practice, consequent upon a desire to satisfy a craving for novelty, books of travels are too often either caricatures of the people whom they profess to describe, or correct descriptions of persons .as strange and incidents almost as unusual to the native inhabitant as to the foreigner. This is notably the case with books of travel in the United States, and also, but in a less degree, in those which have described England to " Americans." The peo- ple of the two countries are, or were until a few years ago, so nearly the same people, developing them- selves under different forms of government and phys- ical surroundings, that writing travelers, especially INTRODUCTORY. 5 those from the motherland, have felt, it would seem, as if they must be sharply on the lookout for some- thing strikingly characteristic. Tourists have gone about in both countries seizing eagerly upon the pe- culiar, the strange, the startling ; and this they have set forth as portraiture. Thus, also, illustrators with the pencil have done ; and not only in each other's country, but each in his own. The result of all this wonder-seeking is distortion, confusion, misap- prehension, — ignorance instead of knowledge, avei'- sion instead of liking. I i-emember that on a drive, one pleasant afternoon, with a lady, through a gently rolling country near the eastern shore of England, where she was at home, and where there were fewer hedges and old timber houses than I saw in other shires, I was struck by the likeness of the land to that of the more level parts of New England, and spoke of it to my com- panion ; and I remember the little tone of disap- pointment in her reply : " Th.en there was no use of your coming." It was in simple kindness that she was disappointed. She hoped to show me something new. She had it on her mind that I had gone forth, like Lord Bateman, " strange countries for to see ; " and therefore she felt a little sense of short-coming in herself, and even in her country, that she could not show me something quite novel. But there was use in my coming ; and there would have been had I found even more likeness than I did find between what I saw and what I had left behind me. I went to England not to see shows, nor to hunt up things new and strange, but to see it and its people as they are, to look upon them single-eyed as nearly as a man may look without a tinge of warm-hued feeling 6 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. upon the home of his fathers and upon his own kin- dred. I wished to know England as it is, so far as I could learn that in the time that I had for the study and with my opportunities. If I saw that there could be no disappointment : like this or unlike the other, what matter ? I did not go to England as most Eng- lishmen come to " America," where their object seems to be to see a Niagara, or to shoot on the prairies the bisons or the catamounts that they fail to find on Bos- ton Common or in Central Park. Nevertheless, the truth is that I passed my whole time there, with the exception of that which was darkened and dampened by two or three fogs, in a succession of varying pleasures, the greatest of which in degree and in extent was my intercourse — in the old and better sense of the word, my conversation — with the people into whose company I was thrown. These were of all ranks and conditions in life ; and they were most of them average representatives of the classes to which they severally belonged. I found them, with some exceptions, very interesting, even when they were not such persons as I would have chosen for daily companionship. Moreover, notwith- standing the effect of railways, cheap newspapers, and cheap postage, England is not yet without char- acter in its society, nor without peculiar characters who give zest and diversity to the intercourse of every-day life. There are queer people yet in Eng- land. He who will go about the country in an easy, familiar way, and keep his eyes open, may hope to. find them, — as odd, some of them, " as Dick's hat- band ; " and even if the people that he sees are them- selves not very much out of the common, he will yet be likely to meet with incidents, and even to become INTRODUCTORY. 7 a part of incidents, that will be both amusing and instructive, if he be but ready to enter into the spirit of what is going on around him. Not unmindful of all the sources of confusion and misapprehension upon which I have just remarked, and yet doing only what seemed to me natural and right, I have been content to concern myself with that which is truly characteristic. Now the charac- teristic is always the commonplace. True generally, this is particularly true of peoples and countries. In my descriptions of England, therefore, I have told only what almost any man might see there on almost any day, — only what I believe no Englishman would regard as strange. For it is these every-day occur- rences, these stable, homely facts, these commonplaces of life, that show what a people, what a country is, — what all the influences, political, moral, and tellu- ric, that have been at work there for centuries have produced. And if, because I have not sought out the strange, the striking, and the grotesque, my recollec- tions should lack interest, I pray my readers to re- member that I have been dull in the interests of truth. It may be well, also, that I should say that I saw and have written from a Yankee's point of view, ap- plying the term Yankee necessarily to the descend- ants of those to whom it was originally and peculiarly applied, in whatever part of the country they may now dwell. When I speak of my countrymen I mean only those whose families were here at the time of the Revolution, who alone can be the true examples and representatives of the results of the social, political, and physical forces which have been in operation here for two centuries and a half. With others, who 8 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. are spoken of and who speak of themselves as " Amer- icans," and who are the product of emigration during the last thirty or forty years, I do not here concern myself, however respectable, wealthy, or politically influential they may have become (and some of them are very respectable, very wealthy, and politically very influential), or however tenacious they may be (and they are apt to be very tenacious) of their " American " status. But to me, from my present point of view, they are no more than if they had re- mained at home, and had become respectable, wealthy, and politically influential there. Indeed, they are rather less. How could it be otherwise ? In regard to England, I have spoken freely as to myself, but with reserve as to others, of the pleasure of my life there during my first visit, — my only one. I have been sufficiently cautious, I hope, in my refer- ences to my personal experience, not to trespass upon privacy, nor to abuse hospitality. What I mean by this phrase no Yankee who is likely to read this book needs to be told ; but if the language of a very widely- known war correspondent of a very superior London newspaper may be taken as evidence, an explanation may be necessary to some of his countrymen. Hav- ing been accused of violating hospitality in regard to " the States,'' he says that the charge is untrue, be- cause he "gave as many dinners as he received." It was with some surprise that I read this expression of tlie writer's apprehension of the duties and relations of hospitality. Apart from the business-like, debt- and-credit view taken of the matter, it was amazing that the writer did not see that the occasion of the re- proach to wbich he referred was an alleged violation of that privacy and confidence which are implicit in INTRODUCTORY. 9 the social intercourse of gentlemen, and that a man may abuse hospitality by giving improper and annoy- ing publicity to matters spoken of at his own table, as well as if they were spoken of at another at which he "was a guest. It is, however, unreasonable to ex- pect that such implicit and purely sentimental obli- gations should be felt and acted upon by all men, even when they are able correspondents of superior newspapers. At any rate, this is the way in which I have felt the obligations of hospitality imperative on me, in relation to my friends in England no less than to those at home. It has of course been necessary for me to refer to individuals ; and in writing of a country in which individuals are of different ranks it would have been an inept and confusing affectation to ignore them ; but I believe that I have told my story in a way to which my friends, although they may recognize themselves in my pages, will make no objection, and which I am sure will conceal their identity from strangers. Some expectation was expressed, during the serial publication of these chapters, that parts of them would be occupied by descriptions of distinguished literary people in England. That they are wholly lacking in this element of popular interest is not ac- cidental, nor indeed unintentional. Having never made any special effort to meet literary people at home, I did not do so while I was in England. It would be difficult to prove, either by demonstration or by experience, that the fact that a man has the faculty of thinking well and writing agreeably makes him necessarily a pleasant companion. He may be so ; and then he is likely to be the more so for his faculty of thinking ; but the chances that he may be 10 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. ill-natured or ill-bred, or at least uncompanionable, are quite as great as if his Yocation were law, or farming, or fiddle-making. Indeed, I know one fid- dle-maker, an uneducated artisan, who is found by some of the best bred and most intelligent men that I know much more companionable than most of those whom they meet in their own society. It seems to me an altogether erroneous notion, this as- sumption that similarity in occupation, or admira- tion on one side, must produce liking in personal in- tercourse. It was by no means certain, because of my delight in "• Sartor Resartus " and in " In Memo- riam," that I should personally like the writers of those books ; and it was very much more than un- certain whether they would like me. Therefore, as I did not happen to meet them at the houses of any of my friends, I did not visit them, nor others of their order, whom I need not name. For as to go- ing to see them as shows, that I should not have presumed to do, even if I had had such an inclina- tion. ^ I thought myself very fortunate in the way in which I saw England and the life there ; for it was such an informal, matter-of-course, untourist-like way. Of the kindness that was shown me there, I shall say no more than I have said from time to 1 Since the writing of tbis passage the author of Sartor Resartus has passed away, and his Reminiscences have been published. The latter con- firm nie in the opinion expressed above. Their writer, although not the wise and profound thinker that he deemed himself, was the greatest artist in words that this century has seen; and he gave to thousands, of whom I was one, more pleasure than thej' received from any other book-maker of his day. But he has revealed himself as one of those eminent persons whom I should prefer to know onl}' through the protecting medium of some convenient Boswell: — albeit the invention of Boswellism and the elevation of it into a vocation is one of the literary nuisances and social afflictions of the last hundred j'ears. INTKODUCTORY. 11 time, as occasion suggested. I can never cease to cherish its remembrance ; and of this kindness no small part was that which made me at home in Eng- lish houses. Indeed, I was hardly a stranger in any one in which I had the pleasure of being received ; for, with three exceptions, I visited no one whom I had not had the like pleasure of receiving under my own roof ; nor was I able to enter half the houses where I knew that for years welcome had awaited me. Moreover, I had the advantage of seeing Eng- land from two points of view, — that of a visiting stranger and that of one who is at home. Accus- tomed to be mistaken by my British kinsmen in the United States and Canada for an Englishman of British birth, I found the mistake still more com- mon in Old England itself. There, by all who did not know me, it was quietly assumed as a matter of course that I was born on the soil ; and as all who did know me knew to the contrary, I did not travel by rail or afoot with the announcement that I was a Yankee pasted on my hat ; nor in my casual inter- course with strangers did I make the needless dec- laration. Therefore, as I went about a great deal alone from choice, and as, if I went by a highway, I often came back through a by-way, I saw English- men both as they appear to each other and as they appear to strangers. Under both aspects they com- manded my respect and won my liking. Indeed, I must say of my sojourn in England, having both the people and the country in mind, that never that I can remember in my existence since I was a patch of protoplasm did I find it so easy to harmonize with the environment. Never was I, a Yankee of eight generations on both sides, so much at ease in mind 12 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. and body, never, in one Englisli word, so much at home, as I was in England. My reader now knows my mood and my purpose in the writing of this book. It is not properly a book of travel, but the story of a semi-sentimental, semi-critical journey through various parts of Eng- land, in which what the writer thought and felt is told quite as much as what he saw. Whoever does not care to read such a book will do well to close this one here, and go no further. CHAPTER II. ENGLISH SKIES. When" Horace wrote that they who cross the sea change their skies, but not their natures, he uttered a truth the full meaning and force of which is too little regarded bj^ those who are ready to find men of the same race differing essentially because they live apart in different countries. True, the sea that Horace had in inind was but the Adriatic, or at the most the Mediterranean. For it should always be remembered that to the ancients lakes were seas, and that " the sea " was the Mediterranean ; a voyage upon which to Greece, mostly within sight of land, was probably the poet's only knowledge of those terrors of navigation which, with denunciations of its inventor, he uttered in his ode on the departure of Virgil for Athens. The exclamation of the Psalmist — " The floods have lifted up their voice ; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters ; yea, than the mighty waves of the sea " — had probably its inspiration in a squaU- upon the shores of the Levant, or in a tempest in the shallows of Gennesareth. So little can we measure the occasion by the expression which it re- ceives from a poet. He tells us, not what the thing was, but what it seemed to him, what feeling it awoke in him ; and what is really measured is his capacity of emotion and of its utterance ; and even 14 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. that is gauged by our capacity of apprehension and of sympathy. The change of sky — I refer now to the visible heavens — made by passing from New England to Old England was very great. Upon its degree of physiological effect I shall remark hereafter. I am here •concerned merely with its physical aspects. As, on my outward voyage, we neared land, and were on the lookout for the first sight of it, my attention was immediately attracted by the sky. Without the evi- dence of the ship's log, it seemed to me that I should have had no doubt that near by us there was another land than that from which I had come : certainly, above us there was another heaven. It was in the afternoon of a fine summer day, and the outlook over the calm water was beautiful, with a radiance softly bright ; but those were not the clouds of the summer skies that I had left behind me. There were three layers of them, and well there might have been ; for the lowest were so low that it seemed as if our masts must tear them asunder if we should pass beneath them, and the highest were soar- ing in the empyrean. The former, however, were not heavy ; on the contrary, they seemed to be of the lightest texture ; and they stretched far away in long, low lines that could not yet be called bars, — not only were they so large, but their outlines were so soft and undefined. Clouds so formed — clouds which a meteorologist would probably pronounce to be of the same kind — I had seen above the bay of New York, and over the shores of Long Island and New England ; but they were high, so high that dis- tance made them small ; their forms were sharply de- fined ; and when the sun was above the horizon, as it ENGLISH SKIES. 15 was now, or sinking gradually below it, they blazed in crimson and gold, whereas these were softly illu- mined with a mellow, grayish light. They seemed too unsubstantial to reflect the rays that fell upon them, and to need, and to absorb and retain as for their own use, all the brightness that the sun be- stowed. Far above these soared others, brighter, silvery, and fleecy ; and yet again above the latter, but not apparently so far, were others, shaped in radiating curves. These layers, indeed, I had seen in west- ern skies, generally moving in contrary motion ; but the effect was not at all like that which now attracted my admiring attention. The difference appeared to be caused first by the lowness of the first layer, then by the great distance between this layer and the one next above it, and finally by the very perceptible and almost palpable nature of that vast intervening space. It was not mere space, mere distance. My sight seemed to pass through something that enabled me to measure this vast interval by gradation. And in- deed so it was ; for even at that great height the at- mosphere was filled with a continuous vapor, which, although so thin as to be imperceptible, was yet of consistence enough to modify the light from the set- ting sun as the rays passed through its immensity. The skyey intervals were not so impalpable, so color- less, and therefore so immeasurable as they are in " America." As we neared the land great headlands came to meet us, stepping out into the sea, and bearing some- times these long, low clouds upon their fronts. The day was smiling ; and this seemed a gigantic sort of welcome that under lowering skies might have been 16 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. a more gigantic defiance. And then at once I felt as I never before had felt the significance of the first lines of that splendid stanza in the most splendid of modern lyric poems, — "Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep." With my glass, I saw upon the Irish side one or two little buildings, which proved to be lookouts and places for beacons, built at the time of the expected Spanish invasion, and one of those round towers which are of such remote antiquity and mysterious purpose that the most learned and sagacious antiqua- ries have failed to evolve an accepted theory as to their origin. Thus, even long before I touched the shore, was I made to feel the difference which the powers of nature and the hand of man had made be- tween the land which I had left and the land to which I had come. As we steamed on, and came within easy eye-sight of the land, the rocky height of the Irish coast im- pressed me, and the bright rich green of the surface of the country, as it stretched o££ into the distance. The island looked like a great stone set in the ocean jewel- wise, the top of which had been covered with a thin coating of green enamel. Soon we were near enough to see the waves dashing against the sides of these cliffs, which were so high that the ocean swell seemed but to plash playfully about their feet. And then I felt as I had never felt before the meaning of the lines, and saw as I had never seen before, in my flat-shored home, the scene of the lines, — ' ' Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, sea." The position of the speaker I had imagined, — ^upon ENGLISH SKIES. 17 a height looking clown upon the sea ; but here it was before me : — those, or such, were the heights and crags, and there below was the bay. When, after leaving Queenstown, we were well up the Channel, we were at times near enough to the eastern shore to see the surpassing beauty of the country : green field and darker "wood, villages, farm- steads, country-seats, churches, castles, so uninten- tionally disposed by the hands of man and of nature working together that what was designed for conven- ience or made for use blended into a landscape of enchanting variety. And here I saw constantly something, a little thing, that delighted my eye, and I may almost say gladdened my heart, — windmills. There was a gentle breeze blowing, and these faith- ful servants of man for ages past were working away with that cheerful diligence which always marks their labors, and has always made me respect and like and almost love them, and feel a kind of sym- pathy with the poor dumb, willing things when a calm reduced them to idleness, which yet after all was well-earned rest. In my boyhood, there were t^o in sight from the Batteiy, on the Brooklyn side of the bay, and they were not far from my father's house ; but the places where they stood are now cov- ered by a howling wilderness of bricks and mortar, and the windmill seems to have disappeared from the land. At least, I have not seen one anywhere for twenty years and more ; and with them the tide-mill seems to have gone also. In England, although it is the country of coal and iron and the steam-engine, I found them more or less wherever I went, giving life to the landscape, and standing, like a link of develop- ment, between man and unmitigated nature. 18 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. Off Anglesea I made my fii-st acquaintance with that limited knowledge of manifest things on the part of the British Philistine which I afterwards found to be one of his distinctive traits of character. My fellow-passengers were almost wholly Britons, and they had assumed as a matter of course that I was one of them. But there was one difference between us : they had all been travelers, and had crossed the ocean more than once, some of them many times, while this was my -first approach to the shores to which they had often returned. As a knot of us stood looking over the starboard quarter, our at- tention was attracted by a somewhat imposing struct- ure set far out into the water. I waited to hear what would be said about it. Presently one of my companions observed it, and asked what it was. Then there was a little discussion ; and to my sur- prise, I may say to my amazement, no one knew, or seemed able to conjecture, at what we were looking. After a little reserve, I said that I thought it was Holyhead, — a suggestion which was received with favor, and then with general acquiescence. Now my knowledge was due to no sagacity or study ; but to the fact that, before the days of the electric telegraph and of fleets of commercial steamers, my father's counting-house was in South Street, where the steep- roofed old building still stands, and that on Saturdays I was a frequent and not unwelcome visitor on board the ships that lay at the ^wharves before his win- dows. Over the companion-ways into the cabins I saw painted rows of little flags, with the legend " Holyhead signals ; " and with a boy's inquisitive- ness I asked a captain what that meant. His an- swer I need hardly give. Those were the signals ENGLISH SKIES. 19 which each ship hoisted when she came in sight of Holyhead light-house and lookout station, whence the vessel was announced, by semaphore telegraph, in Liverpool. Therefore, knowing where we were in the Channel, it seemed plain enough that that was Holy- head. But there was a little crowd of my British cousins, travelers and commercial persons, who had passed the place again and again, and who did not know what it was ! I held my tongue ; but, like a wiser animal than I am, I kept up a great thinking. When I landed, one of the very few differences that I observed between the people whom I had left and those among whom I had come was a calmer and more placid expression of countenance. This in the descending scale of intelligence became a stolid look, the outward sign of mental sluggishness. But, higher or lower, in degree or in kind there it was, — placidity instead of a look of intentness and anxiety. Now, to suppose that this difference is caused by less thoughtfulness, less real anxiety, less laboriousness, on the part of the Englishman is to draw a conclu- sion directly in face of the facts. The toil and strug- gle of life is harder in England than it is here : poor men are more driven by necessity ; rich men think more ; among all classes, except the frivolous part of the aristocracy (not a large class), there is more men- tal strain, more real anxiety, than we know here, where all the material conditions of life are easier, and where there is less care for political and social matters. Why, then, this difference of look ? I am inclined to think that it is due, in some measure, to difference of climate, — not to such effect of climate upon organization as makes a difference in the phys- ical man, but to a result of climate which is almost 20 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. mechanical, and which operates directly upon each individual. Briefly, I think that an expression of anxiety is given to the " American " face by an effort to resist the irritating effect of our sun and wind. Watch the people as they pass you on a bright, windy day, and you wnll see that their brows are contracted, their eyes half closed, and their faces set to resist the glare of the sun and the flare of the wind ; and be- sides, in winter they are stung with cold, in summer scorched with heat. For some three hundred days of the three hundred and sixty-five they undergo this irritation, and brace themselves to meet it. Now, a scowling brow, half-closed eyes, and a set face unite to make an anxious, disturbed, struggling expres- sion of countenance, although the wearer may be not really anxious, disturbed, and struggling. By the experience of years this look becomes more or less fixed in the majority of " American " faces. In England, on the contrary, there is compara- tively no glare of the sun, and comparatively little wind. The former assertion will be received without question by those who have been in both countries ; but the latter may be doubted, and may be regarded as strange, coming from a man who has to confess that, before he had been on English land forty-eight hours, he was almost blown bodily off Chester walls, and came near being wrecked in the Mersey. In fact, there are not unfrequently in England wind storms of a severity which, if not unknown, is very rare in the United States or in Canada. We have records of such storms in England in the past ; we read announcements of them at the present day. I had experience of one there more severe than any that I remember here, and heard little or nothing ENGLISH SKIES. 21 said about it. But in England, when a storm is over, the wind goes down. Here, on the contrary, our " clearing up " after a storm is effected by the setting in of a northwest wind, against which it is at first toilsome to walk, and which sometimes continues to blow out of a cloudless sky for days, with a vir- ulence quite fiendish. Because it does not rain or snow, people call the weather fuie, and delude them- selves with the notion that the wind is " bracing ; " but nevertheless they go about with scowling brows, watery eyes, and set faces, as they brace themselves up to endure it. On my return, this wind met me nearly two hundred miles at sea. It was something the like of which I had not felt once on the eastern side of the Atlantic. The air was as clear as a dia- mond ; the sky was as blue as sapphire and as hard as steel ; the moon, about fifty thousand miles higher than it was in England, blazed with a cold, cheei'less light ; life seemed made up of bright points ; and the wind blew from the northwest, not tempestuously or in gusts, but with a steady, overbearing persistence for which nothing in nature affords any simile : it is itself alone. I knew that I was near home. There is nothing of this kind in England. Not only did I not find it in my brief experience, but I never heard of it, nor of it is there any record. The absence of it there and the presence of it here may, I think, be reasonably regarded as a very important influ- ence in the fashioning the facial habit of the peo- ple of the two countries. All the more does this seem probable because I have observed that " Amer- icans " who reside in England for- a few years gen- erally lose, in a great measure, if not entirely, the look in question, and on their return to their own 22 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. shores soon acquire it again. It need hardly be said that there are numerous exceptions to these remarks in both countries. To speak of the difference between the climate of England and the climate of the United States is as reasonable as it would be to speak of any difference between England, on the one hand, and Europe, Asia, or Africa, on the other. England is an isolated terri- tory, — the southern half of an island, — and is about as large as the State of Virginia, or as the States of New York and New Jersey together ; while the United States cover the greater third of a continent, stretch- ing from ocean to ocean, and almost from the arctic regions to the tropics. England may be properly compared only with such several parts of the United States as are homogeneous in soil and climate. The difference between the climates, or rather the atmos- pheric conditions, of Old England and of New Eng- land, for example, or of the Middle States, is of course due, very largely, to the greater dampness of the former. Careful records of observations, extend- ing through twenty-three years, show that rain falls in the valley of the Thames, on an average, one hun- dred and seventy-eight days in the year ; that is, on nearly one half of the three hundred and sixty-five. Contrary to general supposition, the wettest month is July; and the wettest season is autumn, and not winter, as is generally believed. Spring is the least wet, winter comes next in rainfall and fog, summer next, and autumn stands highest. In this respect, autumn is to winter as 7.4 to 5.8. But I found rain in England to be a very different thing from rain in New England or in New York. With us it rarely rains but it pours ; and excepting a few light show- ENGLISH SKIES. 23 ers in May, all our rainfalls are more or less floods from the sky, and are accompanied by storms, — storms of thunder and wind in summer, violent v/inds from the northeast in autumn and winter. This is so much the case that loose speakers among us say that it is storming, when they mean merely that it is rain- ing; applying storm to a May shower as to a Novem- ber gale. Now in England rain is generally a much milder dispensation of moisture. It will rain there steadily for hours together, a fine, softly-dropping rain, without wind enough to shake a rose-bush. Such rain is almost unjgipwniii '^America.'' Having ef««^', often observed our rains for purposes of comparison, I find that about five minutes is the longest duration of such fine, light rain as I have seen continue in England for five hours, without either much increase or much diminution, and without any appreciable wind. This is why Portia says that mercy " drop- peth as the gentle rain from heaven." We in Amei-- ica rarely see such rain as Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote those lines. Although the rain falls thus gently, the heavens are very black. The earth is darkened by a murky canopy. It is gloomier than it is with us even when we have one of our three days' northeasters, or one of our blackest thunder-storms. The clouds are of a dirty, grimy hue and substance, and seem not to be mere condensing vapor, but sloughs in mid-air. Look- ing at them, you would suppose that they would foul the houses, the streets, and the fields, instead of wash- ing them. The sight of them gives new force to Mi- randa's description : — " The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch." Fully to understand what that means, one must wake 24 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. up, as Shakespeare often had waked, to an autumn rain in London. The reason of this seemed to me that the clouds lie so low. With us, even in a copious rain, the clouds are so high that the drops strike smartly as they come down, and we can look up to the lofty vapor level from which they fall. But in England the rain comes only from a little distance above the tops of the trees and the houses. (I am speaking not only of showers, but of steady rains.) Even when it does not rain and is not foggy the tops of the not lofty pinnacles of Westminster Abbey are sometimes hidden in mist ; and once from the Thames I saw a gold- lined cloud descend upon the Parliament houses, as if to cast a royal robe around the Victoria Tower. The changes of the sky, too, are sudden, although without violence. You will wake to find a steadily falling rain. The heavens will be of an impenetra- ble dun color; or rather, thei'e will be no heavens, the very earth seeming to be wrapped around with a cloud of thick darkness, distilling water. You will naturally think that such a thick and settled mass can be dispersed and changed only by some great commotion of the elements. As you look out — no pleasant occupation — at long intervals, your judg- ment is confirmed. There is the same steady distilla- tion of water out of the same darkness. Something, a book, or a newspaper, or a thought of faces far away, absorbs your attention, and suddenly there is a gleam of light. You look up ; the clouds are breaking away, and before you can change your dress and get out the day is a beauty smiling through tears, and all the earth seems glad again. But you cannot count upon the continuance of this even for an hour. With ENGLISH SKIES. 25 US, if the wind changes and the clouds break, they are scattered, driyen out of sight for days. Not so in England. Your bright sky there may be obscured in five minutes, and in less than five minutes more, if you are sensitive to damp, you will need an umbrella. This is what is meant in English literature by the changeability of the climate ; not such sudden jumps from hot to cold and from cold to hot as those which we have to undergo. And again, in this variability of the heavens, I found an illustration of a passage in Shakespeare, that in King Henry VIIL, where the doomed Buckingham says, — " My life is spaiin'd akeady : I am the shadow of poor Buckingham, Whose figure even this instant cloud puts on, By darkening my clear sun." The passage at best is marred with the effects of the manifestly hasty composition of this play ; but the instant cloud darkening the clear sun is a simile — yet not a simile, for it is the glory of Shakespeare's style that he rarely wrote in set similes — that has an illustrative power in England which is given to it by no corresponding phenomenon in " America." These passages are no after-thoughts with me, cu- riously sought out for the purpose of giving interest to my descriptions. The fitness of thing to thought was so exact and incisive that the latter came to me instantly as I was observing the phenomenon. Rain is not looked upon in England, as it is with us, as a bai-rier to the open air, unless, as an Irishman might say, the open air is taken in a close carriage. Indeed, were it so regarded, the English people more than any other would live an indoor life, instead of being the most open-air loving of all Northern nations. 26 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. Far the extravagant joke about the English weather, that on a fine day it is like looking up a chimney, and on a fonl day like looking down, is more than set off by the truth of Charles II. 's sober saying, that the climate of England tempts a man more into the open air than any other. It is very rarely, I sliould think, that the weather in England is for many hours together so forbidding that a healthy man, not too dainty as to his dress, would be kept indoors, and lose by it invigorating exercise. It is not too warm in summer, nor too cold in winter ; it is never too hot and dry, and, notwithstanding the frequent rains, it is rarely too wet. The mean temperature of the year is about fifty degrees ; the mean temperature of the hottest month, July, only sixty- three degrees ; and it is only on very exceptional days, in very ex- ceptional years, that the mercury rises above eighty degrees, or falls below twenty degrees, the mean tem- perature of the coldest month, January, being thirty- five degrees. A comparison of these temperatures with those which we are called upon to bear in our_ long summers and in our longer winters shows the advantage which the people of England have over us in respect to out-door exercise. We cannot walk or ride as they do. During no small part of our year physical exertion in the open air is painful rather than pleasureful, injurious rather than beneficial. It is only in autumn that we can find health and en- joyment out of doors. Between the middle of Sep- tember and the middle of December "we maj enjoy a mellow air and what is left of the verdure in our parched landscape ; but at that season we strangely leave the country, whither we go in the blinding, blazing summer, when walking or driving, except in ENGLISH SKIES, 27 the evening, is a fitting diversion only for salaman- ders. It is not, however, only men in England who are not kept within doors by rain from their business, or their pleasure, or their mere daily exercise, English ladies, as is generally known, take open-air exercise much more freely and regularly than women in the same condition of life in most other countries. But it is not so well known, I believe, how ready they are to brave the rain, or rather to take it quietly, with- out braving, as a little inconvenience not to be thought of within certain bounds. At first, I was surprised to see, both in London and in the country, ladies walking about in rain, coming out into rain, which would have caused an " American " woman of like condition to house herself, or if caught in it, and not kept out by sheer necessity, to make for shelter and for home. And not uitfrequently I saw them do- ing thus umbx'ellaless. In England umbrellas would seem to be a necessity of daily life ; but, according to my observation, they are much more generally carried by men than by women. In walking through the Crescent in Regent Street on a wet morning, I have met half a dozen women, lady-like in appearance, ex- posing themselves, and what is more their bonnets, without protection to the fine, drizzling rain with an air of the utmost unconcern. I walked, one morning, from Canterbury to the neighboring village of Harbledown, some three miles, in a rain that, notwithstanding my umbrella, wet me pretty well from the hips down. On my way I met, or overtook, men, women, and children, but only one of them had an umbrella, and that one was — of all creatures — a butcher's boy ! Just at the edge of 28 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. Canterbury — I cannot say the outskirts, for the towns in England do not have sucli ragged, draggled things as outskirts — I stopped at a little house to get a glass of milk (and good, rich milk it was, price one penny), led thereto by a sense of emptiness (for I was yet breakfastless), and by a small placai-d in the window announcing the sale of that fluid. It was served out to me by a middle-aged woman, lean, " slabsided," sharp-nosed, with a nasal, whining voice, who, looking through the window past her business card, said, by way of making herself agreeable, as I quaffed her liquid ware, " Seems suthin like rain, sir I " It was pouring so steadily, although not violently, that I had thought of turning back, and giving up Harble- down for that day ; but this determined me, and put me on my mettle. If a poor wisp of womanhood like that could see in such a down-pour only something like rain, flinching would be a shame to my beard and my inches. I was struck, too, by the thorough. Yankeeness of her phrase : it might have been uttered on the outskirts of Boston. This likeness, however, struck me among the country folk in Kent on other occasions, to which I shall refer hereafter. In Kent I rarely heard an h dropped, and never one superflu- ously added. At a country house where I was visiting in Essex, it was agreed at luncheon that we should have a walk in the park that afternoon, because it was fine, and we had had a drive the day before, and were to have lawn-tennis the day after. JSTow the phrase " it 's fine " in England means merely that it is not actually raining at the time of speaking ; but when the hour of our walk came the rain came also with it. As our party was composed of two ladies and three gentle- ENGLISH SKIES. 29 men, I exjDected that it would be broken up. Not at all. With the most matter-of-course air, the ladies, neither of them notably robust in figure or apparently in health, donned light water-proof cloaks, and, tak- ing each of us an umbrella, we soberly waded forth to our watery English walk. I hope the ladies en- joyed it, for they caused me to do so ; and we saw some noble trees and pretty views in the park and from it. We met a small flock of geese who did not hiss, but looking with goose-like sobriety seemed to recognize us, and to be ready to hold out to us the web-foot of fellowship. I observed that even the la- dies did not put on overshoes, but trusted merely to stout, serviceable walking-shoes ; and although we walked over grass I found that my feet were not wet. I had made a similar observation on my walk to Harbledown. Then my feet became damp, of course ; but although there was neither a plank nor an asphaltum path by the roadside (one of which is commonly found in the more thickly inhabited rural districts in England), my strong walking-shoes were not soiled above the sole. This I found to be the case again and again, so firm are the tightly graveled roads in England. The harmlessness of wet srass was a puzzle to me. I walked all over the lawns at Hampton Court one morning after a rain, led to do so by a companion who knew how things should be done (you always walk on grass in England, if you like to do so), and I neither felt nor saw upon my shoes any evidence of water. Under similar circum- stances in the United States, they would have been wet through in five minutes. It need hardly be said, however, that even when there is not a storm or an unusual rain the usual fall on alternate days is often 30 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND •WITHEsT. too heavy to admit of parties of pleasure. Our lawn- tennis had to be given up as an out-of-doors perform- ance, although the lawn had been specially mowed for the occasion. But our hostess was not to be balked. We went into one of the drawing-rooms, and ourselves rolling the furniture out into the great hall, we stretched a rope across the room, hung cop- ies of the Times over it to make a barrier, and had our game out ; in which, by the way, the most points were scored by my lady herself and by a Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. Unlike the America in the famous yacht race, the " American " was " no- where." In the gardens of such houses, or sometimes upon their walls, it is common to find sun-dials, relics of the past. Those upon the walls are very large, some of them being ten or twelve feet in diameter. They seem to have been as common as clocks, and to have been set up as a matter of course long after clocks were no rarities. But if, according to the pretty le- gend upon one of them, Horas non numero nisi Sere- nas, they were useless unless the sun shone, they must have been mere ornaments for much more than half the days in the year. For even when it does not rain in England the days are comparatively few in which the sun casts a shadow strong enough to mark the hour upon a dial. The noon-mark on the kitchen window-sill of old New England farm-houses was almost always, once a day, a serviceable sign of the time ; but a sun-dial in England must often have been little- more useful than a chair to a cherub. The low temperature of the country enables the people to bear the dampness, and even to find it con- ducive to health and enjoyment of life. " Let it be ENGLISH SKIES. 31 cold," said an Englishman to me, as we walked from his villa to the train through a chilling drizzle, " and I care little if it is damp." And I found the combi- nation, on the whole, wholesome and not unpleasant. But if England, with its damp atmosphere, were sub- ject to our extremes of heat and cold, it would be al- almost uninhabitable : it would be as unhealthy in winter as Labrador, in summer as India. I was sur- prised to see the freedom with which doors were left open for the entrance of the air, and by the uncon- sciousness of possible harm with which women of the lower classes in the country went about in cold mist, or even in rain, without bonnets or shawls. For as to myself, at times I found this chilly fog pierce to the very marrow of my bones, and make me long for the fire which was not always attainable. And when I did have it, the comfort that it gave me was not so great as I expected it would be. Fire does not seem to be very warm in England. I never saw a really hot one. It is this combination of cold and damp that makes the Englishman so capable of food and drink. Noth- ing is more impressive about him than his diligence in this respect. He never neglects an opportunity. Hearty breakfast at nine o'clock ; luncheon at half past one or two, at which there is a hot joint and cold bird pies, with wine and beer; at five o'clock tea, generally delicious souchong, with thin bread and butter ; dinner at eight, serious business ; sherry and biscuit or sandwiches at eleven, as you take your bed- room candle. At home it would have killed me in a month ; there I throve upon it mightily, and laid pounds avoirdupois upon my ribs, which I lost within a year after my return to the air of " America," 32 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. which so often makes one feel like desiccated codfish. There is no shirking whatever of this matter of eat- ing and drinking. It is not regarded as in the least indelicate, or, in the old-fashioned phrase, " ungen- teel," even for a lady to eat and drink anywhere at any time. I remarked this at a morning concert of the great triennial Birmingham musical festival. The concert began at eleven o'clock, and as the price of tickets was a pound (five .dollars) it is to be supposed that every person of the thousands present in that great hall had breakfasted well about eight or nine o'clock ; but yet when the first part was over, around me and everywhere within sight, even in the seats roped off for the nobility, luncheon bags were pro- duced, and flasks ; and men and women began to eat sandwiches and other wiches, and to drink sherry and water, or something else and water (but never the water without the something else), as if they feared that they would be famished before they could get home again. ^ And very careful in this respect are they of the stranger within their gates. The last words that I heard from a very elegant woman, as I parted from her to take a railway journey of three or four hours, were a charge to the butler to see that I had some sandwiches. Needless caution ! They had been prepared, and were produced to me in a fault- less package, and put into my bag with gravity and unction. In due time I ate them, and with appetite, saying grace to my fair providence. One effect of the climate of England (it must, I 1 So the Scotsman Baillie, writing home about the trial of the Earl of StraHord, at which he was present, says that even then and there among the lords there was "much publict eating not only of confections, hot of flesh and bread, bottles of beer and wine going thick from mouth to mouth, and all this in the King's eye." (Bannatyne Club Ed., i. 314.) ENGLISH SKIES. 33 think, be the climate) is the mellowing of all sights, and particularly of all sounds. Life there seems softer, richer, sweeter, than it is with us. Bells do not clang so sharp and harsh upon the ear. True, they are not rung so much as they are with us. Even in London on Sunday their sou.nd is not obtrusive. Indeed, the only bell sound in the great city of which I have a distinct memory is Big Ben's delicious, mel- low boom. In country walks on Sunday the distant chimes from the little antique spires or towers float to you like silver-tongued voices through the still air. Your own voice is hushed by them if you are with a companion, and you walk on in sweet and silent sad- ness. I shall never forget the soothing charm of the Bolney chime in Sussex, which, as the sun was leav- ing the weald to that long, slow-deepening twilight through which the day in England lapses gently into darkness, with no splendor of sunset obsequies, I heard in company with one whose sagacious lips, then hushed for a moment, are silent now forever. These English country chimes are very different from those that stun our ears from Broadway steeples. They are simple, and yet are not formless jangle ; but the performers do not undertake to play opera airs affetuoso and con expressione with ropes and iron hammers upon hollow tons of metal. At the Birmingham musical festival, I first re- marked the effect of the climate upon sound. There was a lai'ge instrumental band, and a good one ; and that it was well conducted need hardly be said, for the conductor was Sir Michael Costa. But in pre- cision of attack, in perfection of crescendo and dimi- nuendo^ in the finish and the phrasing of the various salient passages as they were successively taken up 34 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. by the different instruments, and in sonority, I found the performance not quite equal to that of Mr. Thomas's band, the drill of which was very superior. A dozen bars, however, had not been played before I was conscious of a sweet, rich quality of tone, par- ticularly in the string band, which contrasted with the clear, hard brilliancy of the Thomas orchestra. This impressed me more and more as the perform- ance went on, although the enjoyment of it was marred by the organ being not perfectly in tune with the band. Another superiority in Costa's band at- tracted my attention : they accompanied much bet- ter than Thomas's ; with more feeling, sympathy, and intelligence. The singers could trust tliem and lean upon them. This was doubtless due in great part to Costa's long experience as an operatic con- ductor, while, on the other band, Thomas has always worked in instrumental music pure and simple ; but I cannot doubt that it was due in part "also to the feeling of the individual performers. As to the dif- ference in the quality of the tone, I can find no other cause for that than the climate. Possibly, however, the English orchestras tune to the normal pitch (al- though it did not seem to me to be so), in which case some superiority in quality of tone would, be ac- counted for ; the high, so-called and absurdly called, Philharmonic pitch being destructive of quality, which is sacrificed to a sharp sonority. ^ 1 Some months after the first publication of this chapter Dr. Arthur Sul- livan, who was then in New York, was reported in the New York Herald as having remarked upon this difference in tone between the string bands of the two countries, and as having accounted for it to himself by the sup- position that the musicians in "America" were not careful in the selec- tion of their instruments. His surmise was natural, but erroneous. He would find good instruments enough here; but the mellowing air of Eng- land cannot be bought and brought across the ocean. There is no more ENGLISH SKIES. 35 One little performance of Costa's on this occasion was very interesting. My seat, although not too near, happened to be in such a position that I could see all his motions, and even his face. In a piece from Beethoven's Mass in C there was a little fugue, the rhythm and the intonation of which were both somewhat difficult. As the tenors entered with the subject they were unsteady, and speedily went into confusion. Kuin was imminent. But turning to Costa I saw him, little disturbed, merely increase the emphasis of his beat, while he himself took up the subject, and, looking eagerly at the tenors, sang it right out at them. They were soon whipped in, and the performance was not only saved, but was so good that its repetition was demanded by the presi- dent, the Marquis of Hertford (no applause being al- lowed) ; and on the repeat the tenors behaved hand- somely in the presence of the enemy. Whether I was favored by the English climate I do not know, but in addition to this soft, sweet charm which the air seemed to give to evei-y thing that was to be seen or heard, I found even late autumn there as verdant and as variously beautiful as early sum- mer is with us, and without the heat from which we suffer. In Sussex the gardens were all abloom, wild flowers lit up the woods, blackberries were ripening in the hedges, birds singing, and everything was fresh and fragrant. Among the birds, I observed the thrush and the robin-redbreast ; the latter not that tawny-breasted variety of the singing thrush which sensitive barometer than a stringed instrument. Dampness affects them all so much and so quiclcly that I have known tlie first and second strings of a 'cello t(f rise half a tone in an hour or so with a change of wind from dry to damp. This rise accompanies a slight increase of the thickness of the string, which gives its tone a little more body. 36 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. is here called a robin, but a little bird about half as large, with a thin, pointed bill, a breast of crimson, and a note like a loud and prolonged chirrup. It would be charming if we could have this man-trust- ing little feathered fellow with us ; but I fear that he could not bear our winters. In Warwickshire I found roses blooming, blooming in great masses half- way up the sides of a two-story cottage on the road from Stratford-on-Avon to Kenilworth ; and this was in the very last days of October. True, I had only a few days before shivered through a rainy morning drive in Essex, when the chill dampness seemed to strike into my very heart ; but on the whole I found myself under English skies healthy, happy, and the en j oyer of a succession of new delights, which yet seemed to me mine by birthright. CHAPTER III. ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. JouY, the author of "L'Hermite cle la Chauss^e d'Antm," which is the French " Spectator," has a re- mark which those who are ready to generalize upon na- tional peculiarities would do well to consider. " Plus on reflechit," he says, " et plus on observe, plus on se con'vainct de la fausset^ de la plupavt de ces juge- ments port^s sur un nation enti^re par quelques ecri- vains et adopt^s sans examen par les autres." ^ He illustrates and confirms this conclusion by asking, Who is the Frenchman that does not believe himself to be one of a people the most fickle and the most inconstant in the world ? Nevertheless, he adds, if we observe and study the character of our people elsewhere than in the capital, where it denaturalizes itself so easily, we shall discover that, so far from being inclined to change, the French is, of the peo- ples of Europe, the most enslaved by its prejudices, and the most bound down to routine. The French Addison was right; and there could be no more impressive illustration of the truth of his judgment than the opinions formed of each other, and tenaciously held for more than half a century, by the people of England and those of " America," 1 The more we reflect, and the more we observe, the more we are con- vinced of the falsity of the greater part of those judgments passed upon a whole people by some writers and adopted without question by others. {L'Hermite, etc. No. v., 21st September, 1811.) 38 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. or, as the latter is generally called in the former, "the States," both phrases being brief make-shifts for the long, complex, and purely political designa- tion, "the United States of America." One of these notions is counterchanged, as the heralds say ; coun- terchanging being a quaint contrivance, by wliich a figure, a lion for example, is shown partly of one color and partly of another, in opposition to a party-colored background of the same tints. This correspondent perversion and antagonism has a grotesque resem- blance to the opinions sometimes entertained of each other on one subject by two individuals or two peo- ples. Thus British writers, and generally the Brit- ish people, adopting, as Jouy savs, without question the opinions of their writers, speak of us as a nation of travelers ; while many of us, on the otlier hand, think of Englishmen as staid, immobile folk, slow in action, mental and physical, and, compared with our- selves, sluggish, stolid, and with a dislike of movement which is composed in equal parts of vis inertice and local attachment. There was never a notion more incorrect, or set up more directly in the face of commonly known facts. Englishmen are, and always have been, the greatest travelers in the world. Englishmen, of all people, have been the readiest to leave an old home for a new one. They are the explorers, they are the colo- nizers, of the earth. It is because Englishmen are travelers and colonizers that two English-speaking nations monopolize the larger and the fairer part of this great continent ; that the vast continent-like island of Australia is rapidly becoming another New England ; that Victoria counts among her titles that of Empress of Indi^ ; and that the aborigines of the ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 39 southern wilds of Africa are beginning to yield place to the Anglo-Saxon. Even on this continent more men from the Old England than from the New have traveled to the Western plains for curiosity or for the pleasures of the chase ; and in South America, — in the Brazils, in Peru, and in Chili, — of the English- speaking denizens and mercantile houses ten to one are British. Upon the latter point I speak not with personal knowledge, but by inference from what I do know and from testimony. The notion that " the Americans " are a nation of travelers has sprung chiefly from the largeness of our hotels, and the freedom with which we use them. In former years the greater number of English trav- elers in England went, except when they were actu- ally en route, to lodgings. It is only of late years that large hotels like ours have been established in the principal English cities ; but there, notwithstand- ing all that has been said of* the Englishman's dislike of hotel life, they are profitable, and seem to be not unsuited to the habits of the people. Our large hotels were at first the result of a certain social condition. We had not a class of people who liked to let a part of their own houses to transient lodgers of a condi- tion in life above their own. Keeping a hotel or a boarding-house as a business was quite another mat- ter. It was undertaken like any other business. Hence our hotels and boarding-houses, and our free use of them merely as places where we could buy food and rest for a few hours, jast as we could buy anything else at any shop, without concerning our- selves about the landlord in one case or the shop- keeper in the other. And this notion of our being so much more given to travel than Englishmen are 40 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. had its origin many years ago, before railways were, and wlien we used steamboats even much more than we do now, which Englishmen can never use largely as a means of locomotion. A British traveler of that time, finding himself in one of our large river- boats, with one, two, or perhaps three or four hundred people, inferred, in his ignorance, that our whole pop- ulation was constantly movhig about in those to him wonderful vessels. He had never seen more than a stage-coach full of fellow-passengers at one time, and the great throng astonished him. But for one trav- eler in a stage-coach here there were a hundred in England, besides those who traveled post. However all this may have been, nowadays half England seems to be every day upon the rails. High and low, rich and poor, they spend no small part of their time in railway carriages. Ladies who would not venture themselves in a London cab alone (al- though that they do now pretty freely) travel by rail unattended, or at most with a maid, who is generally in a second-class carriage, while they are in a first. Not only married and middle-aged women do this, but young ladies, even of the higher and the upper- middle classes.^ The number of trains that enter and leave London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and other large cities daily is enormous. The great stations in London, of which there are six or seven, like the Victoria, the Charing Cross, and the Euston Street, swarm with crowds at all hours. The entire popula- tion of the island seems to be always " on the go." And all this is done without bustle or confusion. The Englishman and the Englishwoman of to-day are so 1 Teste, : the adventure of Colonel Valentine Baker, now, as Baker Fasha, restored to grace and good society in England. ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 41 accustomed to travel that they go about upon the rails with no more fuss than in going from the draw- ing-room to the dining-room, and from the dining- room back into the drawing-room ; and this freedom in locomotion is much aided by the perfect system of the railway management, and the comfort with which the whole proceeding is invested. There has been much dispute as to the compara- tive convenience of the English and " American " sys- tems of railway traveling. I give my voice, without hesitation or qualification, in favor of the English. In England a man in his traveling, as in all other af- fairs of life, does not lose his individuality. He does not become merely one of the traveling public. He is not transmuted, even by that great social change- worker, the railway, into a mere item in a congeries of so many things that are to be transported from one place to another with the least trouble and the great- est gain to the cornmon carrier. His personal comfort is looked after ; his individual wishes are consulted so far as is possible. He arrives at the station with his luggage. One of the company's porters imme- diately appears, asks where he is going, and takes his trunks and bags. He buys his tickets, and directed, if he needs direction, by other servants of the com- pany, all of whom are in uniform, he takes his seat in a first-class or second-class carriage, as he has chosen. He is assisted to find a comfortable place, and, if he appears at all at a loss, is prevented by the attendants from getting into a wrong train or a wrong carriage. For here, as in all similar places in Eng- land, there is always some authorized person at hand to answer questions ; and the an-swer is civil and pleasant and sufficient. His luggage, properly la- 42 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. beled, is placed in a van or compartment in the very carriage in which he takes his seat. For, contrary to the general suppositioii, first, second, and third class carriages are not distinct vehicles or, as we might say, cars, coupled together in a train. The body of the vehicle on each "truck" is divided into first, second, and third class carriages or compartments ; and each one of these composite vehicles has a luggage van. A minute or two before the train is to start a servant of the company, whose business it is, goes to the door of every carriage, and, examining the tickets of the passengers, sees that each one is properly placed. In more than one instance I saw the error of an igno- rant passenger who had neglected to make the proper inquiries rectified by this precaution, which prevents mistakes that would prove very annoying. When this has been done the doors are closed but not locked, the word is given " all right," and the train starts, and with a motion so gentle that it is hardly percep- tible. There is no clanging of bells or shrieking of whistles. The quiet of the whole proceeding is as impressive as its order. And I will here remark that that most hideous of all sounds, the mingled shriek and howl of the steam- whistle, from the annoyance of which we are hardly free anywhere, in town or out, is rarely heard in Eng- land. At Morley's Hotel in London, which fronts on Trafalgar Square, within a stone's-throw of the great Charing Cross station, and where I stopped for some days, I did not once hear, even in the stillness of night, this hideous sound. On the rails it is rarely heard ; and there the noise is not very unpleasant. It is a short, sharp sound, — a real whistle, not a de- moniac shriek, or a hollow, metallic roar. ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 43 The care that is taken of the safety of passengers is shown by an incident of which I was a witness when going to Canterbury. The way-stations are on both sides of the road. Passengers who are going up take the train on one side ; those going down, on the other. The communication between the two sides of the station is either by a bridge above the rails, or by a tunnel under-ground ; and no one who is not a serv- ant of the company is allowed to walk on the tracks, or to cross them, under any circumstances whatever. On the occasion to which I refer, a man stepped down from the platform on one side, and was instantly met by a person in uniform who ordered him back. He submitted at once, and then said, good-humoredly, to the station-master, " I suppose you adopted that regulation because of the accidents that happened." " No," replied the other, with a smile ; " we adopted it before the accidents happened." In "America" we wait for the accident. The carriages are the perfection of comfort. The first-class are in every way luxurious. You are as much at your ease as if you were in a large stuffed arm-chair with a back high enough to support your head as well as your shoulders. The second-class car- riages on some of the lines are hardly inferior in real comfort, although they are not so handsomely fitted up; the most important difference being a diminu- tion of room. But even in the first-class carriages there is no glare of color or of tinsel, nor shining ornament of wood or metal. All is rich and sober ; and there are no sharp corners or hard surfaces. The holder of a first-class ticket may ride in a second or a third class carriage if he desires to do so and there is room for him ; and I have again and again, on the 44 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. stopping of the train at a way station, gone from one to the other to observe the passengers in each and to talk with them, — for English people are much more talkative and communicative than we are, particu- larly when they are traveling. In this way I had the pleasure of many long conversations, even with ladies whom I never saw before and whom I shall probably never see again. When a train stops the doors are all immediately thrown open, and if it is at a way-station the passengers give up their tickets as they pass out through the station. If you choose to go beyond the point for which you have bought your ticket, you merely pay the additional fare, for which a receipt is given ; doing which causes no ap- preciable delay. When the train reaches its destination it is stopped a short distance from the station, and an officer of the company comes to the door of the carriage and asks for your ticket. Sometimes this is done at the last way-station, if that is very near the end of the line. The train then moves on and quietly enters the station, slowing its gentle movement so gradually that motion insensibly becomes rest. There is no clanging, bumping, or shaking. If you have only your hand-bag and your rug, you step out, and if 3'ou do not choose to walk, you take the first of the line of cabs in order as they stand, and are off in a minute. If you are in London, and are observant, you will see as you pass the gate that your cabman gives your address to a policeman, who writes it down with the number of the cab, taking a look at you as this is done ; but the cab does not perceptibly stop for it, and then is off on a trot. If you have lug- gage and more than a single trunk, you hold up your ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 45 finger, and one of the company's porters is instantly at the carriage window. You tell him to get yon a four-wheelerj and give him a bag, a rug, a book, or a newspaper, which he puts into some four-wheeled cab, which is thereby engaged for you. You get out, go with the porter to the luggage van, which is not one of two or three huge cars, full of trunks and boxes, away at the end of the train, but a small com- partment just at your side ; and the contents are not numerous, of course, as each van has only the lug- gage of the passengers on one vehicle. You point out your own trunks and boxes, the porter whisks them up to the cab, and in five minutes or less from the time when the train stopped you are trotting off to your house, j^our lodgings, or your hotel, and all your haggage is tvith you for immediate use, without the bother of cljocks aiid expressmen and a delivery of your bags and boxes at some time within half a day afterwai'ds. If by chance any mistake has been made as to . the disposition of your baggage, which happens with extremest rarity, according to my ob- servation, it is discovered at once, and there is the whole force of the company's porters and higher offi- cers to rectify it, and to search for and produce your propert}^ under your own observation ; and the thing is done in a few minutes. Police officers are there, too, not lounging or indifferent, but ready, quick, and active to give you protection and help. The re- sult is expedition and the keeping of your property under your own eye, and the having it immediately at your residence. It is customary to give the porter who gets your cab and takes your luggage to it six- pence or fourpence for his trouble. Nothing is more remarkable on an English railway 46 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. than the civility of the company's servants ; and this is the more impressive because it does not at all di- minish their firmness and precision in obedience to orders. I happened on two occasions to remark this particularly. But before telling my own experience in England I will relate that of another person under similar circumstances in " America." A young gentleman, vrhom I know very well, started from Philadelphia to New York, buying a through ticket. He stopped on the way and re- mained a night, and the next morning resumed his journey. When he presented his " coupon " ticket to the conductor, he was told that it was worthless, as it was dated the day before, and Avas good only for the day on which it was issued. He insisted that as he had paid to be taken from Philadelphia to New York he had the right to be taken the whole distance, whether he stopped on the way six hours or twenty- four, and he refused to pay the double fare demanded. At the next station the conductor ordered him out of the car. He refused to go, and thereupon the other undertook to remove him ; but this, even with the assistance of a brakeman, was not found highly prac- ticable, and was given up as a bad job. When the train reached Trenton the conductor and his assist- ants entered the car with a man in plain clothes who said that he was an officer, and who arrested the pas- senger. This officer said that he was commissioned by the governor and by the mayor of Trenton, but that he was also in the employ of the company. The passenger demanded the intervention of the mayor, was able to enforce his demand, and the i-esnlt was his immediate release. The matter was then placed in the hands of a lawyer, and I believe has not yet been settled. ENGLAND ON THE RAILS, 47 Now it SO happened that a.t that very thne I was in a 231'ecisely similar position in England. The af- fair being in all its circumstances very illustrative of the difference between the two countries in railway regulations, and in the manners of those who achiiin- isterec) them, I shall relate it in detail. While at the Great Western Hotel at Liverpool, which belongs to the Great Western Company and is the Liverpool terminus of the line, I had spoken to a porter of the house, who did me some little services, of my inten- tion to go to London in a day or two, stopping at Birmingham for the great triennial musical f^tival. On the afternoon when I was to start, I came in be- lated and in great haste. I had but twenty minutes in which to pack, pay my bill, buy my ticket, and get off. I sent this porter to get me a second-class ticket. He went, and my luggage was taken in charge by another porter. I reached the train just in time, and the first porter, whom I found standing at a carriage door, handed me my ticket with some silver change, all of which I thrust into my waist- coat pocket without , looking at it, and got into the carriage which he had selected for me. The other porter, who had taken my luggage, came to the door, said, " All right, sir," and we were off. I was so close upon the time of starting that the inquiry as to my destination was made just as the train began to move. To my surprise the ticket examiner said, as I showed him my ticket, which of course I had not yet had time to look at, " This ticket is for London, sir, and you feaid Birmingham." As it proved, the first porter, having heard me speak of going to Lon- don, had in his haste forgotten what I said about Birmingham, and had bought me a London ticket. 48 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WmilN. I was immediately in a state of unpleasant doubt as to what my experience would be and wliat would be- come of my luggage, for I had been in the country hardly a week. At the first stopping-place I made inquiry of the guard, and was told that the stops were so short that nothing could be done until we reached Stafford, where the train would stop ten minutes. The train had hardly come to a stand-still at Stafford when he made his appearance and took me immediately to a superior official, who, when I had stated my case, said" that I must see the station- master ; and in less than half a minute that person- age appeared before me. He was an intelligent, middle-aged man, very respectable in his appearance, and very respectful in his bearing. The guard told him the case briefly. He ordered the luggage in the van of my carriage to be taken out. It was . all turned out, and mine was not found. I was asked to describe it particularly. I did so, and the order was given to take out all the luggage from all the Birmingham and London carriages. It was now quite dark, and the search was made with lanterns ; but in two or three minutes (so many hands were engaged, so quickly did they work, and so little lug- gage, comparatively, was there in each van) my trunks were found, duly labeled " Birmingham." The second porter had made no mistake. I then told the station-master that I had intended, as he saw by the labeling of my luggage, to stop at Bir- mingham, and asked him if with a London ticket I might break my journey for a day or two. He said that he thought that I might, bade me good-evening, and the train started without the delay of a minute. I stopped at Birmingham, stayed two days, and ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 49 then resumed my journey to London. At a short distance from the Euston Street Station the train halted, and we were asked for our tickets. I gave mine, and the ticket taker, glancing at it as he was moving on, stopped short, and said, " This is a day's -ticket, sir. I cannot take this." " You '11 have to take it," I said, " for I have no other." " Then I must ask you, sir, to pay me your fare from Bir- mingham." " I 've paid it once, and I certainly shall not pay it twice on this line until I have been taken to London." " I beg pardon, sir, but I must posi- tively refuse to take this ticket. It 's against my orders ; and I must ask you for your fare from Bir- mingham." I was struck by the man's respectfulness, civility, and quiet good humor, but none the less by his unflinching firmness ; and I answered him with, I believe, equal respect and firmness, " T am sorry, but I shall not pay double fare. I refuse positive- ly." " Then, sir," was his reply, " I must ask you for your name and address." I took out my card, wrote upon it the name of the hotel in London to which I was going, and handed it to him. He touched his cap, saying, " Thank you, sir. Good evening." I replied, " Good evening," and he passed on. The affair had, of course, attracted the attention of my carriage inmates, one of whom said to me, as the train started again, " I think you '11 find you 're wrong. This is a matter the companies are very particular about ; I don't know why ; and I believe the question has been decided in their favor ; I can't see why. You 'd better write to the general super- intendent of the company when you get to London," and he gave me that ofiicer's name. The nest morn- ing I did write, stated my case, received a courteous 4 50 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. reply, and the matter was settled quietly, good-nat- uredly, decently, sensibly, with respect on both sides, and with the least possible trouble. I think so much could not be said of the proceedings in the case of my young friend between Philadelphia and New York, even although he was a resident of New' York and was able to give a name and references very well known, and I was a stranger in England and had never been in London. At the great railway stations such is the throng of travelers ceaselessly passing back and forth, or waiting for trains, accompanied sometimes, in the case of ladies who are going alone, by friends, that these places afford very favorable opportunities for the observation of all sorts of people from all parts of the country, whose superficial traits may be thus conveniently studied and compared. The variety of classes and conditions is great ; the difference un- mistakable. Here we see nothing like it. True, we can tell Northerners from Southerners, Eastern from Western men, and can distinguish by the outside be- tween a denizen of one of the great cities and one from the rural districts. An observant eye can even detect slight variations between the urban and the suburban man or woman, none the less easily when the latter has had her garments carefully made ac- cording to the patterns in " Harper's Bazaar." But beyond this a close observation of our travelers tells us little. In England, notwithstanding the leveling and assimilating tendencies of the last half century, due largely to the railway itself, the gradation of classes is readily perceptible, even to a stranger's eye ; nor is the condition, or in many cases the oc- cupation, less distinguishable than the class. Agri- ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 51 cultural laborers are very rarely seen upon the rail- way, except when they move in gangs for special work ; and then they are quite likely to be Irishmen. The farmers travel much move than I supposed they did, — very much moi^e than they do with us. I met with them and talked with them in second-class cars on every line on which I traveled ; for as I have said it was my habit, when alone, to change my place at station and station. I found that my apprehen- sion of their class and condition from their appear- ance was rarely, if ever, wrong; and so it proved (within certain limits, of course) in regard to other classes. Not only are the upper classes, that is, we may say, those who are educated at Eton and Har- row and the two great universities, unmistakable by their bearing and expression of countenance, but among the professional classes a barrister would hard- ly be taken for a physician, or either of these for a clergyman, or a clergyman for either of those. The London city man, " commercial person," is also un- mistakable, unless he is one of those highly educated great bankers or merchants which are found in Eng- land, but are very rare in " America." Such a per- son might be taken for a peer, unless you were to see him and the peer together, when, with a few " tip- top " exceptions on the city side, the difference would manifest itself, if in no other way, by the counte- nance, if not in the behavior, of the city man him- self. The intermediate classes — commercial travelers, small attorneys, tradesmen, and so forth — have also their distinctive outside and expression, difficult to define in words when dress has come to be so iden- tical in form and color among all classes, but still, as I 52 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. found it, quite unmistakable. I remember that on one Sunday, when I went to morning service at a little vil- lage church with the "lady of the manor," I observed in the choir, near which her ipew was, a man so very earnest in his singing that he attracted my attention. As we walked back through the shrubbery, just be- yond which the church stood, shut off by a wall through wliich was a little gate, I spoke to my host- ess of this man's singing, and asked if he was not a carpenter. " Yes," she answered, with a look of sur- prise ; "but how did you know that? " (I had come to only the day before.) " Oh," I said, " I knew that he must be an artisan, for he was plainly neither a farmer nor a laborer ; and as he did not look like the village blacksmith or wheelwright, I there- fore concluded that he must be a carpenter. And besides, he sawed away so at his singing." The man's dress was like that of my host in fashion and material, a black cloth frock and trousers, and they were perfectly fresh and good, and his linen was clean; but the difference of rank and breeding be- tween the two men was as manifest as if the one had worn his coronet, and the other his paper cap and apron. All these various classes are nowhere seen together as they are at the railway stations ; for, except the agricultural laborer and the lowest classes in the city, all travel. I therefore never Avas near a station with- out entering it and walking about for a while among the people there. A trifling incident at one, which was connected with a hotel at which I was, inter- ested me. I had gon'e down to breakfast in my slip- pers ; and when I rose from the table I walked out into the station, from which two or three trains were ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 53 about starting. As I was quietly eying the motley multitude, I heard a small voice : " Black your shoes, sir ? — only a penny ; " and as I did not immediately reply, my attention being fixed upon a group at a little distance from fne, the words were repeated, and I turned my head. The speaker was looking up earnestly into my face. I, smiling, pointed down to my slippered feet ; and the boy, a good-looking little fellow, smiled too, but shyly, and, seeing his mistake, blushed to the edges of his hair. Wonder of won- ders ! thought I. Here is a country in which boys can blush ; where boys who speak English without a brogue, and yet black boots, have some shamefaced- ness in the presence of their elders. The little fel- low gained somewhat by my not having a job for him to do ; but what he took so joyfully should have been more, by a hundred-fold, to acknowledge fitly the pleasure that I had from his shy, glowing face. This was on the 31st of August, and I saw in the station and elsewhere signs of the time unknown to me before. These were keepers, with leashes of dogs, going hither and thither to the preserves ; for shoot- ing was to begin on the morrow. There was such a fuss and talk about it that one would have thought that it was a matter of life and death to some thou- sands of gentlemen that they should burn powder and propel lead into birds on that day, and that some other thousands of men, and three or four times as many thousands of dogs, should be promptly on the spot to help them. The dogs were mostly handsome, intelligent animals ; the keepers were smallish, tight- built fellows in long gaiters, with a strange mixture of shrewdness and brutality in their faces. On my journey to London I had the good fortune 54 ENGLAND, ■ WITHOUT AND WITHIN. to witness an incident very characteristic of the so- ciety in which I was. I took the train at Birming- ham at about four o'clock in the afternoon. Al- though I had a second-class ticket, as I have said, I was put by mistake into a first-class carriage. The grades of the carriages are indicated on the glass of the upper half of the doors ; but . as the doors were opened and thrown back, I did not see " First Class " on the door of the one I entered. When the train started I was alone. At the next station, or the next but one, a party of three, a young gentleman and two ladies, approached the carriage, and one of the ladies entered it and took the seat next me on my left hand, between me and the door, I having one of the middle seats. Her companions appeared to be her brother and sister, or her sister-in-law ; and from their talk, which I could not avoid hearing, I learned that she was going a sliort distance, and was to be met by her husband at the station where she was to stop. When the train began its gentle, almost imper- ceptible motion, both of them kissed her, — the lady with feminine effusion, but the young gentleman in a perfunctory manner ; and when I saw his cool sa- lute, and heard his " Take care of yourself, old girl," I was sure he was her brother. No other man hav- ing his privilege could have availed himself of it with such indifference. For my carriage companion was a beautiful woman ; and her beauty impressed me the more because of its delicate character, and be- cause she was the first really beautiful woman of her class that I had yet seen in England. She was just tall enough to be noticeably so, and the noble ele- gance of her figure could not be concealed by her ENGLAND ON THE EAILS. 55 traveling dress. This was a long garment, of a soft texture and light color between buff and cream, but- toned from the throat to the lower hem with buttons of the same tint as that of the dress. Her hat, or bonnet, was also of the same material, and was with- out ornament of any kind. As a bonnet has strings, I believe, and a hat has not, it was probably a hat ; for no woman not inhumanly disposed could conceal by a ribbon the inner outline of such a cheek as hers ; and she was not inhuman. In her dainty ears were small earrings of dull gold set with turquoises, which were matched by the brooch which confined a lace frill around her lovely throat. Her eyes were blue, her brow fair ; her mouth had the child-like sweetness which Murillo gave to the lips of his Vir- gins ; in expression her face was cherubic. Why I describe her with so much care my reader will soon see. She apparently had no other luggage than a small Russia-leather bag, which she put into the rack above our heads. We sat in silence ; for there was no occasion for my speaking to her, and she looked mostly out of the window. After we had passed one or two sta- tions she took down the little hand-bag, opened it, took out a bottle and a small silver cup, and turning herself somewhat more to the window poured some- thing into the cup and drank it off at a draught. I did not see what she drank ; but in an instant I knew. The perfume filled the whole carriage. It was brandy ; and the penetrating odor with which I was surrounded told me of the strength of her draught as well as if I had mixed her grog myself, or had joined her in a sociable cup. At this I was not so much astonished as I should have been two or 56 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. three days before ; for at the Birmingham festival I had seen, during the interval between the two parts of a morning performance, potation of the same kind by ladies of whose respectability there could be no question. We went on in silence. After passing one or two more stations we stopped at one — Rugby, I believe — for a little longer time than usual. Soon I was conscious that some persons whom I did not see were about entering the open door, when my an- gelic beauty sprang from her seat, and placing her- self before the door cried out, " No, you shan't come in ! I won't have third-class people in the carriage ! " There was remonstrance which I did not clearly hear, and the people attempted to enter. She then threw her arm across the door-way like a bar, clasping firmly one side of the carriage with a beautiful white dimpled hand. Catherine Douglas, when she thrust her arm through the staples of the door, to keep out the pursuers of her king, could not have been more terribly in earnest. She (wy Catlierine Douglas) almost screamed out, " Go back ! go back ! You shan't come in ! This is a first-class carriage, and I won't have third-class people put into it ! " Then came counter-cries, and there was a hubbub which certainly was of the very first class. She turned her beautiful head to me with an appealing look ; but I sat still and made no sign. A guard, or other official person, who accompanied the inferior intruders ex- postulated with her; and I heard him explain that the train was so full that all the third and even the second class carriages were occupied, and that as these people had their tickets and said they must get on he was obliged to put them into our carriage. It would be for but a little while, only till we reached a ENGLAND ON THE EAILS. 6T certain station. My fair companion was obdurate, and perhaps was a little set up by the contents of the silver cup. But two first-class passengers came in, and as they pleaded for the admission of the luckless third-class people, and the assurances that there was no alternative and that the period of contamination would be brief were repeated, she at last subsided into her seat, although still grumbling, and the ob- jectionable persons were admitted. They certainly were not people with whom it would have been pleasant to sit down to dinner. One, a woman, took the seat on my right, and the other, a coarse, ill-looking fellow, sat himself opposite to her. The face and hands of the woman, sallow and leathery, although she was young, might have been cleaner, and contrasted very unfavorably with the lovely, fair, and fresh complexion of the angry beauty. Her nails were like claws, with long black tips. She had a red woolen tippet around her neck, and her bonnet was a hopeless mass of crumpled rib- bons and dingy, flaring flowers. Her companion was the male proper to such a female, — a little less noi- some, however ; for when a woman sets out to be dirty or disagreeable she succeeds better than a man. Immediately a war of words began between the two " ladies," and it was fought across me. The beauty repeated her objection to third-class people, and pro- tested that as she had paid for a first-class place it was a shame that she should be made to travel third class whether she would or no. She with the red tippet wished to know what harm she would do any- body by riding in the same carriage with them, and added, " Some peepull that coll themselves first-clawss peepull because they paid for a first-clawss ticket 58 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. might be no better than other peepull that paid for a third-clawss ticket." A sniff and a toss of the beau- tiful head. Then she of the tippet : " As for me, I 'm not going to stop in Kugby all night with race- peepull." (It appeared that there had been races somewhere in the neighborhood of Rugby that day.) " If peepull tvere lionly third-clawss peepull, they could n't be expected to stop hall night in a place wen the 'ole town was filled with honl)^ race-peepull." This proposition seemed to meet with general bland assent from all the company in the carriage ; and I was delighted to find that below the deep of com- mon third-class people there was admitted to be still a lower deep, into which certain third-class people could not be expected to descend. Opposite my fair neighbor now sat a rubicund, well-rounded clergy- man, to the establishing of whose local color many gallons of richly-flavored port must have gone. He had not an apron nor even a dean's hat, but either would have become him well. He soothed the fair first-class being with a mild mixture of sympathy and expostulation. There was a general discussion of the situation, in which every one of my fellow-passengers had something to say ; and the impropriety of third- class people being put into contact with first-class people was generally admitted, without the least re- gard for the presence of her of the red tippet and of her companion. At last I was appealed to ; for all the while I had sat silent. I replied, " Really, I ought n't to say anything about the matter ; for I my- self am only a second-class passenger out of place." The beauty turned upon me a stare of surprise, and with a bewildered look " wilted down " into her corner. She of the dingy claws and flowers tittered, and the subject was dropped. ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 59 After a while the silence was broken by the third- class person's saying that she wanted to get to a cer- tain place that night, and asking vaguely, of no one in particular, if she could do so. There was no reply at first ; but after a moment or two I was surprised by hearing the first-class dame say " Yes," softly, with a mild surliness, and looking straight before her. Her former foe then asked, "How?" A shorter pause ; then, " Take the train that meets this one at Blisworth Junction," carne from the beautiful lips be- tween the turquoises, — the head turned slightly to- ward the questioner, and the words dropped sidelong. This seemingly announced a treaty of peace ; and again to my surprise, and much more to my pleasure, a conversation went on across me, but now in perfect amity, and information as to the minutest particulars was freely asked for with respectful deference, and given with gracious affability. The fact that my fair neighbor was accompanied to the station by her brother and sister showed that she was what is called " a respectable woman ; " and the manner and speech of the three were those of cul- tivated people. Moreover, upon reflection I became convinced that she was neither a termagant nor a par- ticularly ill-natured person. She had merely done, in a manner rather unusual, I believe, even in Eng- land, and somewhat too aggressive to suit all tastes, what it is the habit of the whole people of England to do : she had insisted upon her rights, and resisted an imposition. She meant to have what she had paid for. This the custom and the manner there. Eng- lish people are, according to my observation, kind and considerate, notably so, and ready to do a service to any one in need of it ; but they resist, vi et armis^ ■60 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. tooth and nail, the slightest attempt to impose upon them; and they do it instantly, upon the spot, and follow the matter up vigorously. The habit is pro- ductive of unpleasantness sometuiies, and it may cause some disenchantments, but it has its advan- tages, and they are not small. -^ Another characteristic of the country is shown in its railway vocabulary. There are, for example, a "guard" or guards on the train, and a "booking office" at the station. The guard guards nothing, and has nothing to guard. The steam-horse was not only " vara bad for the coo," but for the highway- man, who long ago ceased to labor in his vocation. At the "booking office " no booking is done. You merely say, to an unseen if not invisible person, through a small hole, " First (or second) class, single (or return)," put down your money, receive your ticket, and depart. But as there were booking offices for the stage-coaches which used to run between all the towns and through nearly all of the villages of England, the term had become fixed in the minds and upon the lips of this nation of travelers. So it was with the guard and his name; and when the railway carriage supplanted, or rather drove out, the stage-coach, the old names were given to the new things, and the continuity of life was not completely broken. The railway carriages are even now often 1 This incident, which I have told witliout embellishment, will remind the reader of Fielding of the indignation of Miss Graveairs at the entrance of Joseph Andrews into the stage-coach with her, and her declaration that " she would pay for two places, but would suffer no such fellow to come in." And it may also bring to mind that when the coach was stopped by highwaj'men the ladj^ gave up a little silver bottle, " which the rogue ap- plied to his lips and declared that it contained some of the best Nantes he had ever tasted." There continues to be a great deal of human nature in men, and some in women. ENGLAND ON THE RAILS. 61 called coaches. We, however, had traveled so little comparatively, owing in a great measure to the long distances between our principal towns and even be- tween our villages, and stage-coaches were so com- paratively rare and so little used, that when the rail- way engine came, not only they, but all connected with them, words as well as men and things, disap- peared silently into the past, and left no trace be- hind. In such continuity on the one hand, and such lack of it on the other, is one of the characteristic differences between the Old England the New ; and its cause, as it will be seen, is not in the unlikeness of the people, but in that of their circumstances. CHAPTER IV. LONDON STREETS. I LIVED in London. I did not merely pass througli it on my way elsewliere, stopping for two or three days at a hotel while I drove about the vast den of lions ; nor was I content with passing a longer time in the same way. After a week or so of hotel life and sight-seeing, I sought diligently, and found not easily, lodgings in which I established myself as if I had been a bachelor born within the sound of Big Ben. Hence I made excursions on foot or by rail, but usually by both ways of travel, into the neigh- boring country, and chiefly into that which lies around the beautiful banks of the Thames. Into the great city itself, however, I made daily excursions ; for so the walks by which I explored the various parts, far and near, of that thickly peopled region of bricks and stones might well be called. I set out sometimes with an end to my journey clearly in mind, but oftenest without one, wandering on over the vast distances, watching the people that I met, and scan- nino- the houses and them that looked from the win- dows. But I never got to the end of London unless I took a steam-engine into service. Cabs and omni- buses were of no avail. I used them, but generally I walked, following no guide but my curiosity. I never felt so lonely as I did in these solitary ram- bles in London, — never so much cut off from my LONDON STEEETS. 63 family and my home, I may almost say from human- kind. In mid-ocean I did not feel so far removed from living contact with the world. Within these boundless stretches of streets, and of houses so same, and yet each with a physiognomy of its own, just like so many men and women, — and I came to look at them as if they were human, and in the poor parts, which are of astonishing extent, where they stand crowded together as far every way as the eye can reach, to pity them for the gloomy life they led there, with the sweat and dirt oozing from their sad faces, — within these precincts, made oppressive, if not melancholy, by the apparently endless repetition of miits, it seemed to me farther than I could con- ceive, not onl}^ to the land that I had come from, but to any other place out of my range of vision. I could not take in even London; and what was out of Lon- don was beyond beyond. After I had walked about it enough to have in my mind a loose, exaggerated apprehensioif of distance, such as we have in childhood, and was yet not so much at home in tl)e place as to become familiar with it and to lose its impression of strangeness, the thought of its vastness became vague and unmeaning, like that of astronomical distances, which are so far beyond apprehension that a change in them by the addition or subtraction of a million of miles or so is of no significance. And the feeling that the rest of the world was very far removed from me transferred itself afterward to England, with some variation. England began to seem to me the one place that I knew upon all the earth : out of England was out of the world. What we call ^'America," although I had come from there in ten days, and although my eyes 64 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. hungered for the sight of faces and my ears thirsted for the sound of voices there, took on a nebulous shape and substance, not much more cognizable than any other inchoate body within or without the solar system ; and I began to understand the long indiffer- ence, and the ignorance, indifference-born, of English- men to the country which lay beyond the horizon edge of the ocean. There is little architectural beauty in London, be- sides that of the wondrous nave of the great Abbey church. Externally, even that venerable and most interesting structure is so marred by Wren's towers that the feeling which it excites is one of constant regret. Within, a very considerable part of it is de- faced with ugly monuments, chiefly to titled nobodies ; and generally the more insignificant the body and the grander the title, the more pretentious and ugly the monument. It is offensive to see the statues of great men jostled by such a mob of vulgar marbles. St. Paul's, outside and inside, is the ugliest build- ing of any pretension that I ever saw. A lai-ge in- closed space is always impressive ; and the effect thus produced is all of which St. Paul's can boast. Its forms are without beauty, its lines without meaning ; its round windows are ridiculous. Its outside is not only ugly in form, a huge piece of frivolity, but its discoloration by the black deposit from the London atmosphere, and the after-peeling-off of this in patches, give it a most unpleasant look. It seems to be suffer- insf from a disease that covers it with blains and blotches. The public buildings in the City, the Bank and the Mansion House and the Post-Office, and so forth, have the beauty of fitness ; for they look just like LONDON STREETS. 65 what they are, — the creations, the abode, and the stronghold of British Philistinism ; rich, substan- tial, tasteless, and oppressively respectable. The new Houses of Parliament present a succession of faint perpendicular lines in stone ; even distance cannot make them imposing. Only the bell-tower, whence Big Ben utters, four times hourly, his grand, sweet voice, has beauty for the eye as well as for the ear. The parish churches are mostly by Wren, or in his style, and are ugly with all the the ugliness possible to a perversion of the forms of classic architecture. In looking for lodgings, in which I had not even the help of advice, I went over no small part of Lon- don, and into many London houses of the middling order. My search extended from Covent Garden to South Kensington, and from Euston Square to the Thames, and even across it ; for I was led off into Surrey by advertisements, of the locality of which I knew nothing. As to the lodgings that I saw, they had for the most part a tendency towards the suicide of the lodgers ; so gloomy were they, so dingy, so stuffy, and so comfortless. On inquiry as to what rooms there were to let, I was generally told that there was "the dron-room floor; " and when I replied that I did n't want a whole floor, but a bedroom and a sitting-room, I was also generally told that there was a room to let " at the top o' the aouse." I found that these rooms were literally at the top of the house. In those which I looked at I found an iron bedstead with a bulgy bed, the stuffiness of which I smelt as soon as the door was open, and upon which was a dingy brown coverlet drawn over the pillow. A small wash-stand with small ewer and basin, a chest of drawers, a looking-glass, and one or two not 5 66 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. very robust chairs completed the furniture of the apartment, which always looked out upon the win- dows of like apartments, and the roofs above and the chimneys around them. For these rooms the price demanded was almost invariably "a paound a week." In Surrey and some other places it was somewhat less, — from fifteen to eighteen shillings. Bath-rooms were unknown, but "the servant would bring me a can of 'ot water in the morning." I spent the greater part of four days in this search, not altogether unwillingly, because of the places into which it took me and the people with whom it brought me into contact. With some of these places I seemed to myself not unacquainted, so familiar was I with their names and their localities. This was particularly the case with the smaller streets around the lower end of St. James's Park. The houses in these, — old-fash- ioned, and yet not old enough to be venerable or even antiquated, — with their plain, sombre brick fronts, the look of character and respectability which lin- gered about them, although they had long been de- serted as the dwelling-places of people of condition, and the elaborate iron-work on the steps and before the areas of many of them, in which I observed large conical iron cups, set at an angle, which, strangely never mentioned by any writer that I remember, w^ere plainly huge extinguishers into which the link- boys thrust their links, — all these seemed to me like respectable, decorous old friends of my family who had been waiting to see me, and who now looked at me with serious and yet not unkindly eyes. The newer part of London, near South Kensington, and by Hyde Park Gate and Prince's Gate, did not interest me so much externally ; although some of LONDON STREETS. 67 the houses were made delightful to me by friends who had really been waiting to give me welcome. The houses here are very handsome. The pretentious talk that I have heard about Fifth Avenue houses leads me to say that there are hundreds of houses in the best parts of London — around Hyde Park, on Carlton Terrace, and in other like places — which are far finer, much more noble, as Pepys would have said, than any that are to be found in New York, in Boston, or in Philadelphia. I except some of the old houses in Philadelphia, — those built in the be- ginning of this century, in which, although there is little show of gilding, color, and French polish, there is that far higher beauty in domestic architecture which is given by ample and well-ordered space. I was in many of the houses in May Fair ; in not a few into which I was not invited. For if I passed a house which I saw was undergoing repairs, and the family was absent, I entered, and inquiring for the person in charge, I was generally able to go through it at the cost of a shilling or half a crown to my at- tendant. Sometimes houses were thrown open to workmen, and these I always went through unques- tioned. The difference between houses of this class and those which may be regarded as of a correspond- ing class in New York is that the former, while less showy than the latter, are more spacious, and have more of the dignity which accompanies large and well-proportioned size. The entrances, the pas- sage-ways, and the staircases are very much wider ; the halls in some are large enough to admit of sup- port with pillars. The drawing-rooms are notably spacious, and are not directly accessible from the front door. Both a drawing-room and a parlor are 68 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. common in these bouses, and two drawing-rooms and a pavlor are not rare. But what is known in New- York as an English basement house (that is, one in which the staircase comes up into a dark hybrid sort of room between the front and the back parlor) must be so called because there are none such in England. I did not see one in London, or in any other English town that I visited. The houses are generally like the basement houses built in New York more than thirty years ago. The notion also that rows of houses all alike are not found in England is altogether wrong. In the new part of London such rows, and of very handsome houses, are common ; while in the new parts of smaller towns the houses built for people of moderate means stand in rows of from a dozen to two dozen, as like each other as one brick is like another. The pretense, and the consequent misrep- resentation, of some British travelers on this score is like much more of their pretension, unfounded. There is, however, a heavy, monotonous effect given to a long row of houses m New York by the hideous device known as a " high stoop," which is much more oppressive than that which could be produced by the indefinite repetition of any house that I saw in Lon- don, and which makes a row of " brown stone fronts" in New York the most unsightly and unhome-like- looking structures that the mind of man ever con- ceived. Two simple contrivances are found in almost all London houses of the better class which might be adopted with great advantage elsewhere. The first is a handsome square lantern, which is set in the wall over the street-door, and which lights from the inside the vestibule and from the outer the porch and steps. LONDON STREETS. 69 The comfort of this lighting is very great, as every one accustomed to our dark steps and porches sees imme- diately. The other is two bells, the pulls of whicli are marked severally " visitors " and " servants ; " the convenience of which in the daily working of a household need not be told to any housekeeper. And much more numerous as servants are in London (and as much better as they are more numerous) than here, more pains are taken there than .here to save their labor and their steps. Over the street-door bell- pulls, or over the letter-boxes, of the best houses, it is common to see on bronze plates, " Please do not ring unless an answer is required." These little pre- cautions tend much to the common comfort of master and mistress, and of servants. There is a remarkable absence of show and preten- sion in the shops of London. Even in Regent Street and New Bond Street and St. James's Street there is little display, and hardly anything is done merely to catch the eye. And even in these quarters the shops are comparatively small. You may find the most splendid jewels, the richest fabrics, and treasures of art and of literature in little places that would pro- voke the scorn of the smallest dealer in Broadway. The publishers make no. show at all. The greatest of them are to be found in unpretending quarters, with little display of their literary goods, which are stored elsewhere. The principals are in their counting rooms or their parlors up-stairs, and quite inaccessi- ble, except when they choose to see those who send up their names. The book-sellers are hardly more expan- sive. I found that, with one or two exceptions, the men from whom I had received, when I was a book-buyer, catalogues of books of great rarity and price were in 70 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. small, unpretending shops which in New York would attract no attention. But a glance at their shelves was provocative of a wof nl sense of impecuniosity ; and I found them intelligent, and with a notable knowledge of their business and of the literary world, and also of the why and the wherefore of the value of their books. They were not all William Picker- ings ; still they were generally men of whom Picker- ing was in some degree the type and the model. One day, as I turned the corner of a little street nor far from Covent Garden, my eye and my admi- ration were attracted by a pair of little old yellow and blue vases which stood in a window among some other articles of the same sort, and I wished to in- quire the price. The entrance to the shop or sales- room was in the cross-street, and proved to be merely the somewhat imposing door of a large, old-fashioned dwelling-house. I rang the bell ; which seemed to be rather an odd way of getting into a place where arti- cles were exposed to public sale. The door was opened. I ventured to say that I wished to know the price of a pair of vases in the window, speaking, I am sure, with some shyness and hesitation ; for I felt rather as if I were intruding upon household privacy. This feeling was not diminished by the sequel. First, a stout, middle-aged man appeared, descending the stairs. He was in a dressing-gown and slippers, with a smokihg-cap on his head. He was closely followed by a middle-aged woman, plainly his wife, also stout, and clad in dingy garments of heterogeneous fashion. I was received with great distinction, almost with ceremony ; and while I was repeating my simple wish to know the price of those vases, a young woman, doubtless the daughter of the LONDON STEEETS. 71 respectable persons before me, descended the stairs, and, taking up a position in the rear, joined her par- ents in looking at me. After her came a blowsy lit- tle Scotch terrier, who trotted to the front of the group, and stood, with nervous nostrils, looking up into my face through the chinks in his soft shock of hair. The servant who had opened the door with- drew slowly and by stages, facing about like the rear- guard of a retreating army ; and thus she, for a while, was added to the group. And all this merely be- cause I wished to know the price of a pair of vases, — vases put in the window to catch the eye of the passer-by. I was marshaled into the show-room. I walked across it at the head of the party, keeping my coun- tenance and pretending, impostor that I was, to take the whole performance as a matter of course, when in fact I felt as if I were making believe that I was a Highland chief with his tail on. I pointed out the pottery, whereupon my host — for such I felt he was — bowed, and blandly smiling said, " Hah ! yessur, yessur ; most helegant vawses ; quite rococo, indeed ; hin the Rennysawnce style ; hand only sixty guineas." The stout wife repeated, "Quite hin the Rennysawnce style." The daughter did not speak, but I saw that she longed to do so ; and if the terrier could have barked Rennysawnce I am sure he would have done so in fine style, for he seemed by far the most intelli- gent of the party. I thanked my host, and said I would think about it ; — another base imposture on my part, for I could not afford to give sixty guineas for a pair of little blue and yellow pots. But what was I to do when a man turned out the guard as if I were officer of the day making grand rounds, and all 72 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. just because I wished to know the price of a pair of vases ? I was about to withdraw promptly, feeling very much ashamed of myself ; but I was not allowed to do so. I was asked to look at the rest of the stock, and with such heartiness of manner that I saw plainly that, altogether apart from the question of present purchase, they would all like to have me examine what they had for sale. I made the round of two rooms, escorted by the family ; and after seeing many beautiful things, I bade good-morning to my enter- tainers, who courteously attended me to the door in a body, and stood there until I turned the corner ; and all because I wished to inquire the price of. a pair of vases. I did not have quite such a formidable reception at any other of the many little shops which I entered to bu}^, or to make inquiries ; but this instance is indic- ative of the style which I found in vogue. On the first occasion or two when I did not buy, I felt quite ashamed of myself for putting such very polite peo- ple to so much trouble ; but I soon got used to the fashion, and liked it. For indeed it is pleasanter than that carriage of the salesman or the saleswoman (who advertises herself as a " saleslady ") which seems to say, " I would die on the spot, or ruin my employer, rather than show you the least deference, or take any trouble to please you." I was struck by the readiness to sell to me, a per- fect stranger and chance passer-by, and to send home my purchases without even asking payment. These good people could not have been readier to supply my w^ants if I had been an old customer. I remem- ber buying an umbrella in Burlington Arcade, and ordering my name to be engraved upon the handle. LONDON STREETS. 73 It was on my second day in London. I had given my address, but I expected to stop at the shop on my re- turn, look at the engraving, and pay for the whole, and have it sent home. This I did not do, wandering back by another way. On reaching my hotel, there I found my umbrella, with the engraving nicely done, but not even a bill. The next morning I went and paid for it, and thanked the shop-keeper for sending it to me, a perfect stranger, and jestingly added, " How did you know I should come back again ? " The answer, with a smiling shake of the head, was, " Oh, sir, we don't lose much money in that way." There was always a readiness to " book " anything I liked, but seemed reluctant to buy. Once, when the keeper of an old curiosity shop, a woman, earnestly suggested that she should send me home a magnifi- cent pair of fire-dogs, which I lingered over in ad- miration, the dog part being reduced copies in bronze of Michael Angelo's Day and Night on the Tomb of the Medici, and, the price being eighty guineas, I had replied rather curtly, " Thanks, but I can't afford it ; I 've no money," the answer was, immediately, " Oh, sir, we 'd book it for you with pleasure." This readi- ness was but one mode of the manifestation of a gen- eral confidence which seemed to me remarkable, and the existence of which was a most pleasing social trait. If I had been a resident of London, and these good people had known but my name, the matter would have had a different aspect ; but in every case it was my first visit to the shop and I was quite alone.^ 1 A singular exception to this confidence is worthy of remark. I wished to hire a violoncello, that in odd moments I might keep my fingers from rusting. I was required to give a reference ; and there was so much fuss that I simply deposited the value of the instrument. Not being satis- fied with the one I got, I went elsewhere for another, to have the same ex- 74 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. And when bills do come in with goods, or afterwards, they are sent " with the compliments " of Messrs. So-and-So, and with a request for further orders and the honor of your recommendation. If you express a wish to examine anything, it is sent to you for approval " with compliments." If it is desirable that you should inspect anything which is in making for you, you have a respectful note asking you to do Messrs. So-and-So the favor of calling at your con- venience ; and this although your order may be only a matter of a pound or two, and Messrs. So-and-So may be able to " buy you " a thousand times over, and know it. If this is a result or a necessary ac- companiment of aristocratic institutions, they cer- tainly in one respect have a wholesome and elevating influence. London shop-streets are in a great measure free from the abominable defacement not only of tele- graph poles, but of what we now call signs. Even in the Strand, in Oxford Street, and in Edgeware Road, where the shops are second-rate, there are few such great, glaring, gilded boards as afPront the eye in every trading quarter of New York. There are signs, but they are com23aratively few and small and inoffensive ; and of flag-staffs and transparencies and other rag-fair appurtenances there are none. This is one characteristic of . London streets that makes walking through them a pleasant and a soothing process. And this unmarring modesty of outward perience. This argues rather ill for the good behavior of my fellow-fid- dlers. But having this time given a reference, I found that I might have had all the fiddles in the shop on my bare word. And besides, having hired one for a month, on giving it up in a few days less than a month, I offered, of course, the price for the time for which I had engaged it, and was surprised to receive back a shilling or two, deducted for those days. LONDON STEEETS. 15 show involves no inconvenience. I never had the least difficulty in finding any shop to which I wished to go, but once ; and in that case the fault was my own. But there is one peculiarity of London streets which is somewhat embarrassing to a stran- ger : they are not, the long ones at least, numbered regularly from end to end, with the odd numbers on one side and the even on the other, but very ir- regulai'ly and in sections; the sections being those parts of the street which run through certain quar- ters ; and the same street has different names in dif- ferent quarters. The quarter in which a house or shop stands is generally named, as well as the street itself. This produces those double designations which are found in most London addresses ; for example, " Bedford Street, Covent Garden ; " " Wellington Street, Strand;" or "Bond Street, Regent Street;" and I have one, " 11 Vigo Street, Regent Street, W. Poultry." The complication makes no difficulty when once you are used to it ; and it has a pictur- esqueness and individuality which seemed to me far preferable to the right-angled and numerical street arrangement which rules off a city in square blocks, and numbers the houses in the first 100, 101, and so on, those in the second 200, 201, and so on. It is difficult to attach any idea of personal possession or peculiarity to such an address as No. 1347 Chestnut Street, or No. 100 West Fifty-First Street. How much more character there is in the Black Swan without Temple Bar, the Queen's Head against St. Dunstan's Church, the Golden Ball in St. Paul's Churchyard, or the Kings Arms in Little Britain ! What we call signs, nowadays, are really not signs, but quite the contrary. A sign is a symbol, — a 76 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. thing of one kind wliicli represents or indicates some- thing of another kind, or which is adopted as a desig- nation for a particular place or person. Indeed, a sign is not a description in words, but as Bardolph might say, a sign is — something — which — whereby — we make a sign of something. Thus we read in old books of such addresses as those mentioned above, and of the sign of the Bible, or of the Crown, or of the Rising Sun, or of the Cock, or of the Eagle, or of the Red Lion, or what not. These were really signs, and they came into use to designate shops or inns in times when few people could read. A board on wbich is written the name of the person over whose door it is, with a description of his business and the number of the house, is not properly a sign ; although when these descriptions took the place of the old signs the name of the latter was transferred to the former. A few of the old sort of signs remain in London, and in some instances the name of an old sign re- mains as the designation of the house. One of these is the famous hostelry, The Cock, in Fleet Street, hard by Temple Bar. But lately Temple Bar has been removed from Fleet Street, and I believe the Cock itself has come down from the old perch, and crows no more. I took my luncheon there one day in a low, dark room, with a sanded floor. There Avere boxes, with little dingy green curtains along the top ; the seats were as hard and straight as those of a pew in an old New England meeting-house. It was probably in the same condition when Dr. Johnson, who lived not far off, took his dinner there. I ob- served that the score was still kept with chalk. The attendants were very sad and solemn. But for their LONDON STREETS. 77 black swallow-tailed coats and neckties that had once been white, you might have supposed them the very- waiters that had just heard the news of the death of Queen Anne. The spirit of British Philistinism was concentrated there. The beef and the beer were in- deed supremely good ; but notwithstanding this and the interest attaching to the place, my luncheon was a rather doleful and depressing performance. What is to be done without Temple Bar across Fleet Street who shall say ? I had thought that this obstruction, architecturally not very admirable, had its title to respect in some close connection with the British constitution, which is of about the same age; and this notion was not unsettled when I saw the props and make-shifts by which it was kept from fall- ing into disastrous ruin. Its removal shows how, at the last moment, the English mind can rise to the emergency of a great reform ; and its preservation in one of the parks shows equally that respectful con- sideration for the memory of the past which is one of the estimable and lovable traits of the national character. Nothing is more remarkable in London than the suddenness with which you may pass from a thronged street bustling with the business of the modern world into quiet and silence amid verdure and vener- able memories. Out of Fleet Street you go through a small gate-way and a narrow, dim passage which promises nothing, into the Temple Gardens, whei*e, hearing no sound but that of leaves rustling lazily and a fountain plashing drowsily, you may walk, on such a beautiful day as that on which I walked there, mus- ing amid a sweet stillness that could not be more undisturbed if you were in the rural heart of Eng- 78 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. land. If you know one of the resident benchers or barristers, and choose to visit him, you will find his name painted in small black letters on the lintel of a door ; and you will go up a rude staircase with a heav}^ beam hand-rail that will remind you of the stairs at Harvard and Yale in the halls that are the most old-fashioned and the rudest. You will see your friend's card upon the outside of a plain, dingy deal door; but that passed, you are likely to find yourself in chambers that are the perfection of unpre- tending luxury and comfort ; and your friend's talk and the wine that he will offer you are likely to be such that you would gladly sit the whole day enjoy- ing both, quite oblivious of London, the hum of which steals so lightly to your ears in the pauses that it seems less a thing of time present than a dim mem- ory. Stretching down to the Thames for half a mile below Charing Cross are little streets with naiTow entrances which suddenly widen, and on either side of which are old houses now mostly let out in lodgings. They lead to gardens by the river-side ; and there, too, you may walk or sit in silence, while just behind you roars the Strand. These streets bear the names of great families whose city residences were built there when the Strand was a suburban road by the river-side. The great houses have disappeared, most of them long ago ; but the last of them, North- umberland House, was taken down quite lately. Three years ago its dilapidated basement and founda- tions still stood just be3^ond Trafalgar Square, the last ragged remnant of feudal magnificence in Lon- don. From the upper end of Trafalgar Square, out of LONDON STREETS. 79 which issues Pall Mall, the street of the great clubs, and hard by which are the public offices of Downing Street, it is not five minutes' walk to St. James's Park, with its long stretches of green turf, its great trees and its water, where wild fowl dive and flit into hiding. Here Dorimants and Bellairs might make appointments, and keep them unobserved, just as they did in the days of Charles II. and of Etherege ; al- though, indeed, prying eyes might look down from the gardens of the noble houses on Carlton Terrace, built in the reign of a king who had all of Charles's vices without any of his manly good nature or his wit. Beyond St. James's, Green Park stretches along the unbuilt side of Piccadilly to Hyde Park, which is a wilderness of arboral beauty, and where, if you prefer silence and solitude to the throng and display of Rotten Row, you may sit under the branches of great trees, and fancy yourself in the Forest of Arden, although cabs and omnibuses are dashing along within half a mile of you. There I saw clumps of oaks cast- ing shadows that covered nearly an acre, with acres of sunlit greensward lying beyond them ; and after a ramble of a mile or more I struck diagonally across the park, and came to a straight avenue about half a mile long between lofty elms, which were the edges of a noble wood, so free from undergrowth that the eye could pass from trunk to trunk until distance brought obscurity. The London omnibus, or 'bus as it is universally called, is a much less pretentious vehicle than that which plies up and down Broadway and Madison Avenue ; and in some respects it is much less com- fortable. It is small, sober in color, and in form a mere ugly square box on wheels. It is in constant 80 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. use as an advertising van. Its windows are immova- ble. At tlie upper end there is no window or aper- ture at all, nor is there any in the roof ; the only means of ventilation being the window through which you see the conductor standing upon the step, where, like the head-waiter at the Cock, he keej)s his score (on some lines, at least) in chalk. On a muggy day one of these air-tight London 'busses, filled with the Queen's liege subjects, not of the upper classes (who rarely or never enter one), is not pervaded with the odors of Ceylon, or with the freshness of the breezes on the top of Mount "Washington. If you use an omnibus, ride upon the outside ; and this is some- thing to do ; for you have not seen London streets unless you have looked down upon them from the top of an omnibus. There is one comfort in the London 'bus which dis- tinguishes it and all other jDublic vehicles in England from those in the United States. They are not over- crowded. No one is permitted to enter a full 'bus or tramway car and stand up in it to the annoyance of other persons. Neither in London nor in any other part of England did I see this offense against good manners committed even once. If an omnibus were full, the conductor took up no more passengers. And yet the street travel in London is of course much greater than it is in New York, where omnibus pro- prietors and the managers of street railways, prac- ticing for their profit upon the supineness of one part of the public and the dull perceptions and rude manners of another part, are permitted to carry peo- ple packed so closely together that they are pressed into a somewhat lasting semblance of sameness, like the wax cells in a bee-hive. Entering a car once LONDON STREETS. 81 on a tramway in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, I found every seat occupied. I purposely stood up to see what would come of it. I had found all sorts of pub- lic servants, guards on railways, beadles in churches, and vergers in cathedrals, very considerate and ac- commodating ; but I had not stood a moment when the conductor of this car came to me, and said, with that mixture of deference and firmness which I have mentioned before, " Beg pardon, sir, but you can't stand here." I yielded, of course, immediately, and went out ; but stopped, again purposely, upon the platform. "Beg pardon, sir," immediately said my conductor, " but you know no one is allowed to stand upon the platform. Please go on top ; plenty of room there." And thither I went, where I had in- tended to go from the first. Everything in the England of to-day is bound by vis- ible links to the England of the past. This is mani- fest even on the railways, as I have before remarked ; and the very omnibuses in London preserve these signs of the continuity of English national, municipal, and social life. London, from the time when it was a little walled town, has always had suburbs lying a mile or two away, and these suburbs it has grad- ually absorbed ; being in this respect like, but only in a certain degree, other great cities in other coun- tries. No other great city has had so many subur- ban villages around it. But though London has taken them to itself, it has not destroyed them ; they preserve their names, and still to a certain degree their individual existence. Thus Charing Cross, Kensington, Paddington, Putney, Hackney, Bays- water, Brompton, etc., which are quarters more or less new of metropolitan London (not the city 82 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. proper), were once villages and parishes, separated from the city by green fields. Of this fact the Lon- don omnibus is a daily witness and record. It is not quite a mere public vehicle running through streets to take up chance passengers, but is still a sort of stage-coach plying between stage and stage, stopping regularly at each to take up passengers who assemble there. The fares are determined by this custom. They are not so much for the whole distance run by the 'bus, or for any part of it, but twopence from one stage to another, or threepence for a longer trip. Chance passengers are of course taken up and set down at any point ; but much the greater number are taken up at these distinct stages, and leave the 'bus at some one of them. The various stages are set forth, with their proper fares, on a board at the upper end of the vehicle. The practice in the United States has been just the reverse of this, and deliberately so. For exam- ple, omnibuses began to run in New York just as they did in London, between the centre of trade and sub- urbs which had become attached to the city. Green- wich and Chelsea were suburban villages, to the first of which people fled from New York, when the city was visited by yellow fever, only some fifty and odd years ago. Fifteen or twenty years afterwards the first line of omnibuses was set up to ply between Wall Street and Greenwich, and " Greenwich " was painted on the 'bus, as " Charing Cross," or " Ham- mersmith," or " The Elephant and Castle," is upon a 'bus in London. But what trace of Greenwich is there now in New York? The name is never seen nor heard ; and few inhabitants of New York know that there ever was such a village at a place on the west LONDON STREETS. 83 side, not quite half-way from the Battery to Central Park. So Williamsburgli, a considerable town, has been united to Brooklyn within the last twenty-five years ; but its old name is rapidly fading away before the glories of its new appellation, " Brooklyn East District," for which its real name has been changed, with conspicuous loss of convenience, individuality, and dignit}^ Names of streets are changed in the most ruthless manner. We have in New York not only the destruction of history long ago in the change of Queen Street into Pearl Street, and the late snob- bish and silly change of Laurens Street to South Fifth Avenue, but within a year or two Amity Street has been made into Third Street ; and there has been an attempt to wipe away the name of Lord Chatham from the thoroughfare to which it was given in honor of his protest against the oppression of the American colonies. This foolish and vulgar fashion cannot rightly be called " American," It belongs chiefly to New York, the most characterless place in every respect that is known to me ; but I am unacquainted with any of its Western imitations. Li Boston they do not thus blot out all memories of the past, nor at the South. I have a friend in Annapolis who lives in Duke of Gloucester Street; and there is comfort in the date of her letters. But the New York numerical system will probably prevail until States and counties and cities are subjected to it, — why not ? — and we shall have letters addressed to No. 243^ West 1279th Street, City Seven, County Twenty-Three, State Five. A lovely arrangement this will be, when it takes place. But it is merely a consistent carrying out of the plan already adopted. What associations of home or of 84 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. happiness can there be with a number ? With what face can a man speak of the time when he lived in dear old One Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Street ? For my part, I would rather than this go back to the obsolete addresses of London, and live over against the sign of the Black-Boy and Stomach- A die in Lit- tle Britain. London does not retain these old names and things in their old form and force, but she does not wipe them out as with a wet sponge, and begin the world anew for every generation. As to finding one's way about in London, there is no difficulty in it whatever ; at least I had none, although I was a per- fect stranger, and generally — because I preferred to be so — without guide or companion. I saw no beggars in London streets. Even in the poorest quarters, where, but for the half-drunken look of half the people, it seemed to me that the very tap-rooms must have shut up for want of custom, and where I felt as if I were five miles from decency, so long had I walked without seeing a clean shirt on a man or a clean face on a woman, 1 was not asked for alms. This was not peculiar to London. Li all England, town and country, I was begged of but once, and that was in effect for food, not money. Having at home every day, and many times a day, proof that there is nothing about me to forbid the asking of alms, I was soon struck by this absolute absence of beggars, and I threw myself in the way of solicitation, but with no success. I thought once that I should succeed with a poor woman who had a few faded little nosegays for sale, and who impor- tuned me to buy. I said no, that I could do nothing with her flowers, but spoke kindly. She entreated me to buy, and followed me out of Bond Street as I LONDON STREETS. 85 turned into another street, holding out her sickly lit- tle bouquets, which I thought might be like the wan, feeble children that she had left at home. I still shook my head, but did not tell her to go away, and I am sure must have looked the compassion that I felt. I meant to buy a nosegay, but I thought. Surely this woman will ask me to give her something. But no ; she even followed me to the very door of the house where I was going, thrusting the flowers almost into my face, and saying, " Only sixpence, sir ; please buy one : " but she did not beg. I remained obdurate in vain, until the door opened, and then I took her nose- gay, and put something into her hand which, little as it was, brought joy into her face, and the door closed upon her looking on her palm and making a half- dazed courtesy. It was in the Strand, about nine o'clock in the evening, that I met my only beggar. As I walked leisurely through that thronged thoroughfare, sud- denly I was conscious of a woman's presence, and a woman's voice asking, " Please, sir, would you give me tuppence to buy one of those pork-pies in that shop ? I 'm so hungry." I paused. The face that was looking up into mine with entreaty in the eyes was that of a young woman about twenty years old, not pretty, but with that coarse comeliness which is not uncommon among lowly born Englishwomen. Her dress was neat and comfortable, but not at all smart. As I looked at her doubtingly, she said, " You tlnnk I want it for drink ; but indeed, in- deed, I don't, sir. You need n't give me the tup- pence ; you may come and buy the pie yourself, sir, and see me eat it, if you will." She pointed across the street to a little shop where pastry and other 86 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. viands were in the window. I bad no doubt that her object in walking the Strand at that hour in ■ the evening was not to. beg for pork pies, but I de- cided to do as she suggested. We crossed the street and entered the shop. It was a very small place, humble and rude ; much more so than I expected to find it from the look of the window. However, it seemed perfectly quiet and respectable, — merely a tiny eating-house that lived by the chance cus- tom of the poorest wayfarers along the Strand. Be- hind the little counter stood a woman so fat that she looked like a huge pork-pie in petticoats. I said to the girl, " Never mind the pie ; call for what you like." "May I?" she cried, her eyes brightening wide with pleasure ; and then, turning to the little counter, she said, with a largeness of manner and an intensity of satisfaction the sight of which was worth a Cincinnati of pork-pies, " Stewed tripe and pota- toes!" We sat down in a little pen upon deal seats and at a deal board that had once been painted, but, I think, never washed. Stewed tripe was manifestly a stand- ing dish ; for we had hardly taken our seats when a plate, a soup plate, of it came up through a sort of trap-door just outside our pen, with two large un- peeled potatoes on a smaller plate. My companion made a hasty plunge outside, and set them smilingly upon the table. The principal dish looked like a bucket of bill-sticker's paste, into which a piece of a bill had fallen, as sometimes happens, and become thoroughly soaked. It was steaming hot, and gave out a faint, sickening smell, in which I detected an element that reminded me of an occasion when, upon the recommendation of a professed good liver, I LONDON STEEETS. 87 had vainly tried to eat a little tripe broiled after some wonderful fashion. The girl seized upon the potatoes ; and although they were so hot that she plainly could not touch them without pain, she squeezed them out of their skins into the pasty fluid in which the tripe was wallowing. At once she be- gan to eat the grumous mess, and ate so hastily, almost voraciously, that she burnt her mouth. I told her not to eat so, fast, but to take her time, and let the stuff cool. "But I 'm so hungry," was her reply. She abated but little of her eagerness, and soon fin- ished her portion to the last morsel and the last drop. Upon my invitation she ate some trifle more ; but Avhen I asked her if she would have some beer, to my surprise she said no, adding, " They 've no tap here." This is the case in many eating-houses in London, of the better as well as of the lower order. At one where, early in my London experience, I was eating a chop, I was asked if I would like anything to drink, and ordering a pint of half-and-half, I was surprised at the waiter's saying, " Please to give me the money." To my look of inquiry he replied, " We 've no license, sir, and we send out." This just reverses the prac- tice in New York, where the keeper of a bar will add a skeleton restaurant and two beds to his establish- ment for the purpose of making sure his license to sell beer and spirits. I suppose that there are not half a dozen restaurants in New York where ale and beer may not be had for the asking. When the girl had stayed her hunger, I led her to talk, to which she seemed not at all unwilling. She proved to be one of those simple, good-natured, com- mon-sensible, but not quick or clever, women who abound in England. She told me a story, — with a 88 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. man in it, of course. When was a woman's stofy without one ? A man's story sometimes, although rarely, may have no woman in it; but a woman's withont a man, — never. This one had no incident, no peculiarity, which gave ^it the slightest interest. It was the baldest possible narration of fact. She had been at service, and her child was born about four months ago ; that was all. But there was also an entire absence of the pretensions and the com- plaints common in such cases ; universal in the United States, but more rarely heard in England, I believe, where there is less sham upon all subjects. In this case, at least, thei-e was not a word of re- proach, and no talk of betrayal or of ruin. On the contrary, she said frankly, " I 've no call to find any fault with him." I respected the girl for this can- dor. "But," she added, "I did think he needn't have run away just before my baby was going to be born. The poor little kid would n't have done him any harm." I more than heartily agreed with her here, when I found that she had neither seen the fa- ther of her child nor heard from him for nearly six months. But I could not but respect her simplicity, her uncomplaining endurance, and her cheerfulness; for she spoke hopefully, and with such slight but lov- ing reference to her baby that I was sure that when it left her breast she would hunger before it did. To be sure, she had health and strength and youth and courage, and some humble friends who did not cast her off ; but for all that that selfish and cowardly fellow knew, she miglit have been dead, or worse, lying ill and starving with his child on straw in a garret. Her feeling toward him seemed to be that of mild contempt, because he had lacked the manli- LONDON STREETS. 89 ness to face the consequences of his own conduct. She made no claim upon him whatever. From what I saw and heard I came to the conclusion that among the lower classes in England an unmarried mother is not in general treated so cruelly by her friends as in corresponding circumstances she is with us. As I made a slight contribution to the comfort of her baby, she begged me to go home with her and "see the little kid," with regard to whose prettiness she gave me very confident assurances. To this invitation I did not seriously incline. We went out into the glaring, g?is-lit, bustling Strand. She shook hands with me in a hearty way, and with no profusion of thanks from her we parted. I turned after I had walked a few steps, and saw her standing still amid the hurrying throng, looking earnestly after me. I nodded to her, went on my way, and saw her no more. I observed, as she was talking with me, that she did not maltreat her h's. I found other instances of a like correctness of speech among people of her low condition of life in England ; but they are Yery rare, — rarest of all in London. The others that I met with were, if I remember rightly, chiefly in Kent and in Lancashire. CHAPTER V. LIVING- IN LONDON. My search for lodgings in London ended in my fixing myself in Maddox Street, which runs from Re- gent Street near its upper end across New Bond Street. Here I had a parlor, bedroom, and dressing- room on the second floor ; and, although they were not handsome, perhaps hardly cheerful, I was very comfortable. I did not mind it that my little side- board, my sofa, and my chairs were old mahogany of the hideous fashion of George IV. 's day. They were respectable, and there was a keeping between them and the street into which I looked through chintz window-curtains that reminded me not unpleasantly of those that had hung over my mother's bed in my boyhood. They were much more grateful to my eye than those which formed the canopy of my bed, which were heavy moreen of such undisturbed antiquity that they made the room somewhat stuffy. But I liked the old bedstead, which was a. four-poster so high that I ascended to it by steps ; and those also brough^ back my boyhood to me in the recollection of a dreadful fall which I had from just such a pair, which I had mounted to blow a feather into the air, m defiance of parental injunction. The low French bedstead long ago drove the four-poster out of " Amer- ican " bedrooms, in the Northern cities at least ; but in England the stately and, to uneasy sleepers, some- . LIVING IN LONDON. 91 what dangerous old night pavilions still hold their own, not only in London lodgings of the higher class, but in great country houses, where they have stood, many of them, for more than a century, some of them for more than two. English beds are, in the day-time, among the few things in England which I did not find pleasant to look upon. This is because of the fashion in which they are made up, which seems to be invariable. The coverlet is drawn up over the pillows ; and the cur- tains, hanging from the canopy or pushed up to the head-posts, are then drawn across the upper part of the bed, one curtain being folded over the other. To an eye accustomed to the sight of white pillow-cases and of the upper sheet turned down over the coverlet, the effect of the English arrangement is gloomy, stuffy, and forbidding. But at night, when the maid has released and half drawn the curtains and turned down the coverlet, and has prepared everything for your night toilet, an English bed-chamber, even in lodgings, has a very attractive and sleejD-inviting as- pect. The bed, too, kee23s the promise to the eye. English beds are delightful to sleep upon, and are something in feeling between a hair mattress and a well-stuffed feather bed, soft upon the surface, yet firm beneath. I found all English beds so, even in the inns of small provincial towns. The neighborhood in which my rooms were had some little interest for me, and would have had more if I had been a woman, from the fact that they were within a few yards of St. George's Church, Hanover Square, where the marriages of which accounts are published in the London newspapers almost always take place. My fair readers I believe' have won- 92 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. dered, some of them I know have wondered, why the Lady Arabella must always be married at St. George's. The reason is simply this: that St. George's was until lately the westernmost parish of London, the " West End " parish, that which is nearest the quarter known as Belgravia.^ Now an Englishwoman, whatever her position, is married, as a rule, at her parish church ; if from her father's country-seat, at the little old stone building which has stood just outside the park perhaps for centuries ; if in London, at St. George's, Hanover Square. The church is, however, not upon Hanover Square ; not nearer it, indeed, than Grace Church is to Union Square, or than the " Old South " is to Boston Common. It has its designation, after the London fashion which I have mentioned before, because it is in the neighborhood of Hanover Square. The church itself is ugly enough, like most of the London churches built in the last century ; but it is somewhat imposing from its lai'ge portico, over which is a handsome pediment supported by six Corinthian pillars. Inside, however, it is mean and frivolous, almost vulgar. It is remarkable that this portico stands out over the pavement or sidewalk, the steps rising abruptly from the edge of the road, so that pe- destrians walking upon that side of the street must go into the road, or mount the steps and pass within the pillars as if they were going to church. The ef- fect is somewhat that of a huge ecclesiastical trap set to catch wayfaring sinners. When I took these lodgings, I was struck with an- other manifestation of that confidence which I have 1 Of late such marriages have been "celebrated " at All Saints' Church, Knightsbridge, and at Christ Church, May Fair, as well as at St. George's. The first two are very much farther west than the third. LIVING IN LONDON. 93 already mentioned. One day, as I passed througii the street, I stopped and looked at the rooms, at- tracted by a neat little card in the lower window, announcing that there were "apartments to be let." ^ Three days afterwards I came unannounced in a cab with my luggage, and, finding that the rooms were still unlet, said that I would take them for an indefi- nite time between a fortnight and six weeks. I was made welcome, and my luggage was taken up-stairs. I had not yet given even my name ; but now I pre- sented my card, the name on which I am sure my landlady had never seen before, and asked if I should pay a week in advance. The answer was, " Oh, no, we don't want that, sir." Inquiries were then made as to how I would like to be taken care of, at what hour I should breakfast, and so forth. For the rooms I paid a guinea and a half a week, exclusive of fire and candles. For breakfast, and for luncheon when I chose to take it there, I was to pay just the cost of what was furnished to me. I found the bills for these " extras " very moderate ; and from the time when this arrangement was made I never saw my landlady, heard the sound of her voice, or was re- minded of her existence, except by her bill, which appeared, with every item carefully priced, weekly upon my breakfast table. I was expected to pay for every article that I asked for, no matter how tri- fling. An extra candle appeared in the bill ; and I remarked, when the arrangement as to my occupa- tion of the I'ooms was making, that Mrs. said, " As you won't dine at 'ome, you say, there '11 be no 1 I have heard this phrase, " to be let," called an Americanism, —what, indeed, have I not? But I found it, to my surprise, very much more common in England than in the United States, whei-e, so far as my ob- servation extends, it is comparatively rare. 94 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. charge for kitclien fire." It seems that the cost of heat expended in making breakfast is counted in the room rent of London lodgings, but that for every dinner that may be served there is an extra charge for kitchen fire. I paid also for the v^^ashing of my bed-linen, towels, and napkins. My own clothes were sent out for me to the laundress, of whom I knew nothing but the wonderfully written bills on minute scraps of paper which came with the returned garments. The price of their lavation looked very small to me, as indeed it should have been if price bore any porportion to purification. For it seemed to me sometimes, when they came back, as if the smoke and dirt of London, which was upon them in streaks and patches when they were sent ont, had be^i merely dissolved and diffused through them, and fixed in them by heat and starch. For once I sympathized heartily with that selfish snob, George Brummell, — the sufferance of whose impudent vulgarity by English gentlemen and gentlewomen was always a marvel to me, — in his insistence upon country washing. Was his charm a singularity in being clean in his person and neat in his dress ? Charles James Fox was a dirty sloven. Country washing in England is as fine as can be ; the clothes come to you as white as snow, and seeming to bring with them a suggestion of daisies and lavender. But London washing seems to be done in a dilution of grime; and how, indeed, could it be otherwise ? This homely subject leads me to remark upon the relief of the English housekeeper of middling rank from one great trial of her "American" sister in a corresponding condition of life. In no English house- hold of a station above that in which washing is done LIVING IN LONDON, 95 as a means of livelihood is any washing done at all, except in great houses in the country where there is a laundry service. The weekly wash which is the ever-recurring torment of most "American" house- keepers is unknown in England. Everything is sent out to a laundress. I think that the effect of this is one element of the greater serenity and repose of English life. Nor would English kitchens — and I saw not a few, in full operation, in houses of all grades — admit of the laundry work that is carried on in so many " American " kitchens where there is no separate laundry. The English kitchen in the houses of men of moderate means — for example, professional men and merchants not wealthy — is not half so large as that in corresponding houses with us. A set of standing-tubs would more than half fill it. And that Moloch of the " American " kitchen, the great mass of heated iron known as a range, is almost unknown in England. The fire- places are comparatively small ; the fire is open, and although there is the hob and the hot closet and the boiler, the whole affair is much less formidable than our range, which looks like an iron-clad gun- boat stranded upon the hearth-stone. I dined, when not at the house of a friend, at res- taurants of various grades. Eating and drinking is such serious business in England, and is taken so much to heart by everybody, that one expects to find ample and worthy provision for it in the great capi- tal. But although a stranger need not go hungry in London if he has money in his pocket, he is not sure of being able to breakfast, lunch, dine, or sup to his satisfaction, at short notice, if he is at all fastidious as to viands, cookery, or table service. There are 96 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. eating-houses in great numbers and variety, at some of wliich you may fare sumptuously, and at many of which excellent cold beef and hot, tender chops may be had, with good beer, and even good wine ; but of restaurants at which you may order from a copious bill of fare to your liking, there are very few. I did not find one that would compare favorably with half a dozen that I could name in New York, or with Par- ker's in Boston. At most of the London eating-houses of the first class there is a set dinner at set hours, or rather two or three set dinners of different grades, which are served at corresponding prices. The courses, few or many, are placed before you in due order, and the cooking is tolerably good ; but you cannot travel out of the record ; and as to coming in at your own hour and making up your own menu^ the preparation of which begins while you are dallying with oysters and soup, that is almost out of the question. Of course, there is good reason for this ; for it need hardly be said that London can and will have any- thing that it wants ; and I find the reason in the habits of the people, who are prone to regularity of life, and as a rule have a liking for the simple and the solid, and are not inclined to be fanciful. Not- withstanding the introduction of French cookery and dinners a la Musse among the luxurious classes, the " average " Englishman, even if he can afford to be fanciful and luxurious, has a liking for his joint, and is satisfied with that if it is well cooked, juicy, and large enough. Lord Palmerston used to tell his but- ler, when people were coming to dinner, to get what he pleased for the rest, but to be sure to have a good joint of roast mutton and an apple-pie for him, — LIVING IN LONDON. 97 and " Pam " was a typical Englishman. Moreover, the Englishman generally likes to eat his dinner at home, even if he is living at lodgings ; if not at home, at his club ; if neither at home nor at his club, then at some eating-house, where he goes regularly and takes the regular course of things, content if his dinner is plentiful, his wine sound and strong, and his cheese mild, but reserving the right to grumble, with good occasion or without. He is not inclined, like the Frenchman, to take his wife and children to a restaurant and make his dinner a work of art, more or less varied and rich in design and costliness, ac- cording to the condition of his purse or the festivous- ness of the occasion. Such, too, if I mistake not, were the habits and tastes of Yankees, until the Del- monicos introduced into New York, some thirty or forty years ago, I believe, the French restaurant sys- tem, which has gradually exercised a modifying influ- ence upon habits of life in this respect throughout the country. It may be questioned whether, all cir- cumstances and consequences being considered, this influence has been in every respect benign, even upon cookery. The joint is still dominant upon the average Eng- lish table. Its rule is visible, tangible, almost oppress- ive. It appears in various forms, even at breakfast. That greasy Juggernaut of many American breakfast tables, a hot beefsteak, or a beefsteak which is not hot, is almost unknown as a morning dish in Eng- land ; at least, I had the pleasure of never seeing it, even at an inn ; but mighty cold sirloins, and legs of mutton, and hams, and birds in pies, and mysterious potted creatures weigh down the buffet at all the great hotels. Your eggs and bacon, your sole or 7 98 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. your whiting, with, your muffin kept hot by a bow] of hot water beneath the plate, are set before you upon your special table ; but to yonder mountainous holocaust of cold heterogeneous flesh you may take your plate at pleasure, and carve for yourself, and cut and come again. In private houses the same ar- rangement obtains, but modified and gently tempered to eyes more fastidious and appetites more delicate than are generally found in a public coffee-room. In the windows of the middling restaurants, soon after noon, placards begin to appear, announcing in large letters, "A Hot Joint at 2 o'clock," and a like promulgation is made at intervals of an hour or thereabout. It seemed to me as if there was a degree of solemnity about this ; and I am sure that the word joint in reference to the table is uttered with a not- able unctuousness and emphasis by the average Eng- lishman. At the Garrick club a member may have a friend not a member to dine with him, and the stranger may have any kind of soup, fish, made dish, or pastry ; but he may not have a slice of the joint. Of that sacred thing only the initiated may partake. To maintain the cultus of the joint in its purity, and at the same time to meet the requirements of English hospitality, a peculiar kind of steak has been invented at this club where it is served to visitors instead of roast meat. At a restaurant of high class just out of Regent Street, at which I dined twice, the worship of the joint was impressively brought Kome to me. The room was a handsome one, and the service rich, al- most elegant ; the diners seemed to be all of such a condition in life as one would expect to find in such a place. In due time I was asked whether I would LIVING IN LONDON. 99 have roast beef or roast mutton. I cliose mutton, of course. Whereupon my waiter disappeared, and pres- ently returned, slowly followed by a man clothed in a white garment and with a white cap upon his head. In one hand he bore a huge naked blade that looked like a sabre, in the other what seemed to be some pronged instrument of torture. Behind him came an assistant who pushed forward on rollers a small stag- ing of dark wood, which was solemnly set before me. I looked in amazement, but with little apprehension of peril ; for was I not in the land of Magna Cbarta, and trial by jury, and the Bill of Rights ? It was in truth not a block, and the man in the white cap was not a headsman who had come to take my head, al- though upon the seeming block was a charger large enough to have held that of John the Baptist if he had been as big as Goliath of Gath. But it was al- ready occupied by a huge roast saddle of mutton, and the man in white was only the carver. The blade gleamed in the air and descended upon the joint, and the only result of this solemnity was that there lay upon my plate a large slice of mutton so delicious that the eating of it marks an era in my gastronomic life. I shall date my dinners back and forth from the day when I ate that mutton. In no other eating-house that I remember was there so formal and elaborate a cultus of the joint as this, which I believe is peculiar to the house where I saw it. But in all others, and particularly in those of a somewhat lower grade, I observed that the joint was spoken of with a certain deference and unction, much as, for example, when it was said that Mr. Blank was particularly engaged ; " Lord So-and-so was with him." The manager of the place where the 100 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. joint was solemnly sacrificed to the god of Philistia had but finely apprehended and boldly conformed to the spirit of the public, one of whose, priests he was. His carving performance was a little above and yet closely akin to that of the grill-rooms, the attraction of which is that your chop, or your kidney, or your steak, is broiled before your eyes. You may pick out your chop, if you like to do so, see it put upon the gridiron, and stand by while it steams and smokes and hisses and sputters before you, and, hastening to your table, send it steaming, smoking, hissing, and sputtering clown your throat. The smell of cooking is one of the sensuous miseries of life ; and the sight of a gashed and dismembered joint, with its severed 'tendons and fibres, its gory gravy, and the sickening smell of its greasy vapor, is, it would seem, what any man not a Fijian of the old school would gladly avoid. But in England, eating, with us a necessity, with the French an art, is a religion, and the joint is, like some other fetiches, at once god and sacrifice. The de- vouring of hot, red, half-roasted flesh is high among the duties and the beatitudes. I said .that when asked to choose between beef and mutton of course I chose mutton, and that I was richly rewarded for my preference. Much as Eng- lish mutton has been praised, not half enough, so far as I know, has been said of its excellence. As to the roast beef of Old England, it is good enough, but al- though I suppose that I had opportunities of eating the best that could be had, I found it no better in flavor or in fibre than that to which I had been ac- customed. On the whole, I think that, although we have nothing better, one is rather surer of getting very good beef here than there. I found the beef- LTVIXG IN LONDON. 101 steaks decidedly inferior to ours. But with English mutton, eaten in England, there is none to be com- pared. Canada mutton, and even English eaten here, is inferior in every respect. Although I had such a distaste for mutton, particularly when roasted, that I had often said, to the discomfiture of the do- mestic powers, that I should be glad never to see it again upon the table, in England I ate it always when it was to be had. There it was mutton which was mutton, and yet was not muttony. For tenderness, juiciness, and flavor, it was beyond praise. It was merely to be eaten with thankfulness. To return to my lodgings : for my comfort in tliem I was chiefly, and indeed it seemed almost entirely, dependent upon a maid-servant who took care of them and of me, and who was always ready when I touched my bell. Emma — for that was lier name — Avas a typical specimen of her class. The prettiest women I saw in England were, with few exceptions, among the chamber-maids and the bar-maids; and Emma's fine figure, bright eyes, and ever pleasant and re- spectful manner of course enhanced the agreeable effect of her careful and thoughtful service. They even caused me to be somewhat disturbed by the consciousness of the fact that she cleaned the shoes which sbe brought up with my can of hot water in the morning. I did not quite like to feel that a woman, and a pretty young woman, performed that service for me.^ The freedom, innocent and unconscious, of the English chamber-maid was also a surjDrise to me. At 1 I let this passage stand as it was first written : yet how much more rehictant I ought to have been were the woman old ! But a man cannot help being a man. 102 ElTGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. the house of a friend, in one of the suburbs of Lon- don, soon after my arrival, I was awakened by a slight tap at the door, and a rosy, blue-eyed, fair-haired young woman, of that type of English beauty which is not too often seen in England, walked into my bedroom with a can of hot water. I was startled, although I did not find the shock at all unpleasant. She set out my " tub " and my rough towels, and dis- appeared with a pleasant " Good-morning, sir." One reason for this agreeable ceremony is that bath-rooms are rare in English houses ; and in households in which men-servants are not kept, the maid-servants perform all such offices. For that a "gentleman" should do anything for himself, even in the prepara- tion for his own toilet, is not to be thought of, except in some great emergency. The care with which one is looked after by these good creatures — and they seemed to me to be the perfection of good nature and of thoughtful kindli- ness, and made me wish that I had sovereigns to give them instead of shillings — was illustrated to me on my return to my lodgings from my first dining out. It was after midnight when I came in. In the pas- sage below stood a lighted candle, and against it leaned something, I forget now what, which showed that it was meant for me. I found the door of my sitting-room wide open, with a chair set against it to keep it so ; for, like all the other doors in my rooms, it was hung upon beveled hinges, which caused it to shut gently of itself. Upon the table directly in front of the door stood two candles unlighted; between them were the letters and cards that had been left for me during the evening. The door between my sitting-room and bedroom was also wide open, and LIVING IN LONDON. ' 103 was stayed back, as also was that of my dressing- room. In both bedroom and dressmg-room every- thing was prepared for my night toilet, even to the laying out of ray night-shirt " in a wow " upon the bed, like Dundreary's dozen. This careful setting open' of all the doors did indeed suggest to me a sus- picion on Emma's part of the condition in which I might possibly return from dinner ; but that I readily forgave her for the forethought. Briefly, there was nothing that I could wish or reasonably expect to have done for my comfort that this good girl did not do for me, generally without my asking it. After I had been in my rooms a day or two, she seemed to understand me, and to know what I should like, and to set herself to making my stay as pleasant as possi- ble. And, like most of her class that I saw, she added to her ministrations the grace of cheerfulness, while at the same time, although she was not without the capacity of enjoying a little complimentary chaff, her manner was perfectly modest and proper, mingling respect for herself and for me with an ease of man- ner very uncommon in the Hibernian maid-servant of " America." She illustrated to me one day a superstition which had quite faded out of my memory. I had asked for a fire, which she laid and lit, but which, owing to some ill condition of the air, smouldered in blackness. I went into my bedroom for a minute, and, returning, found the open tongs laid over the top of the coals, and Emma standing over the grate watching it in- tently. " What is that for ? " I asked, pointing to the tongs. " To draw up the fire, thir," replied the girl, who added a little lisp to the charm of her soft English voice ; and then I remembered that I had 104 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. read of this superstition, but I did not suppose that it still held its own in England, and that I should ever see it acted upon in simple good faith. The blaze at last came up, and . the girl lifted off the tongs with a little look of triumph at my face, which I suppose showed some of the amusement and the doubt I meant to conceal. With all their respectfulness and deference, Eng- lish servants and people in humble life indulge in a freedom of speech of which democracy has unfor- tunately deprived us. I made purchases from day to day ; they were greater in number and in bulk than in value ; and one day, being a little annoyed by the clutter which they made upon my table and sofa, when Emma brought in an addition to it which had just come home, I cried out against them. "And yet they keepth a-comin', thir," said the girl, as she turned to go out. Another time, sitting in solitude, and being very much vexed at a mistake that I had made, I exclaimed, " I do sometimes think that I act like a born fool!" "I thuppoth tho, thir," demurely said Emma, who had entered from my bedroom just as I spoke. I looked at her a moment, and we both laughed, — I heartily, she shyly and blushing. And yet in all this there was not the slightest lack of respect ; she never forgot her place, and I could not but think in regard to her, as I thought in regard to others in like condition, how much better this free- dom of intercourse was, how much more human, than an absolute interdiction of all communion between the server and the served, and how much it might do to smooth and sweeten life for both. I was witness to a scene of freedom between the server and the served in which the conditions and LIVING IN LONDON. 105 the sexes were reversed. One morning I went to take an early walk in Hyde Park. It was not later than nine o'clock, which for London, and pai-ticularly for that end of London, is very early. And indeed, as I walked at my will through path, or over lawn, and beneath great trees, with that perfect freedom the consciousness, or rather the unconscious posses- sion, of which adds so much to the charms of an English park, the rays of the sun slanting through a golden mist, the cool freshness of the turf, and a moisture yet upon the leaves made the land- scape seem like one seen soon after dawn in an American summer. I had crossed the Serpentine, and was walking slowly along the foot-path by the side of the road, when I saw coming towards me a 3^oung lady on horseback. She was riding alone; but at the usual distance behind her I saw her groom. Till then I had found the park as deserted as if it were midnight; and now I and the two distant riders were the only living things in sight ; and sound there was none except a gentle murmur faintly coming from the town, as it slowly wakened into life. The riders walked their horses, and as we gradually approached each other I saw that my horsewoman was a large, fair girl, some twenty years of age. She rode a hand- some bright bay, remarkably tall and powerful, as indeed the horse that carried her had need to be ; for she herself was notably tall, and her figure was full to the utmost amplitude of outline consistent with beauty. Plainly, neither she nor the groom saw me, and as I wished to have a good look at her without seeming rude I withdrew myself into a posi- tion which enabled me to do so, as she passed within a few yards of me. She was not beautiful, and pretty 106 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. would have been too small a word to apply to her in any case, but she certamly was a fine, handsome girl ; her face breathed health and sweetness and good nat- ure ; she was very fair, with glowing cheeks, and teeth that made me thank her for smiling as she passed. She wore a blue riding-habit that fitted very close, and of course a chimney-pot hat. As she drew near to me, I saw that the groom gradually shortened the distance between them, and spoke to her, he speaking first. She answered, and they be- gan to talk, he bringing his horse step by step nearer hers. Looking at him attentively, I found him one of the handsomest men I had ever seen. He was tall, and strongly although sparely built, with fair skin, dark hair and whiskers, steel-gray eyes, and a firm yet persuasive-looking month. He was in complete groom's costume, top-boots, livery-buttons, and striped waistcoat, but these did not seem able to subdue a certain distinction in his bearing. Perhaps, how- ever, he was only a fine, handsome animal, and would have been vulgarized by being put into a dress-coat and a white neck-tie, — that crucial test of a man's ability to look like a gentleman. Nearer and nearer he came to his young mistress, closer and closer his horse sidled up to hers, till when they had just passed me he was hardly a head behind her, — just enough to say behind. He spoke earnestly now, leaning over toward her from his saddle ; and she did not lean the other way, but turned her head slightly to him, and looked down with a sidelong glance upon the ground. I could hear her voice as well as his, and although I was not able to distinguish the words of either, and the sounds became fainter with the slow stepping of their horses, I felt somewhat ashamed of my position. LIVING IN LONDON. 107 And yet the place was public, and I had expected only to see a young lady ride past me. Gradually I lost the sound of their voices, but I still saw the groom leaning toward her and her head not turned away from him. At length it seemed as if their saddle-girths must touch, and as if he must be tempted to put his arm around her, as she sat there, except for the blue woolen surface. Lady Godiva from the saddle up. But he was discreet, and merely held his place : — the blue outlines of her noble fig- ure became indistinct, the great gleaming knot of her golden hair waned and faded in the distance, and they rode out of my sight, leaving me to wonder what might come of all this. Another of my early walks was to Covent Garden market, where I went soon after sunrise to see the early trafSc. Covent Garden, with an adherence to the signification of its name, is a market for flowers and vegetables only. It is not much frequented by private purchasers, but is the place where dealers, green-grocers and coster-mongers supply themselves. Half London gets its supply of garden stuff from Covent Garden. I found little peculiar in the place, except its size and the filling of this vast expanse with vegetable produce. I arrived in the height of the early business. All around the place were the little carts of the little dealers, waiting to be filled, or just filled and hurrying off at that break-neck pace with which such people think it necessary to drive as well in London as in New York. Even the donkey-carts went off with rapidity. The number of these was amazing and amusing. I never saw so many donkeys on four legs before, nor shall I ever see so many again. There were ears enough there to have stretched in a 108 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. straight line through London. The hurry and the bus- tle were bewildering. Every dealer seemed to think that his fortune for the day depended upon his making his purchases and getting off with his load five min- utes before his neighbor. But in the midst of all, here and there auctions went on, — Dutch auctions as they are called. For it has long been the strange cus- tom to sell vegetables and flowers every morning by auction at Covent Garden ; but the sale is called an auction because the offered price does not increase, but diminish. The things are put up at a certain price, which is gradually lowered by the crier, until they are taken at the rate last named. When this so- called Dutch form of auction came in I did not learn. The vegetables were much what may be found in our own markets, but seemed fresher, perhaps be- cause I saw them earlier in the morning than it is my wont to see anything. I took note of no novelty except the vegetable marrow, that fruit of the soil which Mrs. Nickleby's admirer cast at her feet. On eating this vegetable, I thought it most ill adapted to the expression of an ardent passion, in which it inight yield to the pretensions of a pumpkin. It looks like a long, smooth squash ; and even when it passes through the hands of a skillful cook, it tastes like squash and water. The fruit at Covent Garden, some of it, was fine and fair to the eye ; but in this respect I found in England much to be desired. I shall not say with Hawthorne that I never tasted anything there that had half the flavor of a New England turnip ; but, excepting grapes, I found the flavor even of wall fruit and hot-house fruit comparatively tame. Apples were small and tough ; pears, mostly from France, LIVING IN LONDON. 109 were better, but still inferior ; peaches were often fair to tlie eye, yet at best rather greenish in tint, and within always almost tasteless, little more than a pleasantly acid watery pulp. Indeed, the climate of England is not well adapted to the growth either of fruit or of grain. For both there seems to be required a drier and longer continued heat than her skies afford. The hot-house supplies this in part for fruit, but only in part, except, I am told, as to the strawberry ; but that I did not eat ; it was not in sea- son. The melons, even those which came from Spain, were poor, flashy things, far past the help even of pepper and salt. Yet it is poor melon the flavor of which is not spoiled by condiments. As to grain, it remains to be proved, and will probably erelong be tested, whether England might not better abandon its culture, and depend, for wheat at least, upon other countries. To this end come the corn laws. It is not very far from Covent Garden to Seven Dials. This place is so called from the fact that by the meeting of seven streets seven corners are formed, at each of which there was once, it is said, a dial. This place has a reputation like that of Five Points in New York ; and it is remarkable that the meeting of man}^ streets should in both cities have been fol- lowed by a degradation of the neighborhood. But Seven Dials, although I found that it richly deserved the ill odor in which it stands, is not, as Five Points is, or was, the lowest and most wretched part of the town. There are neighborhoods in London which are to Seven Dials as Seven Dials is to May Fair. These are regions which stretch away to the east and north from the city proper. They are a town in them- selves. The formation of a nest of slums one can 110 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. understand ; but it was inconceivable to me how this vast area of wretchedness and vice, and of moral and physical filth and gloom, could have come into exist- ence in a, civilized country. I went into the inner- most recesses of it, — into quarters which I found few London men knew of, and whei-e I was warned by those who did know them that there was danger. But although remarked and gazed at, I was not mo- lested ; and although I had nothing with me for self- protection but an umbrella, I came out unharmed. Indeed, I have found that a man may go almost any- where and among almost any people, if he will only behave to them as if he neither fears nor hates them ; and the only way of doing that is neither to fear nor to hate. I found here nothing to provoke hate, nothing lu- dicrous, nothing amusing. The sadness of it weighed heavily upon my spirit. The houses were high and without any character whatever ; plain brick walls, lead-colored for the most part, and pierced with mod- ern windows. Indeed, all this part of London is quite modern. In one little court, however, that I penetrated running out of Whitecross Street (a street named twice by Defoe in his " History of the Plague in London : " once as the street in which a shop-keeper lived who was summoned to the closed door of his deserted shop to pay money, and who, with death in his face, told the messenger to stop at Cripplegate church and bid them ring the passing bell for him, and died that day ; nest as the scene of the burning to death, of a plague-stricken citizen in his bed, and, as it was supposed, by his own hand), I found a rem- nant of the old city, a relic of the great fire which so closely followed the great plague, more than two hun- LIVING IN LONDON. Ill dred years ago. It was tlie rounded corner of an old peak-roofed stone o^ plaster house, only two stories high, which had escaped the burning ; and although not more than about twenty feet square of it seemed to have been left, this had characteristically been preserved, and was built into the modern building. From the quaint windows of this ancient habitation two girls, not more than twelve or thirteen years old, but with pallid faces and a hideous leer, began to chaff me as I stood in the little court. I felt that to be the most dangerous place that I had ever been in, although I had walked under the walls in Havana more than twenty years ago ; and I turned away and got out of it as soon as possible, but went leisurely, nodding good-by to the girls. And in these streets there were shops, although of what forlornness of aspect who can tell ! But they told that even these people buy and sell and get gain, and live upon each other. It would seem that they must live altogether by thieving and burglai'y. One business was strange to me. Cooked food was sold at stands, at not very remote distances from each other. A board or two was stretched across two trestles or two barrels, and on this were a few pota- toes, bits of bacon, and other viands. I saw no one eating ; at which I did not wonder. There might have been much of interest to be learned from the people in these houses, but upon that I could hardly venture ; externally, they only oppressed me by the endless sameness of the dull and formless misery which seemed to dwell within them and about them. The mention of the great fire reminds me that one day I passed the place where it was stayed. This is Pye Corner ; and the fact is recorded in a little in- 112 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. scription on one of the houses. It had an interest to me beyond that of the event thus announced ; for Pye Corner is the place where Mrs. Quickly tells us that Falstaff came continuantly to buy a saddle. Most unexpectedly Lcame upon this memorial of the old London of Elizabeth's and Henry V.'s days ; and I confess that by the help of Mrs. Quickly I felt my- self nearer to Shakespeare there than when I stood in his father's cottage in Stratford, or looked upon his signature in the British Museum. The scene of Falstaff's continuant shopping for a saddle is also celebrated by Defoe, who tells us, in his "History of the Devil," that the fact that Satan had a cloven foot is certified by " that learned famil- iarist Mother Hazel, whose writings are to be found at the famous library at Pye Corner." Did the cir- culating library spring up at Pye Corner to flower into Mudie and the Grosvenor ? What proportion of intelligent Londoners know that there is such a place as Pye Corner, and such a street as Whitecross Street, I shall not undertake to say ; but my experience leads me to think that the number must be very, very small. And apart from the general ignorance about places of interest, but not of celebrity, which is not peculiar to Londoners, I was much impressed by the Englishman's ignorance of everything that did not concern him, if it were a little out of his daily beat, even if it were daily be- fore bis eyes. I was walking, one day, with an eld- erly London friend through precincts where he told me he had passed his boyhood and his youth. Going from one charmingly secret and mysterious court to another, as much in private, it would seem, as if we were going through a succession of back yards, I saw LIVING IN LONDON. 113 on one Land a great gate-way with square posts surmounted with balls : it must have been twelve feet high. I asked my friend what it was. He hes- itated a moment, and then said, smiling, " Indeed, I don't know. Strange to say, although I 've seen it all my life, I never did know." Just then another elderly gentleman crept out of some hidden by-way to worm himself into another, and my friend ex- claimed, " Oh, here 's A ! He '11 tell us ; he 's lived near here all his life." But A knew no more about the great gate-way than my friend did himself; and they were not such Philistines but that they laughed at each other for their common igno- rance. Not only did I find this sort of ignorance, but act- ual ignorance of their own neighborhoods, of the principal streets, great thoroughfares, and public places. The very cabmen were not to be trusted ; and I had to set one right by most impudent guess- work when I had been in London only a week or two. I found that it was much better to trust to my own general knowledge, and to my feeling for form and distance, than to ask direction from any one but a policeman. 1 They were always right, always atten- tive, always civil. Before I left London I came to look upon every policeman that I met as a personal friend. I was lost but once, and that was after midnight, and because, instead of trusting to the providence that watches over waj'farers, I was misled and misdi- rected. I was on my way home from dinner at a 1 I find this memorandum in my pocket-book: "London, September 20th. A commissionaire, in full uniform, asked me the way to Hyde Park Gate." 114 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. suburban bouse (it was tbe occasion wben the maid set all the doors open for me), and found myself set down, or turned out, at tbe Victoria Station about twelve o'clock. I bad been tbere only once before, but I wanted the walk borne ; and, confident in my ability to go back over any road by which I had passed one way, I called no cab, and set out to walk to ni}^ lodgings by way of St. James's Park, St. James's Street, and Regent Street. To my surprise, as I was turning into tbe street leading, as I tbought, to Buckingham Palace Road, I saw the cabs go- ing my way turn off at another street. I waited a few moments, and, seeing that tliey all went that way, I inferred that I had gone wrong, and I fol- lowed the lead of the cabs. I had not walked a hun- dred yards before I thought that I must be astray. That was not the street I had come through before ; everything was strange to me. But I reflected that the night was very dark, and I kept on for a while, the impression of strangeness and of lengthening dis- tance still increasing on me. The cabs were out of sight and out of hearing long ago. Just as I was about stopping to reconsider my ways, I saw a young man come out of a house a little ahead of me. When we met I asked him if that was the way to St. James's Park. " Oh, yes," he cheerily replied, " quite so, quite so. You '11 keep on for about off a mile, and then go straight through it." The distance, half a mile in addition to what I had walked, struck me as too great, and I asked if he was sure, and mentioned again that it was St. James's Park I wanted. " Oh, yes," he replied, " quite sure, quite so, quite so." I thanked him, and walked on. But at every step I was more and more LIVING IN LONDON. 115 impressed by tlie feeling tliat I had not been driven through that street on my way to the station, and after walking full " off a mile " I saw no sign of the park, nor of any of its surroundings. I did, how- ever, see a policeman, and glad I was of the sight. To my inquiry how far it was to St. James's Park, he replied, " Wy, bless your art, sir, I dun know ow far it may be the way you 're a-goin'. You 're a-walk- in' halmost right away from it. You must turn back for near a mile," etc., etc. In a word, I was to go back to where I had first turned off. I started, but before I got there along caine a belated cab, which, thinking I had had walk enough for that night, I hailed and took. It was well that I did so. My cabman astonished me by the route he took; so much so that I turned and called to him, " Maddox Street, Maddox Street ! " " All right, sir-," he answered, and on he drove, up and down, through ways un- known to me. At last I recognized my street through the darkness, and was set down at my own door. " Why did n't you come by Buckingham Palace Road ? " I asked. " It 's much shorter." " I knows it, sir. Sof course. But the pok was shut up this afternoon, sir ; mendin' the road, sir." And this was the reason that the cabs had turned off into an- other street, to my misleading. Another little experience of this kind amused me and made me wonder. A gentleman had asked me to his house on Sunday morning. He lived in' Knightsbridge, and was an author of high repute. I had never been to Knightsbridge ; did not even know where it was ; but I found out that it was to be reached through Piccadilly, and I set out to walk there. I had come, I was sure, pretty near to the 116 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. place, and I thought that I would ask to be directed to this gentleman's house ; less that I felt in need of direction, than for the sake of trying an experiment ; for the ignorance of London people about London had become a matter of observation to me, and of amusement. I looked about and saw a gentleman descending the steps of a very handsome house near Albert Gate, Hyde Park. I went to him and asked if he could tell me where my friend lived, mention- ing the celebrated name, of course, and adding that I was sure it was very near there. The gentleman was not only polite, but kind, as I always found peo- ple in England ; but he hemmed and hawed, and said he ought to know, yet at last was obliged to confess that he did n't. " But come," he said, " we '11 find somebody to tell you. Llere 's a crossing-sweeper ; he '11 be sure to know, if it 's near by." But the old sweeper was as ignorant as the gentleman, and touched his hat and looked at us with a lack-lustre eye. I had a delightful inward smile, said good- morning, and in less than three minutes I was at Charles Reade's door, which was not more than a hundred yards off, and in five minutes more I was sitting with him in a pleasant parlor (not a di-awing- room) before a sea-coal fire, talking fiddle, — a sub- ject which he understands better and warms up about more than any other except one ; and what that is no woman need be told who has read his novels, from " Peg Woffington " down to " The Cloister and the Hearth," and onward through the brilliant list. I wish to write of things, not persons, but I may say that I found Charles Reade far more attractive than authors generally are to me. He is tall, distinguished in person and in manner, yet easy and simple in LIVING IN LONDON. 117 speech and bearing, with no more vanity than he has the right to have (and this I mention only because he is credited with more) ; and as to his companion- ableness, I only wished for greater opportunity of testing it. I did not tell him that his near neighbors did not know where he lived ; but I wish that I had done so, for the sake of the hearty laugh that we should have had toa-ether. CHAPTER VL A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES, I DID not spend a whole Sunday on the Thames ; but as I was gohig to morning service at the Abbey, and to evening service at St. Paul's, I chose to make the river my vfay from one to the other ; and doing this it seemed to me good to go leisurely over the whole of it within what is called the metropolitan district. This one is enabled to do easily and pleas- antly by the little steamers that ply back and forth constantly within those limits. The day was as beau- tiful as a summer sky, with its bright blue tempered by lazy clouds smiling with light and sailing upon a soft, gentle breeze, could make it ; the sense of Sunday seemed to pervade the air ; and even the great city sat in sweet solemnity at rest. When science has taken entire possession of mankind, and we find no more anything to worship, will the Sun- day-less man possess, in virtue of his rule of pure reason, any element of happiness that will quite com- pensate him for that calm, sweet, elevating sense — so delicate as to be indefinable, and yet so strong and penetrating as to pervade his whole being and seem to him to pervade all nature — of divine se- renity in the first day of the Christian week ? It is passing from us, fading gradually away, not into the forgotten, — for it can never be forgotten by tkose who have once felt it, — but into the unknown. A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 119 There are men now living who have never known it ; their numbers will increase ; and at last, in the long by and by, there will be a generation of civ- ilized men who will say, that there should ever have been a difference between one day and another passes human understanding. This sense of Sunday is much stronger in the country than in the town ; — strange- ly, for the current of life is there much less visibly interrupted ; and it is always deepened by a sky at once bright and placid. And such a sky has its effect even in town. I felt it on this day, as I glided, through sunny hours and over gentle waters, past the solid stateliness and homely grandeur that are presented on the Thames side of London. I walked across the lower end of St. James's Park, passing over much the same ground that King Charles trod on the 30th of January when, in the midst of a regiment of Cromwell's Ironsides, but at- tended personally by his own private guard and his gentlemen of the bed-chamber, and with the Parlia- mentary colonel in command walking uncovered by his side, he went to lay down his handsome, weak, treacherous head upon the block before the outraged Commonwealth of England : — an event which, not- withstanding the Restoration and the subsequent two centuries of monarchy in England, is the greatest and most significant of modern times, and is also of all grand retributive public actions the most thoroughly and characteristically English. Tyrants have been put to death or driven from their thrones at other times and by other peoples ; but then for the first time, and first by men of English blood and speech, was a tyrant solemnly and formally tried like an ac- cused criminal, condemned as a criminal, and put to •120 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. death in execution of a warrant issuing from a court constituted by the highest power in the land. Com- pared with this high-handed justice the assassination of a Cffisar is like a brawl among "high-toned " poli- ticians, and the expulsion of the Bourbons the chance consequence of a great popular tumult. And in this was its endless worth and its significance ; and hence it was that from that time there was a new tenure of kingship. Then for the first time the great law of government was written, — that it should be for the best interests of the governed; and it was writ- ten in the blood of a king. This was the one boon of that great act to England, to the English race, to all civilized Christendom ; for politically the behead- ing of Charles was a blunder ; and the Common- wealth, after living an artificial life for a few years, died an inevitable death, because it was born out of due time. None the less because it was Sunday did I find the cows at the place towards the lower end of the park, whither I strolled, and where they and their predecessors have stood day after day for centuries, professing to give new milk to visitors thirsting for this rustic beverage, either for its own sake, or that it might by its associations enhance the rural effect of the meadows and the trees. I did not drink of the product of their maternal founts ; but my expe- rience leads me to the unhesitating conclusion that if those cows give milk instead of milk-and-water they, must be of a breed which, or the product of which, cannot be found in Middlesex without St. James's Park. The milk of London is a little thicker, a little more opaque, and a little whiter than its fog. Whether or no it is more nourishing I shall not venture to say. A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 121 Probably tliese cows do give milk-and-water, and pro- duce instinctively, as. becomes metropolitan British kine, tlieir article of trade ready adulterated. For, many times as I passed the place where they stand, I never saw man, woman, or child drinking ; and I am sure that if .they gave real milk there would at least be a procession to them of mothers 'and nurses with their weanlings. They seemed to be of the homely vaiiety known as the red cow, to which belonged she of the crumpled horn and she that jumped over the moon. And if this were so it is yet another witness to the perpetuity of things in England : for the fa- cetious Tom Brown, who lived and wrote in the days of James II., tells of the intrusion of the milk-folks upon the strollers through the Green Walk with the cry, " A can of milk, ladies ! A can of red cow's milk, sir ! " I could not but think that if kine could communi- cate their thoughts there would be in that little knot of horned creatures a tradition of the looks of Charles I. and of Cromwell, and of Charles II. and of the Duchess of Cleveland, and of Nell Gwynne, and of dear, vain, clever, self-candid, close-fisted, kind-heart- ed Pepys, and of the beautiful Gunnings, and of the captivating, high-tempered Sarah Jennings, who could cut oft" her own auburn hair to spite the Duke of Marlborough, and fling it into his face, and of the Duchess of Devonshire, who kissed the butcher and wore the hat, and of all those noted beauties, wits, gallants, and heroes whose names and traits are the gilded flies in the amber of English literature. For there probably has been uo time since the park ceased to be a royal chase when there was not at least some one of the herd, and probably more, that could have 122 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. learned all these things in direct line of ti'adition from predecessors. So, to be sure, the same is true of the men and the women of London ; but the directness of such a course of transmission was brought more home to me in considering these cattle, as they stood there, the representatives and perpetuators of a little custom, older than any commonwealth, in one of the richest, most populous, and most powerful countries of the earth. Chewing the cud of my fancies, I passed out of the park, and soon was at the Abbey door ; but not soon was 1 much farther. I had not troubled myself upon the score of punctuality ; and being a few minutes late I found the Abbey — that part of it which is used for service — full, even to the crowding of the aisles down to the very doors. I managed to squeeze myself in, but was obliged to stand, and moreover to be leaned against like a post, through service and through sermon. In these I found no noteworthy milikeness, even of a minor sort, to what I had been accustomed to hear from my boyhood. The changes in the language of the Book of Common Prayer to adapt it to the political constitution and the social condition of the United States of America are so few and so slight that they must be closely watched for to be detected. The preacher was Canon Duckworth, canon in residence, who reminded me in voice, in accent, and in manner very much, and somewhat in person, although he was less ruddy, of a distinguished clergyman of the same church in New York, and whose sermon was the same sensible, gentleman-like, moderately high-church talk which may be heard from half a dozen pulpits in that city every Sunday. Not every one, however, of those who preach them. A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 123 or the like of them in England, has Canon Duck- worth's rich, vibrating voice and fine, dignified pres- ence. The long hood of colored silk that he wore (his was crimson), like all English clergymen that I saw within the chancel, was not, as I find many per- sons suppose it to be, an article of ecclesiastical cos- tume. It was merely his master's hood, —that which belonged to him as Master of Arts. The different colors of the linings of these academic hoods indicate the degree of the wearer and the university by which it was bestowed. ■ They are worn by university "clerks" on all formal occasions. After the sermon there was an administration of the communion, and. all persons who were not par- takers were required to leave the church. The ex- odus was very slow. Even after the throng was thinned and movement was easy, many lingered, looking up into the mysterious beauty of that noble nave. These the vergers did not hesitate to hasten, addressing them in some cases A^ery roughly, as I thought, and even putting their hands upon their shoulders ; but on my telling one of them that al- though I did not mean to commune I should like to remain during the service, he with ready civility, and with no shilling-expectant expression of countenance, took me to a seat within a gate and very near the outer rails. In this service, too, I found nothing pe- culiar to the place or to the building, — indeed, how could there well be? — but I observed that certain of the communicants, as they passed through the railing on their way to the table (which they, I suj^pose, would call the altar), and as they returned, carried their hands upright before them, holding the palms closely together and bowing their heads over them, 124 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. with an air which conveyed the impression that they thoiight they were behaving like the saints in an altar- jDiece or in a missaL Perhaps I might have observed the same practice at home if my church-going had been more frequent since the outbreak of "ritualism." It was strange, as I came out from such a solemn service in that venerable and sacred pile, and strongly indicative of the political position of the church in England, to be met just outside the door by a man who carried under his arm a liuge bundle of hand- bills, calling a meeting and making a protest about some mu.nicipal matter. These he distributed freely to the communicants, as they issued from the cele- bration of the mystery, who took them as a matter of course into the same hands which had been pressed together with such ascetic fervor only a few minutes before, and, glancing at them, put them for the most part carefully into their pockets. We know that the English Church is a part of the government of Eng- land ; but its peculiar place is shown by practices which to us would seem highly indecorous. In the rural counties I saw posted on the doors of parish churches — beautiful with the beauty of a lost in- spiration, and venerable with the historic associations of centuries thick with acts of import — notices of those persons in the parish who had taken out licenses to keep dogs ; the list being always led by the name of the lord of the manor. There this was no sacri- lege. A parish in England is a political and legal entity, with material boundaries within which cer- tain officers have power ; and the parish church is its moral centre. Why, therefore, should not the licenses to keep dogs be announced upon its doors ? Soon after leaving the Abbey I was at the river- A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 125 side ; and in a minute or- two along came a small black steamer, in length about twice that of the little tug-boats that run puffing and bustling about New York harbor, and no wider. It seemed to me more than simple, indeed almost rude in its bare discom- fort ; and certainly it was as far from anything gay or festive in appearance as such a boat could be. The absence of bright paint and gilding, and of all that glare of decoration which it is thought necessary to make "Americans" pay for, commended the little craft to my favor ; but I thought that without these it yet might have been made a little less coarse and much more comfortable. On the dingy deck were some benches or long settles of unmitigated wood ; and that was all. There was not even an awning ; but perhaps awuings would interfere with the vailing of the funnel as these boats pass under the bridges, and they might perhaps also be in danger of fire from the small cinders that then escape. The passengers, in number about a score, were all of what would be called in' England the lower-middle class, with one exception, a fine-looking man, manifestly a " gentle- man," and with an unmistakable military air. •As I sat upon my hard seat, worn shiny by the sit- ting of countless predecessors, and looked around upon my fellow-passengers, I was impressed by the stolidity of their faces. The beauty of the sky, the soft, fresh breeze, the motion, the fact that it was a holiday, a fine Sunday, seemed to awaken no glow of feeling in their bosoms. And yet they were, most of them, plainly pleasure-seekers. As we moved swiftly on (I had taken an up boat) we soon passed over toward the Surrey side of the river. Erelong an elderly woman by whom I sat turned to me, and, 126 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. pointing out at some distance alieacl on our left a square tower, the familiar outlines of which had at- tracted my attention some minutes before, asked, " Wot buildin 's that there ? " " Lambeth, madam ; the Archbishop of Canterbury's palace." " The Harchbishop o' Cantubbury ! Well, well ! deary me ! A many times as I 've . bin on the river, I never see that afore." To be asked such a question by a Lon- doner in my first half hour upon the Thames aston- ished me, and the confession that followed it was amazing; for Lambeth palace is almost opposite Westminster. This was within the first fortnight after my arrival in England, and although, as 1 have already mentioned, I met with an exhibition of this kind of ignorance even before I set foot on English ground, I was not yet prepared for quite such an ex- ample. Before another fortnight had passed I had learned better. As I turned to look at the questioner, I saw that she was a neatly-dressed, obese female, and that she was accompanied by a neatly-dressed, obese man, who plainly was her husband. The couple had lived to- gether a long while ; they had grown old together ; they had grown fat together ; together they had sunk, year after year, deeper into a slough of stupidity ; together they had, as they passed through the world and life, become more and more ignorant of the one, and more and more indifferent to all of the other, except eating and drinking and the little round of their daily duties that enabled them to eat and drink. Their faces had grown like each other, not only in expression but in form. The noses had be- come more shapeless ; the chinless jaws had swelled and rounded imperceptibly into the short, thick neck. A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 127 Those faces probably had once expressed some of the vivacity of youth ; but this had passed away, and nothing, no trace of thought or feeling, had come into its place, — only fat ; a greasy witness of content ; and the result was two great sleepy moons of flabby flesh pierced here and there by orifices for animal uses. I made surreptitiously an outline sketch of their two faces, as they sat side by side staring stupidly before them ; and it looked like two Bourbon heads on a medal. He was one of those long-bodied, sliort-legged Englishmen who are framed with facilities for a great development of paunch. Man and wife were about the same height ; and at the next landing they got up and waddled off together. I laughed within my- self, as I am laughing now; and yet why should I have sat there and scoffed at those good folk for be- ing what nature and circumstance had made them? Of a very different fabric in every way was the military-looking man whom I have already men- tioned. He was tall and strong, although not stout ; a well-made, good-looking man, with a certain con- sciousness of good looks not uncommon among hand- some Englishmen, and not unpleasant. His dress showed, that union of sobriety with scrupulous neat- ness and snugness which is characteristic of the Eng- lishman of the upper classes. He alone of all my male fellow-passengers kept me in countenance in my chimney-pot hat. The round-topped hat, called "wide awake," or what not, has become so common in London that a crowd looked down upon from window or from 'bus seems like a swarm of great black beetles. I walked toward this gentleman, thinking that I would speak to him if he appeared willing ; but he dismissed my doubts by 128 ■ ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. speaking first. Brief as my experience in England had been, this did not surprise me ; for I had ah^eady learned that English folk — women as well as men — are free in their intercourse with strangers 'to a de- gree that made me wonder whence came their rep- utation for gruff reserve. I should say that the chances of a pleasant chat with a fellow-traveler in England compared with those in the United States were as seven to three. I have again and again trav- eled from New York to Boston, and from New York to Washington and back (both journeys being of about two hundred and thirty miles each waj^), with- out having one word spoken to me by a stranger, al- though my journeys have mostly been by daylight ; but in England I never went a dozen miles in com- pany with other people without pleasant talk with one or more of them. Nor is such intercourse lim- ited to traveling ; there is a freedom of intercourse there to which we are comparative strangers ; this, notwithstanding the visible limitations and restraints of rank, — perhaps rather by reason of them. We sat down and talked as the boat glided swiftly up the river, the banks of which became gradually more suburban in appearance. The Thauies, wher ever I saw it, whether below London Bridge, or above that landmark and within the metropolitan district, or beyond, where it passes Kew and Isleworth and Twickenham and Richmond and Hampton, is re- markable for its character. It is nowhere common- looking ; and the variety of its traits within a few miles surprises the eye at every stage with new de- light. From the wide-expanding shores, the vast gloomy docks, the huge black hulls, and the strange, clumsy lighter craft of the Pool and Limehouse A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 129 Beach, past the stately magnificence of the embank- ment and the Abbey, witli the Houses of Parliament on one side, and Lambeth on the other, up to the en- chanting rural scene at Richmond, is not farther than it is from one village to another one just like it, through miles of sameness upon the Hudson. My talk with my temporary companion was the mere chat of fellow-travelers under a bright sky ; but even he managed to illustrate that narrowness of knowledge of which I found so many examples. As we looked off toward the west end of the town, there were in sight three or four rows of new houses, all unfinished, and some not yet roofed. He spoke of " so much buildin' goin' on " and " sellin' houses," and wondered how it was, and why gentlemen built houses and sold them. Thereupon I told him of the associations of builders, masons, carpenters, and the 4ike, who built houses by a sort of club arrangement, and had their pay in an interest in the houses, which they sold at a good profit. Now this I merely re- membered having read some two or three years before in the London Building News. ^It was nothing in me to know it ; the remarkable thing was that a Yankee, hardly a fortnight in England, should be called upon to tell it to an intelligent Englishman.'^' Our little boat soon reached her upper landing, and then turned back. I went down the river to London Bridge, and there, after visiting the Monu- ment and looking at the plain and unpretending solidity of the warehouses, which had the look of holding untold wealth, and after loitering about the murky purlieus of Thames Street, I crossed the bridge and was in Southwark. But of course T;he bridge was like a short street across the river (it 130 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. used to be a street with houses on either side), and one end of it was much the same as the other. In the people that I met, who were generally of the lower classes, there was a pleasant appearance of ho- mogeneousness. They were all English people ; and 'the speech that I heard, although it was not culti- vated and was sometimes even rude, was English. I heard no brogue nor other transformation of my mother tongue. Little else attracted my attention, except the general inferiority of the men in height and weight to those we see in New England, and the rarity of good looks, not to say of beauty, in the women. They were all plainly in their Sunday clothes, which did not much become them, and in which they were at once much set up and ill at ease. Not far from here I encountered a flock of girls between eight and twelve years old, who proved to belong to the Bridgewater School. They were dressed in blue and white, with straw bonnets trimmed with blue. They were neat, and looked comfortable and happy ; and some of the elder girls with whom I talked said that they were so. The school contained forty-two girls and sixty-five boys. The best that I learned about it was that the girls made their own dresses, and were taught every _ afternoon to sew by hand. But I looked in vain among them for the rosy, golden-haired, blue-eyed cherubs which I had been led to suppose were as thick in England as in an antique altar-piece. On my way to St. James's Park I had stopped at a little coster-monger's stand and bought an apple, merely for the sake of a few words with the man and his wife, who were both in attendance. I took up an apple carelessly as I was going away, when the man A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 131 said, " No, sir, don't take that ; it 's no good. Let me get you a better ; " and he picked out one of the best he could find. He appeared pleased when I thanked hira and said that was a good one. Un- gratefully, I gave the fruit to the first urchin I met ; for although I might have been willing to walk down St. James's Street munching an apple on a Sunday morning, it was not for an English apple that I would have done so. But none the less I reflected that the like of that had never happened to me in my boy- hood, when I did buy apples to eat them anywhere, in doors or out of doors ; and I thought that most persons in trade would not have regarded that trans- action as " business " on the part of my coster-mon- ger. If he could " work off " his poor stock first, at good prices, he should do so, and — caveat emptor. I do not mean to imply that all coster-mongers in England are like him ; but, notwithstanding all that we hear about the tricks of British traders, adultera- tion, and the like, I will say that his was the spirit which seemed to me to prevail among the retail deal- ers of whom I bought in England. The seller seemed to be willing to take some trouble to please me, and — without making any fuss about it — to be pleased when I was pleased. Not far from the Southwark end of London Bridge I passed a little fruiter's stall. It was plainly a tem- porary affair set up for the Sunday trade ; but in it were hanging some bunches of very fine white grapes, and I bought some that I might take them down to the river-side and eat them. They were only eight pence a pound. Down to the river-side I went, and, finding an old deserted boat or scow, I seated myself upon it, and ate my grapes and flung the skins into 132 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. the water, as it ebbed swiftly past me, but gently and almost without a ripple. As I lay there the beauty of the day began to sink into my soul. The air had a softness that was new to me, and which yet I felt that I was born to breathe. The light in the low, swelling, slowly moving clouds seemed to come from a heaven that I once believed was beyond the sky, and did not smite my eyes with blindness as I looked upward. The stillness in such a place im- pressed me, and took possession of me. There was not a sound, except the distant plash of the wheels of one of the little steamers, and a faint laugh borne lightly down from the parapet of the bridge. And there lay before me, stretching either way beyond my sight, the great, silent city, — London, the metropolis of my race ; the typical city of my boyhood's dreams and my manhood's musings ; the port from which my forefather had set sail two hundred and fifty years ago, to help to make a new England beyond the sea ; the place whose name was upon all the books that I had loved to read ; the scene of all the great histor- ical events by which I had been most deepl}^ moved. It was worth the Atlantic voyage to enjoy that vis- ion in that silent hour. Within my range of sight, as I turned my head, were the square turrets of the Tower and the pinnacles of Westminster ; and I must have been made of duller stuff than most of that which either came from or remained in Eng- land between 1620 and 1645 not to be stii-red by the thoughts of what had passed, of mighty moment to my people, at those two places, or between them. Many of those events flitted through my mind ; but that which settled in it and took possession of it was the return of Hampden and Pym and the other Five A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 133 Membevs who had fled fi'om Westminster to London before Kino- Charles and his halberdiers. From where I sat, had I sat there on the 11th of January, 1642, I might have seen that now calm and almost vacant stretch of water swarming with wherries and deco- rated barges outside two lines of armed vessels that began at London Bridge and ended at Wesminster, while up the river, between this guard of honor, sailed to Westminster a ship bearing the five men whose safety was the pledge of English liberty ; and along that opposite bank, now silent and almost de- serted (not indeed the Embankment, but the Strand, then the river street, as its name indicates), marched the trained-bands of London, with the sheriffs and all the city magnates and the shouting citizens, amid the booming of guns, the roll of drums, and the blare of trumpets. It was London that received and sheltered the Five Members ; it was London that protected them against the king ; it was London that carried them back in triumph past Whitehall, then purged of its royal tyrant, to resume their seats at West- minster, at the command of the outraged but un- daunted House of Commons. That was the bright- est, greatest day in London's liistory ; that the most memorable pageant of the many memorable seen upon the bosom of old Thames. I should not have enjoyed this vision and these thoughts if I had not lusted for those grapes, and for the pleasure of eating them to the music of the rippling water. Again I took a steamer and went up the river and retuj-ned, that I might mark well the bulwarks and the palaces of this royal city, and see it all from the outside by daylight ; and also that I might enjoy the day, which was beautiful with a rich, soft, cool 134 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. beauty unknown to the land from wliicliwe are driv- ing the Sitting Bulls and Squatting Bears, to whose coarse constitutions and rude perceptions the fierce glories of its sides are- best adapted. On the return trip the few passengers thinned rapidly away, so that at Charing Cross (I believe it was) every one but myself went ashore ; and as no one came on board I was left actually alone upon the deck. This did not suit me, for I wanted to see the people as well as the place ; and I too, just in time, went hastily ashore to • Avait for another steamer. The landings are made at long, floating piers or platforms ; and upon one of these I walked up and down, after having bought another ticket. Erelong another steamer came, well loaded, and I watched the people as they came ashore. Thoughtlessly I turned and walked with the last of them toward the stairs by which they made their exit to the city. It was my first day on the Thames, and 1 had not observed how very brief the stoppages of the boats were : they touch and go. I was startled by the plash of the wheels, and, turning, I saw the boat in motion. In- stinctively I made for her, and having the length of the platform as the start for a running jump, I easily cleared the widening distance and the taifrail, and landed lightly on the deck. But it was a wonder that I was not frightened out of my jump and into the water ; for there was sensation and commotion on the boat, and cries ; two of the deck hands sprang forward, and stretched out their arms to catch me as if I had been a flying cricket-ball ; and when I was seen safely on the deck there were cheers, — decorous cheers, after the English fashion. Indeed, I was sit- ting comfortably down and opening a newspaper be- A SUNDAY ON THE THAMES. 135 fore the little stir that I had caused was over. I did not read my paper ; for I was in the condition in which Montaigne supposed his cat might be when he played with her. The action of the people interested me quite as much as mine interested them. These English folk, whom I had been taught were phleg- matic and impassible, had been roused to visible and audible manifestation of excitement by an act that would not have caused an " American " to turn his head. The passengers on our crowded ferry-boats saw men jump on board them after they were under way day after day without moving a muscle, until, too many having jumped into the water, and too many of these having been drowned, we put up gates and chains, not long ago, to stop the performance. I should not take that jump again, nor should I have taken it then if I had stopped to think about it ; but I was glad that I did take it then, not for the saving of the five or ten minutes that I did not know what to do with, but for the revelation that it made to me of English character. I landed again at London Bridge, and went to evening service at St. Paul's, I have said before that this great cathedral church has no attractions for my eye externally, except in its dome, that heaves itself heavily up into the dim atmosphere ; nor has its in- terior to me any grand or even religious aspect. The service there, too, as we sat on settles under the dome, seemed to me entirely lacking in the impress- iveness of that at Westminster. The voices of the clergymen were indistinct, almost inaudible ; th(i singing sounded comparatively feeble, like the wail- ing of forlorn and doleful creatures in a great cave. The introit, although the dean was there, witli a 136 ENGLAND, WITHOUT AND WITHIN. stronger array of assisting clergymen, and choir boys in surplices, and vergers than I had seen before, seemed a comparatively ragged, childish perform- ance. I took a distaste to the whole thing, and man- aged to slip away between the sei-vice and tlie ser- mon, in which movement I fomid myself kept in countenance by others. I strolled for a little while about the silent city, meeting not more people than I should have met in Wall Street or the lower part of Broadway on a Sun- day afternoon. Moreover, during service the bright skies had darkened, and it had begun to rain ; but it soon stopped, and the black clouds were white again. Feeling hungry, I began to look about for a place where 1 could get luncheon. I soon found