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INTEODUOTORT. 
 
 These papers are in part a recast of some letters contrib- 
 uted to the public press of tlie United States during a visit 
 to Europe in 1879 and 1880, and in part fresh matter from 
 original notes then taken. The wide republication here and 
 abroad of many of the newspaper letters suggested the prep- 
 aration of this volume. 
 
 The several sketches are mainly in the direction of com- 
 parative studies of social and political life in other countries. 
 The volume is, however, less symmetrical in this respect than 
 I could have wished now, for the reason that this line of 
 treatment was not an original plan — the work only drifting 
 that way in the gradual course of travel and writing. 
 
 Comparative study has been the rule of advancement in all 
 knowledge this century, and advance in the sciences of politics 
 and society will best be made by the same means. We cannot 
 compare our own institutions and form of government with 
 those of other nations until we understand them, and we can 
 never thoroughly understand them until we see them brought 
 out in relief against the background of other countries. 
 
 In other countries and in former times responsibility for the 
 social and political progress of any nation has been confined 
 to a small and highly-favored class. With us it rests upon 
 the whole people. The education of foreign travel — once the 
 privilege and pleasure of a few — has, therefore, become the 
 duty of every American citizen. The citizen is the statesman 
 now. If this is not the Providential intent of the flood of 
 European travel which annually leaves our shores, it is cer- 
 tainly its fortunate opportunity. 
 
 Any contribution, however imperfect, to this comparative 
 study of ourselves ought to be of some use to some portions 
 of our people. In Chapter XVII. of this work I have at- 
 tempted to show that aid in this work is the most useful 
 function now left to our diplomatic service and the best reason 
 for its present existence. 
 
 Along the pathway of travel and study I have endeavored 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 to give, wherever possible, some of that more intimate and 
 personal information which every educated traveller so often 
 feels the want of, and which for some reason will not get into 
 the guide-books^the special uses of special places, the best 
 economies of time and route and intellectual energies, the tried 
 and tested equipment of books, — that kind of information 
 gotten only by experience, always costly, and which to one en 
 route for the first or only time generally comes too late for use. 
 And in this matter of information, a closing word of coun- 
 sel. Much of the higher value of travel is often lost for want 
 of some reasonable provision beforehand for taking all of the 
 advantage of foreign life. Old lands, with their endless asso- 
 ciations, have such charms for the New- World citizen that 
 he is apt to think of nothing but the pleasure of wandering 
 at will among their ruins, their grandeur, their unaccustomed 
 and suggestive sights and sounds. 
 
 The highest expression of any living land, however, is its 
 society, which is the fruit of all its years or centuries of 
 \ struggle and longing. He only sees a land who knows its 
 j \ people. England, for instance, which, by reason of language 
 ! land race is the most profitable ground for American travel, 
 ■ lone can only begin to appreciate by meeting personally some 
 members of some of its distinctive and defined classes, and 
 seeing them in the setting of their own homes. A single 
 day spent in a cathedral close ; in an old castle, with an his- 
 toric family, still its living soul, yet in it ; in an English 
 gentleman's country-house, that charming flower of a well- 
 ^ perfected order of life ; in the college-cloisters of one of the 
 ancient universities ; in a substantial farm-house ; or, if one 
 cannot do any better, in a humble, out-of-the-way inn, will give 
 more insight into the social structure and historical civilization 
 of England than a whole cycle of existence in hotels or helpless 
 rambling with red books among show ruins and over beaten 
 highways. These are the pictures which are the real histori- 
 j cal paintings of the country. To get a stereoscopic view of 
 England one should enter all these doors and many others. 
 That good fortune, of course, can only come to very few, but 
 all may enjoy some one " interior," and from it, like a skilled 
 anatomist, construct to his own conception the whole fabric of 
 the body politic and social. 
 
 Philadelphia, November 15, 1880. 
 
ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
I 
 
OOISTTENTS. 
 
 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 I. — Chester 
 
 II.— York .... 
 III. — Shottery . 
 IV. — Reading in Berkshire 
 Y. — Lancaster . 
 YI. — University Towns : Oxford 
 YII. — University Towns : Cambridge 
 
 PAGE 
 
 9 
 19 
 25 
 30 
 36 
 44 
 61 
 
 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 VIIL — English Political Life . 
 
 IX. — Gladstone 
 
 X. — An English Election 
 XI. — The Interrogation Point in Politics 
 XII. — Comparative Cost of Government 
 XIII. — Parliament, — The House of Commons 
 XIY. — Parliament, — The House of Commons 
 XY. — Parliament, — The House of Commons 
 XYI. — Parliament, — The House of Lords 
 XYII. — Foreign Service .... 
 XYIII. — Comparative Politics 
 
 79 
 
 84 
 
 92 
 
 99 
 
 103 
 
 109 
 
 118 
 
 126 
 
 142 
 
 145 
 
 151 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 XIX. — Westminster Abbey 
 XX. — The London Pulpit 
 XXI. — The Play and the Theatre 
 XXII. — The London Times . 
 XXIII. — Historic Taverns 
 
 1* 
 
 165 
 175 
 
 189 
 196 
 207 
 
Q CONTENTS. 
 
 SCOTLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXIY. — Entering Scotland 223 
 
 XXV. — Scottish Notes 230 
 
 XXVI. — Towards the Hebrides .... 238 
 
 XXVII.— Io»fA 247 
 
 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 XXVIII.— Venice 265 
 
 XXIX.— Genoa . . . . . . . .276 
 
 XXX.— Pisa 286 
 
 XXXI.— Siena 293 
 
 XXXII.— Oryieto 305 
 
 XXXIII.— PiSTOJA 314 
 
 XXXIV.— Ravenna 322 
 
 ROME. 
 XXXV. — Rome the Centre .... 
 
 . 331 
 
 XXXVI. — St. Peter's, and Italian Preaching . 336 
 
 XXXVII.— The Pantheon 346 
 
 XXXVIII.— Prison of St. Paul and St. Peter. . 353 
 XXXIX. — The Palace of the Inquisition . . 362 
 XL. — Constantine's Battle-Pield . . . 367 
 •XLI. — Ostia — The Pompeii of Roman Civili- 
 zation 374 
 
 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 XLII.— New Rome 385 
 
 XLIII.— United Italy 393 
 
 XLIV.— Gariealdi 402 
 
 XLV.— Modern Italy 409 
 
 XLVI.— The Italian Life 422 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Hints of Travel 435 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHESTER. 
 
 The Entrakce-Porch to England — An Initial Walk — 
 The Old Home — Vitiation oe the Language — The 
 Soldier and the Beggar — Coming Differentiation of 
 the English and American Language — The Vignette 
 Cathedral Scene of England. 
 
 Chester is the vignette scene of England, and a 
 very cliarming one. Within fifteen miles of Liver- 
 pool, and trains running out almost hourly, the expe- 
 rienced traveller can, and the judicious one will, avoid 
 that monotonous town consecrated to trade and lucre, 
 and spend his first night in England in a little country 
 village representativ^e and typical of the most English 
 of English scenery. Indeed, if circumstances permit, 
 I would advise that the visitor ^w^alk from Liverpool 
 to Chester. It is a short distance, over excellent roads, 
 and the walk will give one at once an idea of English 
 landscape which it w^ould take weeks of railway travel 
 to acquire. 
 
 The walk will be made along green lanes and by 
 hedges and under avenues of great trees which form a 
 picture not to be forgotten, and answering completely 
 to what is, perhaps, the conventional conception of any 
 well-read person of rural England. To an educated 
 American, indeed, all England is so familiar by pic- 
 tures, literature, and legend that, entering it for the 
 first time, he feels as if he were coming home again 
 instead of visiting a strange land, — as if he had been 
 there before in a half-remembered childhood or in a 
 dream, and were part of it. This indefinable sense of 
 a previous knowledge is not, I think, a mere intellec- 
 
 9 
 
10 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 tual photograph or illusion, the impression of years of 
 early or long reading. It is the assertion of a race in- 
 stinct. Froissart — that most picturesque of old chroni- 
 clers — does not prepare one so for Normandy, nor does 
 Boccaccio for Italy. Any one who goes to Rome for the 
 first time recognizes at once the Pantheon or the Col- 
 osseum, and the stranger at Paris enters the Madeleine 
 confidently without question of guide or guide-book, 
 but he knows them, however, as he knows the pyra- 
 mids and obelisks, and he has not that feeling of kin- 
 dredship, that sense of his own merger in them, which 
 is one of the great charms of English travel. 
 
 Although to American eyes simply a charming 
 country village of a few thousand inhabitants, Chester 
 is by English law a city, being a cathedral site, and 
 fairly bubbles over with tradition, legend, and history, 
 so that one feels like looking on its very humblest 
 people with respect as the richly-dowered " heirs of all 
 the ages.'^ These heirs, however, save the cultured 
 aristocracy, who are few in numbers and mostly of ec- 
 clesiastical savor or relation of some kind to the cathe- 
 dral, with its ancient establishment, seem poor and 
 struggling, and I fancy would gladly give up all their 
 historic privileges for a quarter-section of American 
 prairie. 
 
 Our Pennsylvania town preserves the full name and 
 tradition of this site better than its English ancestor. 
 For long i^eriods of history this old Chester was known 
 as West Chester, — -just what it was under the Romans, 
 the " west camp" of the province, " Chester'^ being the 
 very natural corruption of our rude forefathers for the 
 Latin castra. Chester's first interest, indeed, comes to 
 us from its associations as an ancient Roman fortress or 
 stronghold. Here, about the time of Christ, was sta- 
 tioned the Twentieth Legion (about a brigade of our 
 army), keeping down our barbarian ancestors. Stone 
 coffins and other Roman antiquities are still dug up 
 from time to time, and one or two handsome Roman 
 
CHESTER. 1 1 
 
 crvpts, discovered after centuries of disuse, have been 
 put to modern use as wine-cellars. It is a natural mili- 
 tary position, having been seized on by those excellent 
 soldiers, the Romans, and well fortified, and has been 
 a centre of tough fighting ever since. Its distinction 
 in this respect is grounded on sound military and geo- 
 graphical reasons, and will endure. When the Romans 
 had gone, the Danes held its abandoned walls to the 
 bitter end against King Alfred. It was the last point 
 taken by William tiie Conqueror, the last fortress to 
 lower the Saxon standard before the Norman banners. 
 From a tower on its walls, which is now a relic, they 
 show you the spot where King Charles I. stood and 
 sav/ his army and his kingdom melt away before his 
 eyes down on the moors below. There will be a battle 
 here again when the Germans invade England, if Eng- 
 lishmen still keep up their fathers' fashion of fighting 
 for their soil inch by inch. From a military point of 
 view, Chester is topographically " the last ditch" of a 
 lost cause in England. 
 
 All the town is surrounded by a huge wall w^ith 
 balustrades of brick, and at the angles fortified with 
 towers, which in their day swept the faces of their 
 sections of the wall and commanded its approaches. 
 Along the top of this wall you walk now, and see on 
 one side the moors — which, I suppose, in the old times, 
 when defence was the first consideration, could be 
 flooded by the Dee, a tranquil little stream answering 
 in size and appearance to the American creek — and 
 the other the near hills of Wales. Our guide, an en- 
 thusiastic and slightly bibulous '^ freeman" of Chester, 
 looked on these hills yet with only half-repressed in- 
 dignation as the abode of marauders and thieves, whom 
 we might momentarily expect to swoop down. In- 
 deed, in the excitement of historic declamation, relating 
 the past military and ecclesiastical glories of his native 
 city, I think sometimes he got the centuries mixed up, 
 and mingled his own troubles with the statelier tragedies 
 
X2 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 which marked the fall of thrones and turned the course 
 of history. 
 
 Inside the walls, in the "old city/' every building 
 and street is quaint and picturesque, and the narrow 
 ways are fairly crowded with houses that are historic 
 and pregnant with suggestion. There is the summer 
 residence of King Henry VIII., a low, mud-walled 
 building, not twelve feet high, but which so short a 
 time ago was a fit dwelling for a monarch. It sounds 
 rather comical now, but there is in Chester a charitable 
 foundation of this many-wived King Henry for the 
 perpetual support of " six widows." The widows are 
 to-day enjoying this benefit. 
 
 Through a brick alley-passage not five feet wide 
 you come on the ancient palace of the great Earl of 
 Derby, a soldier and statesman, who in old times 
 headed armies, levied war against his king, and for 
 that act parted with his head on the scaffold. This 
 place is a rackety structure of two low stories, hardly 
 high enough to stand up in, and is now occupied by a 
 family of the poorest sort in a city where poverty 
 is squalid and wretched to an extent that we happily 
 know nothing of. A dirty, red-haired girl with torn 
 petticoats and a hungry-looking face received us on 
 the threshold and offered the modern hospitalities of 
 the palace. 
 
 Another huilding strikingly quaint and suggestive 
 of ancient manners is a long, low structure, gabled and 
 antique, which, some six or seven hundred years ago, 
 was the residence of a great bishop who ruled in Chester. 
 It is more spacious and imposing than either of the 
 others just mentioned. Along the entire front, of some 
 eighty feet, runs a gallery something like the inclosed 
 porch of a Lancaster County hotel. The whole front 
 of this house, from the roof to the ground, is covered 
 with carved and graven images in wood of curious and 
 often grotesque design. Two entirely nude figures, 
 man and woman, are shown you by the guide, and one 
 
CHESTER: 13 
 
 fayade has been cancelled and shaven plain, the imagery 
 being too gross for modern eyes. 
 
 These odd old buildings, their whole fronts covered 
 with curious w^ooden carvings, and many of them de- 
 voted now to the commonest and humblest uses, give a 
 general effect to Chester which is stronger and more im- 
 pressive than any of the detached " shows'^ which here, 
 as in any locality, are always forced on the stranger. 
 This fantastic tracery of steep gables and overhanging 
 eaves and brown skeleton rafters, the lean ribs of cen- 
 turies, and quaint relievos, half-religious, half-pagan, — 
 this and the beautiful view stretching out over peaceful 
 water and meadow to the delicate filmy contour of the 
 Welsh mountains are the pictures of the place. 
 
 The great sight of Chester, of course, is her cathedral, 
 the central point which gathers up her history from the 
 time of King Alfred. It is not large compared with 
 others in the island, but, half in ruins, is beautiful and 
 picturesque beyond description. This cathedral, like 
 all the great churches of England, is a pantheon. In 
 St. Paul's and Westminster lie the dead of the nation. 
 In Chester and other country churches or cathedrals 
 sleep the local great. These grand graves, where those 
 men who have deserved well of their country and their 
 fellows are gathered in noble com])anionship and hon- 
 ored for ages, are a powerful stimulus to great thought 
 and heroic action, and must tend strongly to elevate 
 those who live near them and w^orship in them, drawing 
 them daily away from the ignoble struggle for mere 
 gain of money, and lifting them up to better things. 
 For in all this country, for which wealth has done so 
 much, I have not found one name enshrined there in 
 honor merely for its riches, and any man or boy may 
 be buried in the greatest church of his county or the 
 kingdom if he does some service to his fellows worthy 
 of recognition and remembrance. In this beautiful 
 cathedral of Chester, consecrated by art, legend, and re- 
 ligion, among the bishops and statesmen and generals 
 
14 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 of centuries, I have found the names of young soldiers, 
 without rank, fortune, or family, who died only a few 
 years ago in the Crimea. 
 
 In St. PauFs grand pile, where lie Wellington, and 
 Nelson, and Sir John Moore, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, 
 and John Howard, and Bishop Heber, and Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds, there are inscribed, with equal honor, the 
 names of some poor unknown ship-boys who in a great 
 naval action went down nobly, standing to their 
 duty as grandly and as faithfully as admiral or general. 
 As I looked at this tablet some young sergeants, proud 
 of their early chevrons, and of a regiment on its way 
 to the African war, were poring earnestly over the 
 names, and I knew that the real service of this cathe- 
 dral would be offered some day in silence on the battle- 
 fields of Zulu) and. 
 
 It is impossible, of course, to describe in words such 
 a cathedral as this, — a building which is the result of 
 the consecrated labor, art, and devotion of centuries. 
 And it is but one of many. They must be seen to be 
 conceived, and when seen can only be known through 
 the eye of culture and history. 
 
 Chester cathedral is not by any means the one to 
 select as the prelude to a course of systematic study, 
 but it does well enough to break in with. One must 
 do his aesthetic teething somewhere, and Chester answers 
 very well for that purpose. 
 
 Right here at Chester, on the threshold of England, 
 one strikes an English habit which is offensive to Amer- 
 ican taste, and which will jar on the ear during one's 
 entire stay in the country, — viz., the corruption, by illiter- 
 ate contraction, of the language. This process of de- 
 terioration is going steadily on in all classes. Cheshire, 
 the county name, is slovenly and ignorant English for 
 Chestershire, but it has been adopted by all England, 
 although its origin must have been from the thick-lipped 
 hinds. Cheshire is clownish, and means nothing; Ches- 
 
CHESTER. 15 
 
 tersliire is sonorous, stately, and records two volumes of 
 English national history, — the Latin rule of the camp 
 and the Saxon rule of the shire. 
 
 The lower-class Englishman is thoroughly illiterate, 
 and often succeeds in stamping his illiteracy on the na- 
 tion. There cannot be a neglected class in any com- 
 munity without the whole community suffering for it. 
 Just as the Southern people in our country acquired a 
 negro twang and dialect, the black nurses teaching it 
 to the white children, so to-day the English language in 
 England suffers at the hands of its large uneducated 
 and neglected class, and it has come to pass that Eng- 
 lish gentlemen cannot keep even their aristocratic 
 Dames intact, but accept them back from their servants 
 mutilated and vulgarized in sound. Thus Beauchamp 
 has deteriorated to Beacham, Beauvoir to Beaver, Stan- 
 hope to Stannup, Cholmondeley to Chumly, St. John 
 to Sinjin, Marjoribanks to Marshbanks, Worcester to 
 Wooster, Leicester to Lester, Greenwich to Greenitch, 
 Chaworth to Chorth, Woolwich to Woolich, Ha worth 
 to Horth, Hawarden to Harden, Warwick to Warick, 
 Taliaferro to Toliver, St. Botolph^s-town to Boston, 
 Sandys to Sands, Wemyss to Weems, Dillwyn to Dil- 
 lan, Strachan to Strawn, Mainwearing to Mannering, 
 and so on from one end of the island to the other. 
 
 This vulgar and servile pronunciation, especially of 
 the lordly old Norman names, is very marked and very 
 unpleasant to a stranger. But it is retribution. Eng- 
 land has not been true to her trust in the matter of 
 common education. With universities and schools far 
 beyond anything we can pretend to, with a clergy 
 educated greatly beyond our grade and enjoying in the 
 days of priories and abbeys the monopoly of educa- 
 tion, she has kept her talent of learning selfishly folded 
 in a napkin for the exclusive uses of one class. Now 
 the wronged classes avenge themselves. 
 
 Indeed, the wrong against the noble language of Mil- 
 ton and Shakespeare is very prevalent throughout all 
 
IQ ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 England, high and low. If the lower-class Englishman 
 drops his "h's/^ the upper-class Englishman drops his 
 " w's ;" and I do not know that the offence is in any- 
 way mitigated because fashion approves the one elision 
 and disapproves the other. ^'Extraordinary" is a ^ood 
 shibboleth with Avhich to test the Englishman. Very 
 rarely does he successfully master the " d.'^ 
 
 It sometimes seems as if the special function of the 
 United States with regard to our common English lan- 
 guage were to be its preservation by the general educa- 
 tion of the whole people. England has shown that no 
 special centres of education, however excellent, respected, 
 or sacred, will protect the purity of the tongue against 
 masses of ignorance and servility. 
 
 This lazy vitiation of the English by the dropping 
 of letters, and sometimes of whole syllables, is in con- 
 stant progress in England on a grand scale, enervating 
 the language in form and sound, and were there no 
 communication between the two countries would soon, 
 with other influences, result in two tongues related to 
 each other like French and Spanish or Spanish and 
 Italian. As it is, the process of differentiation has al- 
 ready set in, but it is hourly counteracted by the inces- 
 sant intercommunication of the two peoples. 
 
 As this different use of words will confront the 
 stranger all the time in England, I give here some 
 illustrations to show on how large a scale the variation 
 has already begun : 
 
 English. American. 
 
 Shop. Store. 
 
 Shopkeeper. Storekeeper, merchant. 
 
 Shares, shareholder. Stock, stockholder. 
 
 Chairman (of a company). President. 
 
 Eailway. Eailroad. 
 
 High level (railway). Elevated. 
 
 Station. Depot. 
 
 Shunt. Switch. 
 
 Stoker. Pireman. 
 
 Guard. Conductor. 
 
 Driver. Engineer. 
 
CHESTER. 
 
 17 
 
 English. 
 
 Booking-office. 
 Goods, 
 Carriage. 
 "The cars." 
 Line. 
 Chemist. 
 Lift. 
 
 Tram, tramways. 
 Outing. 
 Post. 
 To book. 
 
 To post (a letter). 
 To book (a seat). 
 To *' take in" (a newspaper) 
 Quite, in the sense of 
 Public-house. 
 Spirits. 
 Meat-shop. 
 Tub. 
 
 Cab, cabman. 
 Inn. 
 
 Luggage, luggage-van. 
 To register (luggage). 
 Stick. 
 
 The hustings. 
 The Ministry. 
 Member. 
 
 " Contesting a seat" for Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 A^nerican. 
 
 Ticket-office. 
 
 Freight. 
 
 Car. 
 
 "The train." 
 
 Track. 
 
 Druggist. 
 
 Elevator. 
 
 Street-cars. 
 
 Excursion. 
 
 Mail. 
 
 To charge. 
 
 To mail. 
 
 To buy a ticket. 
 
 To subscribe for. 
 
 Entirely. 
 
 Tavern. 
 
 Liquor. 
 
 Butcher-shop. 
 
 Bath. 
 
 Hack, hack-driver. 
 
 Hotel. 
 
 Baggage, baggage- wagon, -car. 
 
 To check (baggage). 
 
 Cane. 
 
 The stump. 
 
 The Cabinet. 
 
 Representative. 
 
 " Running" for Congress. 
 
 Who can translate into exact American " young per- 
 son'' as uttered by a British dame ? How shall one ex- 
 press, under our different social conditions, the contempt 
 and disgust of "cad" ? What equivalent have we on 
 this side of the Atlantic for those great structural ver- 
 tebrae of an Englishman's speech, " really," " ah," 
 "haw," "now"? 
 
 Were it not for the large and continuous intercom- 
 munication of books and magazines and newspapers, 
 of letters and telegrams and travel, the languages would 
 even now be standing widely apart. 
 
 The "Kows," the guide-book feature of Chester, were 
 
 a disappointment. They are a curiosity, of course, but 
 
 b 2* 
 
18 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 greatly overrated. The best description, perhaps, is in 
 one of Dickens's later novels, but the great novelist 
 wrote of them like a reporter paid by the column, and 
 from his trained imagination built up a curiously in- 
 volved and very interesting structure on a rather com- 
 monplace foundation of fact. The Rows run only for 
 a few short blocks, and are simply a deep porch set far 
 in each house and open from house to house. One 
 can walk continuously for the distance of a block along 
 the porches just as on the street below. At the end of 
 each block, however, he must descend to the street, 
 ascending again at the next block. In time, small shops 
 have been opened in the second story, and you have 
 thus a double shopping-front for a small distance. It 
 is only this, and nothing more. 
 
 Chester's greatness and interest lie in her historic 
 riches, — her wealth of culture, legend, religious tradi- 
 tion, and power, — and it seems a pity that she should be 
 labelled and ear-marked for travellers by what is at best 
 but a curiosity and but an item in her vast repertoire 
 of things curious and quaint. 
 
 Entering this pleasing vestibule of England, you 
 meet at once two figures unpleasant to the American 
 eye, — the soldier and the beggar. Here they are in 
 these quiet sylvan shades and echoless cloisters, and 
 they never leave you wherever you go in Europe. The 
 poverty and beggary of Chester are very repulsive to 
 one unacquainted with the squalor and wretchedness of 
 this continent, and it is something very sad to see them 
 in a village town whose chief monument and distinction 
 is a venerable cathedral, and which itself is almost a 
 cathedral close. The British scarlet and gold, too, 
 flashes along these leafy streets and under ruined walls 
 and still moss-grown arches, — wherever, in fact, a Brit- 
 ish nursemaid strays. The English drum-beat echoes 
 every day around the entire globe, which is grand, but 
 it is also heard every night in every peaceful county 
 of England, which is not so grand. 
 
YORK. 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 YORK. 
 
 An Old Cathedral City — The Gateway to Historic Eng- 
 land — A Traveller's Plight — The English Cathedrals 
 — Story of their Building and what they Cost — The 
 NEW Uses of the Old Temples Stripped of their Pic- 
 tures AND Idols — An English Rest. 
 
 York is the historic gateway by which to enter Eng- 
 land. The stress of modern travel carries one to 
 Liverpool, and, while its suburban confine of Chester is 
 a very picturesque and pleasing vignette portal, it has 
 no historical significance. The traveller who comes to 
 study England will do weR to leave there after a day 
 and strike directly for York. This is in conflict with 
 all the modern routes of travel ; but, as these routes 
 have been determined for the use and advantage of 
 railway companies rather than the pleasure or profit of 
 travellers, they are no guide to an intelligent seeing of 
 the country, and are often a harm. 
 
 York was a stronghold of our ancient Briton fathers 
 and a capital seat of rude power away back in the mists 
 before the time of Christ. It was the capital of the 
 Roman empire in Britain, and the old Roman military 
 walls around the city are still standing in a wonderful 
 state of preservation. You could fight a battle from 
 them to-day did the conditions of modern warfare allow 
 it. In the streets and buildings and remains you see 
 the record successively of the Roman period of English 
 history, the Saxon, the Norman, and modern England 
 from the Plantagenets through the Commonwealth down 
 to Victoria. In the walls and arches of the great 
 minster you read the whole history of English archi- 
 
20 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 tecture, — Saxon, Norman, Late Norman, Early English, 
 Decorated, Early Perpendicular, Perpendicular, Late 
 Perpendicular. York is a kindergarten of English 
 history for grown folks. 
 
 In its name York is another illustration of the in- 
 herited and hopeless tendency of the Englishman to a 
 corruption, by contraction, of the language. " York" 
 is the stately and civilized " Eboracum" of the Latins 
 as it has come down to us through the thick-lipped 
 Saxons and half-articulating Britons, only the rude 
 guttural remains of a once polished word. 
 
 Coming to York on the last day of a racing week, I 
 had an experience very odd to an American. This 
 town, with a modern population of fifty thousand and 
 some twenty centuries of dignity, has hardly the hotel 
 accommodation of one of our Western towns of ten 
 thousand people. Every inn was full, and the land- 
 lords did not seem to feel under the least obligation to 
 provide for any one. When all their rooms were full 
 they seemed to think their duty ended, although this 
 thing must occur again and again. In nearly all the 
 old towns of England the hotel provision is simply 
 ridiculous, judged by our necessities. After driving to 
 the half-dozen or so modest-sized inns of the place 
 without getting a lodgment, I was about taking the train 
 again to find a roof for the night, when some citizen 
 who had watched the quest directed me to a private 
 house where lodging, he thought, might be had. I 
 found there very good apartments and fair service 
 and meals, but at a cost greater than the Windsor in 
 New York or the St. George in Philadelphia. 
 
 Much of the interest of the town attaches to its 
 Norman period, as you read it in castle and bar and 
 ruined abbey, although in this epoch of its splendor 
 and power York was but a town of ten thousand in- 
 habitants. The Normans, however, cared very little 
 for monotonous figures. Although great sailors, they 
 had only moderate capacity as traders ; but as soldiers, 
 
FORK. 21 
 
 pripsts, artists, poets and builders, the force of their 
 time, they left their stamp indelibly. They made his- 
 tory rather than textile fabrics or patent machinery. 
 
 the glory of York, however, — as it is one of the 
 glories of England, — is its great cathedral or minster; 
 and it is the object chiefest worthy of study in the 
 place. It is indeed a very good specimen with which to 
 begin the study of the English cathedrals. These noble 
 cathedrals of England, spread over all the land, are 
 one of the first and strongest impressions of the king- 
 dom on the stranger. They are so grand, so beautiful, 
 so living, like breathing hearts of stone, that seeing 
 them one feels at once as if he had never seen a church 
 before. They seem not of this world, but of some 
 other world ; higher and better houses not made with 
 hands, but born of an art and a conception beyond 
 our modern powders. 
 
 But when one reflects what they are and what they 
 mean, they start a singularly involved social problem, 
 and the cold judgment inclines against them. They 
 are the product and represent that dreary and profitless 
 stretch of English history from the Norman conquest 
 to the Reformation, — five wretched centuries of want 
 and ignorance and human suffering and stagnation. 
 They are tlie outcome, and with a few castles and 
 splendid abbeys the whole outcome, of the five hundred 
 years in which England was a province of the modern 
 Roman empire, the people and the kings of England 
 ruled over by cardinal-princes, — the ecclesiastical pro- 
 consuls of Rome. During this period all the other 
 countries of Europe were similar provinces, and these 
 wonderful cathedrals went up in them all. You recog- 
 nize at once the essential idea of them, the grand con- 
 ception, the spirit of the work, as you meet them again 
 in France and Germany and North Italy. The ca- 
 thedral stands out everywhere as the dominant idea of 
 that period and the symbol of its power. This idea in 
 the different development of our day is lost, and you 
 
22 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 cannot reproduce these old cathedrals now. It has 
 been tried, but with inevitable failure. No study or 
 imitation of the old proportions will fashion a building 
 like unto those which yet speak for their dead age. 
 You may get something which is like the form, but it 
 is not the living form : it is a corpse. The soul has 
 forever fled. 
 
 Now, what is painful to think of in relation to these 
 lovely cathedrals is this : These magnificent buildings, 
 that seem almost to glow with faith and beauty, drank 
 the life-blood of England. During the period of their 
 building England was almost stationary. There was 
 no social advance and no social hope. There were no 
 homes in England as we know them now. There was 
 no freedom as we know it now, little of comfort, and 
 nothing of progress. From A.D. 1100 to a.d. 1400 the 
 population of England advanced but ten per cent, a 
 century, less than one-tenth of one per cent, a year. 
 For the people there was no wealth, no education, no 
 trade or commerce. There was deficient food, shelter, 
 and clothing, and, in consequence, continuous disease 
 and epidemic. There was chronic war. It was a time 
 of plague, pestilence, and famine, of battle and murder, 
 and of sudden death. There was no science, there was 
 no art save in the direction of ecclesiastical architecture 
 and adornment. 
 
 Yet it was the same England, with the same people, 
 soil, climate, and resources, as to-day. But one-fourth 
 of the adult population of that time are computed to 
 have been priests, monks, nuns, and their hangers-on 
 and attendants, non-productive persons and an eco- 
 nomic burden on the other three-fourths, whose produc- 
 tive powers were still further lessened by a long list of 
 saints' days, and a heavy drain for military purposes. 
 This is the England of these beautiful abbeys and ven- 
 erable priories and stately cathedrals. All over Europe 
 these buildings are a magnificent demonstration of or- 
 ganized ecclesiastical power and a wonderful flowering 
 
YORK. 23 
 
 of ?esthetic force, but it has been all at the cost and sac- 
 rifice of the common jieople, whose " bodies are the 
 temples of the living God/^ For them these silent 
 gray cathedrals meant intellectual and civil starvation, 
 social degradation, physical ill health, aud the shorten- 
 ing of life. 
 
 For one who wants to drink in the beauty of the 
 cathedrals of Europe it is better to begin with those of 
 England, — Lincoln, and Ely, and Peterborough, and 
 Durham, and Lichfield, and Canterbury, and Salisbury, 
 and Exeter, and AV'inchester, and Wells, all of which 
 are worth a visit, and many others. It is better to 
 begin with these English cathedrals and enjoy them 
 while one may; for, with all their impressive splendor 
 to our unaccustomed Puritan eyes, they come to look 
 empty and bare and cold after one has once felt the 
 sensuous glories of the churches of Southern Europe. 
 The beauty of these Northern churches is too severely 
 intellectual in contrast with the warmth and rich color 
 of the South. Coming back from there, one feels the 
 nakedness of the stern gray cathedrals of England 
 and longs for the Madonnas and bright coloring of Italy, 
 the ascending incense, the burning lamps and warm {)ic- 
 tures, the family altars, the noble armies of saints, the 
 marble flight of pure white angels, — thousands and thou- 
 sands of them, — and the splendor of the trembling altar 
 with its sacred lights flaming over silver and precious 
 stones. 
 
 To tell the truth, although our Church-of-England 
 friends never quite like to hear it, these great cathedrals 
 of theirs were built by the Roman Catholic Church. 
 They belong, with all their splendors, to it, with all its 
 defects. Their present use is unsympathetic and an an- 
 achronism. Robbed of their saints and swinging cen- 
 sers, their beautiful idols and graven images and poly- 
 theistic chapels, they are a cold void. For the present 
 Church-of-England service they have little more special 
 ap2)ropriateness than has a Greek temple. And so 
 
24 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 it has come to pass that in some of them the choir is 
 inclosed from floor to roof on all sides, and fashioned 
 into a new Protestant church within the old cathe- 
 dral, conformed to the exigencies of the" modern 
 worship. 
 
 For the American stranger, to whom the outside of 
 the Old World is all a poem, York is a delightful old 
 town just to wander through alone and at will. It is 
 full of quaint and ancient little streets, overhanging 
 houses, antiquated stone seats and remains, odd nooks 
 and corners that have come down from the Middle Ages. 
 In all its streets you read the legend of Roman and 
 Saxon and Dane and Norman and Puritan. On its 
 walls you see the Plantagenet and Tudor emblems. At 
 one sweep in a few hours in York you may find Roman 
 altars and coffins and forgotten household gods, Saxon 
 monuments, Norman fortifications, the poor dwellings 
 of the people in mediaeval times, Elizabethan manors, 
 and the unimpressive because familiar building of our 
 own day. 
 
 York was once the northern metropolis of England, 
 a centre of fashion and political life, and dividing eccle- 
 siastical power with Canterbury and London at a time 
 when ecclesiasticism was the force of the realm. Now 
 the railways have drawn all that to London, and York is 
 a quiet, easy-going old cathedral city, eminently respect- 
 able, aristocratic, and rather sleepy. As a social study I 
 have no doubt it is interesting and worth investigation, 
 but it was not my fortune to know it save from the out- 
 side. A cathedral city is itself an order of life and 
 society unknown tons, and which it would take a novel 
 to reveal. 
 
 There are three clubs in York, and they show how 
 the lines are drawn. One, and the leading, the York- 
 shire, is for " county gentlemen" ; the York is for 
 '^ city professional gentlemen" ; while the third and last, 
 the City, is for " tradesmen." 
 
 York, with a population of fifty thousand, and the 
 
SHOTTERY. 25 
 
 capital of the largest county in England, — Yorkshire, — 
 covering a population of about two and a half millions 
 of souls, has just three iceekly newspapers. 
 
 It is an English town from top to bottom, old- 
 fashioned, comfortable, dignified, and satisfied with it- 
 self. There is nothing in our land with which to con- 
 trast it or run a parallel. There is probably no way in 
 which a stranger would get a better inside conception 
 of English provincial life of a high order than by living 
 for a few weeks in York ; and if one were fatigued or 
 exhausted by the wear and tear of the ocean, it would 
 be an excellent and profitable resting-place. 
 
 York, England 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SHOTTERY. 
 
 Anne Hatheway's Cottage as it stands To-day — A Farm 
 Village — Shakespeare's Love in the Thatched Cot- 
 tage — The Local Affection for the Story. 
 
 I HAVE walked to-day from here to the neighboring 
 village of Shottery to see the cottage where Anne Hathe- 
 way lived and where Shakespeare won her. It was a 
 charming bit of representative English scenery, that 
 landscape and view so unlike our own, and yet so 
 familiar through literature and tradition that it always 
 seems to me as if I had seen it before in dreams or some 
 previous condition of existence. I followed a footpath 
 across the fields, with old-fashioned stiles at every fence 
 and hawthorn hedges along the lanes, — the very path 
 trod by Shakespeare in his quest of Anne. Tradition 
 does not say how often he had to walk it. 
 
 The cottage, a quaint, straw-thatched building < ov- 
 B 3 
 
26 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 ered with ivy and rose-bushes, is in a good state of 
 preservation. The old house, which was, for its time, 
 commodious and of some pretensions, is now occupied 
 by three families, — farm laborers. The central divis- 
 ion, which is formed of the hall and main fireplace, and 
 the sittin2:-room of the old buildincr as it stood in 
 Shakespeare's time, is now known as the Hatheway 
 cottage, and is kept much as it stood then, with some 
 of tlie old furniture and heirlooms of the family. An 
 elderly woman, with the pleasant manners of the hum- 
 ble classes here, received me, and showed a real and in- 
 telligent interest in explaining the legend and relics of 
 the place. In answer to a question, she told me she 
 was herself a Hatheway, and that her family had lived 
 on the spot ever since the time of Shakespeare, as well 
 as for generations before. 
 
 Although the exterior of the house is of humble ap- 
 pearance, the Hatheway family must have been of the 
 better sort in their days. The room where Shakespeare 
 made love — or where Anne made love to him, as a 
 somewhat cynical and mature damsel of the place, who 
 seemed to look on my walk to Shottery parish as a 
 kind of mild lunacy, informed me — is a large room, 
 some fifteen feet square, handsomely panelled in oak. 
 It is flagged with broad stones, worn smooth by the 
 steps of generations, looking rude to us, but which was 
 the comfortable custom of the time. The 2:reat feature 
 of the room is the wide, old-fashioned chimney-place, 
 in which you can sit, and sitting look up through to 
 the sky. In the left wing of this capacious fireplace, 
 as you face it, there is cut or built in the wall the 
 bacon-closet, still serving that homely use for the 
 Hatheways of 1880. On the right side stands the 
 " courtin'-settle,'' as my old friend phrased it, a very 
 rude wooden bench, some five feet long, with back and 
 low arms. This seat my guide was sure was the real 
 and veritable place which did the work, and carried the 
 Hatheway family into legend and history. On it sat 
 
 1 
 
SH OTTER Y. 27 
 
 at the time of my visit a young girl of sixteen, sewing 
 some homely work, — a Hatheway without a Shakespeare. 
 
 Up a narrow and humble Avooden stairway you reach 
 the half-story rooms, which are now and were in the 
 sixteenth century the sleeping- apartments of the family. 
 The bedstead, the central feature, is further evidence of 
 the substantial standing of the family. It is hand- 
 somely carved with scroll-Avork and human figures; 
 some of them resembling the grotesque carving seen in 
 ancient cathedrals. This work appears, by its style and 
 class, to date about four hundred years ago. The bed has 
 been in the Hatheway family ever since their name be- 
 came a matter of interest, and is believed by them to have 
 been used for generations before. It is not in use now, 
 and is furnished with very heavy and soft linen, woven 
 in the family, and hemmed with wonderful elaboration. 
 This, too, an heirloom from more prosperous times. In 
 this bedroom is a spinning-wheel seat, alleged to have 
 been immortalized by Shakespeare, but the good dame 
 would not give the passage by which his kindly re- 
 membrance had carried the homely object into literature. 
 
 This room, the old state bedroom of the family, 
 like its adjoining mate, the present sleeping-apartment 
 of the house, is so low that you touch the ceiling every- 
 where except in the centre, and the joists and rafters 
 are joined together not by nails but by wooden pegs. 
 
 The Hatheways of Shakespeare's time were " yeo- 
 men,'' a class of British society that has pretty much 
 disappeared. The people who live in their cottage to- 
 day are farm-laborers, a class so poor and ignorant and 
 hopeless of any future that we happily have no equiv- 
 alent to it in the United States. This fact accounts for 
 much of the contrast between the substance and com- 
 fort indicated by these relics and traditions of the past 
 and the meagreness and poverty of the family to-day. 
 It makes this humble cottage, also, an instructive illus- 
 tration of a very unsatisfactory change that has been 
 going on in the lower order of English society. 
 
28 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 Visitors, the Hatheway dowager informed me, came 
 often, but not so many in these hard times as in years 
 before. The Americans, she said, were " the best;" and 
 to my inquiry as to what was best, she said they took 
 most interest and seemed most pleased. I was pretty 
 sure my hostess took me for an American prince, and 
 so, noblesse oblige, gave her a shilling, where I think a 
 sixpence was the usual gratuity. This modest British 
 coin brought me a shower of blessings and kind wishes, 
 and, wdiat was more practical, some snowdrops and 
 '' rosemary for remembrance'^ from the garden. Indeed, 
 the real gratitude which a shilling given to a decent 
 man or woman in this land always evokes is sad evi- 
 dence of the narrow margin of existence here. Life is 
 a struggle, and the poor go into it burdened and handi- 
 capped almost beyond hope. 
 
 In the modest garden of the cottage, planted with 
 box, lavender, marigold, rosemary, pansy, thyme, and 
 other familiar English flowers and shrubs, stands the 
 well of pure cold water, in the same place and serving the 
 same homely uses as of old. It is doubtful, however, if 
 Shakespeare ever drank of it. The Englishman of the 
 sixteenth century, like the Englishman of the nine- 
 teenth, I suppose, confined himself to ale. 
 
 In my walk across-fields from Stratford-on-Avon to 
 Shottery, the footpath of course often diverged, and I 
 was forced to inquire of those I met the way. I was 
 much struck with the familiar knowledge of all with 
 the story of Shakespeare's love, and their simple pride 
 in it. In other localities where there were famous 
 churches, in which good knights and old earls famous in 
 history lay buried, I have often inquired of respectable- 
 looking people and found them ignorant of or only half 
 acquainted with the great historic features of these 
 places. In Warwick, for instance, I found several 
 Avorthy people who seemed to know nothing of the 
 great Earl of Leicester, and not to care much whether 
 his body was in their church or not. All around Shot- 
 
SUOTTERY. 29 
 
 tery, however, the name of Anne Hatheway was a 
 household word and the humble thatched cottage a 
 shrine. Some rude farm-laborers, who spoke so thickly 
 I could hardly understand them, and used language so 
 provincial as not to seem English to American ears, 
 and some bright little boys hardly twelve years old, 
 alike gave intelligent answers, showed a friendly sym- 
 pathy in my quest, and seemed to think my pilgrimage 
 the right and proper and natural thing to do. 
 
 This is " Shakespeare land." The town lives and 
 moves and has its being in his memory and tradition. 
 His body lies buried here in a beautiful and stately 
 edifice, — a noble shrine to which the culture and genius 
 of the world come to worship; the house in which he 
 was born has been carefully and faithfully restored, 
 and is held in honorable trust for the use and devotion 
 of posterity ; the dwelling in which he died is set apart 
 from common uses, and is to be the site of a grand 
 memorial monument ; but the hearts of this people go 
 out in simple love and affection to the little cottage 
 where he loved, even though historic gossip suggests 
 and calm reflection convinces one that the passionate 
 fascination of a boy of eighteen for an innocent crea- 
 ture of twenty-six was not a purely idyllic romance. 
 
 I am staying here at the Red Horse Inn, a house 
 which has the enviable distinction of having its adver- 
 tisement drawn by Washington Irving. He introduced 
 it into American literature in his first letters from Eng- 
 land, and it has ever since enjoyed a rich custom of 
 American travel, and is worthy of it. Irving, long 
 years ago, wrote with grateful feeling of its good cheer, 
 its solid comforts, its homelike domesticity, its honest 
 wines, and its pretty waiting-maids, and the house keeps 
 up well its reputation in all these essential points. Of 
 the inns of England suffice it to say that, while some- 
 what expensive as compared with our hotels, they are 
 a delightful experience in life which I fear we shall 
 
30 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 never have in our country. Neither our landlords are 
 solid and unassuming enough to give them nor our 
 people sensible enough to demand and have them. I 
 have tried three now, — the Craven Arms, at Coventry, 
 the Warwick Arms, at Warwick, and the classic Red 
 Horse here, — and understand the reason of their affec- 
 tionate remembrance in English literature. 
 Steatford-on-Avon. 
 
 CHAPTER ly. 
 
 READING IN BERKSHIRE. 
 
 Eeadin"g or England and Eeading of Pennsylvania — 
 Comparative Picture of Two County Towns — Blood is 
 Stronger than Water. 
 
 Reading of England, like the familiar Reading of 
 our Pennsylvania, is the capital town of the county of 
 Berks, here often called Berkshire, — the shire or shriev- 
 alty of Berks. The two towns are almost about the 
 same size, — 42,000 to 45,000 inhabitants. Reading of 
 England figures in the directories at 27,000, but the 
 town of Early, which is built into it so that the stranger 
 cannot tell in which municipal corporation he may be, 
 is substantially and popularly a part of Reading, and 
 brings its population up to the figures of its New-World 
 namesake. 
 
 England's Berks County has a population of 196,475, 
 and an acreage of 450,132 acres. The Pennsylvania 
 Berks has a population of something over 100,000, and 
 an acreage something over 600,000 acres. They are 
 near enough to make a parallel have some interest. 
 
 Politically, all comparison ceases. Berks of Penn- 
 sylvania, with its Reading in it, sends one member to 
 the House of Representatives of the United States, and 
 
READING IN BERKSHIRE. 31 
 
 sends hira by male or manhood suffrage, every male 
 citizen of age and not convicted of an infamous offence 
 having an equal voice in the selection of the repre- 
 sentative. The Berkshire of Eno;land, with only 7741 
 legal votes, sends to the House of the Commons of the 
 United Kingdom three members, two of whom are 
 Conservatives and one Liberal ; while Readingtown in 
 its own right, on a registry of 4721 votes, sends two 
 more members, both of whom are in this Parliament 
 Liberals. Then Abingdon, wn'th 890 votes, Walling- 
 ford, with 1204 votes, and Windsor, with 2054 votes, 
 all boroughs in the same county, send one member each, 
 two of whom are Conservatives and one Liberal. Eight 
 members, therefore, are sent from the county of Berks, 
 and, as it may often happen under the peculiar British 
 system of voting and representation, they are exactly 
 divided as to party. Berks County, therefore, pairs 
 itself in the House of Commons. I write of the 
 House which expired in 1880. 
 
 The county is represented in the upper house by all 
 its peers, be they one or twenty. It is to be said, how- 
 ever, for the honor of the peers, that its mem here when 
 sitting as legislators rise above sectional or local feelings 
 and sit for the whole country, — i.e., when that does not 
 conflict with their sitting for their own class. I am 
 glad of the opportunity to make this political contrast, 
 for it is only by such pictures that one can set forth the 
 wide differences of detail in the practical politics of the 
 two countries. 
 
 The Reading I write from is a very ancient site. It 
 emerges in a shadowy way out of the night of history, 
 and first appears in recorded tradition as Redinges, 
 which has very naturally softened into Reading. The 
 Danes and Saxons fought around here one thousand 
 years ago. King Alfred the Great once or more visited 
 the spot. Parliaments of England sat here when the 
 Parliament was a peripatetic and experimental institu- 
 tion, wandering around as our own Continental Congress 
 
32 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 once did through York and Lancaster and Philadelphia. 
 Archbishop Laud and John Bunyan were familiar with 
 its streets. An old King Henry, about 1100, founded 
 for it a magnificent abbey to house and accommodate 
 two hundred Benedictine monks, — the same fortunate 
 fellows who once enjoyed the historic cloisters of West- 
 minster Abbey and were a great order in England. 
 The stately ruins of this grand old abbey, artistically 
 clad in fresh and neatly-kept ivy, jealously guarded 
 from decay on the one hand or too perfect restoration 
 on the other, are now the pride and glory of the Reading 
 of to-day. It is, in truth, a very striking and vener- 
 able pile. The great old walls, with gates and arch- 
 ways and massive works still standing in the rough 
 outline of hall and chapel and cloister, are quite re- 
 markable in their composition, the masonry resembling 
 that natural conglomerate formation of rock popularly 
 known as pudding-stone. The huge walls in front have 
 been built entirely of pebbles or bowlders of a hard, 
 smoky crystal or quartz, imbedded in some kind of 
 mortar, which formed the whole into one solid mass. 
 
 These are the things which old Reading has in advan- 
 tage over our new Reading. And these legacies of the 
 past are not only a wealth of tradition and legend and 
 inspiring associations, but a substantial material bequest 
 of brick and mortar. Her churches, her public build- 
 ings, her roads, — in part at least, — come down to her as 
 the gift of previous generations. This is the advantage 
 which every English town has over us, and it is a great 
 one. 
 
 These things apart, there is a strong similarity be- 
 tween the two towns, — the Readings of England and 
 Pennsylvania. In both the houses are solid, comfort- 
 able, respectable, — the dwellings of a substantial mid- 
 dle class of people. In both the streets are spacious 
 and fairly well kept. In both brick is the predomi- 
 nating material of structure, and in both there is a dis- 
 tinctly visible new and old order of building. The 
 
READING IN BERKSHIRE. 33 
 
 pavements of the Pennsylvania Reading are roomier 
 than those here, and the accommodations for travellers 
 on a larger scale. Although three railways run into 
 or through the place, there does not seem to be much 
 travel, and consequently little provision for it. The 
 business of Reading is largely as a distributing centre 
 for Berks County, which comes in and goes out the 
 same day, while the nobility and upper classes rarely 
 have occasion to use a country hotel, visiting at one an- 
 other's houses. These facts, of course, limit the neces- 
 sity of providing for travel. I am staying at the tradi- 
 tional county-house, a good old English inn, which, 
 although comfortable and excellent in its way, is quite 
 primitive and thoroughly provincial. Our Reading is 
 quite ^^ smarter.'^ 
 
 It is to be said further for this Reading that its best 
 does not show on the outside. The nobility and landed 
 gentry, of course, eschew a town and spend their large 
 means in building country establishments, which, being 
 seated in the heart of vast estates, are out of sight even 
 from the high-roads. The presence of this class in the 
 town is seen only in an occasional drag on the streets, 
 or the " boxes'' and ponies and coroneted equipages 
 and heavily-built hunters which indicate the neigh- 
 borhood of gentlemen's stables. Were all the houses 
 of the wealthier people of our Reading to be with- 
 drawn from its town limits, it would lower the level of 
 the appearance of the place very greatly. 
 
 The environs of the town here are for this season 
 very beautiful and attractive. As you pass along the 
 road you catch continuous glimpses of homes of ease 
 and elegance and refinement hidden in the trees or 
 nestling quietly and warmly in the midst of broad and 
 abounding acres, golden now with wheat, and bordered 
 by thorn-hedges red and fragrant with roses. 
 
 This Reading of England, like ours, is also some- 
 what famous for its breweries, — its fountains of beer. 
 It has, too, noted iron-works, a fairly gigantic biscuit- 
 
34 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 factory known all over the kingdom, and other manu- 
 factories, and has become quite a centre of the seed 
 trade in England. In fact, this trade is the most conspic- 
 uous in this place, the seed depot of the main house in 
 the business being an enormous affair entirely dispro- 
 portionate in size to anything else in the town. Being 
 on the junction of the Thames with another small 
 stream, this Reading has also some shipping and fishing 
 interests, which our town has not, and the Oxford stu- 
 dents comedown to it often in racing- and boating-par- 
 ties. The boating is, indeed, quite a feature of the 
 place, giving a distinct local color to the town. 
 
 Anglican Reading, finally, has a park with which, I 
 suppose, our younger town cannot compete. It is not 
 large, but speaks well for the cultivation and aesthetic 
 advancement of the people. Its laying out evinces a 
 thorough acquaintance with the best principles of land- 
 scape-gardening, and fully doubles its apparent size 
 and all its uses. Its treasures of ornament are quite 
 effective, — wonderful old trees always the centres of 
 little systems of walks, a grim, black cannon, " cap- 
 tured at Sevastapol,'^ fountains and basin grass-plots 
 relieved with rare flowers and exotic foliage, and, last 
 and best, the crowning feature to which all avenues 
 finally lead you, that stately old abbey, with its royal 
 ivy and arched vistas, and scattered fragments and 
 capitals, and the stone sarcophagus, and all the " prop- 
 erties,^^ in fine, which any well-regulated, picturesque 
 old English abbey should have. 
 
 Like our own Reading, this one, too, rests in a mag- 
 nificent background of generous farms and agricultural 
 wealth. The good cheer of the country is everywhere 
 visible, — in the fruiting-fields, in the warm, rubicund 
 faces of the burghers, in the heavy, well-fed horses, 
 and in the general well-to-do and contented look of 
 everything and everybody. The farms of Berkshire 
 are reputed through England, and the famous Berk- 
 shire pigs are known to breeders the world over. In 
 
READING IN BERKSHIRE. 35 
 
 the old country, as in the new, the county of Berks 
 is the solid foundation of Reading city. 
 
 This Reading has just three weekly newspapers and 
 none daily. Compare this with the vigor and energy 
 and journalistic excellence of the large press of Amer- 
 ican Reading, daily, weekly, and monthly, and you 
 know which country you are in. 
 
 To trace this parallel between these two towns of 
 our two countries, although starting in the accidental 
 point of similarity of name, has been very interesting 
 to me, and I trust will be equally so to some of my 
 readers. The two people are very much alike; their 
 dwellings are similar; their ways and habits of living 
 about the same, even, notwithstanding the strong in- 
 fusion of Germanic blood into the human stream of 
 our Reading. But what is that again but the repeti- 
 tion in modern times, and on a small scale, of the an- 
 cient race history of England ? The two towns repre- 
 sent also the substantial middle-class population of 
 both counties, and it is interesting and instructive to 
 observe that like conditions of life, or nearly like, pro- 
 duce on both sides of the water about the same results, 
 notwithstanding the great differences of politics, gov- 
 ernment, and social structure which exist between us. 
 It is evidence of our common blood and race, — a blood 
 that goes back of modern history and takes in German 
 as well as English stock. 
 
 Keading, England. 
 
36 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 LANCASTER. 
 
 Two Towns in the Old World and the New — Tracing 
 THE Lineaments of the Pennsylvania Town in the 
 Blood and Soil of England — English Electoral System 
 — Voters with Three or more Votes — The Celtic Tinge 
 — A Missing Link — The Old Time Colonial Lancas- 
 ter of Pennsylvania fresh in England Yet. 
 
 Pennsylvania, in her State nomenclature, bears 
 perpetual testimony to the affectionate remembrance in 
 which the early English settlers ever held their old 
 country, keeping green in the names of the new land 
 the memory of the old homes they should see no more 
 in this world. The extent and detail in which this has 
 been done is quite remarkable, although it often escapes 
 notice until it is forced on one's attention by finding 
 in a strange land place after place with the old familiar 
 names. This systematic reproduction sometimes ahnost 
 makes the new land seem like a shadow of the old. 
 
 There are here a Carlisle town, '' on which the sun 
 shines fair," which is the county-seat of Cumberland ; 
 a Peading, the county-seat of Berkshire ; a Lancaster, 
 the county-town of Lancashire ; a York, the county- 
 town of Yorkshire; a Chester, the cathedral city of 
 Cheshire; a Huntingdon, in Huntingdon County ; and 
 a Bedford, in Bedford County. There are a Bucks 
 County, a Montgomery County, a Westmoreland County, 
 a Northampton County, a Somerset County, a North- 
 umberland County ; and in detached towns and villages, 
 streams, townships, and so on, one might run the list 
 out indefinitely. 
 
 In this Lancaster from which I write one can 
 trace the family relationship even to minuter detail. 
 
LANCASTER. 37 
 
 There are here from old a King Street and a Queen 
 Street and a Little Duke Street, and St. Mary's, James', 
 High, Market, Water, Ann, Church, and Middle 
 Streets. Our Prince Street is here Prince Regent 
 Street. There are a St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church 
 and a Phoenix Foundry, which may, for aught I know, 
 be the parent of our Phoenixville Iron-Works. 
 
 England's Lancaster, like Pennsylvania's, is a town 
 of something over twenty thousand people and the 
 centre of a Lancaster County, but between the two 
 counties there is no parallel. England's Lancashire has 
 nearly three millions of population. It is relatively 
 one of the largest counties of England, having an acre- 
 age of one million two hundred and eight thousand 
 acres. During this century it has become the centre 
 of the cotton trade, and cities like Manchester and 
 Liverpool, with their hundreds of thousands of inhab- 
 itants, have sprung up within its borders, but little 
 Lancaster town, with its old church and castle and the 
 prestige of its Roman camp, is still the historic county- 
 town, the seat of its dignity and honor. England 
 rather looks down on new-made wealth unconsecrated 
 by religion, learning, blood, or traditions of arms. 
 
 Although a place of perhaps several thousand inhab- 
 itants less than our Pennsylvania town, this Lancaster 
 presents a much more imposing appearance. It is built 
 entirely of stone, giving it a very solid and substantial 
 air, while the tints of the stone, grays of every hue, 
 produce a much handsomer effect than anything that 
 could be gotten from bricks. The central view from 
 the old Main Street, looking up the rising slope of the 
 hill, covered with quaint gables and buttressed walls, 
 and finally culminating in the castellated masses of 
 John of Gaunt's great tower, is one of the finer pic- 
 tures of interior England, and architecturally quite 
 striking. It is an irregular town of narrow streets, 
 rambling up and down hills of even steeper grade than 
 those of our own Lancaster, and plunging every now 
 
 4 
 
38 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 and then into dark and dingy hollows that are more 
 picturesque than reputable. It is^ however, very 
 reasonably free, for England, from beggary and want, 
 and its approaches to the country are generally through 
 pleasant lanes lined with comfortable cottages or small 
 houses festooned with flowers, and each with its little 
 garden of green grass or foliage presenting a pleasing 
 picture of comfort and modest refinement. 
 
 It was on a market morning I came to Lancaster, 
 and the look of things was very familiar. King Street 
 was lined with unhorsed wagons and carts and vehicles 
 of all kinds from the country. In the large, spacious 
 courts or interior yards of the inns were throngs of 
 people surging out into the streets and back again. In 
 the stalls and tap-rooms the men were gathered, talking 
 and selling and buying ; in the stores and shops, the 
 womeu. Farther down into the town the scene be- 
 came more distinctly English and provincial, the market 
 shifting into a kind of fair, — noisy, cheap, and rough. 
 Here all kinds of things were being sold at vendue, 
 half a dozen rude auctioneers standino; almost with 
 their backs to each other, each with a barrel covered 
 with a sheet-iron plate as his stand or counter. All of 
 them cried their wares at the top of their voices, and 
 pounded with a hammer on the iron plates in order to 
 emphasize their yelling. The music was Wagneresque. 
 It was a simple realistic opera that told very w^ell the 
 story of rustic England. Nevertheless, through all 
 this din and disorderly noise the transfer of property, 
 after a fashion, went pretty rapidly on. The things 
 sold were small wares of a cheap kind, — rough china, 
 tin, ready-made clothing. Everything was rude, petty, 
 and humble. 
 
 One touch of local color which I certainly thought 
 to have come on here is conspicuously wanting. I had 
 surely expected to see again in this ancient Lancaster 
 the " Red Lion,'' and the " Leopard,'' and the '' Black 
 Bear," and the '' White Swan," and the ^' Cross-Keys," 
 
 I 
 
LANCASTER. 39 
 
 and " The Grapes/' all in goodly state with substantial 
 coaches in front of them, and sanded floors, and bur- 
 nished pewter, and warm welcome, and good cheer in- 
 side, but they are not here. Nor did I find any inn 
 signs or names at all in the old place which have sur- 
 vived in the new, — a missing link in the chain of suc- 
 cession which seems rather singular. 
 
 The most marked contrast between the two Lancas- 
 ters is the entire absence here of any Teutonic element. 
 The place is very English, with even less trace of the 
 Saxon than in most parts of England. Lancaster has 
 very sensibly felt the influence of the Celtic settlement 
 to the north, south, and west of it, — Scotland, Wales, 
 and Ireland, — and you see this blood-stamp clearly in 
 the forms and structure of the people, especially in the 
 women, who have more of the French and Irish race 
 characteristics of feature and movement than any I 
 have met in any part of England. This was easily dis- 
 tinguishable both in the farmers' daughters in the mar- 
 kets and in the faces and carriage of the townswomen 
 whom I saw in church. There was a distinctly warmer 
 coloring of hair, a greater elasticity of step and fluency 
 of motion, than belongs to the average English M^oman 
 of other sections of the land. Being the last strong- 
 hold against the Danes and Saxons and invading 
 Northmen of all kinds coming in from the east, it is 
 but natural that this northwest quarter of England 
 should retain most strongly the blood and features of 
 the earliest races. 
 
 From the time of the Wars of the Roses, Lancashire 
 has always been a place noted for its political activity, 
 and just now it is in active motion, organizing already 
 for the next Parliamentary election. At present it 
 sends a strongly Conservative delegation to Parliament, 
 notwithstanding the radical leaning of such places as 
 Manchester and Liverpool and Preston, a manufactur- 
 ing town of one hundred thousand. The county, apart 
 from these towns, sends eight members, all Conserva- 
 
40 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 tive, two of whom are in the Cabinet. Preston sends 
 two Conservatives, Liverpool two Conservatives and one 
 Liberal, and Manchester two Liberals and one Con- 
 servative, these latter two great towns just pairing off 
 each other's influence. The voting list of Lancashire, 
 when all the districts are footed up, seems pretty high, 
 but it must be remembered that under the English sys- 
 tem one man may easily cast three votes, or even more. 
 For instance, in Lancashire, a man living in Preston 
 or Liverpool might easily have three votes, thus : 
 
 1. If in his town he is a registered property-owner 
 or rent-payer, he has a vote there. This is the first, 
 and, according to English feeling, the lower grade of 
 franchise. The man votes as one average, industrious, 
 respectable subject of the kingdom. 
 
 2. If this same man is of a county family, owning 
 estates in the county, he may also vote on the county 
 list. Here he votes his family birth and historic con- 
 nection with the kingdom. 
 
 3. If this same voter, who has already cast two 
 legitimate votes, is an educated man, he may vote again 
 on the registry list of his university, which sends its 
 members to Parliament. Here he votes his education. 
 
 Lastly, as far as he may be able to influence or assist 
 in the appointment of a bishop, he also votes again, the 
 bishops being lords, who sit in the upper House. 
 
 It is this delicately-adopted system of the representa- 
 tion of interests, of birth, of education, of religion, of 
 classes, of labor, of money, etc., which makes all mere 
 figures so deceptive and illusory in treating of English 
 politics. The English statesman resents the mathe- 
 matical basis of representation as being merely an 
 averaging and levelling process. 
 
 English Lancaster has just three weekly newspapers. 
 Here, as in the case of Reading, our Pennsylvania 
 towns so far outstrip their old-country parents that any 
 comparison is out of the question. It is the same way 
 in old Carlisle, which, with a population of thirty- 
 
LANCASTER. 41 
 
 five thousand, publishes only weekly journals, and but 
 three of them. 
 
 Our young Lancaster of the New World — if you 
 will subtract from it all the presence and influence of 
 the great German blood, whicli it could so ill do with- 
 out — is a pretty fair reproduction of this old town. 
 That is the only marked difference. You do not hear 
 a grateful German word here, or see the trace of a 
 single Germanic custom, usage, or tradition. 
 
 There are no great barns here ; no red-faced farmer 
 boys with their shining buggies and well-fed horses in 
 the streets ; no staid and decorous Mennonite elders 
 with solid and prosperous air; no German books or 
 papers or almanacs in the shop- windows ; none and 
 nothing of tliat honest, strong, and historic race which 
 has contributed so much to the wealth and glory of our 
 Lancaster County, and which is now perhaps its better 
 half, — only their English cousins of like manner and 
 degree. You find here fresh and in clear outline the 
 Lancaster of our young past ; the Lancaster that clus- 
 tered around the old-fashioned court-house ; the Lan- 
 caster of old King and Queen and Duke Streets ; the 
 Lancaster of the Old Bar and of the country '^ manors" 
 of gone times ; the Lancaster that used to come in from 
 Carnarvon and Coleraine and Little Britain and the 
 " lower end ;" the Lancaster of the Yates and Cun- 
 ninghams and I^ardners and Montgomerys and Frank- 
 lyns and Jenkins and Bartons laid away in their family 
 graves forever. Here it is, drinking port and sitting 
 in stately old Windsor chairs and burning wax tapers 
 and swearing at dignified butlers and powdered foot- 
 men yet. 
 
 In their respective relation to the adjacent country 
 there is a strono; resemblance between the two Lancas- 
 ters. Lancaster of England -is situated on the pleasing 
 river Lune, which, when the tide is out, is nearly as 
 respectable a stream as our Conestoga Creek ; when the 
 tide is in it is something larger. While the county of 
 
 4^ 
 
42 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 Lancashire is distinctively known as a cotton-spinning 
 district, that portion of it which lies immediately 
 around Lancaster town and forms its beautiful setting 
 is a fine, rich agricultural sweep of land rolling pretty 
 much as do the farm-fields from Lancaster to Millers- 
 ville, in Pennsylvania. It looks rather richer and 
 more bountiful than our land, because the generous 
 green of the meadows and fields is not broken by the 
 arid lines of dusty roads and dry fences. The sweep 
 around this Lancaster is one broad field of living green, 
 the various divisions of property marked only by the 
 darker olive shades of the hedges. The roads are nar- 
 row and deep, and so hedged by hawthorns and box 
 and bushes as to be hardly seen, and not at all to break 
 the picture of the landscape. 
 
 Altogether, there is quite a family resemblance be- 
 tween the two towns, — their people and life. There is 
 the same size, the same equable comfort and rest and 
 substance, — the golden mean of blessing. The general 
 features of every-day life — on the outside and out of 
 doors at least — are much the same. There is a reason- 
 able distribution of wealth among the people of both 
 towns, and a comparative freedom from want. 
 
 Lancaster of England — with its solid structures of 
 stone ; its fine gray tints unbroken by the glare of red 
 brick or white paint ; its old-fashioned domestic houses, 
 with quaint armorial bearings or scriptural legends 
 carved above the doorways ; with its venerable walls 
 and gateways clad with ivy and lichens ; with its famous 
 round castle, which has 
 
 " Oft rolled back the tide of war," 
 
 and from whose parapets surly cannon are even now 
 trained on the peaceful fields ; with its mediaeval legacies 
 of dungeon and keep ; with its authentic traditions of 
 Roman empire ; with its towers and turrets and spires 
 of modern time and use ; with the British soldiery of 
 
LANCASTER. 43 
 
 to-day, brilliant in scarlet and gold, filing through its 
 streets to the calls of drum and bugle; with its local 
 peasant dialect, unintelligible to American ears, and the 
 clang of the wooden shoe — is by far the more pictu- 
 resque and impressive of the two j)laces. 
 
 Lancaster of Pennsylvania, however, has solid ad- 
 vantages over the older city. She has already public 
 buildings far bevond those of this town at the same ao;e. 
 Give the Lancaster of the New World one thousand 
 years more and I doubt not she will be a greater city 
 than even this one, and in tradition, already in her in- 
 fancy, has she not the names of Muhlenberg and Mifflin 
 and Fulton and Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens, — men 
 as great and historical as any of the heroes of the Wars 
 of the Roses ? She was for a brief space, in times of 
 turmoil, also the capital of the nation, a seat of govern- 
 ment just as respectable as the court of Henry IV., 
 which for a short time was held here. 
 
 And to-day, in many of those things which mark the 
 strength of this century, — in new^spapers, in schools, in 
 broad streets, in commodious pavements, in spacious 
 hotels, in fine stores and the goods in them, — our Penn- 
 sylvania town is far ahead of its respectable old English 
 parent. The glory of this Lancaster lies in its past : 
 ours is yet to come. 
 
 There is one fact forces itself on one in drawing this 
 parallel between the two towns from the old home site 
 which is rather strange and somewhat sad. The name 
 of our new Lancaster, the establishing it as the seat of 
 a county of Lancaster, the naming of the streets after 
 the old ones even to the detail of rank. King and 
 Queen and Prince being the great streets here and the 
 others mentioned minor ones, — all force the conclusion 
 that our American Lancaster was laid out by English- 
 men of Lancashire, who lovingly traced in the soil of 
 the New World the very lines and features of their old 
 home. Yet in the county paper of to-day, on the signs 
 of the shops in the streets, on the mouldering and 
 
44 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 sunken tombs and gravestones In the old churchyards, 
 I have not found a single one of the old colonial family 
 names of the Lancaster of Penn. Literally, " the places 
 that once knew them know them no more." 
 Lancaster, England. 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 OXFORD. 
 
 An Idyllic Seat or Learning and Conseryatism — Citri- 
 ous Superstitious Survivals — Historical Development 
 OF THE Modern College — The American and the Eng- 
 lish College — Ecclesiastical Oxford — The Martyrs — 
 An Old-Fashioned English Country Inn and Eour-in- 
 Hand Travel — Gentleman-Coaching in England — A 
 County Institution. 
 
 " A citie seated riche in everye tliinge, 
 Girt with woocle and water." 
 
 Oxford — the ford where, in old Saxon times, the 
 oxen crossed the river, and now the ford where, for five 
 hundred years, England's youth have crossed a greater 
 stream — is a charming picture of rest and sylvan beauty, 
 — an academic idyl. It is a picturesque old place of 
 that medisevo-ecclesiastical architecture, half religious, 
 half military, which tells so impressively the story of 
 its day ; a town of towers and turrets and spires ; of 
 ancient walls and buttresses and quaint gargoyles; of 
 glorious stained-glass windows, oriel and rose and 
 arched and Catharine; of lovely academic garden- 
 parks ; of quadrangles and chapels and cloisters for 
 the monks of letters; of forgotten bastions and re- 
 doubts, and long, stern walls with battlemented walks, 
 now peacefully crumbling under ivy and roses; of 
 stately oaks and beeches, and grand old trees venerable 
 with moss and lichen and tenderly watched and cared 
 
OXFORD. 45 
 
 for in their green old age ; of Gothic arches and gate- 
 ways and falling ruins ; of wooded walks and gentle 
 waters ; of smooth, soft meadows, all shaven and shorn, 
 " and fields of living green ;" of noble bits of forest, 
 carefully tended and stocked with antlered tenants ; 
 of prisons of the martyrs and precious altars where, in 
 flame and fire, they won their crowns ; of crosses and 
 statues of great men and good women and strange 
 beasts, grotesque symbolic images in stone ; of quiet 
 churchyards and chiming bells and peaceful graves ; 
 of gray stone and clinging green and ancient gables ; 
 of scented gardens filled with old-fashioned English 
 flowers with homely Saxon names ; of rustic inns ; of 
 classic streams and time-stained halls consecrated by the 
 traditions of faith and learning, and hallowed with the 
 names and memories of the great and good of England. 
 
 " Were ever river-banks so fair, 
 Gardens so fit for nightingales, as these? 
 Was ever town so rich in court and tower?" 
 
 When the American college graduate sees all this 
 wealth of culture and of the tradition and legend of 
 learning which is lavished so generously on the founda- 
 tions of scholarship here, he feels sharply the bareness 
 and poverty of the surroundings of our best academic 
 life. The English student, even if he never studies much, 
 may get unconsciously, almost by absorption, a generous 
 education. His training, apart from the tuition of the 
 schools, is liberalizing and humane, for he enters at once 
 in his daily life and being into the fellowship of cen- 
 turies of learning and intellectual dower. It is his in- 
 heritance. 
 
 I think no American alumnus will ever visit an 
 English university without a feeling of poignant regret 
 for the opportunities which have not been his and a 
 vain instinctive Avish that he might be born again. 
 But it is not fair to compare our young American col- 
 leges with the English school, the heir of all the ages 
 
46 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 of Anglo-Saxon culture, piety, and intellectual growth. 
 Not only are they separated by centuries of care and 
 sacrifice and endowment, but to-day they represent 
 different conditions of society, and different stages in 
 the development of history and education. 
 
 Nor would it be wise for an American student to 
 take his full academic course in an English university, 
 however superior the advantage and pleasure as far as 
 scholarship and cultivation are concerned. The friend- 
 ships one makes at college will largely influence and 
 control his future life, and for Americans this associa- 
 tion should be American. An American boy who 
 studies at a foreign school simply expatriates himself 
 for life. He comes home a stranger in his own land. 
 
 I would, however, strongly advise every college- 
 bred man of our country who is yet within, say, five 
 or six years of his graduation to complete and finish 
 his course by a year at Cambridge or Oxford. Such 
 one year of post-graduate study will sum up and round 
 off all that has gone before, and in the way of broad- 
 ening thought and widening the range of his intellec- 
 tual activities double the value of all the years of his 
 American cursus. Even one day in Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge will yield a rich return to a trained mind from 
 our schools. The acquaintance made, too, df English 
 and continental young men — men who will rise to power 
 and influence in foreign nations — will always extend 
 one's power and influence at home if he can make 
 them available from a wide basis of home acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 If, however, one must be restricted to a single course 
 of a few brief years, for an American the American 
 college, with all its barrenness, its lack of refinement, 
 its poverty of intellectual wealth, is the proper place. 
 The two schools represent different stages of society, 
 and the progress of learning and the education of the 
 American college will, on the whole, best answer the 
 present demands of American life, social and political. 
 
OXFORD. 47 
 
 Education, in our Anglo-Saxon times, has so far de- 
 veloped three grand stages or epochs: 
 
 I. The monk and the convent represent the first stage 
 of learning in our modern civilization, or renewal of lost 
 civilizations. During this period education was a mo- 
 nopoly, held strictly and exclusively within the control 
 of the Church. This was the medieval period. Edu- 
 cation was shut up in the cloister. The very word 
 daustrum describes it. 
 
 II. Next comes the fellow^ and the college. The 
 modern college, with its foundation, its endowed and 
 permanent masterships and fellowships, all the fortu- 
 nate holders of these franchises housed and living to- 
 gether with their precious stores of tradition, association, 
 honors, books, manuscripts, and appliances of learning, 
 is the legitimate child of the convent, and has been 
 often actually and literally its heir. Here, too, educa- 
 tion was at first held to the Church, but within recent 
 centuries it has been emancipated to the learned profes- 
 sions, — comparatively limited bounds. Knowledge, 
 however, was still in coUegio, and not free. This is the 
 period of modern Europe and the second stage. 
 
 III. Third comes a stage which has not yet taken 
 definite shape or outline, — the stage to which we are 
 tending, and for which the American college in its 
 present condition is the preparation and vestibule. The 
 ^vork of this stage I take to be the emancipation of 
 learning and education from any class bounds, and its 
 free distribution among all the people, — perhaps even at 
 their homes, — the fixed centre being a limitation and a 
 thing of the past. The system of university examina- 
 tions which now covers all England like a network, and 
 which Harvard has introduced in the United States, is 
 a pronounced movement in this direction. This is the 
 period of the near-impending i'uture. 
 
 Vie are now in transition from the second to the 
 third stage, and must endure all the unpleasant features 
 of transitional existence. 
 
48 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 But while we may not reproduce the English college 
 on our soil, we cannot, therefore, affect to ignore or 
 despise it. We are its heir, entitled to all its wealth 
 of life, just as the college inherited the treasure and his- 
 toric existence of the convent. And it should be our 
 study to get this in all its fulness, and as vsoon as pos- 
 sible. There are many features of English university 
 life which might at once be advantageously adopted or 
 adapted here, and I think a most useful training for an 
 American college president or professor would be a 
 personal study of English university life, — its organi- 
 zation, academic discipline, relations to society, and 
 daily school and individual life. There could be no 
 better qualification for an academic leader. 
 
 Oxford, as a village, is a far lovelier and more pic- 
 turesque place than Cambridge. Indeed, as a picture 
 to a stranger it is one of the loveliest spots in all 
 England, and I much wonder that it is not more of a 
 place of summer resort for travellers, especially as dur- 
 ing the long vacation chambers are to be had cheap. 
 Living, indeed, is always cheap as compared with the 
 cost of our life. I noticed in Oxford a placard offering 
 fourteen small houses for rent at a gross rental of one hun- 
 dred and fourteen pounds. They were houses for work- 
 ing-people, four rooms and back-closet and shed, built of 
 solid stone, well finished, in a healthful and clean lo- 
 cality. This is about forty dollars a year of our money. 
 
 Apart from its academic life and glory, Oxford pre- 
 sents many features of attraction to the visitor. Its 
 authentic record dates from a.d. 900, and one reads 
 the liistory of England down from that time in its ven- 
 erable walls and crumbling ruins. 
 
 It has religious associations and memories of surpass- 
 ing interest to Protestant faith. In its streets 'once 
 flamed the most famous fires of martyrdom in Eng- 
 land ; in its halls and chambers preached, in its towers 
 
OXFORD. 49 
 
 were imprisoned, and from them led to death, tlie death- 
 less martyrs. An imposing memorial cross, after the 
 general fashion of the handsome Queen Eleanor design, 
 erected in the middle of a' handsome street, marks the 
 neighborhood of the spot where Archbishop Cranmer 
 and Bishops Ridley and Latimer were burned to death.* 
 
 " Then God was witli them, and the glare 
 Of their death-fires still lights the land to truth." 
 
 This splendid monument was erected in 1841, and I 
 take it was intended as a mute and imperishable memo- 
 rial against the Tractarian movement, then in alarming 
 progress. From a stern and gray church-tower still stand- 
 ing near this spot you see the window from which that ex- 
 cellent authority, Burnet, says Cranmer in prison looked 
 out and saw his comrades, Ridley and Latimer, burned 
 at the stake. He was near enough to see their faces. 
 
 There are several of these martyrs' towers in Oxford 
 in which distinguislied scholars and prelates and states- 
 men were confined for conscience' sake, and it is depress- 
 ing to think that most of them were church -towers, — 
 parts of houses dedicated to worship and to the preach- 
 ing of a gospel of love, and that men did and could 
 worship in them at the very time they Avere desecrated 
 to such unholy and unchristian uses. In those dark 
 days of Oxford church towers seem to have been built 
 with perhaps an ulterior '^ eye to the glory of God," 
 but practically and immediately for the purpose of con- 
 fining in them such persons as differed in views and 
 opinions from the builders or custodians. 
 
 Among the records of Oxford are two sickening bills 
 of the executioner in these martyrdoms, charging by 
 items for the services of his assistants and for materials, 
 fagots, etc., — significant now as monuments of the con- 
 
 * The original picture, by the way, of the " Burning of Eidley 
 and Latimer at Oxford," hy Sir George Haytes, left England 
 some time ago for Philadelphia, having been purchased by Mr. 
 Latimer, a direct descendant. 
 c d 5 
 
50 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 dition of civilization and religion in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. The entire cost of the burning of the two bishops 
 was £1 5s. 2d, ; of Cranmer, 12s. 
 
 Oxford has always been noted as against Cambridge 
 for its religious activity and coloring of thought. It 
 has been in all its history the home of polemics and 
 controversy and doctrine. From the ])ulpit and the 
 stake, and in later and more gentle years the " com- 
 mons room'^ of its precincts, nearly all the great re- 
 ligious movements of modern English times have taken 
 their start. To-day I believe it furnishes a much larger 
 proportion of its graduates to the orders of the Church 
 than does its sister Cambridge. 
 
 In the list of its graduates you can almost read the 
 religious and ecclesiastical history of England. 
 
 Among them are John Wiclif the Reformer, Tyndal, 
 (translator of the Bible and martyr), Archbishop Laud, 
 John Foxe ('^ Book of Martyrs"), Cardinal Pole and 
 Cardinal Wolsey, Archdeacon Philpot, martyr. Bishop 
 Hooper, martyr, Cardinal Moreton, Bishop Jewell, 
 Bishop Bonner, " the bloody,'^ Sir Matthew Hale, Cam- 
 pian, the noted Jesuit, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Cecil, 
 Bishop Heber, Dean Mi I man, both the Wesleys, John 
 and Charles, Hooker, the writer, Bishop Butler ("Anal- 
 ogy"), Sir Thomas More and Sir Thomas Browne 
 ("Religio Medici"), Bishop Lowth, Dr. South, John 
 Keble, Rev. F. W. Robertson, Dr. Edward Young, 
 Archbishop Whately, Cardinals Manning and John 
 Henry Newman, and Dr. Pusey. Cranmcr, Ridley, 
 and Latimer were Cambridge men, but they were all 
 burnt here. 
 
 I might lengthen out this list almost indefinitely by 
 going into the names of distinguished living clergy and 
 dignitaries in the English Church, would it not seem 
 invidious to make selection. I have mentioned none 
 of the men now alive save only the two able princes of 
 the Roman empire who claim to rule in England. But 
 a glance at this list shows that the great Methodist and 
 
OXFORD. 51 
 
 Tractarlan movements, so unlike in character and tend- 
 ency, were cradled here ; tliat the rehabilitation of the 
 Roman Church on English soil in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury found its leaders here ; that many of the minor 
 currents of modern theological and religious thought 
 started here; and that here surged in merciless force the 
 fluctuating waves of the English Reformation, out of 
 whose conflict, through fire and sword, arose the present 
 Churches of England. 
 
 Sydney Smith and Dean Swift, who illustrate how 
 oddly the English semi-social, semi-political system of 
 filling pulpits sometimes works, were also Oxford men. 
 
 Oxford has been in all its history distinctively the 
 Church school, and to-day stands nearer the cloister 
 than Cambridge, which, in many features, is tentatively 
 stretching forward to the new era. 
 
 Oxford, like Cambridge, has a university press, 
 known the world over for the finish and scholarly 
 thoroughness of its work. The distinctive feature of 
 the Oxford press has come to be the printing of the 
 Eno;lish Bible. Here vou o-et the authorized Kincr 
 James version in absolute purity of text, every letter 
 and point established with critical accuracy and judg- 
 ment, and the whole book produced in the highest 
 finish of paper, composition, })ress-work, and binding. 
 It is the best memento to bring home from Oxford, and 
 you can get it in editions of every kind and style and 
 price. It claims to be the best-printed Bible in the 
 world, and, I suppose, is, and certainly it is invested 
 witli more interesting traditions and associations than 
 any edition that issues from any other press, for it 
 comes from the school-house of Wiclif and Tyndal, 
 and the martyr-fires of Cranmer and Ridley in Oxford's 
 streets made the circulation of our Entrlish version 
 possible. 
 
 It is a curious fact that the traces of an extinct re- 
 
52 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 ligion survive longest in the forms of the new religion 
 which takes the place of the dead one. Long after the 
 life of the old faith has fled it still is preserved in the 
 ceremonies of the new. In Italy to-day nearly every 
 striking fete and feature of the Roman Catholic 
 Church is traceable- to customs and rites of the old 
 classic faiths which held sway there before the Christian 
 era. So in Oxford, a historic religious centre of Eng- 
 land, and, as the centres of learning always are, a most 
 conservative spot, the vestiges of the forgotten beliefs 
 and usages of early paganism in Britain are clearly 
 visible in a number of traditional ceremonies which 
 have been handed doAvn from the centuries, and whose 
 observance is yet jealously maintained, although their 
 meaning and original life are long lost. 
 
 The beautiful Magdalen Tower is the pride of Ox- 
 ford, and well it may be, for in grace and symmetry 
 of architectural design, and the lovely picture of culti- 
 vated glebe and wood and water which surrounds it, it 
 is one of the finest sights of England. 
 
 On the castellated summit of this tower, every first 
 day of May, " at five o'clock in the morning,'^ the choir 
 of St. Mary Magdalen College, in vestments, assemble 
 and chant a Latin anthem, and in reverential orison 
 hail the rising of the sun. Hundreds of people gather 
 on the streets and in the parks at the foot of the tower 
 to witness this ceremony. This matin rite means noth- 
 ing any more now, but is admitted to be the survival 
 of some pagan solemnity, — as most May-day customs 
 are, — probably of sun worship. 
 
 In Queen's College, to this hour, the ^^ ryghte merrie 
 jouste of ye boare's heade" is yet observed with cere- 
 monial state on every Christmas day. At dinner in 
 the great arched college hall on that day a fine old 
 boar's head, bedecked with bays, is solemnly borne 
 around the oaken floor, while the college chant the 
 sonorous old carol whose words and music are so 
 familiar to academic memory : 
 
OXFORD. 53 
 
 *' Caput Apri differo 
 
 Keddens laudes Domino. 
 The boar's head in hand bring T, 
 With garlands gay and rosemary ; 
 I pray you all sing merrily : 
 
 Qui estis in convivio." 
 
 This observance is most probably a transmitted 
 vestige of the Feast of Freyr, the Scandinavian god 
 of peace and plenty, held at Yule-tide, when a boar was 
 always sacrificed in his honor and as an offering of 
 thanks and gratitude. The words of this semi-pagan 
 canticle date from the sixteenth century, and, although 
 the whole thing is a Norse relic, it was certainly a more 
 Christian diversion than burning bishops. 
 
 Non-academic Oxford is a typical English village of 
 the prettiest kind, — a village of green hedges framing 
 picturesque bits of wood and valley and charming 
 homes; of slumbering churchyards toned with gray 
 tombstones and dark yews ; of quaint gables and ram- 
 bling streets stocked with old-fashioned country inns, 
 each one the fitting background of an ever-clianging 
 picture of rural sights. All the traditional inn names 
 of England seem to be gathered here, and they make 
 one of the features of the town. There are the King's 
 Head, and the Red Lion, and the Saracen, the Three 
 Jolly Farmers and the Three Cups, the ]\Iaiden- 
 head, and the Crown, and the Roebuck, and others I 
 cannot recall. 
 
 I put up at the Mitre, — the traditional old county 
 and university inn, — an interesting historical picture in 
 itself of past social life and customs in England. The 
 Mitre is to-day but a survival of a past generation, 
 of a glory of Oxford that is gone ; but it is still 
 an instructive and pleasing remain to an American 
 stranger. It is an old-fashioned county inn of the 
 once aristocratic kind, of a High-Church and horse- 
 racing flavor, redolent of old port and strong red ale, 
 patronized by young country squires, who lunch on cold 
 
 5* 
 
54 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 ham and champagne, and by broad-shouldered, florid- 
 faced, cheery Englishmen born of the soil, and '^ who 
 they tliemselves have said it." Its very name is a de- 
 fiant shout for prelacy and Establishment, an echo of a 
 war-cry which carries you back to the old days of 
 trouble and party-passion, — the days of Church and 
 Crown. 
 
 You enter through an unpretending wooden door, 
 heavily barred and crossfastened, into a low broad hall, 
 and the first sight which greets your eyes are stout 
 rounds of beef and generous flitches of bacon and game 
 of various kinds hung by hooks to. the unplaned rafters 
 overhead ; you step hastily from under to avoid the 
 drops of fat which threaten the unwary lounger (the 
 experienced habitues, I soon found out, knew just 
 where to stand), and in doing so confront the useful 
 young woman who answers as bar-maid, room-clerk, and 
 cashier in a British inn, who welcomes you personally 
 and pleasantly to the house. Some four-in-hand coach- 
 ing-whips of approved pattern and trial ornament the 
 hall-way, professionally and gracefully coiled on the 
 walls. The guards' loud livery hangs on the pegs vi'ith. 
 some gentlemen's overcoats. Several handsome and 
 affectionate hounds mingle intelligently with the other 
 functionaries, guests, and dignitaries, and you know you 
 are at a respectable centre of coaching, hunting, racing, 
 and English country sports generally. 
 
 But the bishop's mitre is the trade-mark of the 
 house and the historic crest of the 2)lace. This prelatical 
 symbol confronts you everywhere and all the time. It 
 is panelled in the halls, painted on the walls, carved on 
 the doors, burnt in the china, engraved on the glass, the 
 silver, and the pewter, and woven in the linen. It 
 blushes through your wine, lies placidly under the water 
 in your wash-basin, consecrates the stables and dog-ken- 
 nels, and seems to rest in contented benediction on your 
 ale-tankard. Even the napkins are loyally folded in 
 this respectable episcopal device. 
 
OXFORD. 55 
 
 But it is the benediction of tlie past which comes 
 down on the American traveller when he enters tliese 
 old-fashioned doors. The Mitre claims to have stood 
 here from a.d. 1400, dispensing food and shelter for man 
 and beast. Fifteen generations of fathers and sons have 
 purchased its hospitalities. In its low-ceilinged coffee- 
 rooms men sat, near five hundred years ago, much as 
 Ave sit now, and when they talked politics or told the 
 news they spoke of Agincourt and glorious King Harry, 
 of the execution for treason of the Lollards, of John 
 Huss burnt, of the strange maid Joan, the sorceress of 
 Arc, luring English soldiers to defeat and shameful 
 death on the fields of France, or of how the rude but 
 resolute Parliaments of En2:land were wrestlino; with 
 the crafty and learned legates of the pope. This is the 
 Mitre tavern which the American crosses the seas to 
 see, and which, I think, his English cousin on the 
 spot never sees. 
 
 The Mitre tavern of Oxford, however, as it exists in 
 the flesh to-day, is a thing of the past, and I cannot 
 conscientiously recomtnend it to the modern traveller. 
 The times have chano;ed and it has not chano;ed with 
 them, except, perhaps, to keep abreast with the modern 
 extravagant prices. Flavor and picturesque traditions 
 are very good in their way, but they will neither feed, 
 lodge, nor care for one's comfort and cleanliness. There 
 are other and better hostelries now in Oxford, — those 
 of our own century. 
 
 The link which connects the Mitre with the present 
 time, and drags it, half-alive, into this nineteenth cen- 
 tury, is stage-coaching. I entered Oxford on the top 
 of a stage-coach and left it in the same glory, and 
 warmly advise every traveller for pleasure or study to 
 do the same. One sees the country, the estates, and the 
 common peo])le for miles as he can by no other way, 
 and, by a half-mental, half-physical process, arrives 
 at the consciousness of the Englishman's conception 
 
56 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 of the height of human hap}")iness. The Mitre, by- 
 virtue of its lineage and traditions, is the hostel where 
 " the coach" puts up, and hence its raison d'etre and 
 existence now. 
 
 Four-in-hand stage-coaching in England is something 
 more than a rich man's amusement. It is an institution. 
 It is the assertion of a national and class tradition, and 
 when an English gentleman assumes charge for a sea- 
 son of a coach line it is looked on as a patriotic act, 
 and the man himself in doing so is deemed to have de- 
 served well of his country. 
 
 The stage line from Oxford via London to Cambridge 
 is owned and driven by a gentleman of the county, 
 Captain B., — his commission in the local militia, I be- 
 lieve, — who pleasantly gave the full details of his work 
 as we drove along. His line of road is one hundred 
 and twenty miles, and his. coach stable is stocked with 
 just one hundred and twenty horses, — a horse to the 
 mile. He drives this entire route in one day, return- 
 ing the next, and resting only on Sunda-y. The schedule 
 time either way is twelve hours, starting from the 
 Mitre, Oxford, on Monday at nine o'clock A.M., and 
 pulling up at The Bull, Cambridge, at nine o'clock p.m., 
 reversing the trip on Tuesday, and so on through the 
 week. This schedule allows thirty minutes in London 
 for luncheon. 
 
 Captain B., a gentleman of about thirty -six, of 
 wealth and j)osition, does this work regularly every day 
 for a season of some five months each year. I spent a 
 week at Oxford, and also at Cambridge, and was person- 
 ally witness to the unfailing punctuality of departure and 
 arrival at both places. There is no railway in our country 
 or in England which does better, — perhaps none which 
 does so well. He and his coach were immensely popular 
 all along the line. The little villages were always in a 
 tumult as we rolled through them. All day every wagon 
 or carriage of high or low degree drew off and gave the 
 road to ^' the coach ;" the ladies were gathered at many 
 
OXFORD. 57 
 
 a tempting- looking hall or park gate to see the spirited 
 horses, well in hand, dash by foaming and glossy. The 
 landed gentry of the neighborhood frequently timed their 
 walks so as to come in with us at the changing-places and 
 exchange a word of greeting or welcome. Every one, 
 high and low, gentle and simple, the entire route 
 through, knew all the teams and their respective 
 merits, and every inn and station was full of tales and 
 legends of them and their driver. From one end of 
 the drive to the other the coach was a county institution 
 and the captain was a county hero, and to understand 
 the meaning of this you must remember that " the 
 county^^ is the corner-stone and foundation of English 
 life. 
 
 Captain B. had perfected with a master-hand every 
 arrangement of detail in his enterprise, and both the 
 safety and pleasure of the passengers were looked after 
 with scrupulous regard. He carried with him three 
 servants, a guard, a valet, and a relay driver in case of 
 emergency. While everything was thus provided to 
 support and sustain him and keep him in good condi- 
 tion, he personally did the work of driving, and it was 
 one whose magnitude and steadiness would, I think, 
 appal most American gentlemen. It was not a party 
 or an excursion, recollect, or a spurt, but regular daily 
 work, in wet weather or fine, — this year nearly every 
 day wet, — and carried on often without even the relief 
 of a congenial companion. 
 
 At the end of the season, the captain told me, he sells 
 all his horses by auction at Tattersall's, and sometimes 
 makes on them. Having been driven for a season in 
 the coach is a good character for a horse and commends 
 him in the market. It is a guarantee of careful and 
 experienced training. Part of the work and pleasure 
 of coaching during the season is the breaking in of the 
 new horses. 
 
 There is no one day of English travel which is better 
 worth taking than this enjoyable four-in-hand drive 
 
58 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 from Oxford to Cambridge, or vice versa if you are at 
 Cambridge first. You see five counties of England, 
 much of its best farm land and southern scenery. You 
 enter London and leave it on a seat from which you 
 have a view such as you can get in no other mode of 
 conveyance. You see the city shading into the country 
 for miles and miles on either side, and gain an idea of 
 its vast size and of the dense population of rural Eng- 
 land such as no reading, statistics, or thinking will give 
 you. In London you rest half an hour and lunch at 
 the White Horse Cellar, just as English gentry were 
 supposed to have done a hundred years ago. It is a 
 veritable cellar, down steps, and with a humble and 
 unmarked front, but right in the centre of fashionable 
 Piccadilly, and preserved in all its original features with 
 pious care. 
 
 And best of all you see the English stage-coach in its 
 glory, — the struggling survival of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. This is a historic study, and alone is a picture 
 worth coming to England for. It is a siglit to see the 
 coach roll ofP: it is a greater sight to see it come in at 
 the end of the day amid the popular acclaim and en- 
 thusiasm that might attend a victorious general return- 
 ing from conquest and battles. 
 
 Fully an hour before the time of starting the boys 
 and idle men of the town begin to gather around the 
 main court-yard and gaze in silent and satisfied contem- 
 plation on the great lumbering red-and-yellow vehicle 
 which stands empty and unhorsed before the door. 
 Then, in due time, the stately guard makes his appear-- 
 ance with a burden of responsibility upon his serious 
 features. One or more young porters attend his decorous 
 footsteps. A hush falls upon the vulgar crowd, and 
 then, in measured and authoritative tone, begins the 
 issuance of official orders. Ah ! it is a sight to see the 
 grandeur of this functionary, conscious that the eyes of 
 all the county are upon him, in gorgeous livery and 
 high beaver hut and huge bouquet in button-hole, 
 
OXFORD. 59 
 
 pinned there by the buxom barmaid ; the ministerial 
 air with which he determines the proper location of the 
 luggage ; the judicial gravity with which he decrees for 
 or against a trun k ; tlie grave halt over the proper 
 strapping of a box ; the utter repression of any levity 
 on the part of his youthful subordinates; the more tiian 
 Olympian front with which he accepts the grateful in- 
 cense of the common herd ; and the swelling sense of im- 
 portance of every favored servant who is intrusted with a 
 duty about the wheeled throne, their official communica- 
 tions with each other; the distended dignity of every 
 groom and footman ; the nervous, expectant look of some 
 town youth halfway up in society, who lingers by the 
 team and boldly essays to stroke the near wheeler, anx- 
 ious to receive a nod, perhaps, happy moment ! a con- 
 descending word of recognition, — to be seen talking with 
 the swell demigod of a driver when he in due time appears. 
 
 Punctually at 8.59 the lord of the coach, with his 
 buttonhole flower, too, and irreproachably dressed, 
 walks out of the open door through an aisle of living 
 flesh, which opens deferentially before him, ascends the 
 box, accepts the reins, and sits for a moment like a 
 statue. The guard and the proprietary driver compare 
 gold watches, — an awful instant of suspense, — a last 
 moment of rapid comprehensive inspection ; the guard 
 reports all ready, the horn rings out, and the state 
 carriage of the county rolls off* as smoothly and noise- 
 lessly as a perfect locomotive, in the hands of a perfect 
 engineer, draws its train out of a w^ell-appointed depot. 
 
 As a matter of pride and point of finished etiquette, 
 the guard, who has been clambering all over the stage, 
 on and off" a dozen times, makes his final report from 
 the ground, and then leaps lightly on the wagon after 
 the wheels are in motion. His easy professional ascent 
 of the coach diagonally is the last touch to the })icture. 
 
 The arrival of the coach is a still more inspiriting 
 scene. In an English village all work has stopped at 
 four o'clock in the afternoon, perhaps three, and by 
 
QQ ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 < nine p.m. the whole town, men, women, and children, 
 are thrown painfully on their own resources for amnse- 
 ment or occui)atiou. They are, therefore, more than 
 ready for the discharge of any public duty. I have 
 repeatedly seeu the streets, both at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, densely packed for squares awaiting the coming 
 of the coach, whose horn was to be heard out of the 
 darkness at 8.57, growing clearer and livelier as it 
 grew nearer. And this not on any extraordinary occa- 
 sions, not to meet any prominent guest, but only to 
 welcome '^the stage-coach." We simply cannot under- 
 stand the feeling with which the Briton clings to an old 
 institution, and honors and worships the man who sus- 
 tains and asserts it. 
 
 A shout goes up as the heads of the impatient leaders, 
 who snuff excitement in the air, touch the crowd. The 
 human walls form themselves again, the coach rolls into 
 the stand, and, wdth the solemn air of a great duty done, 
 the driver drops the reins into the hands of the local 
 grooms, who contest for the honor of receiving them. 
 Then the cheery welcomes, the questions as to the 
 events of the past two days in which the worlds of the 
 village and of the coach have been sundered, the orders 
 for dinner, and the form and ceremony of the landing. 
 The formal service of the morning is all repeated in 
 inverse order, and, last of all, the tired and triumphant 
 horses disappear into the night, led away like heroes, 
 amid thronging masses of attendant Britons. 
 
 I have seen a cabal of veteran politicians decide on 
 the policy of a momentous national campaign. I have 
 seen battles forced in a flash, and anxious generals 
 strike out a plan of action in the saddle and almost 
 in the moment of execution. I have seen a council of 
 officers, with defeat around them and their dead among 
 them, ansAver with solemn defiance a summons to sur- 
 render. I have seen half a dozen army corps deploy 
 their massed battalions in silence on to a field of history 
 and death, — but I have never seen anything half so 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 61 
 
 impressive, so utterly and overwhelmingly imposing, 
 as the arrival or departure of a swell English coach- 
 and-four in front of an old-fashioned English country 
 inn. 
 
 Oxford, England. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 In College Chambers in the University — The Puritan 
 College that gave Birth to Harvard — The College- 
 Day AT Cambridge — The Suppressed Undergraduate — 
 Dinner in the College Hall — A Survival of Baronial 
 Times — English College Expenses — A Commonwealth 
 OF Letters. 
 
 Some months since, in Rome, I s])ent an afternoon 
 in the convent grounds of San Gregoriano, from whose 
 pleasant shades St. Augustine carried, hundreds of 
 years ago, the seeds of learning and Christianity to 
 savage England, leaving the refinement, the culture, 
 the religious fellowship of civilization to bear the faith 
 to our rude Saxon forefathers. 
 
 To-day I write from the Puritan cloisters of Em- 
 manuel College, Cambridge, the historic walls from 
 whence the germs of civil freedom, and that education 
 which alone can protect and perpetuate it, were borne 
 to our New England. It was from this Emmanuel 
 College — that Puritan foundation established in faith 
 away back in the stormy days of the Commonwealth — 
 that w^ent forth the early divines and educated laymen 
 who, in our colonial times, laid the firm foundations 
 of the civil and religious liberty we enjoy in this land, 
 in this generation. And to-day it is grateful and 
 
Q2 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 pleasing to know that, foremost among the traditions 
 of Emmanuel, and cherished among her wealth of 
 pious, civic, and scholarly associations, are the memories 
 of these graduates, the Harvards and Hookers and 
 Wards and Bradshaws of 1600-1650, and the great 
 work they did, in which the mother-college claims her 
 deserved share. "Among those chiefest worthy of 
 honor," says Bacon, " are the founders of states ;" and 
 Emmanuel hopes to have securely founded in the New 
 World the Commonwealth which went to pieces so 
 disastrously in the Old. It is her crown. That staunch 
 and learned old Puritan statesman. Sir Walter Mild- 
 may, whose liberality and faith laid the foundations of 
 Emmanuel in the darkness of uncertainty and political 
 trouble, builded better than he knew. 
 
 The language of the charter or deed of foundation 
 of the college given by this scholar, soldier, and states- 
 man, which I regret I have not at hand to quote at 
 this moment of writing, is often touching, and read 
 now, in the light of history, is in places dramatically 
 ]n'ophetic. He held high office under the government of 
 Queen Elizabeth, and the fact of his freedom to found, 
 in express words, an establishment for the teaching and 
 culture of Puritan principles is strong evidence of the 
 civil liberties of England in that brilliant epoch of her 
 history, and of the intellectual breadth and liberality 
 of her political leaders. As the dire(;t ancestor of Har- 
 vard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Emmanuel 
 College has always had a special interest and attraction 
 for the American scholar, and some of our best JSFew 
 England and New York families have sent their sons 
 to it for their collegiate education. 
 
 From Cambridge of England, however, the interest 
 of Emmanuel College takes a wider sweep and range. 
 As the academic fountain of Puritanism she Looks on 
 our whole land^ people, and history — in one sense, the 
 religious and political development of Puritanism — as 
 her child and descendant. 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 63 
 
 A good friend in London, who recognized the Puri- 
 tan in me, and who was himself a fellow of Emmanuel 
 in residence, was kind enough to invite me to spend a 
 week in Cambridge in college quarters, ])lacing at my 
 disposal a suite of undergraduate chambers then vacant, 
 it being the long vacation. 
 
 The college life of Oxford and Cambridge, the mu- 
 nificent development of ages of faith and learning, is 
 something so infinitely deeper, broader, richer, and 
 better than anything we have in our land, and withal 
 so diflPerent, that it is difficult to know how to describe 
 it or where to begin the attempt. I do not know, how- 
 ever, that I can commence in any better way than by 
 attempting a picture of my quarters and working out 
 from thence. . 
 
 Cambridge University, as I suppose every one knows, 
 is a collection of independent colleges, each with its 
 own separate government, buildings, grounds, history, 
 and associations. These colleges to-day are seventeen 
 in number, and they make up both the university and 
 the town. If you will take seventeen silver dollars 
 and half-dollars, and throw them down on- a piece of 
 white paper irregularly but rather close together, 
 draw circles with a pencil around ea<?li of the coins, and 
 then connect these circular inclosures by convenient 
 lines indicating streets and w^alks, you will have a 
 pretty good idea of the plan of Cambridge town. It 
 is simply a village which has grown up and around the 
 grounds — or what, in Pennsylvania, is called the 
 "campus" — of the several colleges. 
 
 What first strikes an American stranger with some 
 surprise is the comparatively limited extent of these 
 grounds, — the territorial plant of the college. In our 
 imaginations these colleges — venerable in age and tra- 
 dition, and dowered with the associations of centuries 
 — rise in magnificent proportions, and seem to stand in 
 princely domains in glebe and forest. As a matter of 
 fact, the average college at Cambridge or Oxford has 
 
g4 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 not a greater acreage in its grounds than the average 
 American college ; in fact, has not so great. Harvard, 
 I am sure, has larger grounds than most of the English 
 colleges. So have Princeton and Union, and, I believe, 
 Yale. Pennsylvania is already very generously en- 
 dowed in this respect. Few of the English colleges 
 have grounds equal in extent or in artistic possibilities 
 to those of Jefterson and Washington at Canonsburg, or 
 Franklin and Marshall at Lancaster, or the Lehigh at 
 Bethlehem, or Dickinson at Carlisle, or Lafayette at 
 Easton, or the institution at Mercersburg, or even of 
 our University of Pennsylvania, planted on costly acres 
 in the built-up streets of a great city. All these have 
 greater advantages in the way of scenery and room and 
 possible embellishment and artistic enrichinent of their 
 grounds than the average English college of the two 
 great universities. Some of the college-buildings here 
 consist of but a single structure, with such grounds 
 only as are inclosed in the interior court. 
 
 On these limited academic fields, however, the con- 
 secrated wealth of long centuries has been lavished, 
 under the 'guidance and direction of the highest art and 
 cultivation of the time. The grounds of some of the 
 larger colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are often laid 
 out with park and landscape effects such as have hardly 
 been reached anywhere in our country. Even the 
 smaller ones are carefullv dressed and worked, so that 
 an acre or two will often set forth a wonderful study 
 of foliage or hue. And all are crowded with grand 
 old tombs, mouldy, half-decipherable legends, armorial 
 bearings, monuments of history, the graves of martyrs, 
 statues, arches, solemn ruins, memorial gateways, 
 monumental crosses, picturesque cloisters, and a thou- 
 sand works of art and ennobling associations. In the 
 successive architecture of many of these noble edifices 
 and in the chain of names and graves and monuments 
 you can read the history of England from the twelfth 
 century down. 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 65 
 
 It is tliis splendid endowment of tradition, tliis con- 
 tinuous legended memorial of the scholarship and piety 
 of ages, which is the wealth of the English college. It 
 is the contrast with this wliich makes our own college 
 life, so far, seem so poor and thin and meagre. 
 
 Another disillusion is the fact that the number of 
 under2:raduates in these Eno-lish colleo;es does not differ 
 materially from the number in ours. This runs from 
 sixty or'seventy up through the hundreds, in some one 
 or two cases touching a thousand, just as in our de- 
 tached American colleges. It is the massing of these 
 English colleges in one column and bringing them all 
 under the influences of one another which gives them 
 their intellectual force in the world of thought. The 
 seventeen colleges of Cambridge are not educating any 
 more young men than seventeen isolated American 
 colleges, but they are as an organized regular army is 
 to a body of loose militia regiments. 
 
 Emmanuel College holds about a medium rank as 
 to the extent and decoration of its grounds. The 
 extensive front of the great college-building is Greek, 
 with some adaptation of English style, — this in the 
 way of protest against the ecclesiastical architecture of 
 most of the other colleges. The central feature of the 
 main edifice to an American eye is the high quadrangle 
 or interior court, faced on two sides with arcades, and 
 bright with its shaven lawn of grass ever green and 
 smooth and fresh. The entrances to the chambers of 
 the fellows and undergraduates open on to this court, 
 always known over Cambridge in college vernacular as 
 the" quad. '^ Although . this residence portion of the 
 college is but one building, it is divided into sections 
 or grand compartments, very much like the separate 
 houses of a city row, having no communication with 
 one another, and each section entered only from its own 
 front door. These sections, or houses, consist of about 
 six or eight sets of chambers, two or three of which are 
 e 6* 
 
gg ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 occupied by fellows, the remainder by undergraduates. 
 In older times this was the family, the fellows being 
 charged with some care of the students. This is not 
 the case now, although the fellows always take a kindly 
 interest in their undergraduate neighbors, feel, perhaps, 
 some little historic responsibility, invite the boys, at all 
 events once or twice, to breakfast with them, and if 
 there is any community of tastes or feelings it results 
 in a valuable association and acquaintance -for the 
 undergraduate. He is in the care of an older man, 
 who feels for him as a brother. 
 
 Now for the life of the undergraduate, the only col- 
 lege-life known in our country. My quarters, as I 
 have said, were the ordinary suite of chambers of an 
 undergraduate student, absent at the time, and their 
 description will appear rather sumptuous to the Ameri- 
 can graduate who recalls the two-in-a-small-room ac- 
 commodation of many a good Pennsylvania college. 
 This suite consisted of three good-sized chambers, with 
 a small pantry or closet-room. The main chamber, by 
 which you enter your suite, is a tine large room about 
 twenty feet square, looking out with three windows on 
 the quadrangle. 
 
 In this sitting- and reception-room are served your 
 breakfast and luncheon by your own servant, and at- 
 tached to it is the pantry, a capacious closet for the 
 storage of your table-linen and service, and large 
 enough for your attendant to make a little coffee or tea, 
 wash the dishes, or cook a slight breakfast. Out of 
 this large room open two smaller one^, ten by fourteen 
 feet, a bed-chamber, and a study or private retiring- 
 room. 
 
 Each section, or house of six or eight suites, has its 
 own separate servants, with their own quarters, to whose 
 services each fellow or student has equal rights. This 
 staff consists generally of a man and wife or small 
 family, who can, between them, readily cook the break- 
 fasts, prepare the morning baths, brush the clothes, 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 67 
 
 black boots, and run the errands of tlie six or eight 
 single gentlemen who form the family. Some of these 
 servants, as is always the case around a college, become 
 quite scholastic in appearance and demeanor. In Cam- 
 bridge this male attendant is known as the '' gyp ;" in 
 Oxford as the '^ scout.^' 
 
 The development of the undergrad nates' quarters to 
 the present generous provision illustrates somewliat tlie 
 progress of social life and habits during the past 
 century or two, and affords evidence of some curious 
 changes. In early times undoubtedly two or more 
 students were quartered together. ^' Chum" is a con- 
 traction of chambermen. It is likely, in remote times, 
 that six students occupied a common sleeping-room 
 with three or more beds in it ; but even then each one 
 of them, as the ancient buildings show, had his sepa- 
 rate little cell, generally opening out of the common 
 bed-chamber, to which he retired to read, study, or 
 ^' muse." From this habit this little cell became known 
 as the student's ^^ museum." Here w^e have the history 
 of another word now diverted to quite a different 
 special use. The change in personal habit and feeling 
 made by a few hundred years is quite curious. The 
 student of Cambridge to-day would willingly read, 
 write, or study in a common chamber with another 
 man, but he would, under no circumstances, share his 
 bed -room with him. 
 
 My rooms look out on either side on prospects 
 pleasing to the eye, cultivating to the taste, and ele- 
 vating in association and suggestion. On one side they 
 command the classic green quadrangle, all shaven and 
 shorn, with its cloistered arcades, venerable gray tombs, 
 monumental legends, and the admonitory walls and 
 columns of gone ages. On the other side the study and 
 bed-chamber sweep a small stretch of college park, 
 lookino; out on rardens with ivy and roses, and a clear 
 little stream in which, from your wuidows, you can see 
 the fishes swimming under the crystal waters, and on 
 
68 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 whose quiet bosom placid ducks and philosophic swans 
 live in amity with their finny friends. Wide, roomy 
 seats are built into these wdndows, in the pleasant old 
 English fashion, and very delightful and restful they 
 are when you look out from them on noble trees, 
 charming gardens, and vistas of leafy boughs and 
 lake and meadow. Compare this with the red brick 
 walls and the bare wastes of clay, and, perhaps, the 
 barren, neglected campus, which form the entourage of 
 a new American school and leave their painful photo- 
 graph forever on the minds of its children. 
 
 On the walls of these rooms hang some good en- 
 gravings and a small painting, a mounted fox head and 
 brush, a worn horseshoe, probably from the heels of 
 some triumphant racer, whips, spurs, crossed oars, some 
 hunting pictures. It is proper to add that there are 
 also some books. The suites of the fellows are gene- 
 rally somewhat superior in accommodation to those of 
 the undergraduates. 
 
 Life in one of the colleges of an English university 
 is something very different from that of an American 
 college. Intellectually it is something far higher and 
 stronger. The undergraduate is not the central feature, 
 as with us, but only an incident. The living college is 
 the master and the fellows. The undergraduates are 
 but the younger members of the academic family and 
 on the threshold of the house, — the little children who 
 are seen and not heard. 
 
 Again, not the least part of the liberal endowment 
 of an English college is the tradition of social usage 
 and habit which it carries down, by force of which any 
 student coming to live within its walls and sharing its 
 life receives the training of a gentleman, acquiring the 
 personal habits and manners which fit him for associa- 
 tion with the better classes of society. In the average 
 American college the student leaves either a boor or a 
 gentleman, just as he entered. In the English college, 
 however, the home for hundreds of years of the sons 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 69 
 
 of gentlemen, the habit of life has become fixed and 
 traditional, and any boy going through it comes out 
 with that as a part of liis education. 
 
 The daily life of the English college-resident is 
 simple, and differs from ours distinctively in the care 
 with which it is arranged to distribute the time for 
 work and exercise or rest, and the ease with which it 
 consequently bears on the individual. The English 
 student attains a far higher grade of scholarship than 
 ours, but we never hear of his breaking down, of shat- 
 tered nerves and prostrated brain. He takes more 
 time, it is true, but saves his body and his head. 
 
 The order of the college day is roughly this : Bathe 
 in your room at six or seven o'clock ; breakfast served 
 in your front chamber at seven or eight o'clock ; read- 
 ing until one o'clock p.m., when there comes a light 
 lunch in your room, generally only bread and cheese 
 and strong college ale. 
 
 Lunch-hour ends absolutely the day of study or 
 work. At this point the whole college — master, fel- 
 lows, and students — betakes itself to the open air, and 
 spends the whole afternoon, until six or seven o'clock, 
 out of doors, walking, riding, boating, fishing, or at ath- 
 letic games. It is here the college boy builds himself up 
 for life. At seven o'clock dinner, and from dinner to 
 bedtime rest. This is the common schedule of an or- 
 dinary university day. I have heard that there are 
 " reading men" who burn the midnight oil far into the 
 night, but I write only of what I have seen. 
 
 The college dinner is an imposing and perhaps the 
 central feature of the daily life of the university. 
 Here, in the great hall, the whole college meets together 
 in pleasant union, and it is, I believe, now the only 
 general meeting of the day, compulsory prayers being 
 abolished except on extraordinary occasions. The hall 
 itself — a survival of the old baronial times of the days 
 of the "boar's head and rosemary" — is always one 
 of the most striking architectural features of the college 
 
70 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 building. It is a fine and lofty room, with arched or 
 fretted or handsomely-designed roof, the walls adorned 
 with rich panelling and carvings, statues, heraldic de- 
 vices, armorial shields, and old inscriptions, and hung 
 with the portraits of founders and benefactors, kings, 
 queens, statesmen, and soldiers. It is generally oaken, 
 with stone or wooden floors. 
 
 At one end of the great hall, the farthest from the 
 entrance, on a raised surface, is placed the table of the 
 master and fellows, extending across the room ; on the 
 lower level of the floor are tables for the undergrad- 
 uates, running the length of the room, and placed at 
 right angles with the master's table. All are served at 
 the same time and alike. When the hour for dinner 
 comes, the master and fellows, with their guests if 
 there are any, assemble in the combination-room, another 
 fine chamber, of which anon, and move from there into 
 tlie dining-room, the master leading. The same order 
 of procession and seating of guests holds as at any gen- 
 tleman's table. As the procession from the combina- 
 tion room enters the main hall, the undergraduates, 
 who are already seated, rise from their benches and 
 stand as the college passes. When the procession 
 reaches the head of the table, one of the students reads 
 or intones a brief Latin prayer, and all seat them- 
 selves. At the close of the meal the same ceremony 
 is repeated, the undergraduates rising and standing at 
 attention as the master and fellows pass out. In 
 Queen's College, Oxford, I believe the summons to 
 dinner is yet blown from a trumpet by a tabarder, 
 but this is exceptional. 
 
 This college dinner, taken thus every day in the 
 academic ancestral hall, in the presence of the efiigies 
 of great men and good women, the founders and an- 
 cestors of the house, in the midst of historic associations 
 and venerable traditions, is the dress-parade of univer- 
 sity life. 
 
 The dinner, I should have said before^ is the ordinary 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 71 
 
 solid English evening meal of four or five courses, — 
 a soup, a fisli, roast meat and vegetables, a salad and 
 dessert. Ale is served the under2;;rad nates on allowance, 
 I believe. On the master's tables there are generally 
 wines, in some colleges on allowance, at others ordered 
 at cost prices. The Englishman, however, generally 
 always drinks a huge flagon or tankard of ale with his 
 wines, sometimes before and sometimes after. It seems 
 always to be in place to the British stomach. The col- 
 lege cellars, I need hardly add, are most excellent: tra- 
 dition does its work kindly and gently even here, and 
 one generation takes care of the next. 
 
 Dinner over, the undergraduates are dismissed to their 
 rooms, while the master and fellows retire to " the com- 
 bination-room," where over their coffee and after-dinner 
 wines the evening is spent in conversation and discourse. 
 The combination-room is a spacious chamber, large 
 enough usually to accommodate forty to sixty men, in 
 solid old-fashioned arm-chairs, with tables, rests, screens, 
 and stools. It is also hung w^ith memorial paintings 
 of benefactors, masters, distinguished " fellows'' who 
 have passed out into the Avorld and become statesmen, 
 cardinals, generals, writers, martyrs, or won fame in any 
 way. Every old college has its gallery of these its 
 honored children, and they are among its chiefest treas- 
 ures. The room itself quickly becomes a centre of in- 
 teresting association and academic tradition. In our 
 combination-room at Emmanuel, for instance, more than 
 one hundred years ago, Dr. Samuel Johnson was a fre- 
 quent visitor, and the spot where he always sat, just to 
 the left of the warm chimney-place as you face it, is 
 ])ointed out as a tradition to-day, and the broad chairs 
 we sat in this year were the same used then. It was in 
 the combination-room of Oriel College, when Keble, 
 and Whateley, and Newman, and Arnold, and Pusey 
 were fellows, that the celebrated " Tractarian'^ move- 
 ment took its start. 
 
 The fellows of a college in residence at times may be 
 
72 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 only eight or ten, when, of course, this room is too 
 large, but the little groups gather in the gloaming of 
 the fireplace, and the effect of tlie shadows around them 
 advancing or retreating into the dark recesses of the 
 spacious walls is very picturesque. Wax candles, I 
 may say here, with their antique religious light, are en 
 regie in a well-regulated old combination-room, gas 
 being too modern and shoddy. A solemnly stately but- 
 ler, with white hair and portly, judicial air, is also an 
 indispensable property. 
 
 Smoking, I believe, is not customary in the combina- 
 tion-room, the fellows, who retire at their convenience 
 during the evening, going to their own chambers singly 
 or in squads for a pipe or cigar. At eleven or twelve 
 the English university man brews a pot of hot tea, 
 drinks it, and on this extraordinary sleeping-potion goes 
 to bed. Here ends the college day. 
 
 Emmanuel College was founded to nourish and as- 
 sert the Puritan principles inside the Church of Eng- 
 land, and for a longtime it distinctively represented the 
 Puritan idea in English thought and history. Its very 
 name was a battle-cry. Emmanuel — " God with us" 
 — was the watchword and popular device of the early 
 Puritans. They wrote it at the head of their letters, 
 used it as a common form of salutation in their homes 
 and on the streets, and later on under Cromwell shouted 
 it at the head of regiments in the crucial hour of battle. 
 The chapel of this Puritan college, as a protest against ec- 
 clesiastical tendencies and superstitious usages, was built 
 plain as a Methodist meeting-house, pointed north and 
 south instead of east and west, and was never consecrated. 
 
 Those stirring old times are gone, and nothing is left 
 of them at Cambridge, not even tlie cold ashes of the 
 dead controversies. The ancient theological camp is 
 now the pleasant home of humaner letters and a pas- 
 sionless science which studies their remains as it would 
 the nerves of a frog or the traces of a prehistoric hab- 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 73 
 
 itation of the globe. Toleration, a spirit of judicial 
 study, is the claim and intellectual boast of the Cam- 
 bridge of to-day. It is its pride now that it never 
 burnt a bishop on either side when the fires of hate 
 and narrowness were flaming over all England. 
 
 Speaking one evening at King's College table of 
 Whistler, — 
 
 '' It may be heresy here," I said, " to admit to an 
 enjoyment of his paintings.'' 
 
 " There are no heresies in Cambridge," promptly 
 spoke up the senior fellow at the table. 
 
 In looking over the worn and somewhat defective 
 records of the early years of Emmanuel College one 
 sees very clearly the direct stream of its influence on 
 the thought and history of our land. From its walls 
 came Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, Nathaniel Ward, 
 John Ward, and many of the lesser divines of colo- 
 nial New England, John Bradshaw, president of the 
 court which tried Cliarles L, and others of the famous 
 regicides, some of whom sleep to-day on our shores, 
 and also a large number of the historic ^' Assembly of 
 Divines," w^ho, in the palmy Parliamentary days of 
 Puritanism, drafted the " Shorter Catechism" in West- 
 minster Abbey. 
 
 After much search we found, on the original rolls, 
 the date of the taking of his degree of M.A. by John 
 Harvard, the early scholar who has given his name to 
 the new Cambridge University of our country. It ^vas 
 in 1628. This date, I think, has never before been 
 published, not being found in the large two-volumed 
 history of Harvard. The record of graduation seems 
 to have been lost, but the degree is taken in course. 
 
 Among the incidental library treasures of Emmanuel 
 shown me was an autograph letter from Edward Everett, 
 who visited the college some thirty years airo, examined 
 with interest its records, and on returning home sent it 
 some volumes of New England academic history. 
 
 It seemed at times rather odd to me to recall the 
 
 D 7 
 
74 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 memories of the rigid old Puritanism of self-sacrifice 
 and severe manners and personal austerity — the old 
 Puritanism we know so well in our land — here in its 
 modern home. The old Greek walls, with their once 
 hard Pro^es^ant lines, are toned and softened and 
 mellowed by time. The rigid distinctive intellectual 
 principles of ancient struggles are lost in the broader 
 culture and wider range of modern thought. The 
 Puritan college of Cambridge to-day does not differ 
 materially from the High Church college or the Broad 
 Church college of the same university. The old 
 names are there held in affectionate memory, like 
 family portraits, but that is all. I hardly think the 
 gaunt old Puritan of the seventeenth century would 
 recognize his Emmanuel boy at Cambridge to-day. I 
 much fear the undergraduate has a carnal knowledge 
 of playing cards and running horses and boat-racing 
 and strange wines and ungodly games, and I do not 
 think the corporate fellows would object to having 
 their college and now-consecrated chapel all covered 
 over with Madonnas and saints and crucifixes, if only it 
 w^ere done in good taste and in the highest glory of mar- 
 ble and stained glass, and mosaic and oaken carving. 
 
 But these Puritan descendants have not forgotten 
 their fathers. They may not lead their austere lives 
 to-day any more than they should wear their quaint 
 clothes, nor would it do any more good. But they 
 give to all the freedom for wdiich the Puritan fought, 
 and thus afford the sweetest incense to his memory, 
 and in the daily college life keep green the names of 
 the founders and leaders. They venerate the ancestral 
 manes ; they honor their parents in the goodly land 
 which the Lord has given them ; and every evening the 
 gathering in the combination-room is a reverent func- 
 tion in piam memoriam. The libation is generally 
 claret, sometimes port. 
 
 I w^as interested in finding how moderate are the 
 
CAMBRIDGE. 75 
 
 expenses of the iinclergrad nates at Cambridge in com- 
 parison with the generous provision for his living and 
 tuition. An allowance of seven hundred and fifty 
 to one thousand dollars a year will sustain a boy 
 creditably. This sum will not only cover necessary 
 expenditures, but enable him to bear his fair share in 
 the college amusements, boating, cricket, etc., and mix 
 on equal terms with his associates. My friends thought 
 one thousand dollars a rather generous estimate, which 
 should also cover the travelling expenses of the year to 
 and from Cambridge from a home in England. For 
 this sum the student not only gets the thorougli train- 
 ing of a strong college, but lives in the strengthening 
 atmosphere of seventeen colleges, with all their splendid 
 inheritance of centuries of tradition and association. 
 
 In outward organization the university is a union of 
 independent colleges forming a literary commonwealth. 
 These colleges hold to the central government much the 
 relation of our States to the national government at 
 Washington. Indeed, following out the line of this 
 comparison, the university might aptly be called the 
 United Colleges of Cambridge. This phrase will, 
 perhaps, best convey to the American mind the outline 
 of its constitution. Each college manages its own in- 
 ternal affairs, regulates its own admissions, establishes 
 its own Gursus, governs its own students, administers 
 its own endowment, and elects its own master. The 
 university organization masses the forces of the whole 
 of them as against the outside world. It confers de- 
 grees, elects members to Parliament, and generally 
 deals with the outward or "foreign affairs" of the 
 academic commonwealth. 
 
 Under recent acts of Parliament very considerable 
 changes are being made in the constitution of the uni- 
 versities and the administration of the colleges, but 
 they are too wide and complex to take up in the limits 
 of this paper. The general movement I may say, 
 
76 ENGLISH TOWNS. 
 
 however, is towards centralization, — ^tbe strengthening 
 the University at the expense of the several individual 
 colleges. 
 
 In fact, I must stop here, noting only in closing one 
 mediaeval touch of local color. Every night here, pre- 
 cisely at nine o'clock, the curfew-bell sounds. It tolls 
 just the same strokes as in the troubled times of the 
 JSTorman conquest, carrying us back hundreds of years, 
 but it cannot carry us off to bed any more. 
 
 Cambridge, England. 
 
ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 7* 77 
 
CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 ENGLISH POLITICAL LIFE. 
 
 A Transition of Sovereign Power in Progress — The Eng- 
 lishman's Development from the "Subject" into the 
 <* Citizen" — Government of the Great Families — The 
 Aristocratic Order — Land its Basis — The Blow to 
 English Society that Comes from our Prairies — The 
 English Castle and the Kansas Wheat-Field — A 
 Bloodless and Silent Kevolution — The Kunnymede 
 of 1880. 
 
 English politics are an extremely interesting study 
 at this moment, because they are in a transition state, 
 and the old forces and the new define themselves more 
 clearly than when the country is in repose and standing 
 still. The government is passing from the hands of 
 an aristocracy into the hands of the people, and this 
 by reason of a change in the social structure of Eng- 
 land itself. The old England whose corner-stone is 
 class and privilege is dissolving in the new political 
 acids of the nineteenth century. The stratification of 
 society — many classes and orders of the people, and 
 these classes resting one upon another — is giving way 
 to a new order of things, where, as nearly as possible, 
 society becomes homogeneous, rank is done away with, 
 and all classes are fused into one mass. 
 
 For many centuries England has been governed by 
 its great families. The castle was the eerm of political 
 power, as the township is with us. The people were 
 not sharers in the management of the nation, but 
 "subjects," nominally of the crown, really of that 
 order — or, in American parlance, " ring" — of great 
 
 families who made and unmade kings and queens. 
 
 79 
 
80 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 Now the Englishman is developing from the "sub- 
 ject" into the " citizen/' This is the silent revolution, 
 social and political, w'hich is in progress to-day in Eng- 
 land. It is noiseless, bloodless, after the fortunate 
 fashion of the land, and moves ever without violence, 
 but it is none the less radical and thorough. 
 
 No one can look on the landed aristocracy of Great 
 Britain without a sense of profound admiration for the 
 power and self-control which have constructed and 
 sustained the order. For many centuries it has 
 governed England absolutely, controlling to its own 
 use and behoof the power of the crown, the Church, 
 the army, the schools, and subordinating to itself and 
 its own uses trade and commerce and wealth. There 
 has been a breadth and intelligence and self-restraint 
 necessary to achieve and keep all this which challenges 
 respect and admiration. These great families acquired 
 and held all the land of the country, and so held a 
 nation as tenants. When votes became the coin of 
 government, they kept all the votes to themselves. 
 Withal there was a certain conscientiousness in all this 
 princely plunder. They did not defend it as a lordly 
 robbery. They wished to show a better title than 
 the sword for this high estate, and so they held it all 
 in trust for the nation. The ballot was a trust in the 
 hands of the few to be exercised for the benefit and 
 good of the many. This was Burke's famous theory, 
 brilliantly elaborated in his brilliant style, and doubt- 
 less he believed it. And if you ask an English lord 
 of to-day, he will tell you that he holds his magnificent 
 estates, — hundreds of broad farms, villages, towns, 
 counties, — not as a selfish personal possession, but in 
 trust for all the people. Nevertheless, in both of these 
 instances it is clearly a case where the trusteeship is 
 more desirable than the usufruct. 
 
 The people have gotten the votes to themselves, and 
 now they are getting the land. This is the revolution. 
 
 Without question, the large English holder by descent 
 
ENGLISH POLITICAL LIFE. gl 
 
 does feel a responsibility over, which the American 
 landowner by purchase never experiences. His fatiiers 
 did acquire their land as a trust, to defend the kingdom. 
 The trust has passed now into a different shape, and 
 those who are conscientious recognize it. The defect of 
 the theory is that those who are not conscientious or intel- 
 ligent do not recognize it, and there is no way of making 
 them. The suffering usufructuaries have no remedy. 
 The submergence of the English aristocracy in the waves 
 of the people is a sight which even the American re- 
 publican views not without a certain sadness. The 
 ultimate gain to the whole people is large. The 
 immediate loss to the world is definite and sliarp. As a 
 class the aristocracy of England is probably the best 
 and highest that has ever been. It has been more con- 
 scientious, more dignified, of a higher moral and in- 
 tellectual grade, than the nobility of any other country. 
 To its blood and birth it has added education and 
 wealth, consecrating them to its high social and politi- 
 cal uses. Thus it has become educated without pedan- 
 try, and wealthy without vulgarity. It is this trinity 
 of hereditary power and education and wealth Avhich 
 has made it strong and permanent. 
 
 As a consequence of all this it has evolved a very 
 higli type of man and woman, — a flower for the enjoy- 
 ment of all the world. In physical health, in personal 
 cultivation, in gentle manners, in a delicate sense of 
 honor, in the perfection of his mode and order of life at 
 home, the English gentleman of our day stands without 
 a rival. Other classes of other countries may approach 
 or equal him in some one of these points, but in the com- 
 bination of them all there is none that comes near him. 
 
 Now, the lower-class Englishman, in whom, by the 
 force of numbers, he will be lost, is not a pleasing or 
 desirable order of man. When the English aristoc- 
 racy goes down it is not merely the dissolving of a 
 venerable historical picture, like a ruined abbey or a 
 fallen castle. It is a positive loss. Thoughtful Eng- 
 f 
 
82 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 lislimen to-day will tell you that the imminent danger 
 to English society is the coming up of large masses of 
 uneducated wealth, which, presumptuous and vulgar just 
 in proportion to its ignorance, deteriorates and lowers 
 the tone of opinion and thus degenerates the fibre of the 
 whole social structure. This is so in every country, but 
 is especially so in England, for the lower-class English- 
 man is a peculiarly ungracious and disagreeable kind of 
 being. The safety of England and the hope of good 
 for all her classes lie in the fact that this change has 
 been going on very slowly. 
 
 Just at present, however, there are many indications 
 that a crisis is threatening that may hasten the course 
 of English history beyond its average slow movement. 
 Curiously enough, the impulse comes directly from our 
 side of the ocean. 
 
 Land is the basis of the English aristocracy. Its 
 rentals have been their revenue, and all of it, for a peer 
 could not go into trade. The rental of land depends 
 ultimately on its bread-yielding power, — the value of 
 the wheat it will raise. But land, having become the 
 corner-stone of social position and power of all kinds, 
 has come to have a fictitious value in England far be- 
 yond its wheat-raising value. The new-made millionaire 
 in England is nothing until he owns a large country 
 estate. This, and this alone, will give him any position 
 in the county and open, grudgingly and sparingly 
 enough it is true, the doors of society. Consequently, 
 the new manufacturer and tradesman buy it at any price. 
 Thus it has come to pass that in recent years, while the 
 rents or income of land have been coming down, the 
 price of land has been going up. The new men want 
 it without reference to its legitimate value. 
 
 With the rise of commercial fortunes values have been 
 going up all over England, as over the world. It costs 
 more to live, and the landed classes, even if getting the 
 rents of a hundred years ago, are relatively poorer. But 
 
ENGLISH POLITICAL LIFE. g3 
 
 they do not get the old rents, for the value of wheat is 
 going down all the time; and the value of wheat is the 
 measure of the rent which the tenant-farmer can pay. It 
 is the farmer whose profits su{)port the landed aristoc- 
 racy. The castle rests on the farm. Now, it is the tre- 
 mendous importation, at ever cheaper rates, of our 
 American wheat into England which is steadily lower- 
 ing the market price of English wheat and the rental 
 of English farms. Thus comes a dramatic situation. 
 The Kansas farmer, the men of Minnesota, Nebraska, 
 and Dakota, all-innocent of their work, are sapping 
 away the foundations of the aristocracy of England. 
 Every swath in a Western wheat-field tojDples a stone 
 from an English castle. 
 
 The social and political fate of the strongest and 
 ablest aristocracy of Europe is being worked out to-day 
 on a foreign continent and by emigrants from Europe, 
 — the stones which the builders rejected there. It is 
 Nemesis. 
 
 This is the situation, and ev^ery year it is getting 
 worse and worse, for every year the price of land will 
 represent less and less its bread-yielding power and 
 more and more its social power, and with the perfection 
 of transportation and the opening of wider areas to cul- 
 tivation American wheat will be laid cheaper and 
 cheaper at English doors. Then, again, another pres- 
 sure hastens the crash. Growing slowly poorer, the 
 landed nobility have been for a generation or two doing 
 what most other people do in like situation, — borrowing 
 and mortgaging their land. To-day the landed estates 
 of England, as a whole, are heavily encumbered, many 
 of them up to their full value. As the power to pay 
 off debt is steadily decreasing, this effort for relief only 
 speeds the final disaster. One of the imminent questions 
 which confronts most gravely the new^ Parliament is 
 some plan for the relief by law of the landed estates of 
 Great Britain burdened by the debts and charges of 
 generations. 
 
84 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 However radical the social and political changes in 
 progress in England, there will not likely be any 
 change in the form of government in our time: Eng- 
 land loves a form too well. The great families admin- 
 istered their aristocratic government under the form of 
 a monarchy. The people likely will administer a re- 
 publican government under the same monarchical form. 
 England to-day is as republican as we are in many 
 things, but the old forms remain unchanged, — venerable 
 and picturesque, but lifeless. 
 
 This is the revolution which is going on to-day in 
 the England of our sight, and it is as great and impor- 
 tant as any in her history, as sharp in its lines, as far- 
 reaching in its consequences. Conventional travellers 
 seek out the plains of Runny mede to sentimentalize or 
 indulge in patriotic platitudes, but there is a current 
 flowing through Westminster to-day, and at every 
 election-poll in England, with a stream clearer and 
 swifter and more fateful than ever ran the historic 
 water-brooks of Surrev. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 GLADSTONE. 
 
 The English Statesman in his London Home — A Pen- 
 
 PORTEAIT OE THE MaN — ThE SCHOLAR IN EUROPEAN POLI- 
 TICS — Mr. Gladstone on American Government Admin- 
 istration — The Payment oe our National Debt — His 
 Fundamental Eepublicanism — Eree Trade, 
 
 I FOUND Mr. Gladstone, the scholar-statesman of 
 England, among books, letters and MSS., and volumes 
 laid in successive strata on his table. The last number 
 of the Nineteenth Century served as a paper-weight, 
 holding down a mass of official parchments. A file 
 
GLADSTONE. 85 
 
 of Greek newspapers peeped out from the covert of a 
 pigeon-hole, — Cyprus was then the bete noir of English 
 politics, — looking like erudite mummies among the 
 strapped and indorsed bandies of jiarliamentary briefs 
 and " orders for the day/^ The " Homeric studies'^ of 
 the Oxford "double-first" scholar were comino; into the 
 most })ractical kind of play as a political force. Dis- 
 raeli himself could not have asked a more dramatic 
 situation. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's London dwelling is a plain, spacious 
 house, one of a substantial " row," with the ordinary 
 architectureless front of a close-built city street. It 
 stands on Harley Street, in one of the most solid and 
 respectable quarters of London. Inside there is only 
 the usual provision of the average well-ofp citizen, — a 
 great deal of comfort, but no display. He avoids the 
 palace-atmosphere in his own home, just as he eschews 
 the glamour of imperial ideas in politics. Simplicity 
 is, indeed, one of Mr. Gladstone's ruling characteristics. 
 The visiting-card of the ex-premier of England reads 
 simply " Mr. W. E. Gladstone." 
 
 This is, indeed, all the rank he is entitled to under 
 the social laws of England, which are held more binding 
 and sacred throughout the land than the acts of Par- 
 liament. It is one of the triumphs of the English 
 social organization, which it has taken centuries to 
 perfect, that at a London dinner-party Mr. Gladstone 
 (out of office) would have to yield precedence to any 
 hobbledehoy of a school-boy whose father chanced to be 
 an earl. 
 
 In this modest house the work-room of the veteran 
 statesman is a moderate-sized chamber on the second 
 story, lined with books and very solidly furnished 
 with heavy table, large, comfortable leathern chairs, 
 and a few fine engravings, some of political, some of 
 art interest, the day's papers on the floor. A vase of 
 fresh flowers, full of color and bloom, smiled through 
 the sombre smoke and muddy fog of London. 
 
3g ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 In personal appearance Mr. Gladstone is an active, 
 lithe, muscular man, rather tall, and of well-propor- 
 tioned frame. His face and figure have that clear-cut 
 contour whicli generally indicates several generations 
 of intellectual activity and personal leadership. Mr. 
 Gladstone is the descendant of a long line of Scottish 
 kirdmen of small wealth and limited possessions, but 
 accustomed to stand first in their community, to think, 
 and to lead. The face is scholarly, cultivated, its out- 
 lines boldly defined by that meagreness of muscle which 
 distinguishes the intellectual athlete. There is not an 
 ounce of superfluous flesh on it. The thin lips and well- 
 cut mouth and chin betoken firmness, determination, 
 and endurance. Seventy summers have sat lightly on 
 Mr. Gladstone, but the years have brought their bless- 
 ing of rest, and his face in general wears the repose of 
 strength and experience, strongly lined with the record 
 of struggle and thought. A new fact, however, or an 
 aggressive opinion wakes the whole man with the fire 
 of youth, and the eye flashes with eager light, and the 
 body bends quickly forward, as if to grasp a fresh ac- 
 quisition. 
 
 Like all strong Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone is a man 
 of large physical power and endurance, fond of out- 
 door air and work, and the ring of his axe at Ha war- 
 den, so familiar to England, has echoed even across the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 An Eton boy and a Christ Church graduate, I 
 found at Oxford that the great university had already 
 in living memory enrolled Mr. Gladstone among her 
 jewels of state, with Wolsey and Pole and Laud and 
 Hampden and Vane and Clarendon and Sir Thomas 
 More and Marlborough and Pitt, and the long list of 
 her sons who have led in field and council, consecrating 
 their trained powers to the service of their country. 
 If Mr. Gladstone owes to his university the intellectual 
 training and discipline which have enabled him to stand 
 foremost among the political leaders of his time, he has 
 
GLADSTONE. 87 
 
 amply repaid the debt in the conscientious devotion 
 with which he has served at the altars of learning dur- 
 ing a busy and eventful life, and a long one, for the 
 premier's political career began within one year from 
 his college graduation, when he was elected to the House 
 of Commons as a Conservative. Within two years from 
 that time he was in the ministry as an under-secretary. 
 
 Notwithstanding the strain of a continuous political 
 career in a country whose political service is, perhaps, 
 the most exacting in the world at this time, — its interests 
 encircling the globe, — Mr. Gladstone has been a most 
 prolific writer, his range of study and discussion run- 
 ning pretty much over all the fields of modern thought. 
 His greater works, " Homer and the Homeric Age," 
 "Juventus Mundi,'' *'Ecce Homo," "Vatican De- 
 crees," are, perhaps, as well known to the educated 
 classes of our own country as to those of England. 
 They do not begin, however, to represent the immense 
 bulk and varied range of Mr. Gladstone's literary 
 labors. These are best seen in the wonderful wealth 
 of his magazine articles, which have flowed in a steady 
 stream for a generation now through the periodical 
 press of England. An edited collection just made by 
 one of the London publishers forms quite a respectable 
 library in itself. In fact, Mr. Gladstone's contributions 
 to the magazine literature of the day have been more 
 voluminous than those of many a professional writer. 
 
 In outlining Mr. Gladstone's literary rank and work 
 one cannot help noting the absence of any high schol- 
 arship in American politics as contrasted with its 
 marked presence in European statesmanship. Edu- 
 cation, of course, is a prerequisite for the European 
 politician, but, further, a respectable degree of scholar- 
 ship may even be said to be demanded. Personal cul- 
 tivation, I may add, is a further incidental qualification 
 growing out of the social structure of the Old World. 
 
 A glance at the English political leaders of the day 
 shows how thoroughly scholarship has entered into 
 
88 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 their lives. Disraeli, ex-premier^ is a distinguished 
 novelist. Of Gladstone, premier of to-day, author, 
 essayist, magazinist, I have just spoken, and I might 
 have noted his breathing Latin renderings of standard 
 hymns which have gone into classic literature. The late 
 Earl of Derby, another premier, is known the learned 
 world over for his translation of the Iliad. Lord 
 Brougham was almost the first scholar of his day. 
 The Earl of Caernarvon, a distinguished reviewer, has 
 just published a translation of the Agamemnon of 
 JEschylus. The Duke of Argyll has published elabo- 
 rate works on politico-theological themes. 
 
 Coming down a little farther. Lord Houghton finds 
 leisure from his duties in the House of Peers to con- 
 tribute a volume of poems, while such active political 
 workers as Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. Edward Jenkins, 
 Sir George Campbell, Henry Vivian, M.P., Lord 
 Lytton, Sir Bartle Erere, Lord DufFerin, Sir Henry 
 Rawlinson, and others, have all published popular 
 books of more or less literary ability. Sir Garnet 
 Wolseley is an accomplished military writer, author of 
 an admirable " Soldiers' and Officers' Hand-Book." 
 Henry Eawcett, M.P., is professor of political economy 
 at Cambridge as well as a distinguished writer. 
 
 Coming to Erance, it is no less striking. Thiers has 
 given to the world a jnece de resistance in twenty vol- 
 umes. Victor Hugo, Girardin, Lamartine, Laboulaye, 
 Montalembert, Jules Simon, Guizot, are names familiar 
 and distinguished equally in politics and in literature. 
 The Comte de Paris has produced the most elaborate 
 and the best history of our civil war yet written, and 
 perhaps the best of all the books called out by our 
 great struggle. Olivier has a new work just announced, 
 and Jules Eavre one just out. Even Louis Napoleon 
 felt it desirable to assume a virtue if he had it not, 
 and issued an imperial "Life of Csesar." 
 
 In Italy, Menghetti, prime minister of the outgoing 
 Cabinet, is known for his large work on '' Church and 
 
GLADSTONE. 39 
 
 State/'' and Pantaleone, senator and soldier, has brought 
 out an elaborate volume "Against Infallibility/' 
 
 In Germany — the greatest national force of the day 
 — every Cabinet has some of its chairs filled by doctors 
 of philosophy, and even the generals are trained schol- 
 ars. In fact, in this country, where the entire mass of 
 the nation has almost a finished education, the political 
 leaders must be men of trained intellectual power. 
 
 Compare all this with our own poverty. General 
 John A. Dix won some possibly permanent literary 
 distinction by a scholarly translation of the "Dies 
 Irse." Charles Sumner was a vigorous and polished 
 writer. The present Secretary of the Navy has entered 
 the field of polemics. There are some New England 
 names in politics entitled to be mentioned respectfully 
 in the world of letters ; but how brief the list, and how 
 meagre for the whole country ! The American legislator's 
 education is pretty much confined to votes and voting, 
 just that particular field of knowledge which English 
 public opinion prohibits its legislator from entering, 
 forcing him to relegate all this kind of work to "the 
 agent," — a special political institution over here, — as 
 incompatible with the standing and character of a law- 
 giver. Like the "whip," the "agent" is a distinctive 
 feature in English practical politics to which we have no 
 direct equivalent. I shall describe them both farther on. 
 
 In the course of conversation Mr. Gladstone grew 
 quite eloquent in praise of the work of the successive 
 administrations of our government since the war, warm- 
 ing almost into enthusiasm as he recounted their achieve- 
 ments in reducing the public debt, and asking practical 
 questions as to the internal direction of this uniform 
 policy through so many administrations^ and as to its 
 popular political effects on the country at large. The 
 well-considered, almost scientific character of these in- 
 quiries showed how thoroughly Mr. Gladstone has 
 studied and how closely he has followed our course in 
 this matter. Indeed, he has made great practical 
 
 8* 
 
90 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 political use of it, from session to session, for some 
 years, in fighting the Conservative jmrty. 
 
 It was the ambition of Mr. Gladstone as leader of 
 the Ministry of 1868-74 to follow in a modest way our 
 lead in this direction, and he did grapple directly with 
 the national debt of England, — monster as it is, — and 
 initiated a very promising movement towards its dimi- 
 nution. Since his outgoing the movement has not been 
 carried on, but I have no doubt the attempt will be re- 
 newed under his present administration. 
 
 In truth, in a general way Mr. Gladstone is rather 
 extravagantly laudatory of our country, standing up 
 stoutly to all the assertions in his recent famous "" Next 
 of Kin" article, so complacently received on our side 
 of the water, so severely criticised on this. I told him 
 frankly I thought he had done us some substantial harm 
 by this brilliant paper, as our national sense of self- 
 sufficiency is not, as a rule, in need of stimulant, but 
 he avers that we were entitled to all he said. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone has unquestionably made a close study 
 of our public men and measures of late years, and takes 
 heart for England from our achievements, believing 
 that the two great popular governments of the English- 
 speaking peoples of the w^orld must move in the same 
 direction, and that what one can achieve the other can 
 do. He has a familiar knowledge of the interior work- 
 ing of our political system, and of the work and char- 
 acter of our really prominent men, — the men whose 
 speeches have shown thought enough to catch the ear 
 of foreign statesmen. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone avers that our national integrity in 
 the payment of our public debt — the efforts both of the 
 people and of administrations made to this end — is 
 something unprecedented in political history. To this 
 point he returned again and again with unflagging in- 
 terest, inquiring whether the nation never grew restive 
 under the continued pressure of taxation, — whether it 
 was made a leading issue in the campaign before the 
 
GLADSTONE. 91 
 
 people, — and expressing his renewed admiration for the 
 courage and integrity of the leaders who carried it 
 through, and of the people who are capable of such 
 things. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, whom I met in the fall of 1879, 
 when he was out of office, was kind enough to go at 
 some length into the party situation of the hour, re- 
 vealing his mental and political cast in this unstudied 
 conversation, following its own drift, far better than in 
 an elaborate speech or article. He has all the essential 
 fibre of republicanism. He has that faith in the 
 people which it is so hard to find in a country where 
 society rests on a foundation of sharply-distinct and 
 separated classes. He is, as a consequence, the instinc- 
 tive enemy of imperialism and all it tends to and longs 
 for, hating its dreams and ventures with a hearty 
 hatred. He believes thorouo;:hlv in movement forward, 
 which, for an old man in an old country, is a sign of a 
 very young heart. The very atmosphere of Europe is 
 depressing and calculated to make one lose faith in 
 human progress. Indeed, I have noticed that even the 
 American domiciled long in the Old World loses insen- 
 sibly that sense of the recognition of a common man- 
 hood in all men which is a part of our inheritance. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone out of office was as much a power as 
 in. The Marquis of Hartington was the technical 
 leader of the Opposition, and did really ''drive the politi- 
 cal machine" on the floor of the House of Commons, but 
 Mr. Gladstone was the heart of the party, the power 
 around which the intelligence and personal confidence 
 of liberal England gathered, as the parliamentary cam- 
 paign of 1880 abundantly demonstrated. To-day he 
 is again at the head of the England that is making 
 history. 
 
 " Free trade" is a popular political enthusiasm or 
 sentiment with the Englishman, something like the 
 instinctive assertion of the Monroe doctrine with us, 
 and in this matter Mr. Gladstone is the prophet of his 
 
92 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 people. For it he Las labored all his life, and has a 
 word, in season or out, to be cast on good soil or barren. 
 
 During this visit the subject had not come up, but 
 at the door of the room, after having shaken hands, it 
 seemed to strike Mr. Gladstone suddenly, and, coming 
 out into the hall, he resumed conversation earnestly on 
 this new tack, firing out some facts and arguments from 
 a thoroughly unstudied and unconventional position 
 over the banisters. 
 
 " Oh ! I want to say a word, frankly and heartily, 
 as we English always do : Why do you persist in your 
 illogical policy of protection ?'' etc., etc. '^ You Ameri- 
 cans are having everything your own way ; you are 
 competing against us all the time in manufactures; 
 you will beat us finally in the long run. Why luill 
 you retard your own progress f 
 
 " Well, Mr. Gladstone, I come from a city of manu- 
 facturers, and we are perfectly satisfied with our rate 
 of progress ; in fact, our great national danger is always 
 of going ahead too fast, and the very best policy for us 
 is one that does retard us a little.^' 
 
 And the momentary colloquy closed as discussions on 
 this subject always do. 
 
 London. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 AN ENGLISH ELECTION. 
 
 Fixing the Time oe Battle — The Briee Campaign — Ee- 
 TURNiNG A Member — Meeting of the Electors — Con- 
 testing A Seat — JSTature and Cost of the Expenses op 
 AN English Parliamentary Election — The English- 
 woman AT THE Polls — Woman and Society in Politics. 
 
 An English parliamentary election is so different 
 from ours, and the differences show so sharply some 
 
AN ENGLISH ELECTION 93 
 
 of the divergences in practice of our two political 
 systems, which are so similar on paper, so dissimilar in 
 fact, that they can best be developed and contrasted in 
 describing the practical process of returning a member. 
 
 In the first place, the time of holding elections 
 is not fixed by law, but depends on the will of either 
 one or the other party, — an immense tactical advantage 
 for wdiichever party is able to secure it. When Parlia- 
 ment dissolves, an immediate election is held for the 
 next one. The party in power can dissolve wdienever 
 they wnsh, if there is any reason so to do. Disraeli 
 was watching, for instance, the whole of the year 1879 
 for a desirable opportunity to dissolve the Parliament 
 whose limitation of seven years was expiring, ready to 
 do so at whatever moment he deemed the public mind 
 was in a favorable condition to return a Conservative 
 majority in the next. But wiiile the party in power 
 have the first shot for this great chance of fixing the 
 time of battle, the Opposition, if it should find itself 
 strong enough to defeat the Ministry, can bide its time 
 for that, and force a dissolution, and the consequent elec- 
 tion of a new Parliament at the moment of its choice. 
 In either case the election takes place at the will of 
 the management of either one or the other party, and 
 is not at stated periods fixed beforehand by law. 
 
 In the second place, when an election comes the 
 struggle is immediate, short, and sharp. Ten to twenty 
 days is full time for a national political campaign in 
 England. In that brief time all the work is done, and 
 the struggle is over, — this, too, in a country where the 
 public pulse does not beat nearly so fast as with us, and 
 where ideas travel very slowly. From London to 
 Edinburgh is in railway time about the distance from 
 New York to Pittsburgh, but an idea will travel from 
 Maine to California ten times faster than from Surrey 
 to Scotland. Nevertheless, the Englishman puts through 
 his political campaigns ten times more rapidly than 
 we do. 
 
94 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 The process of an election^ or as they call it here 
 " returning a member," is in this wise : When the 
 time comes, either by a general dissolution or by cause 
 of a special vacancy, a writ goes out from Westminster 
 to each constituency (American, election district) to send 
 forthwith, or within a certain brief time mentioned, the 
 member or members which constitute its representation 
 as fixed by law. This election district is not as with 
 us a given number of population temporarily defined 
 for that purpose. It is a borough, a county, a city, a 
 university that has at one time or another acquired the 
 right to a certain representation. This writ goes out 
 to the returning officer, who is generally the head of 
 the election district whatever it be, the mayor of a city, 
 the high sheriff of a county. 
 
 This returning officer immediately calls a public 
 meeting of the legal electors to send a member. This 
 meeting takes place, I believe, generally about two 
 days after the reception of the writ. The returning 
 officer who called it presides. Any elector may there 
 nominate a member. The nomination is generally 
 made by the most prominent and influential gentleman 
 in the county or borough. If it is seconded by four 
 other gentlemen, so that five electors join in proposing, 
 the nomination is duly and fully made. The presiding 
 officer waits a due interval to hear if any other nomi- 
 nations are proposed, and, if none are, he then and there 
 declares that the nominee proposed is duly returned, 
 and issues to him at once his certificate, and the whole 
 thing is over. 
 
 Should there, however, be any other candidates, their 
 friends immediately put them in nomination, the names 
 of five electors in each case being;; needed to brino;* a 
 name before the meeting. When two or more have 
 been so nominated the presiding officer announces that 
 the electors have failed to make any return and that 
 their choice must be decided by a ballot, and he fixes a 
 day for taking this ballot, generally from two to ten 
 
AN ENGLISH ELECTION. 95 
 
 days from the meeting. The ballot is therefore only a 
 contingency in an English election, and not the sonl of 
 it, as with as. In ancient times it hardly came into 
 play at all, and even in the general election of 1880 
 very many members were returned without its use. 
 
 This appeal to the ballot is what in England is called 
 contesting a county or borough. "A contest" in Eng- 
 land is not a scrutiny of the vote as with us, but exactly 
 what we call ^^ running" for any office. 
 
 Before any candidate, however, is declared duly in 
 nomination, he must, if there is this contest, give bond 
 to the returning officer, with two good securities, for 
 his share of the costs of the election. The terms and 
 amount of this bond are in the judgment of tlie return- 
 ing officer. If the candidate cannot give it, his nomina- 
 tion drops. Up to this time the proceedings have cost 
 nothing. If there has been no contest, the gentleman 
 nominated has a seat in Parliament without the expendi- 
 ture of a cent. 
 
 With the "contest" or running, how^ever, the work 
 gets serious. This bond is the check-rein to individual 
 political ambition in England. A member of Par- 
 liament receives no salary ; the costs of obtaining a 
 seat by an election average at the least five thousand 
 dollars ; should Parliament dissolve in thirty days after 
 it convenes, as is perfectly possible, the seat is gone and 
 all is lost. 
 
 It is ahvays a mystery to an American politician wdiy 
 the expenses of an English election are so heavy, and 
 what they can be. I think the general belief among 
 us is that this five thousand dollars — and it sometimes 
 goes up to twenty-five thousand dollars or over — 
 is simply a bribery and corruption fund, but it is not so 
 necessarily, and hardly ever directly. In England an 
 election is an affiiir of the candidates entirely, and not 
 of the people, as with us. They hold it and conduct it, 
 and not the state. Out of their own pockets, therefore, 
 they must provide for all the expenses. They pay for 
 
96 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 the printing of the tickets and all blanks and forms, 
 for the hiring of watchers, inspectors, and clerks, and 
 for the rent of all the polling-places, which in a large 
 district, as in some parts of London, mav be enormous. 
 These expenses they share among themselves, and it is 
 to mutually secure these that the bond is given. 
 
 There are also other individual expenses which are 
 legitimate, and which are special to England. The 
 lower-class Englishman has not that taste for politics 
 which is inbred with us, and great exertion is needed 
 to ^^get out the vote,'' which is always light contrasted 
 with our polling. Now, the most delicate attention 
 you can pay the English voter is to haul him to the 
 polls in an open two-horse barouche. The lower-grade 
 vote generally insists on this, and as a consequence the 
 outlay for carriages is always a tremendous item in a 
 candidate's bill. A carriage for an election day also is 
 apt to cost more than for any other day in the year. 
 
 Again, tlie canvass in England is conducted through 
 " agents," whose functions will be explained farther on. 
 These agents are generally local attorneys. As many 
 are used as may be needed, and gradually the custom 
 is spreading of having more and more, until now I am 
 assured that in a rural election the entire local bar is often 
 divided between the opposing candidates. These at- 
 torneys' fees, too, are sometimes regulated on the same 
 principle as are the bills of the livery-stable keepers. 
 There is no trouble at all spending the five thousand 
 dollars — when one understands the customs of the 
 country. 
 
 Finally, the count of the vote is made by the candi- 
 dates themselves, and not by the state. On their mutual 
 report of the result the returning officer makes out his 
 certificate. 
 
 The most novel feature, however, by all odds, of an 
 English election to American eyes is the presence of 
 women in it, and the active part they take in the can- 
 
AN ENGLISH ELECTION. 97 
 
 vass. There is no Duchess of Devonshire to kiss the 
 butchers nowadays, but the ladies of England freely 
 lend their charms to the adornment of the hustings all 
 the kingdom over, and take a personal share and intel- 
 ligent sympathy in the work. The wife, mother, and 
 sisters of the candidate, and sometimes his cousins 
 and his aunts and his friends, appear on the platform 
 with him, or ride in open carriages with him and his 
 party from point to point during the canvass of a city, 
 or on the critical day of the polling, and their names, 
 movements, and appearance are duly chronicled in the 
 daily prints. Gladstone's wife and daughters it will be 
 remembered were with him through all his wonderful 
 invasion of Scotland, and they also " assisted" his son 
 in his contest for an English seat. A youthful Lord 
 Ramsey ran on the Liberal ticket for Liverpool during 
 my stay in the country. His young wife accompanied 
 him everywhere, and her presence really seemed to be 
 popularly his strong point. The Liberal papers referred 
 editorially again and again to " this interesting couple,'^ 
 and kept the picture steadily before the people. It 
 evidently was a political force. The canvass of a 
 county whose political control is in the hands of a great 
 family, may be almost a kind of picnic. The candidate 
 drives out every day from the castle with a brilliant 
 party of lords and ladies, and if he is fortunate speaks 
 on the platform from the centre of a bouquet of 
 countesses and Honorable Marys, — a lovely kind of 
 election committee forever out of the reach of an Ameri- 
 can politician. On occasions the candidate and his 
 friends who speak with him appear in evening dress 
 and with bouquetsat the button-holes, — a proceeding that 
 would be rather desperate here. In England society 
 is a power in politics ; here it is something which the 
 average voter resents. 
 
 The women of course enter into politics with that 
 charming disregard for principles and regard for men 
 which is so pleasing a characteristic of the sex every- 
 
98 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 where, and their participation lends a piquant flavor to a 
 political campaign entirely lost to us. The politics, like 
 the Church, of an old family, however, is generally a 
 matter of descent. 
 
 It is not likely that this phase of political life will 
 ever obtain here. In England politics enters into the 
 very fibre of society, and is part of the social structure. 
 The family is the unit of society there, and not the 
 individual, as with us. The government of the king- 
 dom up to this time has been entirely a matter of 
 certain great families, — part of their property and 
 occupation, — and naturally all the family take an in- 
 terest in it. Gentlemen — the young sons of peers or 
 influential county families — as little able to do any 
 political work as school-girls themselves, also often go 
 around with the party, lending the influence of the 
 family and name by their presence. It is something 
 like sending the empty family-carriage to a funeral, but 
 it does the work with the English voter. 
 
 Englishwomen, it should be added, by the force of 
 this kind of education learn, after a fashion, a good deal 
 of politics, and have a knowledge of public affairs and 
 take an interest in their country which the American 
 woman does not. When a girl can help her lover into 
 Parliament, which, in England, means something much 
 more than going to Congress here, or a married woman 
 can distribute secretaryships or curacies for social vas- 
 salage faithfully performed, politics becomes fully as 
 interesting as dancing or millinery. 
 
 London. 
 
THE INTERROGATION POINT IN POLITICS. 99 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE INTERROGATION POINT IN POLITICS. 
 
 An English Usage — The Government at the Bar of the 
 House of Commons — The Member at the Bar of the 
 People. 
 
 There is one practical point in British politics so 
 unlike anything in our own, and so marked in their 
 system, permeating it from top to bottom, that it is 
 worthy of special presentment. It is the usage of 
 interrogation. 
 
 From first to last, the Government to the House of 
 Commons, the members of the House to their respective 
 constituencies, are always on the stand, bound to an- 
 swer clearly and explicitly any question asked in good 
 faith and in the language of gentlemen. Information 
 from the Government to the people is not, as with us, 
 given in lengthy argumentative messages or elaborate 
 speeches, but daily, and in brief, direct replies to spe- 
 cific inquiries. It is simple question and answer, as 
 plain and unequivocal as the talk between two men on 
 a matter of business. 
 
 This usage probably grows out of the admitted 
 candor and straightforwardness of the British char- 
 acter, which loves simplicity and directness and honors 
 them, and which hates indirectness and concealment. 
 
 I can best illustrate this point of practical politics by 
 describing briefly its mode of use in the two instances 
 in which it is brought into most marked prominence, 
 — viz., the interrogation of the Government in the 
 House of Commons, and of the representative, or 
 " member," as he is here called, when he appears before 
 his constituency from year to year, either to stand for 
 
100 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 election or report to his county the action of the House 
 during its expired session. 
 
 In Parliament there is one distinctive feature to which 
 there is nothing of parallel or analogy in our Congress. 
 When you enter the House of Commons the object 
 which perhaps strikes you first is "the treasury bench," 
 a large, solid table-desk, covered with papers, and 
 standing directly in front of the Speaker's desk. If 
 you are acquainted with the personnel of the politics 
 of the day, you see around this table the familiar 
 features of the leading ministers, — the Ministry of 
 England, the Cabinet of our Government. They are 
 there with their briefs and data, and sometimes with 
 clerks to answer squarely and directly and imuiediately 
 such questions as may be put to them by the represen- 
 tatives of the people. This is done daily, I might 
 almost say hourly. Sometimes, indeed, a whole session 
 may be simply a fire of question and answer, — the ques- 
 tions a brief sentence or two, carefully framed, the 
 answers equally short and well weighed, for on these 
 answers the Government must stand. It cannot shelter 
 itself behind a mountain of words. 
 
 On this right to demand of the Government full and 
 explicit information on any subject at any time there 
 are no limitations by law. There are limitations, how- 
 ever, necessarily, by usage. The same love of fair play 
 which. has evolved this system of interrogation demands 
 that, in matters so weighty as affairs of state, fair and 
 due notice shall be given of the question to be asked. 
 An immature or hasty answer might be injurious to the 
 best interests of the country, and, besides, would not be 
 entitled to the weight and consideration of one duly 
 matured and carefully framed. 
 
 Accordingly, it has grown into a usage that the 
 questions to the Ministry shall be submitted to them 
 in writing at least one day before the answer is de- 
 i^anded. The questions are, therefore, generally handed 
 into the treasury bench on the floor of Parliament the 
 
THE INTERROGATION POINT IN POLITICS. IQl 
 
 day before an answer is publicly asked on the floor. 
 Sometimes they are read aloud, and sometimes only 
 quietly handed to one of the ministers in the most 
 informal way, pencilled on a bit of paper, the back of 
 an envelope, or anything that comes to hand. 
 
 There being no limitation by law, any member of 
 course, if he chooses, may spring any question without 
 a moment's notice, and demand a snap answer. This 
 however, is considered ^^ bad form,'' only injures the 
 individual who attempts it, and the public sense of 
 fairness justifies the minister in declining to reply until 
 he has had proper time. I have seen this done, and 
 am satisfied that the ^' smart" member who attempted 
 it only hurt himself; and, in truth, the minister's dig- 
 nified refusal to return any answer until he could give 
 one worthy of a responsible Government was applauded 
 by the Opposition as well as by the Right. 
 
 The Ministry, again, may decline to answer any 
 question when, in their judgment, the answer would 
 be detrimental to the interests of the nation at that 
 time. This is, the same as with us, a right which 
 must be exercised judiciously as well as honestly. 
 
 Lastly, the questions must, of course, be put in good 
 faith and couched in respectful language. The buf- 
 foonery which so often obtains at Harrisburg or the 
 rough vulgarity of Albany would simply put its users 
 out of the doors at Westminster. 
 
 It is on the hustings, however, that this custom of 
 interrogation takes its most striking and popular form. 
 There the member answers to his constituency face to 
 face in their home, just as the Government answers to 
 the members in the House. The same general rules as 
 to notice, good faith, respectful language, etc., prevail 
 as on the floor of Parliament, relaxed a little, perhaps, 
 by the popular character of the assembly and place. 
 It is deemed better, on the whole, not to notice a vul- 
 garity on the stump, — or perhaps to cautiously call 
 
 attention to it, — but to go on and answer the question 
 
 9- 
 
102 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 anyhow. These questions take the widest possible 
 range, and are always intensely practical. What are 
 the member's views on the Eastern question, and on 
 "farmers' rights" and *' game-laws" at home? How 
 did he vote on the Indian appropriation, and how were 
 his tenant-leases drawn this spring? What are his 
 views on shooting rabbits or burying dissenters? 
 The candidate, or member, is sometimes owner of half 
 the county, and half the voters are his tenants. There 
 is great latitude in these interrogations, and some of 
 them are very curious and personal. They illustrate 
 thoroughly, however, the campaign, and enable a 
 stranger to understand the situation rapidly, and better 
 than he would from listening to a dozen of one- or 
 two-hour speeches. 
 
 There are advantages and disadvantages to this sys- 
 tem on which I have not room at this time to dwell, 
 but which every expert in practical politics will readily 
 see for himself. In England the dangers of the prac- 
 tice are largely lessened by that spirit of fair play and 
 directness which animates the nation and governs all 
 its popular assemblies. There would be danger in 
 many parts of our country that freedom of interroga- 
 tion would degenerate into license and insolence, which 
 would be thoughtlessly applauded. 
 
 The advantages are very great. It tends to check 
 sophomoric speech-making ; it brings the representative 
 and his constituent in direct and very satisfactory re- 
 lation ; it clears up popular doubt or uncertainties, be- 
 cause the issues are framed in popular form by the 
 voter, not for him, and answered direct Yes or No ; it 
 lets the member know clearly what his constituents 
 want, and on what issues they are interested ; and, 
 lastly, it is essentially democratic. The Government 
 is always at the bar of the House, and the House is 
 always at the bar of the people. 
 
 LoNDoisr. 
 
COMPARATIVE COST OF GOVERNMENT. 103 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 COMPARATIVE COST OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Government Salaries in England and the United States 
 — Expenditures, Taxes, and Debts — The Money Economy 
 OF Kepublics. 
 
 There is a certain element of ignorance and discon- 
 tent in our country which is always complaining of the 
 extravagance and cost of our republican Government, 
 national, State, and municipal, and flippantly referring 
 to European Governments, most generally that of Eng- 
 land, as being something better, more satisfactory and 
 economical. I propose to show the folly of this kind 
 of talk, not by any argument, but simply by citing 
 some facts which will illustrate the cost of government 
 abroad. 
 
 I quote England, because, first, that kingdom is most 
 frequently held up to us as an example ; and, secondly, 
 because it is a constitutional Government of large free- 
 dom, and the circumstances of comparison with our- 
 selves are, therefore, fairer. 
 
 The Lord Mayor of London receives a salary of 
 $50,000 a year and a fine residence, — the historic 
 " Mansion House" of the city, — -just what we give the 
 President of the United States. 
 
 The young Marquis of Lome, as governor-general 
 of Canada, receives a salary of $50,000 a year and a 
 residence ; again just what we pay our highest officer. 
 
 The English ambassador at Paris receives a salary 
 the same as that of our President, $50,000 a year, as 
 also does the lord high chancellor. 
 
 The money cost of our chief executive is, therefore, 
 only that of a whole class of officials, say, of third-rate 
 
104 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 rank and importance in this monarchy and empire. We 
 beo^in our scale of salaries at their third degree. 
 
 The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland receives a: salary of 
 £20,000, or $100,000 a year, for governing a small state 
 with less than six million inhabitants. He gets, also, in 
 [addition, $35,000 more in salaries for his household, — 
 not an official household, but a personal one, — chamber- 
 lain, ushers, ^' gentlemen-at-large,'^ master of the horse, 
 gentlemen of the bedchamber, etc. This official starts 
 with just twice the salary of our President and ten 
 times that of the governor of Pennsylvania. 
 
 The Prince of Wales for serving tlie state in ^^ that 
 station to which it has pleased God to call'^ him, gets 
 $200,000, — four times what is paid by us for the ser- 
 vices of a chief ruler. 
 
 The Queen of England for the royal family — her- 
 self, her children, and her relatives — receives from the 
 state annuities amounting to the total sum of £547,000 
 — say $2,735,000. We have no charge, burden, or out- 
 lay of any kind with which to compare this. 
 
 The " Church Establishment" is another political 
 tax with which we have nothing to place in comparison, 
 and is a very substantial item to the taxpayer. The 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, for instance, is paid $75,- 
 000 per year; the Archbishop of York, $50,000 per 
 year ; the Bishop of London, also, $50,000 a year, — up 
 to and over our Presidential grade. The bulk of the 
 bishops, however, — there are twenty-eight, — receive but 
 from $20,000 to $25,000 per year. 
 
 As an incidental evidence of the comparative scale 
 of cost of British Government, I may mention that the 
 English minister to Switzerland receives from his coun- 
 try a salary more than twice as large as that received 
 by the president of the Swiss republic hitnself. The 
 British minister at Washington also receives $30,000 a 
 year, three-fifths of our President's salary, and more 
 than the salary President Lincoln was paid. 
 
 Castles and palaces, sometimes furnished, and with 
 
COMPARATIVE COST OF GOVERNMENT. 105 
 
 even the silver provided, are '' thrown in" with these 
 generous allowances. 
 
 The British Cabinet officers receive generally |25,000 
 against our $8000 for the same duty. 
 
 Now for the " territories/' or provincial possessions, 
 of England. The governor of Ceylon receives $35,000 
 per year ; the governor of New South Wales, the same ; 
 the governor of Victoria, an Australian province, $50,- 
 000 ; the governor of New Zealand, $37,500 ; the gov- 
 ernor of Jamaica, $35,000, and Sir Bartle Frere, in 
 Africa, has been getting $30,000; and so the list might 
 be extended in all quarters of the globe. Compare this 
 with our modest territorial budget. 
 
 But let us come to some departments of expendi- 
 tures not personal and contrast our burdens. 
 
 Take a single item. The estimate of appropriations 
 asked for the army for this year by the Conservative 
 administration was over $75,000,000. This sum has 
 already been exceeded, it is believed, by about 33 per 
 cent., making the cost of the army this year $100,000,- 
 000 or over. And this is cheap for Europe, for the 
 English army is a small one when compared with the 
 continental masses of legions. In France the military 
 burden is worse, and in Germany it is appalling. 
 
 The amount asked for the English navy for the 
 current year is £10,860,901,— nearly $55,000,000. 
 This one sum of naval cost is more than our entire 
 *^ civil service and miscellaneous'^ expenditure for 1878. 
 Or put it this way: The cost of the army and navy to 
 England for one year is about equal to all our current 
 expenses of all kinds, saving the item of interest on the 
 public debt. 
 
 There is always some difficulty in getting the exact 
 expenditures of the English Government, but the reve- 
 nues raised in 1879 from the kingdom alone — the small 
 territories of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and 
 not the empire of foreign possessions — amounted to £83,- 
 000,000, or about $415,000,000. As England is con- 
 
106 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 stantly going deeper into debt, this sum represents some 
 millions less than her expenditures. Our national ex- 
 penditure, including interest on the public debt, was, 
 for the year ending June 30, 1879, $261,000,000. In 
 other words, our cost of government is but three-fifths 
 of that of the English, while our population is one-third 
 more, and our area of territory is twenty-five times as 
 great. 
 
 The final proof, however, in the comparative bur- 
 den of government will be found in the public debts of 
 the two countries. It is they which represent the sum 
 of costs and the weight. Here the contrast is sharp : 
 our national debt is sometliing under two billions of 
 dollars, and is diminishing, and England's national debt 
 is £777,781,590, the enormous sum of almost four 
 billions of dollars, and increasing. As a matter of fact, 
 they count it now only by the interest, which, in 1878, 
 at their low rates, amounted to £28,412,750. The 
 country has lost all hope of paying off the principal ; 
 but that is not the worst, — it is not keeping it down; 
 and in that is seen the weight of the burden of the cost 
 of government, which is greater than the people can or 
 will bear. Since 1862, when the interest on the debt 
 was £26,000,000, there has been a steady and gradual 
 rise, sometimes halting for a year or .experiencing an 
 inappreciable diminution, it is true, but never holding 
 the gain, until it now stands at over £28,000,000. 
 
 And now, how is all this to be met? This is the 
 individual question for our grumblers to confront. 
 The Englishman staggers under taxes of which we 
 happily know nothing at all, or very little, — a searching 
 income-tax, to begin with, stamp acts and excise, probate 
 and customs levies. Many of these are of heavy weight 
 when contrasted with ours, even under the pressure of 
 war. The probate of a poor man's will costs two per 
 cent, on the sum proved. A tax answering;; to our 
 " collateral inheritance" statute lays a levy of one per 
 cent, on direct or lineal succession,— -?*.e., the passage of 
 
COMPARATIVE COST OF GOVERNMENT. 107 
 
 property from father to son. When the legatee is 
 farther out than a grancl-uncle or aunt, this tax rises to 
 ten per cent. Patents for inventions cost $25 at every 
 step, the final issuing of the patent costing from |250 
 to $500 in addition. There are pro-rata taxes on in- 
 surance policies, on every lease, on mortgages, on con- 
 veyances, on settlements, on bonds, on covenants and 
 bills of exchange and bank-notes. Then there are 
 stamp-taxes, — a tax on every receipt given for a sum 
 over $10, on licenses, on houses, on liquors. An at- 
 torney must pay down $250 to the state on his admis- 
 sion as barrister; a notary public, $150 on receiving his 
 commission. You pay $2.50 for the privilege of carrying 
 a gun, and $3.75 for the right to call yourself a servant 
 and hire out as one ; a marriage-license costs S10.50, and, 
 if you want to marry without previous residence in the 
 parish or district, the special license costs $150. 
 
 This list might be extended almost indefinitely. I 
 only cite a few instances at hand to illustrate the weight 
 of taxation in a well-governed European state, and 
 how it presses in on the individual, annoying, hamper- 
 ing, and embarrassing him at every point and turn. 
 
 In fact, we have no idea at all in our fortunate 
 country of what taxation in Europe is. In Italy, for 
 instance, a country where the vast mass of the people 
 are wretchedly poor, — so poor that one who has not 
 seen them can have no conception of their poverty, — 
 the annual expenditure of the national Government is 
 greater than ours, and there are but 27,000,000 people 
 to raise it from, instead of 45,000,000, as in our case. 
 The taxation to meet it requires a levy of over $10 
 per head. As a sample of their powder to bear 
 taxation, I may mention that there is an income-tax of 
 thirteen per cent., which is deducted from even a for- 
 eigner's interest on an Italian Government security. 
 
 It is to be said in favor of England, at least, that, 
 while the people pay high for public service, they get 
 good work, — a better return than we do. Their public 
 
108 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 work is very thorough, and the grade of the public 
 servant higher than with us. All this insures a certain 
 economy in the long run, and inures to the stability of 
 government and the good of the community. 
 
 I am not writing to this question, however. Ours 
 is better for the cost than theirs is for their cost. It is 
 likely that we both err, — they in having too costly a 
 public service, we in demanding too cheap a one. The 
 point I want to make is the immense cheapness of gov- 
 ernment under our system as compared with that of any 
 other. It would be better if we would pay a better price 
 for all public service and demand a better service, more 
 solid work, and a higher class of men to do it, — men 
 of education, character, and responsibility. 
 
 These things, however, are other questions, and open 
 up endless argument in a hundred directions. The one 
 point we are considering now is the immediate cheap- 
 ness of republican government. It is rather fashion- 
 able among a certain class of people to be forever de- 
 claiming about the wastefulness, cost, and extravagance 
 of a government carried on by the people, and not by 
 a special class trained or born to the work. I maintain 
 that a people's government is the cheapest on earth, and 
 the republics of the United States and Switzerland and 
 France are the proofs. An analysis of the national 
 administration of France will show that all those de- 
 partments of the Government which are new and dis- 
 tinctly republican are managed cheaply or at a mode- 
 rate cost to the nation. Those departments which are 
 yet run in the old monarchic grooves, as the diplomatic 
 corps, for instance, are costly. Switzerland, a republic 
 with a population of 3,000,000, has a yearly govern- 
 mental expenditure of $8,500,000; the 4,000,000 of 
 economical Hollanders, who indulge, however, in the 
 luxury of a monarch, spend $50,000,000. 
 
 In fact, economy is an incident of republican 
 government. 
 
 LONDOK. 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 109 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PARLIAMENT. 
 
 Political Topography of the House of Commons — Sitting 
 IN Line of Battle — Plan of the House — Taking the 
 .Ayes and Noes by a Human Count — Sanctity of the 
 Floor — The "Whip." 
 
 Through the attention of one of the leaders of the 
 Conservatives, the party in power in England at tlie 
 time of my seeing it, I enjoyed the courtesy of seeing 
 the House of Commons from its own floor. Tin's is 
 rather an exceptional privilege and a very desirable one ; 
 the strangers' gallery, which is cramped and closely 
 enough guarded too, giving one a view of only half the 
 house, and a very unsatisfactory one at that. 
 
 Everything in England preaches history if you have 
 ears to hear and a mind to understand, and this jealous 
 guarding of the privacy of Parliament comes down as 
 a usage from troublous times when, if the chamber of 
 the House of Commons had been open to visitors, im- 
 proper influences might have controlled the action of its 
 members. Even now the chance presence of the Prince 
 of Wales in the galleries is absurdly remarked on, and 
 so great is the sanctity of the floor of the House of 
 Commons that the messengers and servants of the House 
 itself dare not tread on it when the House is in session. 
 If a message is brought to it from the House of Peers, 
 the messenger advances to the bar of the House, — an 
 imaginary barrier supposed to be swung across the floor 
 from the ends of the lower benches on each side of the 
 room, — and it is there taken from him by the clerk or 
 a member and conveyed to the Speaker's desk. In the 
 
 same way, if you send in your card to a member, no 
 
 lb 
 
110 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 page or servant delivers it at his seat. This messenger 
 again halts at the bar. The nearest member, seeing it 
 is a private message, takes it and passes it on until it 
 reaches your friend or acquaintance. This service of 
 courtesy the members hourly do for each other rather 
 than suffer a sacred old form to be infringed on or 
 weakened. 
 
 The reserved place on the floor which the modern 
 centuries have wrested from the old fear and conservative 
 tradition is a small compartment capable of seating 
 seven persons, or eight if they squeeze. It is on the 
 floor of the House, but carefully railed off from the 
 members' seats. You can communicate with the mem- 
 bers, however, who are in the habit of coming up to 
 the ^^ reservation" and speaking with their friends across 
 the railing. Admission to this bench is given only on 
 the special order of the Speaker in each case. When once 
 you are in this intimate inclosure, which in appearance 
 much resembles the prisoners' dock in our county court- 
 rooms, you have an excellent view of the whole house 
 and everything that is going on. You can see every- 
 thing and hear everything. In the galleries, a large 
 portion of the time, you can do neither. 
 
 On taking my seat inside of this modern and very 
 moderate indentation into the British constitution I was 
 amused to see how very thoroughly the American was 
 there. The theory of this '^ private bench" is that it is 
 a place where members may have an opportunity to 
 speak to and see influential personages of the kingdom 
 whom they ought to be able to consult or communicate 
 with without leaving the chamber. Of the persons who 
 occupied the bench this evening of which I write, one 
 was an ex-senator of the United States, a second an 
 American doctor of divinity, a third an ex-Cabinet min- 
 ister of the United States, and another of the two re- 
 maining was certainly a fellow-citizen, but I did not 
 know him. Five of the seven seats were thus held by 
 the Yankee, — a small army of occupation. 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, m 
 
 Strangers, however, whether favored with the " dock 
 on the floor'^ or less fortunate with a seat in the dekisive 
 galleries, can hardly complain of their accommodations 
 from a House which has not accommodated itself. 
 
 It is a literal fact that there are not seats enough in 
 the House of Commons to seat its own members should 
 they all attend at one time. In this House there 
 are six hundred and seventy-eight members, and there 
 are seats for but four hundred and seventy-six. By the 
 usage of tiie House, therefore, no member is entitled to 
 his seat unless he is in at prayers, — a rule which has 
 something of a schoolboy sound to us. Indeed, the 
 schoolboy atmosphere of the House, to which I shall 
 again refer, is very marked, and forces itself on one's 
 thought all the time. 
 
 The whole matter of seating is very different from 
 ours, and conditions the appearance of the House, the 
 habit and style of speaking, and, to some extent, the 
 usage and course of procedure. In truth, the political 
 parties sit in line of battle. I will attempt to make it 
 as clear as possible. 
 
 In the first place, there are no desks or tables for the 
 members, — nothing but long rows of red-cushioned 
 benches, four tiers, I think, of them rising from the 
 floor. 
 
 These benches run along the two sides of the room 
 in straight lines. The room is a long rectangle, with 
 the Speaker's and clerks' desks at the one end of it, the 
 general door at the other. The rows of benches start 
 from the upper end of the room, " right" and '' left'^ 
 from the Speaker's desk, running down almost to the 
 door. An imaginary line drawn from the lower end 
 of the benches across the room is " the bar.'^ These 
 long parallel rows of benches are divided again in the 
 middle by a narrow aisle running up from the lower 
 tier to the higiiest, for purposes of access. This is 
 called ^' the gangway." 
 
 The members of the Government party always sit in 
 
112 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 the tiers of benclies to the right of the Speaker, and are 
 known as " the Right." The members of the Opposi- 
 tion party all sit in the benches to the left of the 
 Speaker, and are known as " the Left/' The party 
 forces are thus always massed on the floor and face 
 each other. These grand parliamentary divisions of 
 "Right" and '^Left" are further brigaded by the ^' gang- 
 way-line," the regulars sitting " above the gangway" 
 and the irregulars of either side sitting " below the 
 gangway." For instance, to-day the straight-out Con- 
 servatives, who have the government, sit on the right 
 above the gangway. The independent Conservatives, 
 on whom they can generally depend, but not always, 
 sit below them, — i.e., on the right side below the gang- 
 way. The straight-out Liberals, or Opposition, sit on 
 the left above the gangway, the extreme Liberals, or 
 Radicals, just below them, — i.e., on the left below the 
 gangway. 
 
 This custom divides the floor to the eye into four 
 distinct political divisions, and one can always see at a 
 glance how a vote at the moment would stand. It 
 certainly has this advantage. 
 
 The leaders of each party, again, always sit on the 
 front bench of their respective sides ^^ above the gang- 
 way," and thus face each other. Thus, to-day, on one 
 short bench on the right, sit Sir Stafibrd Northcote, 
 Colonel Stanley, secretary of state for war, Mr. Cross, 
 etc., leaders of the Right, who, of .course, are the Min- 
 istry, and facing them, pn another small bench, the 
 Marquis of Hartington, the official " leader" of the 
 Opposition, William Ewart Gladstone, Mr. Foster, 
 John Bright, Robert Lowe. The election which took 
 place as these sketches were being prepared for publi- 
 cation has just reversed these seats. 
 
 Between these two " benches of leaders" is placed a 
 large, substantial, square office-desk table with solid 
 sides and drawers to the floor. This is strictly the 
 clerk's table, but as the clerical officials of the House 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 113 
 UPPEK END. 
 
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 Treasury 
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 Gangway. 
 
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114 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 are not conspicuous, and the right at least of this table 
 is occupied by the ministry, with their secretaries and 
 papers, this section of the floor is popularly spoken of 
 as the treasury bench, although that designation in 
 strictness belongs only to the short front bench where 
 sit officially the leaders of the Right. 
 
 The space on the floor between the two tiers of right 
 and left benches is perhaps fifteen to twenty feet, and 
 stretches the entire length of the room. Its uppermost 
 boundary is " the treasury bench,'^ its lowermost limit 
 " the bar.'' This is the arena, or clear floor, into which 
 our members are so fond of getting when they want to 
 make a speech and give the nation a full view of them- 
 selves. No member of the English Parliament, how- 
 ever, dare speak from this space, which is always kept 
 clear. It is an established rule of the House, come 
 down from the centuries now, and a usage stronger than 
 any written regulation, that no member shall address 
 the House save from some spot where, if he sat down, 
 he would sit down on something. So every member 
 must stand to his bench, and most unsatisfactory, awk- 
 ward, and uncomfortable places are they to speak from. 
 This is undoubtedly a " survival/' as is everything you 
 meet liere. 
 
 I furnish a rough draft or diagram which gives at a 
 glance a bird's-eye view of the political topography of 
 the House of Commons. The knowledge of this, al- 
 though apparently an incidental and ancillary matter, 
 is very important for a familiar understanding of Eng- 
 lish politics, as the ordinary political phraseology is 
 based on it, and in speeches and newspaper articles the 
 bulk of references to parties, sections, or members is 
 made to them not by name, but to the location where 
 they sit. 
 
 Sitting on long benches, or pews, with no conveni- 
 ences of table or desk, the members, when in the 
 chamber, must attend to public business. They cannot 
 write private letters or do their committee work during 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 115 
 
 the session, as at Wasliington. Nor can they adorn the 
 furniture of the House with their feet. They can, 
 however, when bored, read newspapers and sleep, 
 although the position for sleeping is not a happy one, 
 and gives the sleeper rather a drunken and disjointed 
 air. 
 
 The members sit with their hats on, — another his- 
 toric survival. This usage comes down as an assertion 
 of the dignity and sovereignty of the House that it 
 did not have to uncover before any one. As a matter 
 of fact, now only about one-half of the House wear 
 hats at one time, a member relieving himself appa- 
 rently by sometimes wearing and sometimes removing 
 his hat. This custom in this century results in any- 
 thing but an effect of dignity, particularly when the 
 House is half-asleep. In fact, it often gives a rowdy, 
 bar-room appearance or tone to the whole room. It 
 has, perhaps, one advantage. AVheu a noble lord is 
 undergoing a severe attack from the champion of the 
 other side, he simply thrusts both hands away down 
 into his trousers-pockets, jams his broad-rimmed silk 
 hat far down over his eyes, projects his motionless 
 crossed legs stiffly forward, and in this statesmanlike 
 intrenchment no movement or play of his features can 
 betray him. 
 
 In front of the Speaker's table, on a lower desk (not 
 in the diagram), used by the clerks, lies a huge golden 
 club. It is the mace, — a substantive historic survival, 
 and the outward and visible symbol of the power of 
 the House. When the House goes out of session and 
 sits in committee of the whole the mace is removed 
 and slung on rests under the table. 
 
 Whenever a division is taken in the House of Com- 
 mons the members are all told off bodily by a most 
 clumsy proceeding, a custom which evidently comes 
 down from a very ancient and primitive time. All the 
 members get up and leave the floor, deserting the cham- 
 
11 g ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 ber absolutely. They are literally poured out into a 
 hall, where they separate themselves into two lobbies, 
 the ^' ayes" going into one lobby and the "noes" into 
 another. From these lobbies they file out, each lobby 
 pouring out its contents through its own door between 
 a pair of tellers. The vote is thus counted, and there is 
 no other way of taking it if the yeas and nays are called 
 for. Calling for a division, therefore, is a very serious 
 matter in the way of delay. Half a dozen counts may 
 consume a whole afternoon or evening session, especially 
 if any of the members choose to loiter in the hall or 
 lobby. 
 
 By another curious formality, whenever a division 
 was called we " visitors of the House" were removed 
 from our private dock to an outer chamber, and when 
 the ceremony was over brought back again. The 
 reason gravely given for this usage is ^^ lest any stranger 
 might get mixed with the members and counted." 
 During one night I went out thus three times to avoid 
 the danger of being pressed in as a British legislator. 
 
 The description of these arrangements — the ma- 
 chinery of the House of Commons — has consumed so 
 much space, that I postpone to another letter some de- 
 scription of the appearance of the House itself and of 
 its ways and modes of doing business as compared with 
 ours. 
 
 I conclude with some explanation of a human instru- 
 ment of machine politics which we do not have on our 
 side of the water, in just the same shape, at least, — the 
 ^^ whip." 
 
 It is the duty of the ^^ whip" to see that the neces- 
 sary party " vote" is always on hand in case it should be 
 needed either to carry a measure or to prevent an ad- 
 journment. An adjournment can always be had here 
 if there are less than forty members in their seats and 
 any one chooses to call for a count. 
 
 In this land, where parliamentary attendance is so 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 117 
 
 very negligent, the duty of the " whip" is no light one, 
 and requires a large amount of tact, knowledge of so- 
 ciety and the different social relations of the members, 
 prudence, judgment, and sagacity. He must not be 
 nervous and detail the members for duty when they are 
 not needed. He must not be reckless or over-confident 
 or let himself be misled or deceived on the other hand, 
 and be found without any forces when the vote is 
 called. 
 
 Ev^erything over here if once tried and accepted works 
 itself very quickly into shape and becouies an institution. 
 The " whip" is now a recognized and well-established 
 cog-wheel in British machine politics. He is always 
 one of the under-secretaries of the treasury, — I think, 
 the second under-secretary. His real work is not the 
 treasury business, of course, but the party manage- 
 ment and engineering. He has a special office-room in 
 the Parliament building, one of the treasury-rooms, 
 fitted up for his particular uses and work, with tele- 
 graph, messengers, clerks, etc. By courtesy the whip 
 of tl>e Opposition has also a room allowed him in the 
 building, similarly fitted up, to do his party work in, 
 which, to say the least, is very generous of the party 
 in power. However, the taxes of the people pay for 
 both the rooms. 
 
 When the Opposition come into power their whip is, 
 by now-established usage, entitled to the post in the 
 new Ministry of second under-secretary of the treasury, 
 and thus the machine works smoothly on. 
 
 LONDOX. 
 
118 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PARLIAMENT (CONTINUED). 
 
 House of Commons — The Written Constitution and the 
 Unwritten Constitution — Two Systems of Representa- 
 tion — The Representation of Numbers and the Rep- 
 resentation OF Interest — National Construction and 
 National Growth — Society in Parliament. 
 
 While the English Parliament and the Congress of 
 the United States are fashioned after the same general 
 shape, — the former serving, in fact, as the model of the 
 latter, — there are essential and fundamental differences 
 between them that make all hasty comparisons mislead- 
 ing and render the study and practice of English politics 
 something very different from that of American politics. 
 
 Both bodies are divided into two Houses, an upper 
 and a lower ; both bodies are elective (in the English 
 Parliament the seats of the English peers are heredi- 
 tary, but the Scotch and Irish peers are elective) ; both 
 bodies divide the work in much the same way between 
 the two Houses, the lower House controlling the supplies. 
 All these general features of resemblance, however, 
 only serve to hide the radical differences and mislead 
 the superficial observer. 
 
 I shall endeavor briefly, in a running parallel, and in 
 the simplest language possible, to point out the funda- 
 mental and radical divergencies which exist between 
 the Governments of our two great English-speaking 
 countries, as administered by their national legislatures, 
 and to show in passing how these differences illustrate 
 themselves on the floors of Parliament and Congress 
 in diverse customs, habits, and modes of procedure. 
 
 To begin with, the controlling organic difference be- 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. HQ 
 
 tween the two nations is the diiference between a 
 growth and a construction. This difference underlies 
 everything, — government, politics, law, social structure, 
 and e very-day habit and usage. England is a growth, 
 — we are a structure. You see this in everything you 
 look at or consider here, every day and every hour. 
 And wherever there is a diiference in the habits, man- 
 ners, or customs of the two people you can nearly ahvays 
 trace it back to this source and determine it by this as 
 a rule. 
 
 First, of course, this comes out in the constitutions, 
 — the bottom and foundation law of both countries. 
 
 We all know that ours is a pure construction, a plan 
 traced carefully on paper by political draughtsmen for 
 the use of political architects. We know that every 
 word has been carefully studied and every clause and 
 sentence thoughtfully adjusted, — or tried to be adjusted. 
 Every word is plainly written, so that every citizen may 
 know it. Many of them have been made the subject 
 of legal interpretation, — even the punctuation has been 
 so considered. Our Constitution in this feature of ab- 
 solute and entire construction does not differ froui a 
 written contract, an insurance prospectus, or a railway 
 company^s charter. 
 
 Our own Constitution being thus rigidly framed and 
 fixed on paper, we unconsciously assume that all others 
 are also. We hear of the '^ unwritten Constitution" 
 of England and assent to it, but I presume the average 
 American, nine times out of ten, thinks of this phrase 
 loosely as a figure of speech, meaning something, — he 
 does not exactly know what. 
 
 As a matter of literal fact, the Constitution of Eng- 
 land — the fundamental and greatest and determining 
 law of the whole country — is absolutely unwritten. 
 Nor is it anywhere or in any way divided into chapters 
 and sections and division of topics, as ours. Nor is it, 
 of course, indexed. It is a vast body of customs and 
 usages, most of which are rights which have grown up, — 
 
120 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 rights of the crown; rights of the Church and of 
 special Churches; rights of classes; rights of Parlia- 
 ment and of each House ; rights of persons ; rights of 
 colleges, village vestries, abbeys, counties, etc., etc., etc. 
 In the chapter of this volume on Westminster Abbey 
 there is noted a striking illustration of one of these 
 early personal usages grown into a right of national 
 proportions. 
 
 The whole body of these rights and usages which 
 have grown up from year to year, and from century to 
 century, and which are growing yet, is the English Con- 
 stitution. They have never been gathered together, 
 they have never been recorded ; some of them have 
 perhaps never been definitely reduced to rigid words. 
 No one in England would do all this for them if he 
 could, and no one could, for these rights and usages are 
 living things, changing and growing every day, just as 
 our own bodies grow by constant hourly change. 
 
 One can think out for himself how this needs affect 
 the daily life and work of the courts and of the legisla- 
 tures, and of the politicians and the statesmen, and how 
 it must make their work diverge from ours. 
 
 While the English House of Commons and our House 
 of Representatives are both elected by the people, they 
 are elected in an entirely different way, and so as to 
 represent in an entirely different way the body and in- 
 terests of the nation. Here, again, it is growth and 
 construction. 
 
 We choose our representatives to represent purely the 
 principle of numbers or population, — if that is a political 
 principle at all, — each male over twenty-one years of 
 age, and not convicted of infamous crime, be he good 
 or bad, educated or uneducated, cultivated or vulgar, 
 with property or without property, a valuable citizen 
 or a worthless citizen, counting one, and being equally 
 represented in an infinitesimal fraction of the member he 
 sends to Congress. We represent only the individual, 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 121 
 
 not what he is or may have been. We elect our repre- 
 sentatives, too, by a very simple and easy method, and 
 in mathematical proportion to the numbers of the pop- 
 ulation, everything accurately "constructed," like loga- 
 rithms or the tables of a life-insurance company. 
 
 The English system of representation, on the other 
 hand, is very complex and very involved, like the un- 
 folding leaves of bud and flower and tree. It is a growth, 
 various interests and classes having achieved represen- 
 tation from time to time as tliey have forced themselves 
 forward into notice and power. It is also changing 
 every few years, — growing. It could not begin to be 
 described in detail within the limits of a letter, being 
 elaborate, complicated, and not in any way reduced to 
 a simple rule, as ours. There are features in it which 
 seem to us to work great inequalities, — at least if we take 
 our principle of numbers to be the true one. 
 
 Tlie great difference between the two systems, how- 
 ever, may be stated thus : That while we represent di- 
 rectly only the individual, the English system undertakes 
 to represent directly a large number of the higher in- 
 terests of the country. The voter does not vote merely 
 as an individual, but for what he is worth to the com- 
 munity as nearly as that can be ascertained. 
 
 For instance, education is represented when the uni- 
 versities send members to Parliament ; the Church is 
 represented when the bishops sit in the House of Peers ; 
 classes are represented in the same way ; counties are 
 represented when they send members as counties ; 
 boroughs are represented when they send members as 
 boroughs ; and, finally, property is represented in the 
 property qualification, nearly always attached, of the 
 voter. As a matter of fact, too, the army and the navy, 
 great and important institutions and interests in tliis 
 country, are always well represented on the floor of the 
 House, — this by the personal choice of the voters, how- 
 ever, and not by any direct provision. Labor is rep- 
 resented also in the towns which it has built up, — 
 r 11 
 
122 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, — and which send 
 members as towns and not by reason of population. 
 
 It will be seen that the members of Congress and the 
 members of Parliament go to Washington and West- 
 minster in a very different way and represent very 
 different things. 
 
 The duties and labors of the English Parliament are 
 very vast and onerous as compared with those of the 
 Congress at Washington. Our legislative functions 
 have been distributed by construction to the State gov- 
 ernments and other bodies, while in the gradual groioth 
 of centuries all the burdens of the whole nation, and 
 latterly of an empire, have been piled up on Parlia- 
 ment. Our simple distribution of legislative functions 
 is familiar to every one at home. Parliament does, or 
 undertakes to do, everything. It debates on the con- 
 struction of a bridge across the little Thames one day, 
 and the reconstruction of the Indian empire or the con- 
 duct of a foreign war or the peace of Europe the next. 
 In this respect the machine seems to have broken down 
 at present. Everybody, Conservative leader as well as 
 Liberal, admits that the business of the House of Com- 
 mons is at this moment hopelessly in arrears. It is in 
 the condition of a court with an overburdened docket, 
 — back, not for terms, but, as is variously estimated, 
 from ten to fifty years. 
 
 All these great differences — of organic law, of struc- 
 ture, of functions — show themselves clearly, work 
 themselves down in the appearance, in the manners 
 and usages, and in the mode of proceeding of the two 
 great Houses. 
 
 When you first look over the House of Commons 
 and contrast it with our House of Representatives, two 
 things strilvc you at once. You see, first, that the 
 average of years of the representative is higher than 
 with us ; and, second, you find a larger proportion to 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 123 
 
 the membership of distinguished men than with lis, — 
 men of known ability as soldiers, statesmen, thinkers, 
 scholars. 
 
 The first fact is simply the general tendency and 
 result of a more highly organized and mature com- 
 munity. We send older men from Philadelphia and 
 Boston than from the Kickapoo and Oshkosh and 
 such-like districts. 
 
 The second fact — the larger presence of strong men 
 — is directly traceable to the English system of repre- 
 sentation and one of its usages. In the first place, the 
 average grade of the voter in England is higher than 
 with us, which, of course, raises the grade of the rep- 
 resentative. Under the system prevailing now, the 
 very ignorant man or the man without any property 
 interest in his country at all (unless he have a high 
 educational qualification, as on the university lists) is 
 pretty surely excluded from the ballot-box. No Tam- 
 many legions can be marshalled and marched to the 
 polls here; and that is the reason, perhaps, why they 
 march in New York rather than in London or Dublin. 
 
 Then it is the happy usage of an English constitu- 
 ency to select for their representative the ablest and 
 most distinguished man they can get in their kingdom, 
 whether he is born inside the parish lines of the district 
 or out of them. They want to be represented, not to 
 satisfy the claims of Little Peddlington or this or that 
 cross-roads section. For instance, in 1865, Mr. Glad- 
 stone was returned from South Lancashire, and while 
 serving for that district became the leader of the 
 Liberal party, succeeding Palmerston. In 1868, South 
 Lancashire failed to re-elect him. He was not lost, how- 
 ever, either to England or to the party. Greenwich 
 immediately asked the honor of his candidacy, returned 
 him, and in December, 1868, he was prime minister 
 of England. In our country the whole nation would 
 have suffered for the ignorance of South Lancashire. 
 Again, the Marquis of Hartington^ the new leader of 
 
124 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 the Liberals, at the recent election, stood in a different 
 borough from that which sent him to the previous Par- 
 liament. 
 
 This judicious "selection of the fittest" can be made 
 in Pennsylvania under our laws, but it is not the cus- 
 tom, and the petty feeling of local prejudice is against 
 it. The wildest and most barren and meagrely edu- 
 cated district in our mountains can send the most dis- 
 tinguished lawyer or scholar of Philadelphia to repre- 
 sent them in Congress if they want. Had Thaddeus 
 Stevens been rejected by Lancaster, the Chester or the 
 Bradford or any other strong Republican district could 
 have sent him if they had wanted to ; but I suppose 
 they would rather have left the House of Representa- 
 tives in the crisis of war without its great leader than 
 to have done so. 
 
 Another incidental feature of the House which 
 immediately strikes an American is the number of 
 dress-suits scattered over the room, — the men who have 
 been to dinner or are going; for "society" here is 
 always distinctly represented in Parliament. I sup- 
 pose we might say that in our country it is not onjy 
 not represented in Congress, but positively excluded 
 and disfranchised. Here, however, politics is really 
 fashionable. 
 
 The differences of home structure explain this diver- 
 gency again. There is a great deal of loose talk about 
 the duty of American gentlemen going into politics, 
 and the example of English gentlemen devoting their 
 lives and energies to political work is held up as a 
 conclusive argument. Of course, they should, as a duty, 
 but there is no incentive outside of that. There is no 
 analogy at all between the two cases. The English gen- 
 tleman goes into politics because he has his class inter- 
 ests at stake and must defend them. His lands depend 
 on the stability of the present laws, and he must sup- 
 port them. He is "holding the fort" of his position. 
 
 Moreover, he has a distinct representation in Parlia- 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 125 
 
 ment, — his position, his class, his education, liis prop- 
 erty, — while with us nothing is represented but the 
 individual, — his existence as a unit of population. 
 Under the English system not only has "the indi- 
 vidual" a certain representation, but also all that he 
 has been able to add to himself of moral or intellectual 
 worth, or even material wealth. The American gen- 
 tleman in politics, on the contrary, has only the same 
 quality and force as the American blackguard, — one 
 vote. The American scholar in politics has only the 
 same quality and force as the American hoodlum — one 
 vote. The American millionaire in politics has only 
 the same quality and force as the American communist 
 — one vote. 
 
 The bottom reason why the American gentleman, 
 the American scholar, the American property-holder, 
 do not go into politics, and are so infrequently seen in 
 Washington, is because education, cultivation, and prop- 
 erty as such are not represented in our suffrage system, 
 and there is no constituency, therefore, to send these 
 men. We represent only the " individual," and, con- 
 sequently, as a rule, " individuals" go into politics, and 
 "individuals" are sent to Washington. 
 
 The dress-coats, I may mention in concluding, are 
 this year mainly on the Government side, although the 
 Marquis of Hartington, the leader of the Opposition, 
 frequently addresses the House in full dinner-costume. 
 Still, Liberalism in some way seems to tend strongly to 
 sack-coats and felt hats and ready-made clothing. 
 
 LoNDOisr. 
 
 11* 
 
126 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 PARLIAMENT (CONTINUED). 
 
 House of Commons — The Cries oe Parliame:n-t — The School- 
 boy IN Parliament — Pair Play — Individual Independ- 
 ence — Etiquette of the Floor — The Speaker of the 
 House — " Politician" or " Statesman" — Dignity of the 
 House— Decline of Oratory — Speaking in the House 
 OF Commons— Cicero on the Treasury Bench — The 
 Agent. 
 
 I HAVE mentioned the school-boy atmosphere which 
 often marks the House of Commons. 
 
 English life, or at least the life of the upper, and so 
 far controlling, classes, begins at the public schools — of 
 which Eton and Rugby are examples familiar to us — 
 and receives there an impress which never leaves it. 
 Looking over the floor of either House of Parliament, 
 you can see there the Eton boy and the university man 
 all the time. They are the foundation of English pub- 
 lic life, not merely intellectual, but moraL 
 
 There is no more forcible illustration of the surviving 
 force of this boy-education than the cries of Parliament, 
 which sound so strangely to a foreigner, but which he 
 soon sees are a real part of the process of legislation, 
 just as regular and just as effective as the speech- 
 making. Sometimes I thought them more so. These 
 cries, so unusual to our ears, are a kind of low inter- 
 mittent chorus Avith which the house at times accompa- 
 nies the speaker, each political section, '^ right'' and 
 " left,'^ " right above the gangway," "left above the 
 gangway," etc., bearing its part. Unlike the Greek 
 chorus, this accompaniment is not used to explain the 
 plot of the speaker, but it does serve admirably to ex- 
 plain the effect of the speech on the audience and on 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 127 
 
 each part of it. Usually, of course, these cries are 
 confiued to staccato explosions of dissent or approba- 
 tion at the ends of sentences or at the point of some 
 startling facts or figures. Sometimes, however, a 
 speaker is accompanied from beginning to end with a 
 kind of monotonous chant, rising, swelling, or sinking 
 from time to time and sung in two or more parts. Mr. 
 Edward Jenkins, who is especially distasteful to the 
 Conservativeis, generally speaks to music of this kind. 
 
 These cries are exactly such as might be heard from 
 a school-room of boys anxious to put down a speaker, 
 who by a natural reaction is supported in his turn by 
 his friends, who come up to his aid with an opposing 
 volume of sounds. Singularly enough, these sounds 
 are often — generally, I think — given more or less fur- 
 tively. You see before you a body of dignified, rather 
 elderly gentlemen ; you know them to be perhaps the 
 strongest legislative body in the world ; you see among 
 them some of tlie greatest thinkers, writers, and states- 
 men of the time ; you recognize some of England's no- 
 blemen of high rank ; some gallant officers of her army, 
 perhaps an admiral, too, or distinguished author ; sud- 
 denly you hear a low, rising swell of sound that carries 
 you back to your callow days of spelling-books and pop- 
 corn and mint-stick candy, — 0-o-o-o-o-h ; Ou-oo-oo-oo ; 
 Ah-a-a-a ; Whoo-whoo-wh ; Eeh-eeh-eeh-eh ; Boo- 
 00-00 ; Err-r-r-r; Oh-ah-ooh-bah ; Umm-m-m-m-m; 
 Ay-ay-ay, — all the vowel-sounds of the alphabet with 
 every conceivable intonation and form of expression. 
 It is these old gentlemen assisting in the making of a 
 law of England. 
 
 Watching closer, you will see, perhaps, a nervous 
 sexagenarian member sitting squarely up in his seat 
 and looking straight into the eyes of the speaker wdtli a 
 severely-dissenting frown. His stern, grave features 
 never move, but from his open mouth your ears detect 
 a steadily-flowing stream of guttural bass. Another 
 one intones openly his chant of derision or dissent. 
 
128 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 You see hats go up before mouths, heads turned away, 
 a legislator or two suspiciously close behind a column, 
 and other venerable but franker old gentlemen in boy- 
 ish abandon giving way openly to the jollities of the 
 hour. Then up from the other side comes a couuter- 
 wave, bearing on its swell the sense of injury and a 
 protest, — indignation and the determination to stand by 
 its spokesman ; and so this battle, which is not on 
 " the order of the day,'^ and which is not recorded in 
 the next morning's papers, wages from night to night. 
 
 Some members, by practice and experience, perhaps 
 by constitutional adaptation or perhaps from having 
 worked hai'd at school, attain great proficiency and 
 ability in this mode of parliamentary tactics. One 
 evening two portly old legislators with broad, cheery 
 faces, white whiskers, and generally a fine, responsible, 
 conservative air, who sat for the moment on the bench 
 just in front of mine, opened fire at the same time, 
 •evidently by preconcert. Not a feature moved ; their 
 lips were just apart and apparently in rest; the bland, 
 kindly expression of countenance never changed, but 
 from these stout, smooth-shaven throats a strong volume 
 of derisive sound flowed steadily and in smooth cur- 
 rent, without a waver or break, for at least some min- 
 utes, a chorus sufficient to disconcert a pretty self-reliant 
 speaker, the more so from its being so well masked 
 and conveying a mysterious opposition. 
 
 The custom has some practical uses. Although the 
 sounds are mostly simple vowel-notes, you soon learn 
 to understand their meaning, and are able to mark the 
 immediate effect of a speech in all parts of the house. 
 It is, in fact, an almost instantaneous and continuous 
 vote, enabling the speaker and his friends or foes to 
 follow the effect of his argument from moment to mo- 
 ment. Where there is a political topography of the 
 floor, and the House sits in party platoons, as it does 
 here, the feeling and condition of the body at any given 
 moment are very clearly traceable in this way. 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 129 
 
 While these school-room cries are rather a boyish 
 kind of warfare, they are generally used with a boy's 
 sense of candor, fair dealing, and fair play. They seem 
 to be largely the spontaneous utterance of individual 
 opinion, and not a mere partisan game, directed and 
 organized. The cry '^Oh!'^ is the general note used 
 to express derision, disapprobation, and opposition ; 
 " Hear V^ to express support, sympathy, or to call es- 
 pecial attention to any fact or opinion. " Hear !'^ might 
 be called a kind of emphasis underlining contributed 
 by the audience. It is also used ironically at times. 
 The several cries frequently greeted a speaker from all 
 sections of the house at one time, showing that they 
 were individual and not mere responses. I have more 
 than once seen a member while speaking applauded 
 from the opposite side of the house, and I have also 
 seen derisive cries on either side silenced by counter 
 cries from the same side. 
 
 This sense of fairness on the floor of Parliament, 
 and aversion to partisan tactics, is a marked feature. 
 The individual legislator has full freedom, and he is 
 often allowed even to abuse it rather than that the right 
 of free speech should suifer in his person. There is no 
 " previous question" in the House in the sense of our 
 rule, and I have heard members talk platitudes far into 
 the morning and repeat each other wearily without re- 
 buke or remonstrance, although the floor must have had 
 its patience well worn out. Certainly the foreign visit- 
 ors had. The chairman, too, allows the widest latitude 
 in speaking to the question. This generous worship of 
 fair play will be recognized as a well-known British 
 school-boy trait. 
 
 I never saw it violated in the House save on an oc- 
 casion when Mr. Edward Jenkins arose to speak on the 
 " flogging-in-the-army" debate. Then the entire Con- 
 servative side — gray whiskers, bald-heads, dress-suits, 
 army and navy officers, lords, statesmen, white hairs 
 and all — set up a concerted symphony of disturbance 
 
130 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 entirely drowning his voice. Mr. Jenkins faced the in- 
 decorous storm with great composure, speaking for four 
 or five minuteS; — the usual length of the speeches then 
 being made, — although he was entirely unheard from 
 beginning to end, an occasional detached word, sentences 
 apart, being the only sound intelligible. His compo- 
 sure, as I afterwards learned, was perhaps like that of 
 the eels which got used to be skinned, as he for some 
 time past has always spoken under such circumstances. 
 This gentleman, better known in the United States as 
 " Ginx's Baby," has made himself especially obnoxious 
 to the Conservatives, who allege that his assaults on the 
 Government and its officials have been ungentlemanly 
 and offensive, and placed him outside of the pale of gen- 
 tlemen. Mr. Jenkins's friends, on the other hand, claim 
 that all his movements have been legitimate and neces- 
 sary ; that some of the abuses of English administrgf- 
 tion are so involved with vested interests and hereditary 
 claims that it is impossible to attack them without seem- 
 ing to become personal. The question is therefore a 
 debatable one inside of the House, and this treatment of 
 Mr. Jenkins to an American view appears indefensible 
 and hardly worthy of a great party. It is, in a sense, 
 however, a strong tribute to Mr. Jenkins's power, as it 
 proves that he has struck a blow or blows somewhere 
 where they have hurt. 
 
 The sibilant " hiss" of popular assemblies is, I be- 
 lieve, used very little or not at all in Parliament. I do 
 not recall hearing it. 
 
 In addition to this admonitory refrain of dissent or 
 assent, members are constantly subjected to another 
 species of boyish training by " calls." Does a speaker 
 indulge in some loose assertion, some wild generalization 
 or inexact statement of fact, he is immediately reined 
 up with sharp calls of "Date?" "Date?" "]N"ame?" 
 " Name ?" " When ?" " Where ?" " Time ?" " Place ?" 
 "Year?" "Day?" or positive cries of "No!" "No!" 
 
PARLIAMENT : THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 131 
 
 if any one wishes to personally traverse his allegations. 
 The educational influence of this usage is very great 
 and very valuable. Careless declamation, vague rhet- 
 oric, cowardly innuendo, rapidly shrink under this treat- 
 ment. There is little speaking for effect in the House 
 of Commons : a man must speak to the facts. There 
 is no chance, either, under this rule of indulging in the 
 unmanly habit of making loose and sweeping charges 
 in the expectation that they will go to the country un- 
 answered and do their work before an answer can come. 
 Nor is it possible, under this regimen, to make foolish 
 speeches and vainglorious threats to be read at home by 
 your constituency, safe in the sure knowledge that none 
 of your fellow-members will be silly enough to notice 
 them. In short, in these res|)ects the floor of the House 
 of Commons is very much like a ring in a boys' school- 
 ground. Any boy may fight in it, but he must strike 
 fair. 
 
 It need hardly be added that these habits conduce to 
 the habitual display of great personal independence on 
 the part of the members. The personal independence 
 of the English politician, his ready assertion of his in- 
 dividuality, is a marked fact which soon strikes the 
 political observer from America accustomed to the 
 ready subserviency and machine drill of our own men 
 of this class. The English political leader starts, as a 
 rule, with social position, education, and an inherited in- 
 come. He is not dependent on his political exertions, 
 therefore, either for his standing in his community or 
 for his means of livelihood, and has, besides, social and 
 intellectual resources within himself which preclude the 
 need of his seeking occupation or mental activity in 
 politics. Fortunate thus in his triple armor, he need 
 never sacrifice his individual opinions or his self-respect 
 under the coercion of circumstances. So far, happily 
 for England, the professional politician — the man who 
 makes his living by politics — has not ap})eared, but I 
 fear, with the social transition in progress, he is coming. 
 
132 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 There are, of course, men who will cringe and crawl 
 under any circumstances, and England has her share 
 of them, but as a class her public men are inde- 
 pendent and courageous in the expression of individual 
 opinion to an extent which contrasts most happily with 
 the sad reverse in our own country. They are so by 
 reason of their education and assured social position. 
 I heard the Marquis of Hartington, the Liberal leader, 
 one night in the House, and from the leaders' bench, 
 make a speech disclaiming and rebuking the action of 
 a section of his party which I feel sure no leader in our 
 House would dare to make. And it created no especial 
 surprise or commotion here. It seemed to be expected 
 that Lord Hartington would do it, — that he owed it to 
 himself. He owed it as a leader. With us, unfortu- 
 nately, the leadership of a party too often consists in the 
 collective sense of .the average and commonplace ma- 
 jority of its membership. 
 
 There is much about the landed system of Great 
 Britain — the " great-families'^ system, based on primo- 
 geniture and entail — which a republican cannot but 
 consider bad for the state and for the human indi- 
 vidual, but this great tribute must be paid to it, — that 
 it does secure independent and educated politicians for 
 the administration of the affairs of state. The syco- 
 phancy of England so far is social rather than political, 
 and as such comparatively harmless to the state. 
 
 In fact, the very use of words shows the difference 
 in the moral grade of the two countries on this point. 
 '^ Politician,'' a depreciated word with us, is here an 
 honorable one. It means here about wdiat ^^ statesman" 
 means with us in the popular acceptation and use, — i.e., 
 one who administers public affairs as a trust. Uncon- 
 sciously, with us politician has come to mean one who 
 is working for his own personal ends, and we seek in 
 the word statesman to express some higher conception. 
 People may not consciously acknowledge this, but I 
 believe any fair man will admit that when it is ordi- 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 133 
 
 narily said of any one in our land, "X is going into 
 politics/^ it means that "X'^ is beginning to look for 
 personal political employment. Politics means work- 
 ing for office. Statesmanship means government or 
 the administration of the public interests. Now, the 
 English popular mind does not so degrade its political 
 men as yet. Politics means, in popular acceptation, 
 the administration of the affiiirs of state, and politicians 
 the men who administer them. 
 
 In fact, the popular sense of propriety does not 
 admit that a politician — a member of the House, for 
 instance — should busy himself about his election. The 
 machinery of election, the science of elections, are 
 something below the legislator, and which he must not 
 touch. I do not mean to say that many members of 
 Parliament do not busy themselves most earnestly 
 about their elections and watch with most efficient care 
 the whole process, but they must do it within-doors, 
 with carefully-concealed hand, and not ostentatiously 
 and so as to offend the conventional and traditional 
 feeling of their constituency in this matter. Votes, 
 voting, and the active direction of the canvass must 
 be left to ^' the agent.'' 
 
 While the beggarly seating of the House of Com- 
 mons, its bovish cries, and the wearins; of hats by the 
 members give an undignified and almost indecorous 
 air to its exterior, it is at bottom a most dignified and 
 substantial body. The sense of the House of its own 
 dignity is something far surpassing anything of the 
 kind known in our Cono^ress. It is an historic evolu- 
 tion. The House of Commons represents, and means, 
 and is, " the people of England.'' It never forgets that. 
 Every privilege it has has been wrested from reluctant 
 power. They have come at long intervals, — generations 
 apart. Many of them have been paid for with blood, 
 offered on the scaffold and shed in battle. Many of 
 them have cost life and property, long years of merci- 
 
 12 
 
134 ENGLISH POLTTICS. 
 
 less imprisonment, and cruel confiscation. No wonder 
 that this treasure, this trust for the nation, is so sacredly 
 and jealously guarded. Every oifence against the 
 dignity of the House from without or within is an 
 assault on the liberties of En2;land. Hence the ex- 
 treme sensitiveness of the Englishman to the rights of 
 the House, and the honest feeling that an attempt to 
 coerce or bribe a member is the highest kind of treason 
 to the people. For instance, this month a citizen, a 
 lawyer-lobbyist, was committed to the tower of West- 
 minster by Parliament for merely saying that he could 
 influence a parliamentary committee. It was generally 
 admitted that he did not believe that he could do so, 
 and that he lied to his client when he said so, but Par- 
 liament considered its honor involved by such a state- 
 ment even from a comparatively irresponsible man, 
 and he went to prison by a unanimous vote of the 
 House, the leaders of both parties vying with one 
 another to punish the impertinent falsehood. I was 
 present when the motion for commitment was made. 
 The facts having been established by a report of a 
 select committee, there was no debate at all, the 
 House seeming to disdain to soil its hands with such a 
 discussion, and the whole affair was a matter of only a 
 few moments. 
 
 In previous letters I noted several traditional usages 
 and observances which illustrate how zealously, even 
 in petty things, the House guards its dignity and 
 privileges. 
 
 There are also some habits and traditional formulae 
 of speech which, although seemingly of small moment 
 in themselves, act as efficient mechanical aids in pre- 
 serving the dignity of official or political intercourse. 
 Names are never used. One member always speaks 
 of another as "the honorable gentleman and member 
 
 from ." This is inexorable, and is only the first 
 
 step. All members are " honorable gentlemen,'^ and 
 must be addressed as such. If they are or have been 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 135 
 
 in the Ministry, they must be addressed as " the right 
 honorable gentlemen." If a member is also a lawyer, 
 he must be addressed as " the honorable and learned 
 gentleman." If he has served in the army or navy, he 
 is addressed as " the honorable and gallant gentleman." 
 If he is, further, a peer, he is to be addressed as " the 
 honorable gentleman" or " right honorable gentleman 
 and noble lord," or " most noble lord" if his rank is 
 high enough. A member may readily be a " right 
 honorable and gallant gentleman and noble lord," and, 
 if he is, must be so addressed every time he is spoken 
 to or of on the floor. 
 
 This usage, although a mechanical form, acts as an 
 effectual barrier to indecorous or impertinent familiarity 
 or to bad manners, which may be unintentional, the 
 unfortunate heritage of early vulgarity. It would be 
 impossible, for instance, under this rule for one states- 
 man to speak of another as Johnny Sherman, or Andy 
 Johnson, or Abe Lincoln, or Tom Corwin, or Zach 
 Chandler. The habits of good society thus acquired 
 in the House, if not attained before, are carried on to 
 the stump, — or hustings, as they say here, — where the 
 language of the speakers is, with rare exceptions, that 
 of gentlemen. 
 
 Every idea in England must have a personal em- 
 bodiment or conception. She is much nearer the '4dol" 
 stage of thought than we. She believes in a personal 
 sovereign as necessary to localize and animate the na- 
 tional sense of loyalty. This sovereign, too, must have 
 a golden crown and a sceptre like any monarch in 
 Afghanistan or Persia or Zululand or the fifth cen- 
 tury. She believes that her judges need robes and wigs 
 to express the majesty of the law, invisible here, but 
 which is so clearly visible in the pine-table court-rooms 
 of the backwoods of Pennsylvania and Minnesota. 
 
 So the power and dignity and authority of the House 
 of Commons centre in the person of the Speaker. He 
 
136 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 sums up in his official presence centuries of history. 
 And in this case there is a dramatic and historical pro- 
 priety in the political nimbus which encircles his figure. 
 He it was that for hundreds of years ^vas first arrested 
 when the crown moved against the people of England. 
 He it was who rotted in the dungeon and died on the 
 scaffold. And he represents to-day a popular strength 
 and is looked up to with a respect and kind of loyalty 
 which in no way attaches to the office in our country. 
 
 His authority inside the House is correspondingly 
 respected. His slightest movement seemed to command 
 attention and respect. The rude accessory of the ham- 
 mer is entirely unneeded. I listened to one debate 
 which Englishmen of long parliamentary experience 
 seemed to think almost unprecedented in its heat and 
 disorder, and one distinguished member frankly ex- 
 pressed his mortification that I should witness the same 
 and carry it away as an impression of the British 
 Parliament. Feeling certainly ran high, although 
 the language was always guarded and, compared with 
 our legislative emeutes, moderate. The Irish members, 
 however, were openly engaged in the work of " ob- 
 struction," and, with their English friends aiding and 
 abetting, the night was far spent, and the situation was 
 unquestionably trying. The speaking was brief, but 
 quick and spirited, and the floor always contested, half 
 a dozen or more members often striving for it at once. 
 In all this evening the Speaker's decisions — which were 
 manifestly impartial and honest — were never contested, 
 and when a surge of feeling or cries seemed about to 
 overwhelm the room and sweep away everything, a 
 simple wave of his hand without moving from his seat 
 instantly calmed the. rising storm and restored tran- 
 quillity and order. The noisy pounding of a hammer 
 or the frantic ringing of a bell, as in Italy or France, 
 would be resented in Westminster. 
 
 The Speaker, Mr. Brand, it is fair to say, is, however, 
 an exceptionably able man. He is a Liberal, and his 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 137 
 
 discharge of liis office under the former administration 
 Avas so acce})tabie and satisfactory that he was re-elected 
 to his position by the new Conservative House, — by a 
 unanimous vote, in fact, I think. This evidences a 
 very marked contrast between politics in England and 
 America. 
 
 The salary of the Speaker of the House is £5000, 
 about $25,000. The members receive no salary for 
 their services, or compensation of any kind in money. 
 
 There is no system of standing committees in the 
 House, as with us, nor is there any call of the previous 
 question, in the sense of our use of it. 
 
 The most marked difference, however, by all odds 
 between the legislatures of the two countries is in the 
 style of speaking and general conduct of business, — the 
 demonstrative "oration'^ on our side and the quiet, 
 business-like statement of a few sentences here. It is 
 commonly known, I suppose, that there is no such 
 thing as " oratory^^ in Parliament, in either House. 
 No member ever " makes a speech^' in the conventional 
 sense of that phrase, as known with us. Some of the 
 usages I have described are clearly incompatible with 
 the traditional custom of forensic declamation or pomp- 
 ous and pretentious argument, and are sufficient to ac- 
 count for its absence. Many writers ascribe the death 
 of oratory in the House to the uncomfortable benches 
 and limited accommodations, — a clearly superficial and 
 thoughtless view, as in the palmy oratorical days of 
 Pitt and Burke the accommodations were no better, and 
 most likely worse, especially in the auxiliary point of 
 retiring-rooms, wash-rooms, closets, etc. 
 
 The cause of the decline of forensic declamation is 
 deeper and historical. The days of the Pitts and of 
 Fox and of Burke are gone forever in England, be- 
 cause she is too far advanced in thought and education. 
 Impassioned oratory, I take it, is an ingredient of im- 
 mature civilization and dies before a higher condition 
 
138 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 of general education. Demosthenes was possible only 
 under the crude and simple conditions of Greek society. 
 Cicero and the brilliant school of contemporary orators 
 were the product of a slavocratic republic, where the 
 mass of the people were unlearned and untaught. 
 Chrysostom spoke to congregations of Christian con- 
 verts densely ignorant and rude in their manners, as 
 his own reproofs of them show. When Bossuet and 
 Bourdeloue swayed all France with emotion and pas- 
 sion, common France was in a state of mental and re- 
 ligious tutelage. England, when she was proud of 
 Pitt and Fox and Burke,, had a class of country gen- 
 tlemen she will never be proud of as men of intelli- 
 gence and intellectual calibre, whatever else may have 
 been their merits. Even Clay and Webster represent 
 a very crude and provisional stage of civilization in our 
 own country, while Patrick Henry and the Revolution- 
 ary orators were the outcome of our cradle-hours. The 
 rule holds good in the United States even at this mo- 
 ment. Wherever civilization is highest and scholarship 
 compact and influential, there the pyrotechnic " orator'^ 
 flickers out. The ^' mountain eagles'^ of our Alle- 
 ghenies and Cordilleras, the ^' silver-tongued clarions'' 
 who thrill courts and stump and legislatures on the 
 prairies or in the Mississippi bottom, cut a sorry figure 
 if ever they get before the Supreme Court of the United 
 States or of any Eastern State. Oratory is, in fact, 
 only a means of impressing simple or half-educated 
 people which fails when the people get beyond that 
 way of receiving impressions. The civilized world of 
 to-day has pronounced against it. Bismarck declares 
 parliamentary oratory to be " a mischief.'' England 
 suppressed it a generation ago, and we are going in the 
 same direction. 
 
 The speaking in the House of Commons to-day is 
 extremely severe and simple. Members usually speak 
 only from three to five minutes even on the most im- 
 portant subjects, and their language is studied in its 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 139 
 
 simplicity and avoidance of rhetoric. Of course there 
 are times when both the occasion and tlie matter de- 
 mand elaborate and more lengthy treatment and a 
 minister or member may sj^eak for an hour or hours, 
 but this is very rare. The habitual mode is for mem- 
 bers to rise only for a few moments, delivering them- 
 selves straight to the point in a rather conversational 
 style, but every word weighed, guarded, and carefully 
 chosen, very much as an experienced merchant might 
 speak in making a contract. The British legislator has 
 a sense of personal responsibility for every worJ uttered 
 on the floor which does not exist in our legislative 
 bodies at all. In fact, the conduct of business in Par- 
 liament resembles rather the consultation of responsible 
 merchants in a countino^-room or the meetino^of a small 
 board of railway directors than anything like our pop- 
 ular conception of a legislative discussion. The usage 
 of " interrogating the Ministry'' also leads directly both 
 to brevity, a conversational style, and caution and preci- 
 sion in the selection of words. 
 
 The substance of parliamentary speech is generally 
 substantial and good, and the scene w^ould be impressive 
 and dignified were not the whole effect marred by a hesi- 
 tation and labored awkwardness in speaking which, if it 
 is not affectation, has all the appearance of it. But 
 whether an affectation or an infirmity, it is a serious 
 blemish. There is observable throuo^hout all the Eno^- 
 lish higher classes a cultivated diffidence and tendency to 
 self-depreciation, which is perhaps in the start a recoil 
 from the self-assertion and pretension of the vulgar and 
 new-made classes. It has been carried, however, to an 
 extreme which verges on effeminacy, if it is not that 
 already. This mannerism of halting and hawing is its 
 development on the rostrum, and it effectually disposes 
 of all forensic grace and a good deal of forensic effi- 
 ciency. The far remove of the British Parliament 
 from all the traditions of the forum is best illustrated 
 by reporting one of Cicero's speeches as it would be 
 
X40 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 delivered from the treasury bench to-day : Quousque 
 — ah — tandem — ah-a-abutere, — Catilina — hem-m-m — 
 patieniia, n-nostraf Quamdiu nos etiam — haw-aw — 
 furor — hem — haio — ah-h-h. Yet this is the exact way 
 in which a British legislator grapples with a question of 
 state, and to get the force of what he is saying you have 
 to disabuse your mind absolutely of the vice and un- 
 gracefulness of its delivery. 
 
 Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the general impres- 
 sion made by the House of Commons when compared 
 with the leading legislative bodies of the world is good. 
 Its dignity is well sustained, and there is a thorough and 
 conscious power in the membership which inspires con- 
 fidence. There is no attempt at producing effects or 
 making a personal display, and the body keeps pretty 
 steadily to the work in hand, although, for reasons 
 already mentioned, it is not either skilful or successful 
 in producing results. The work of legislation is fear- 
 fully behind, by common admission. It is to the high 
 credit of the membership, however, to be able to say 
 when you look over the floor and listen to it you feel a 
 sense of its integrity. You believe that the bulk of the 
 body is honestly at work trying to make laws, — not 
 talking to the distant county of Buncombe or manu- 
 facturing issues and records for the next campaign. 
 
 In fact, legislation — the administration of public 
 affairs — here is one thing, the function of a gentleman, 
 and getting elected is another thing, and public opinion 
 so far jealously enforces their division. That is at least 
 the traditional feeling, which as yet the politician dare 
 not offend. He must not conduct his campaign per- 
 sonally, but through an agent. 
 
 Hence has arisen in English political life " the agent," 
 — a distinctive cog-wheel in the political machine to 
 which we have no direct equivalent. The agent is a 
 kind of political attorney who has made votes and the 
 science of voting a study. He has the records of many 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 141 
 
 elections for many years. All elections here are very 
 local, — in boroughs, counties, universities, or some re- 
 stricted limits. The agent knows t*lie past history of 
 all these votes and the characteristics of the sections. 
 He can calculate political " probabilities'' and give 
 estimates, and, having this fund of special knowledge 
 and this special bent of mind, he is regularly employed 
 by the candidates to control their campaign and is paid 
 in money for this service. The nominee is presumed 
 at least to be above this kind of work. Thus votes and 
 voting are one thing here, and politics — i.e., statesman- 
 ship — is another, and the man of votes cannot presume 
 to be the politician. «' 
 
 This distinction is severely maintained clear down 
 to comparatively minute details. For instance, paid 
 canvassers, clerks, managers, or watchers, under an act 
 of 1867, are not allowed to be polled, and lose their 
 votes by reason of the nature of their occupation. 
 
 It is needed to be said, greatly to their credit, that 
 the English laws in their provisions for guarding tlie 
 integrity of the polls are veiy strict. Gratuitous re- 
 freshments in all forms have long been forbidden. 
 Charities distributed in a borough by a man who after- 
 wards contested it have been held to be corruption. 
 This rule, although its intent is honorable, might at 
 times work great hardships both to the poor and to 
 liberal gentlemen. 
 
 Looking over the House of Commons, even a stranger 
 can see clear evidence of great changes at work, for 
 under the healthy law of the British Constitution the 
 House must change with the changing social structure 
 of the kingdom. And these changes follow our lead. 
 
 London. 
 
142 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 CHAPTER Xyi. 
 
 PARLIAMENT (CONTINUED). 
 The House op Lords — A Historic Survival — The Throne 
 
 OF ElSTGLAlSTD — SAILING OF THE " MAYFLOWER." 
 
 The House of Lords has less interest for an Ameri- 
 can than the Commons, for it is a lost form in the ma- 
 chinery of government. Like our electoral colleges, 
 the life has gone out of it, and only the shell remains; 
 but it is a very handsome shell. The hall itself is a 
 gorgeous flood of gold and color flushed with soft light 
 and walled in with Gothic oak and stained-glass win- 
 dows. Around the wall in solemn niches stand the 
 statues of the bold barons of Runnymede. The stal- 
 wart barons of England, however, have long since 
 abandoned this floor. 
 
 There is no special difficulty in seeing a session of 
 the House of Lords, as the order of any peer will 
 admit one, and not merely to a caged gallery, but to 
 very good seats just in the rear of the floor and on a 
 level with it. From here one can see all that is to be 
 seen, which, in the way of parliamentary procedure, is 
 not much, and what there is of it is dull and spiritless. 
 
 As the American visitor walks through the peers' 
 corridor on his way to that portion of Westminster 
 Hall which contains the chamber of the House of 
 Lords, he experiences for a moment the slight shock 
 of a complimentary sensation in seeing as one of 
 the eight great frescos of the walls "The Sailing of 
 the Mayflower," a companion-piece to the interminable 
 " Landing of the Pilgrims," which forever stares one 
 in the face from bank-notes and legislative halls 
 throughout all the confines of the United States. But 
 
PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 14,3 
 
 it certainly makes one feel suddenly at home, and with 
 even a pride of kinship in the place, to find the English 
 end of the story told with such honor, and almost at 
 the footsteps of the throne. An odd sight which strikes 
 one passing through the lobby or vestibule to the floor, 
 quite a small and cramped chamber, is a number of 
 rows of common pegs, such as might be in the closet 
 of a boys' scliool-room, but over each peg the name of 
 a peer of England, — all the dukes and earls and barons. 
 These pegs are crowded close together, and are for the 
 hats and coats of the members, — a peg to a peer. The 
 provision is not a whit better than that of many a com- 
 mon school-house in our land to which barefoot boys 
 come with ragged felts and perhaps no coat at all, but 
 it is all there is for these lords, who drive up to the 
 door with a brace of footmen, perhaps, and from a 
 palace. The custom, however, has some historic sanc- 
 tion, and they stick to it. It will probably last as long 
 as the House of Lords. 
 
 Inside of the main hall the seating and general ap- 
 pearance of the interior are about tlie same as those of 
 the House of Commons. At the head of the room, 
 however, where the Speaker's desk would be in our 
 Senate chamber, you see " the throne of England." 
 You feel an absurd sense of suffering a disilkision when 
 you see only a chair, — a very profound achievement 
 of upholstery, no doubt, but still a chair. The Ameri- 
 can republican knows in his heart that a tlirone must 
 be a chair; still, as it is associated in his mind with fairy 
 tales and myths and all the wonders of childhood, it 
 has grown into something grand and stately and im- 
 pressive, and he suffers a pang to find it only a j^iece 
 of furniture replaceable from any cabinet-shop. The 
 throne is one of those things which, on the whole, it is 
 best not to see. When it is resolved into a common- 
 place chair there is a shattering of faith as sad as when 
 the beanpole of Jack the Giant-Killer vanishes into 
 the thin cold air of experience and science. In front of 
 
144 ' ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 the tlirone some little distance, and at its foot, is the cele- 
 brated "woolsack/^ It is a capacious, heavily-cushioned 
 footstool. On this sits the Lord Chancellor of England, 
 who presides over the sessions of the House of Lords. 
 
 By the taw and theory of the English government, 
 the House of Lords is something more than a co-ordi- 
 nate body of the national legislature, like our Senate. 
 It has an absolute veto on all legislation by the House 
 of Commons. Not only is this power utterly unused, 
 but it has ceased even to deter. It will never be 
 claimed. Politically, the House of Lords has ceased 
 to exist, its functions in the government having passed 
 to the Cabinet, or Ministry, which is practically' the 
 Upper House. Even the family influence of the peers, 
 to yield political results in this day, must be wielded 
 through the House of Commons. 
 
 As a historical picture, however, the House of Lords 
 still survives in good condition. A nominal number 
 of peers attend its daily sessions during Parliament 
 season, and mechanically pass all th^ bills and go 
 through all the forms of legislation. On state occa- 
 sions this venerable relic solemnly "" summons'^ the lower 
 House into its presence, and the House comes. The 
 crimsoned hall, too, serves as a splendid stage, where 
 the queen occasionally gives a grand spectacular political 
 tableau somethino; like one of the fforareous relit>;ious func- 
 tions you see at intervals in the great churches of Rome. 
 
 It is worth while dropping in on the House of Lords 
 as often as possible just to study the personnel of the 
 body, and see that type of man which a privileged 
 class, carefully tended for centuries, and draining the 
 blood and soil of the land, — its education and culture 
 and power and wealth,— evolves. That is about all, 
 although it is a good deal. You will see nothing of 
 debate or action in it, learn nothing of politics. The 
 House of Lords in our day is an interesting social 
 study, -but it has ceased to be a political one, save as an 
 antique or remain. 
 
FOREIGN SERVICE. 145 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FOEEIGN SERVICE. 
 
 The Old Ambassador and the New — A Newspaper Pleni- 
 potentiary — The Old-World Ambassador without Uses 
 IN THE Political Machinery of the New — Educational 
 Functions op the Service — How Best to Conserve it — 
 
 KOTATION on the DIPLOMATIC LiST — TENDENCY OF THE EU- 
 ROPEAN Life to De-Americanizk the Kepublican Citi- 
 zen. 
 
 It is one of the anomalies of the present transition 
 state of society from old ideas and usages to newer ones 
 that, while our government sends fifteen ministers to 
 Europe at salaries of from $7500 to $17,500, to repre- 
 sent us and, speak for us, the incessant, effective repre- 
 sentation is done by a modest journalist in Philadelphia, 
 Mr. Joel Cook, the American correspondent of the Lon- 
 don Times, whose voice is heard every day, not only in 
 one but in all the courts of Europe, and not only by 
 the official governments, but by the people. He is by 
 far the most omnipresent and influential envoy extraor- 
 dinary that has ever gone from this country. 
 
 While the London Times has not the circulation of 
 many of the papers of Europe, it has a weight and in- 
 fluence which none of them have. It is taken by every 
 foreign minister of all countries, and in all countries its 
 dispatches are accredited as authority. They are quoted 
 in Parliament and at the dinner-tables and official desks 
 of ambassadors. What Europe at this time from day 
 to day thinks of America and the American people is 
 decided, not by the communications of our diplomatic 
 force, but by what says the London Times. 
 
 There is a grave and growing doubt in the public 
 
 mind whether our foreign or diplomatic service is worth 
 
 its cost to the republic since the introduction of ocean 
 Q k 13 
 
146 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 cables and newspaper correspondence and the absolute 
 adoption of the Monroe doctrine as an article of popular 
 political faith. A look over the ground I think justi- 
 fies the conclusion that it has little meaning at all for 
 us any more in the old sense^ but that possibly it can 
 still be put to better and higher uses than it has ever 
 served, and that without change of form. It is better 
 perhaps for the present to let the shell of the old insti- 
 tution remain, but to gradually give to the service itself 
 a new character and function. 
 
 ^^ The ambassador'^ is the survival of a European 
 condition of society which never was transferred here. 
 His functions belong to a machinery of government 
 which never was put in motion on this continent. His 
 work, in the natural revolution of our new social growth, 
 has been taken up and is discharged on a larger scale by 
 a new personage, — the special correspondent. 
 
 Prince Metternich, in his gossippy memories of Old- 
 World and old-fashioned diplomacy, just given to print 
 by his son, relates that he once asked a brother ambas- 
 sador " how he contrived to have a letter to send to 
 London every post day." There were two a week. 
 
 " You will see no difficulty in it when I tell you my 
 secret. If anything comes to my knowledge that may 
 interest my government, I tell it; if not, I invent my 
 news, and contradict it by the next courier." 
 
 Now, that is exactly the trick of ih^ lazy or unrelia- 
 ble newspaper correspondent of our time ; but it illus- 
 trates forcibly how exactly one of the functions of the 
 old ambassador has devolved upon the new international 
 envoy. The ambassador reported to his government 
 all that he could of the social and political movements 
 in foreign countries ; the correspondent reports exactly 
 the same, only a thousand times more fully, to the 
 people, which is our government. 
 
 The Old- World ambassador had three grand functions 
 which were the meaning of his office and the reason of 
 his being : 
 
FOREIGN SERVICE. 147 
 
 J[. To represent in his person the relations, whatever 
 they were, which existed between his own Government 
 and the Government to which lie was sent. 
 
 II. At times to act for his Government on his own 
 responsibility according to his best judgment. 
 
 III. To keep his Government constantly advised of 
 all the news. 
 
 For the American situation the Monroe doctrine has 
 done away with the first of these functions, the tele- 
 graph with the second, and the newspaper with the 
 third. 
 
 We have no foreign relations in the sense of Euro- 
 pean diplomacy with any power in Europe. When it 
 is necessary for a minister to act now, he receives spe- 
 cific instructions by telegraph. He can even cable a 
 conversation. The diplomatic reports are always far 
 behind the public information of wire and type. 
 
 As a matter of fact, our entire diplomatic list could 
 be swept away with entire safety. Our only real rela- 
 tions with foreign countries are commercial ones, and 
 these are handled by the consular department. As far 
 as my judgment goes, however, I would not advise its 
 abolition, but strongly urge its retention for the present 
 on broader grounds of national utility. There is no 
 more broadening education than the comparative study 
 of foreign nations, their governments, social structure, 
 and systems of thought and religion, and there is no 
 education more needful at present to our own national 
 wants. 
 
 The diplomatic service affords an admirable school 
 for this. It may be made, in fact, a national free college 
 for this kind of education, and its uses in this way are 
 twofold. It serves to educate personally the men whom 
 we specially select for this elevated tuition, and, if their 
 selection is judicious, they in turn become teachers of 
 the whole people. A James Russell Lowell in Eng- 
 land, a Motley or Bancroft or Bayard Taylor or an 
 
148 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 Andrew White at Berlin, a George P. Marsh at Rome, 
 do something more than answer all onr meagre official 
 uses, or than even to train and strengthen themselves. 
 They serve to translate and send over something of 
 England and Germany and all Europe to us, and Bret 
 Harte and Eugene Schuyler, at their consular desks, are 
 worth a good deal more to the American people and 
 literature than all their possible service as registrars of 
 shipping entries. Nathaniel Hawthorne, consul to Liv- 
 erpool, is doing good service to the whole nation yet, 
 although the Government and the men that sent him 
 are long ago gone with him into the grave. It is by 
 the adoption of this principle of appointment — the se- 
 lection for diplomatic posts of men of high character 
 and of scholarly rather than of an average politician's 
 abilities — that we can best conserve our diplomatic de- 
 partment under an altering condition of things, and 
 obtain its fullest and highest uses for the whole nation. 
 
 At all events, as it stands at present, our diplomatic 
 service is thoroughly illogical and unsatisfactory, and 
 no change or experiment even could much impair its 
 illusory efficiency. 
 
 The salaries of the several embassies are extremely 
 inadequate to do what they are supposed to do, and it 
 is impossible for the ministers living on them to repre- 
 sent our country as other countries are represented. 
 If it is the idea of the government to perpetuate the 
 old-fashioned systena of diplomatic representation and 
 communication, then funds should be supplied our rep- 
 resentatives to act their part decently, according to the 
 requirements of the old-fashioned code. 
 
 Again, according to the established law of diplo- 
 matic usage and etiquette settled long before we came 
 ^on the stage, an ambassador is one who represents the 
 person of a sovereign ruler and always outranks a 
 minister plenipotentiary, who only represents the gov- 
 ernment of a country. Now, we know nothing at all 
 of the doctrine of the sanctity or superiority of the 
 
FOREIGN SERVICE. 149 
 
 person of a sovereign, and, when it is explained to us, 
 look on it only as either political heresy or silliness ; but 
 we are forced all the time to impliedly admit it in our 
 diplomatic relations. At any court of Europe in any 
 question of rank or precedence, any ambassador repre- 
 senting a toy king (of Greece, for instance) or a bur- 
 lesque emperor (of Hayti, for instance) will always take 
 the lead of the republican representative of fifty mil- 
 lions of American citizens. No American minister, 
 no matter what his years or influence or seniority of 
 service, can ever be the dean of the diplomatic college 
 at any capital where there is an ambassador present. 
 This is the very case now at one of the prominent 
 courts of Europe. 
 
 But there is another and more serious consequence 
 resulting from this fundamental diplomatic law. An 
 ambassador as representing the person of his sovereign 
 may always demand and have a personal interview with 
 the sovereign of the country to which he is accredited. 
 A minister plenipotentiary may deal only through the 
 ministry. In a crisis the foreign sovereign of his own 
 pleasure may grant him an interview, but the minister 
 cannot demand it as a right. We are therefore in this 
 false position, that should our relations with any Eu- 
 ropean court at any time become critical, our minister 
 at that very court would not have equal facilities for 
 action with the ambassadors of other powers. For 
 instance, the empire of Russia is an autocratic govern- 
 ment. The pleasure of the Emperor is supreme, and 
 his word is law. Should this imperial person meditate 
 a huge war involving the interests of every first-rate 
 power on the earth, the ambassadors from England and 
 Germany could see him and talk with him at their 
 will ; but the minister plenipotentiary of the United 
 States at St. Petersburg could not, — not even if the 
 threatened war was with ourselves. Could any position 
 be more false than this, and what is the propriety of 
 recognizing a system which forces us to accept it ? 
 
 13* 
 
150 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 Lastly, the men whom we do send on this important 
 service, which may be made more important every 
 year, should be real Americans, fresh from the soil, and 
 not those who have lived long enough abroad to have 
 de-Americanized themselves. The European life in- 
 evitably tends to lessen one's respect for the human 
 person and to weaken one's trust and hope in the people. 
 This moral change is sure to come, and it conies so 
 slowly and insensibly that the victims are not aware of 
 their own transmutation. It must needs be when the 
 vast mass of the people are looked down upon, are 
 classified to the bottom, are used, when perhaps they 
 have lost respect for themselves, that one comes to feel 
 unconsciously contempt for them, and that manhood 
 fails to command the respect which is given to class and 
 privilege. Yet an instinctive reverence for humanity, 
 no matter what its mask, and faith in the people are two 
 of the foundation-pillars of the republic, and he who has 
 lost them does not any more represent the American 
 people. 
 
 There is a sound, healthy democratic principle at 
 bottom in the usage of rotation in office on foreign ser- 
 vice. Jefferson held, I think, that no man could rep- 
 resent us abroad with usefulness longer than eight years, 
 and he was about right, although no fixed term can be 
 intelligently laid down, for men are not alike. Some 
 men travel in Europe only during a long residence of 
 years. Others begin to live there from the moment of 
 their landing on its shores. 
 
COMPARATIVE POLITICS. 151 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 COMPARATIVE POLITICS. 
 
 Contrast between the Politics of England and of the 
 United States — The Comparative Magnitude and Ke- 
 sponsibilities of Administration — Evolution of the 
 European Statesman — The Educated Forces of Euro- 
 pean Politics — The Intellectual Kequirements of Gov- 
 ernment Abroad — The English Statesmen. 
 
 There is nothing iu all Europe that challenges one's 
 profounder respect than the strength of her statesmen, 
 and nothing that is more of a revelation to a New- World 
 stranger than the gravity and intellectual range of 
 lier politics. Government abroad is a science, here it 
 "runs itself;" and there could be nothing better calcu- 
 lated to repress the "spread eagle" of the average citizen 
 than an honest attempt to master the political system 
 of one of these " eifete monarchies," and to gain some 
 definite conception of its ])ractical workings. The 
 problem of government in Europe is so vexed, the 
 dangers so imminent, so fixed and hereditary, the rela- 
 tions with all neighboring powers so involved and en- 
 tangling, the internal interests so conflicting, the people 
 so poor and discontented and burdened, that our own 
 troubles and questions of state seem poor and childish 
 in comparison. 
 
 Studying the range and demands of European states- 
 manship, one sees readily how it has produced the edu- 
 cated statesman, so unfamiliar to us, and why the con- 
 duct of government abroad calls for a breadth of 
 scholarship and a trained intellectual force that have not 
 yet been a necessity in the United States. The " log 
 cabin" and " mill-boy" and " horny-handed" statesmen 
 
152 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 of our prairie reputation would wreck any European 
 ship of state irretrievably in three months, perhaps in 
 twenty-four hours. In viewing the field of foreign 
 governments one sees a new wisdom and safety in tlie 
 Monroe doctrine. Perhaps its framers foresaw even in 
 their early hour that our crude political leaders would 
 never be able to meet in equal combat the intellectual 
 giants of the Old World. 
 
 To illustrate more clearly the disparity between the 
 magnitude of the burden of European government and 
 the simplicity of ours, I propose to etch a running par- 
 allel between the political systems of Great Britain and 
 of our country, — in the briefest outline, of course ; but 
 it will serve to suggest the wide difference between the 
 requirements of statesmanship in the two nations. I 
 select England because the similarity of her institutions 
 admits best of direct comparison, but nearly every Euro- 
 pean government faces all the troubles and dangers and 
 responsibilities of England ; some have them intensi- 
 fied ; and some have special problems of their own. 
 
 I. Perhaps the initial and commonest form of national 
 self-glorification with us is the boast of our space of ter- 
 ritory, — the eagle that rests on Pocky Mountain Cordil- 
 leras and laves his wings in the Atlantic and Pa- 
 cific. Now, extent of territory is in itself not necessarily 
 either a danger or a source of power, although it may be 
 both. Judea and Greece have been the mightiest forces 
 of known civilization, and the Poman empire managed 
 to govern the whole world without steamships, railways, 
 or telegraphs. But, as far as magnitude of dominion 
 tests statesmanship or is evidence of national power, we 
 with one segment of a continent do not begin to approach 
 Great Britain. The British rule to-day extends over 
 one-third of the surface of the globe, and over one-fourth 
 of its population. We are but a modest principality in 
 comparison. 
 
 Again, the territory of the British empire is not 
 
COMPARATIVE POLITICS. I53 
 
 compact and contiguous as is ours (with the inconsid- 
 erable exception of Alaska), but lies in every quarter 
 of the globe, separated by seas and contineuts, and on 
 it dwell people of every race and of nearly every lan- 
 guage, speaking in different tongues, thinking by dif- 
 ferent modes, inheriting diverse systems of thought and 
 religion and political tradition. We are one people. 
 
 II. In England the structure of society is a rigid 
 stratification of classes ; in the United States there is 
 but one homogeneous class. The people of our country 
 are one mass of molecular atoms, each atom politically 
 alike. The English legislator legislates for many 
 classes, each with defined limits and vested rights fixed 
 by law and sanctified by inheritance. These rights and 
 the interests of the several classes from time to time jar 
 and clash. He must legislate for many kingdoms in one. 
 The American legislator, on the other hand, simply 
 passes one law for all, because all are equal before the 
 law and in the eye of the law. By virtue also of this 
 homogeneousness of the people, political ideas travel 
 rapidly and equally, permeating a common mass. In 
 England they cannot, by reason of the sectional and 
 class barriers. A given view of politics or of some 
 special question of policy may be accepted and adopted 
 by some one class long before it reaches another, or it 
 may linger long in some certain locality for historical 
 reasons. The Scotchman and the Welshman and the 
 Irishman do not fuse mentally with the Englishman, 
 do not think according to the same modes of thought. 
 Even the Yorkshire man and Lancashire man stand 
 apart, and the man of Surrey or Devon from him of 
 Northumberland. Nor, for that matter, do the farmers 
 with the gentry, or the clergy with the laborer, or the 
 professional man with the peerage, or any of these 
 classes with the others. The body politic has neither 
 the constant internal circulation nor the uniform molec- 
 ular composition of ours. Everything in England 
 is fixed to the soil in small local centres by fastenings 
 
154 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 of society and of blood, and there is not that mobility 
 in the community at large by virtue of which, with us, 
 a national idea travels rapidly and uniformly over the 
 whole nation. Each county has diiferent customs, 
 usages, and habits of thought which differentiate it from 
 the rest of the nation as a whole and in all its social 
 strata. The great family estates, covering compact 
 territories, transmit family peculiarities of living, of 
 thinking, even of farming and working, and operate 
 as a barrier to national impulses of thought. In our 
 country a wave of thought moves rapidly and evenly 
 over all the land and through all the people. Tlie 
 whole country feels it at once. Witness not only the 
 passage of political emotions over the national mind, 
 the rapid transit of a new party issue, or of the thoughts 
 of a great speech, but of social or mental sensation, as 
 in the sweep of the praying-band or spelling-bee excite- 
 ment from one ocean to the other. In England it is 
 not so. Men do not travel, ideas do not travel. It is 
 but thirteen hours from London to Edinburgh, but it 
 takes more than thirteen years for a political idea to 
 traverse the route. 
 
 III. Our government is a simple republic, a federa- 
 tion of a body of equal and co-ordinate States, each 
 State peopled by a population of the same race, the 
 same language, the same history. All the States have 
 the same rights, powers, and obligations, and all these 
 are defined. The administration of the government, 
 even, is by a written chart. Everything is laid down 
 on paper. 
 
 Compare with this simplicity the tremendous impe- 
 rial system of Great Britain, — a system that has an 
 illustration only in Rome under the Caesars. A little 
 class of great families dominate, first, their own order 
 and through it England, and, controlling social Eng- 
 land, elect their own Parliament. Through this Parlia- 
 ment they govern allied kingdoms and an empire 
 stretching through Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, 
 
COMPARATIVE POLITICS. I55 
 
 Australasia, and the islands of the sea. The imperial 
 standard of this great dominion floats over colonial na- 
 tions of all races, spanning even the great gulf between 
 the Aryan and Semitic bloods ; over people of every re- 
 ligion and creed, the regnant faith of Christianity being 
 in the minority; overall latitudes, all colors, all lan- 
 guages, all traditions, all forms of government. The 
 British empire of to-day, morally and physically, is 
 grander than ever were those of Greece or Rome, and 
 its rule is far more conscientious and beneficent. And 
 these principalities and powers and provinces and dis- 
 tant kingdoms of the seas the imperial Parliament 
 governs, not on one simple and uniform plan, but by 
 ever diverse and varying machineries, — by legislatures, 
 by armies, by imperial decrees, by proconsuls, by mili- 
 tary governors, by civil governors, by unpretentious 
 'Apolitical agents,'^ or by regal viceroys. The name is 
 nothing, the power is always there. The heart of this 
 marvellous body politic throbs at Westminster, whence 
 its currents of blood are impelled to the uttermost ends 
 of the earth. The brain is the premier of England. 
 Contrast this with our ready-made work at Washington. 
 IV. Our provincial statesmen groan under what they 
 call the burden of national patronage. When they 
 affect liberal political culture, they tell us that the un- 
 paralleled magnitude of this patronage is a grave danger 
 to the republic. When they simply claim to be strong 
 politicians, ^' leaders,^^ they struggle and wrestle and 
 raise mighty tempests about the distribution of a few 
 petty clerkships and evanescent post-offices. The whole 
 government patronage of the United States is but as a 
 flea-bite to that of England. Whatever we have Eng- 
 land has on a grander scale. What are our petty post- 
 offices, with New York at $8000 salary and Philadelphia 
 at $4000 heading the list, to the limitless range of public 
 offices necessary to administer the vast and imposing 
 imperial machine? Consider the endless civil-service 
 list; the post-offices; the telegraph-service, which, in 
 
156 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 Great Britain, is governmental; the army and navy 
 commissions for colossal hosts and fleets ; the swollen 
 pension-lists, not only military, but civil, literary, and 
 political ; the Church preferment ; the court patronage 
 to tradesmen ; the immense foreign service; and, finally, 
 the dazzling rewards of titles, orders, and peerages. 
 Consider alone the patronage of India, with its state 
 railways and public works, an army of four hundred 
 thousand men, and a parental government over a popu- 
 lation of more than two hundred millions of souls. 
 
 On this question of patronage I will instance just 
 one item to illustrate what its splendors and magnitude 
 and tempting prizes are under the English government. 
 It is an item to which we have no equivalent at all, like 
 the titles and orders and peerages and telegraph- and 
 railway-service and foreign civil list, and other depart- 
 ments. The bishoprics of the Church of England are 
 in the gift of the government. There are twenty-eight 
 of them and two archbishoprics. The Archbishop of 
 Canterbury receives $7.5,000 a year and two official 
 palaces for a residence, and holds office for life. The 
 Archbishop of York gets $50,000 a year, and a palace 
 and his office for life. Either of these positions, in the 
 way of worldly emolument, is better than the Presi- 
 dency of the United States. The twenty-eight bishops 
 receive salaries ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 a 
 year (they average over $25,000 a year), a residence, a 
 seat in the House of Lords, and they have all this for 
 life. The whole higher-class patronage in the gift of 
 the United States, the Supreme bench, the Cabinet, the 
 Vice-presidency, and our entire European diplomatic 
 list, does not begin to approach in splendor or dignity 
 or money value to this one item. The whole body of 
 these great offices of our state are less in number than 
 these bishoprics ; their salaries range but from $7500 
 to $17,500; there are no official residences attached, 
 and they are not held for life. 
 
 V. This ecclesiastical item of patronage suggests one 
 
COMPARATIVE POLITICS. I57 
 
 of the ugliest of all the problems of European politics, 
 — one which is a danger and burden to every European 
 Government to-day, but from which our country hap- 
 pily is and always has been entirely free, — the vexed 
 question of Church and State. The Established Church 
 of England, a Church embracing a minority only of the 
 people, is a part of the Government of England. The 
 head of the Church is the head of the State ; its 
 bishops, by virtue of their mitres, sit in Parliament; its 
 clergy are necessarily a kind of national police. The 
 Church is in the very Constitution. Its interests enter 
 sharply into every party platform and struggle. They 
 fought over the Irish-Church disestablishment a few 
 years ago, — they are going to fight soon over English 
 disestablishment. As a consequence, the clerical inter- 
 est goes actively into the political campaigns in a way 
 that rather shocks our American sense of propriety. 
 The clergy assist at the nominations, and the Church 
 vote at the polls is cast on as purely selfish and grace- 
 less principles as would be the Irish or negro ballot in 
 our cities. The alliance of the Church and liquor in- 
 terests — ^' beer and Bibles'^ — is one of the open scandals 
 of the recent elections. Further, this marriage of 
 Church and State makes an appeal to religious hatreds 
 and fanaticism, the most dangerous and wicked of all 
 passions, an efi^ective political weapon always on hand 
 and useful. A vulgar anti-popery speech that, in the 
 United States, would hardly be tolerated, is acceptable 
 and effective on most English hustings. Thus it comes 
 that premiers and cardinal-princes are writing hotly on 
 questions which we have removed entirely from the 
 field of popular passion. 
 
 While the situation of Church and State in England 
 is indecorous and embarrassing to Transatlantic view, 
 it is only that, and not a danger, as it is to most of the 
 other European nations. In Italy the Church is a vast 
 octopus, with its dank, flaccid arms sucking at every 
 pore of the Stg-te. The fight of Germany with Rome 
 
 14 
 
158 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 is historic and inherited. At this very hour the inflam- 
 mable question of French politics is the expulsion of 
 the Jesuits. Even Japan has just got through a gi- 
 gantic civil war to decide this very question, — the su- 
 premacy of Tycoon or Mikado. We alone of all 
 nations have not inherited in our politics this brand of 
 discord, which has been the occasion of more wars in 
 Christendom than any one other cause, — perhaps of more 
 than all others combined. 
 
 VI. We have no foreign relations, no entangling al- 
 liances, no responsibilities or obligations outside of our- 
 selves. With every European people this is the main 
 field of politics. The nation itself is but the starting- 
 point of government. The real work is ramified and 
 spread all over the continent, perhaps all over the world. 
 Not a step can be taken without consulting other nations 
 and understanding their interests. Europe is as we would 
 be were all the States of our Union independent, antago- 
 nistic, and with inherited animosities of blood, race, and 
 faith, with diverse languages, modes of thought, and 
 political traditions, and with the quarrels and revenges 
 of a thousand years to settle. It is this that makes the 
 minister of state so important a personage in European 
 government and so often its head. Following traditional 
 forms, we have made our Secretary of State the head of 
 our Cabinet, but it is only a survival. He is but a 
 shadow, for happily we have no foreign affairs. It is 
 this also which produces the broad scholarship and in- 
 tellectual supremacy of the European statesman, and 
 drives the demagogue and the half-educated out of the 
 field of politics. Our Monroe doctrine is a political 
 blessing, but it necessarily limits the range and powers 
 of our public men, because it limits the demands and 
 the strain on them. It deprives them of the compara- 
 tive study of politics and history, which European poli- 
 tics, on the other hand, enforce and necessitate. And 
 comparative study has been the law of all advancement 
 in thought and science in this century. 
 
COMPARATIVE POLITICS. I59 
 
 The general elections of 1880 in England were fought 
 on issues almost entirely outside of England, and they 
 involved an intelligent knowledge not only of modern 
 continental politics and history, but of the Greek, Ot- 
 toman, and Asiatic civilizations. Just imagine the 
 statesman of Kentucky or Nebraska being called on 
 for this kind of work ! Or how many members are 
 there in any State delegation in Congress whom we 
 could trust to vote for us on such questions when the 
 consequence of an ignorant or reckless vote might be 
 war? 
 
 VII. Finally, the critical responsibilities of govern- 
 ment in our country are a mere nothing compared with 
 those which immediately and forever confront the Eu- 
 ropean statesman. We never feel them ; they are never 
 brought home either to the people or to the legislator. 
 
 The European statesman legislates with a sword sus- 
 pended over his head. He deals with armed nations 
 ready to strike. Vast camps of populations surround 
 his own, in fatal readiness to move at a signal. A 
 false vote, and before it was circulated through the 
 kingdom hostile bayonets would be swarming across 
 the frontier, and hostile artillery thundering over the 
 land. Within twenty-four hours after a declaration of 
 war by Germany or France or Italy or Russia, the cav- 
 alry would be over the border. A legislative debate in 
 Europe may be like brandishing a torch In a powder- 
 magazine. 
 
 The European statesman, further, has absolutely no 
 margin on which to make mistakes in home affairs, 
 either. He deals with a discontented people, a bur- 
 dened people, a suffering people. With the utmost 
 wisdom and prudence, the average lot of the people 
 will not be a pleasant one. Imprudent or ignorant 
 legislation will bring suffering to many and sure death 
 to some. How different the situation from ours where 
 the land, from one end to the other, is one happy field, 
 with a whole nation garnering smiling harvests, or at 
 
160 
 
 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 cheerful and contented work in its shops and factories ! 
 We have an illimitable margin for legislative mistake. 
 No blunder costs us either blood or money that we feel. 
 We are living like spendthrifts on accumulated capital. 
 This country would have been wrecked a dozen times 
 within living memory by its ignorant leadership had we 
 had the same narrow margin to go on for errors as 
 have the European nations. When that time comes in 
 which a foolish word may precipitate a war, an indis- 
 creet tax raise a riot, or a blunder of political economy 
 result in national convulsion, then we will begin to 
 appreciate the value of education in government, and 
 of the scholar in politics. 
 
 Let me recapitulate briefly, in such form that the 
 eye may take it in at a glance, some of the main points 
 of this imperfect contrast between the involved politics 
 of the Old World and the simple field of the New. So 
 shall we better see the different manner of public men 
 that the two fields call for : 
 
 England. 
 
 One-third of the globe and 
 one-fourth of its population. 
 The empire scattered over all 
 the continents. 
 
 A social structure of many- 
 classes, with unlike interests 
 and vested rights. 
 
 An imperial government, ad- 
 ministered through the Parlia- 
 ment, of one kingdom, and 
 using all known kinds of po- 
 litical machinery. 
 
 Distribution and control of 
 enormous government patron- 
 age. Civil service, immense 
 foreign service, military, naval, 
 Church, titles, orders, peerage, 
 public works, railways, tele- 
 graph, etc. 
 
 The United States. 
 
 A moderate and contiguous 
 territory. 
 
 One homogeneous people. 
 
 One simple form of govern- 
 ment, with uniform machinery. 
 
 Moderate 
 tronage. 
 
 government pa- 
 
COMPARATIVE POLITICS. 
 
 161 
 
 England. 
 
 Church and State, — infinite 
 political and religious compli- 
 cations. 
 
 Established and involved for- 
 eign relations. Responsibilities 
 in common. The nation only 
 a component part of the conti- 
 nent. 
 
 No margin for political or 
 legislative mistakes. 
 
 In the midst of armed powers 
 with colossal armies. Huge 
 standing: armies. 
 
 The United States. 
 None. 
 
 None. Monroe doctrine. 
 
 Wide marsrin. 
 
 No armies without or within. 
 
 An increasing national debt. A decreasing national debt. 
 
 A discontented people. Emi- 
 gration. 
 
 A people taxed to their ut- 
 most capacity. 
 
 Ignorant lower classes. 
 
 A contented people. Immi- 
 gration. 
 
 A generous margin for tax- 
 ation. 
 
 A general common educa- 
 tion. 
 
 Is it any wonder that European politics evolve a 
 stronger order of men than do ours ? When you meet 
 or hear or read the English statesman, you feel the 
 immediate contrast, and a little study of the country 
 shows how different are all the conditions of his life 
 and work. 
 
 The English statesman must be an educated man, 
 for he deals with educated forces and with history. 
 
 He generally springs from the upper classes, and has 
 that knowledge of society which comes from looking 
 from the top down, and not from the bottom up. So 
 far — and it strikes the American with a strong impres- 
 sion — the higher culture of Great Britain governs it, 
 although it has little in common with the mental or 
 religious life of the body of the people, and no sym- 
 l 14* 
 
IQ2 ENGLISH POLITICS. 
 
 pathy at all with their social life. But this is changing : 
 the governing power is passing every year farther 
 down the social scale. 
 
 The English statesman, finally, is mostly a man of 
 means. He has leisure to study for his work, and 
 independence to do as he thinks best. Politics is not 
 with him a means of making a livelihood. 
 
 London. 
 
LONDON. 
 
 163 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 
 A Sermon in Stone — The Peace or the Grave — How a 
 Grave in Westminster Abbey Comes — A Monumental 
 Epitome of English History — England's Worship of 
 Courage — Our Country in the Abbey — The Birth-Spot 
 OF THE "Shorter Catechism" — "The Elect of Eng- 
 land's Dead." 
 
 It was my good fortune to be shown the treasures 
 and beauties of AYestminster Abbey by its scholarly 
 and accomplished dean, whose reputation and fame are 
 as broad in all our land and in all the learned world 
 as his own broad sympathies and the generous gospel 
 he preaches so boldly in the first of English churches. 
 I shall not attempt a picture of this historic fane, which 
 rises so stately here, and which stands perhajis in still 
 statelier and more unattainable proportions in the imagi- 
 nation of all read and cultured Americans. I will not 
 even speak here of the sermons I heard of two of its 
 greatest preachers, Dean Stanley himself and Canon 
 Farrar, reserving the opportunity to touch on them in 
 a later letter on the London pulpit, when a larger com- 
 parative hearing of its eminent men shall have qualified 
 me to write of it with more information and judgment. 
 
 I would not write with the rapid pen and flow of 
 newspaper work of AVestminster Abbey, which centres 
 and sums up in itself all of English history, and which, 
 year by year, gathers to its bosom the best and greatest 
 of England's men. Its picturing or treatment demands 
 long and special study, and any other treatment is an 
 injustice alike to the spot and to the reader. I sup- 
 pose, indeed, that many of my countrymen to whom 
 
 165 
 
166 LONDON. 
 
 the venerable pile is familiar by painting and engrav- 
 ing and the allusions of literature may feel somewhat 
 disappointed at the mention of its name without an 
 effort at its description. There are those, however, 
 whose lives have been a labor of love in. its service, and 
 who have written fully, authoritatively, and responsibly. 
 To their works I refer all across the water who would 
 see or know the best that pen and pencil can do for the 
 abbey. Or, better yet, come and see it. 
 
 "They sleep with their fathers.^^ It was a noble in- 
 stinct, worthy of illustrating its age, whatever that age 
 was, which first conceived the idea of making the 
 churches of England the tombs of its great dead, and 
 Westminster Abbey has been highly favored of history 
 and of England in becoming the shrine of the nation. 
 " Let us here praise famous men and our fathers that 
 begat us.'' It is the one thing which I most envy of 
 Europe, this wealth of its great men and the noble and 
 beautiful use which it may make and does make of 
 their graves, by which it carries down through the 
 centuries what is best of them, keeping their memory 
 green and imperishable, but, more than that, trans- 
 fusing, as it were, their virtues into the daily life and 
 generation of the hour. Here they lie in stately tombs 
 all over England, the men who have deserved well of 
 their country, who have served their fellow-men, who 
 have honored their race, — the soldiers, the philanthro- 
 pists, the teachers, — a lesson, a stimulus, an inspiration, 
 to all that come after them. And it is alike to the 
 honor of England, and convincing evidence of her 
 moral vigor and integrity and of long national life yet 
 to come, that this recognition, these great honors, are 
 open to all. Riches will not buy a tomb in West- 
 minster Abbey, nor a life of ostentation and luxury 
 and display ; but its walls are free to the young lieu- 
 tenant, the young clergyman, the sailor or private 
 soldier or drummer or cabin-boy, who does his duty, 
 and dies in doing it. 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEV. 167 
 
 Perhaps the distinctive feature of Westminster Abbey 
 to a thoughtful stranger is the wonderful catholicity 
 of its tombs. We unconsciously think of it as an aris- 
 tocratic burial-place of the Established Church of Eng- 
 land, — words of limitation. We find its consecrated 
 crypts open to humanity, — literally, to all the world. 
 It has been eloquently called the '^temple of silence 
 and conciliation," and this language is the literal truth. 
 Variances of faiths, harsh judgments on personal lives, 
 the asperities of politics, the rancorous struggles of 
 ambition, the bitterness of parties, — all are forgotten in 
 its still and passionless chapels where side by side sleep 
 friend and foe. The clangor of arms and the damna- 
 tory clauses of old creeds are hushed in its hallowed 
 and silent aisles. Here, walking among its graves, 
 eloquent in their mute and voiceless expression, one 
 comes again and again on tombs or monuments of men 
 almost startling you by their associations or the dra- 
 matic contrast of their lives with their last resting- 
 place. You find in a place of honor " John and 
 Charles W^esley,'^ their tablet legended '^ My parish 
 is the world," — the founders of Methodism in the 
 pantheon of the Anglican Church. You pause in- 
 voluntarily at the name of John Bradshaw, the regi- 
 cide judge, and president of the fatal court. Cromwell 
 and the two Charleses and General Monk sleep near 
 together. An English mob, in unhappier times, once 
 rifled the tomb of the Puritan statesman and soldier 
 and scattered his dust and bones, but the empty grave 
 and its inscribed slab are still there in memory and 
 honor of the man. John Dryden, the Roman Catho- 
 lic; Isaac Watts, the nonconformist; Mrs. Siddons, 
 the actress ; Kemble, the actor ; Congreve, the play- 
 writer of broad freedom, to speak gently near his ashes; 
 Casaubon, the Frenchman ; Spanheim, the Swiss ; 
 Theodorus Paleologus, the Greek ; some of the family 
 of Louis Philippe, — all lie peacefully in the resting 
 ranks of the noble army of its dead. It might be easy 
 
168 LONDON. 
 
 enough to lay most of these men here now in our 
 better and gentler times^ but think of the bitter pas- 
 sions of older days when statesmen paid with their 
 heads for political mistakes, think of the merciless and 
 ignorant hatred which so short a time ago passed for 
 religion and faith, and you can begin to gauge the 
 strength of mind and moral courage and nobility ahead 
 of their generation of the men who dug some of these 
 graves, and who recognized in advance of their time 
 the peace of the grave. 
 
 Honor to whom honor is due. The honor for this 
 great service to humanity is due of recent history ulti- 
 mately to the dean of Westminster (and in earlier cen- 
 turies, I suppose, to the abbot), who is finally responsible 
 for every tomb, monument, or inscription in the church, 
 and whose veto can exclude anybody, living or dead, 
 and any tablet. Let me explain a moment how a grave 
 in Westminster comes, how the greatest honor England 
 can bestow is given. It is so thoroughly illustrative of 
 the interior of English life, of a power of tradition and 
 usage of which we know absolutely nothing, and which 
 we can hardly understand or comprehend at all, that 
 time is not lost in learning it. This great honor, for 
 which kings hope and prelates strive and soldiers die, 
 rests in law to-day, entirely and absolutely, in the hands 
 of one man, — the dean of the Abbey. He can bury any 
 one in the Abbey he pleases and he can close its doors 
 against any one he pleases, and there is no power in the 
 land that can force or control his judgment or discretion 
 in the matter, save, of course, the special action, in a 
 special case, of Parliament, which, unlike our Congress, 
 limited in its power and field of action, is "supreme, 
 irresistible, and uncontrollable" in all things and over 
 all men in England. It is one of those instances con- 
 tinually arising out of the fortuitous historical develop- 
 ment of England in which enormous powers or public 
 trusts or franchises have come into the hands of some 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 169 
 
 one man or class, who are responsible for their use only to 
 their own honor and conscience and the general sense of a 
 whole people, which generally in some way enforces itsown 
 will. And a vast body of such usages, powers, vested 
 rights, and franchises, ecclesiastical and civil and poli- 
 tical, which no one has ever attempted to enumerate or 
 define, and which no one here would define if he could, 
 and of which there is nowhere any written or authori- 
 tative record, is the Constitution of England. Compare 
 this condition of things with the carefully-written paper 
 which is our Constitution, and you have some idea of 
 the organic differences of the two Governments, — the 
 one a growth, the other as yet a pure construction. 
 This fact is the great and foundation difference between 
 English and American politics, and the reason why 
 the acts of one are often no precedent for the other. 
 
 As a matter of fact, Dean Stanley, as any strong man 
 would in a similar position, feels bound to act as the 
 propliet and interpreter of the English ])eople in the 
 discharge of this unique and singularly high trust, and 
 does, as have the deans of Westminster before him. 
 While the exercise of such sole and irresponsible power 
 looks dangerous to the American mind, accustomed to 
 the careful distribution of responsibilities and the deli- 
 cate balance of powers, it has many advantages apparent 
 at a glance. The popular feeling generally obtains its 
 will, but it is regulated, restrained perhaps for a time, 
 by the sounder and truer judgment of an educated and 
 cultivated man, who can also by his power of veto not 
 only prevent indecorous burials, which might be forced 
 under temporary impulse or immature sentiment, but 
 save the building: from the profanation of crude inscrip- 
 tions, born of ignorance, passion, or bad taste. Indeed, 
 the present dean has done an acknowledged service, 
 not only to England, but to the English language, in 
 the regulation of the mural legends and inscriptions 
 which have been placed in the Abbey during his long 
 incumbency. As a whole work they show a marked 
 H 15 
 
170 ■ LONDON. 
 
 force, elegance, and good taste that in future times 
 will be noted and remembered to the credit of our 
 century. 
 
 A stroll through the aisles and cloisters of this great 
 church awakens the echoes of history and starts associa- 
 tions almost at every step which lead one to the outer 
 confines of our knowledge — political, religious, and 
 social — of ourselves. 
 
 Here, in the ancient Chapter-House, a perfectly cir- 
 cular room, on rude stone benches continuous around 
 the wall in three tiers, without arms or railing or rest 
 of any kind, for three hundred years sat the Parliaments 
 of England. 
 
 Here, in the Jerusalem Chamber, a modest kind of 
 vestry room, storied in legend as the death-scene of 
 Henry IV., juggled by a pro})hecy, was framed and 
 published " The Shorter Catechism,'' that famous com- 
 pendium of Presbyterian belief. How many of our 
 American Presbyterians ever think of the "Assembly 
 of Westminster Divines" as assembled and working at 
 this historic Anglican centre ? 
 
 In this same room sat and worked the men who pro- 
 duced the revision of the Book of Common Prayer in 
 the form in which it is now used in England. And, to 
 keep up the chain of historical tradition in this line, the 
 modern " Committee for the Revision of the Bible" is 
 to-day sitting in this chamber invested with such dis- 
 tinguished e(;clesiastical associations. 
 
 Here once was the " treasury of the kings of Eng- 
 land," and here now all the official gold and silver 
 standards of the coin of the realm are under royal lock 
 and key. 
 
 Here, too, opening out of the dean's private study, is 
 the simple closet, now disused, but which once served 
 for the kee})ing of the crown jewels and regalia, of 
 which the dean and chapter are still the legal and con- 
 structive keepers, and which, on the eve of the corona- 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 171 
 
 tion-day of every monarch, are yet brought to the Abbey 
 and kept there over-night, that they may be ready for 
 the ceremony of the morning ; for the coronation of 
 every king or queen of England takes place in this 
 church in front of the Chapel of Henry VII. These 
 jewels are the gorgeous collection of crowns and coronets 
 and sceptres and royal swords and gold and silver and 
 diamonds familiar to all who have visited the Tower of 
 London. Although in the constructive keeping of the 
 Abbey, these regal valuables are by statute in the actual 
 charge as deposits of the constable of the Tower, who is 
 supposed to have the safest place in the kingdom either 
 for state prisoners or state projierty. 
 
 Here, in silent admonitory state, among the dusty 
 tombs of the sovereigns who have sat in it, stands the 
 coronation chair. Under its seat, and part of it now, is 
 the famous " Stone of Scone,'' the rude throne of the 
 old Scottish chiefs, and which Scottish tradition and 
 relic-worship assert to be the very stone on which the 
 patriarch Jacob rested his head for a pillow when he 
 slept and saw his glorious vision of power and long life 
 and God's protection, — " the Shepherd and the Stone 
 of Israel." 
 
 Here, by a dark and narrow stairway, you ascend to 
 the small, rude, touching Chapel of Henry V., swung 
 in the air, the solid stone steps worn almost into cups 
 by the feet of devoted worshippers, who for centuries 
 have climbed its hard, bare way to hear mass and pray 
 by the body of their dead, loved king, the saddle and 
 the helmet of Agincourt keeping solemn guard over the 
 warrior at rest forever. On the Continent I saw many 
 impressive altnrs in crypts and corners and dramatic 
 situations, but I remember none in the unique position 
 of this one, raised high into the air, on a level above 
 the main altar of the church, and looking down on all 
 around it. 
 
 But why lengthen out detached pictures where every 
 foot is illustrative, where every stone is eloquent, where 
 
172 LONDON. 
 
 every aisle and corridor and archway is tremulous with 
 the memories of centuries? 
 
 Westminster Abbey, with its picturesque Old English 
 architecture, so thoroughly ecclesiastical, so rich, so ele- 
 gant; with its cloisters and venerable aisles, shadowy 
 with the associations of legend, history, and tradition ; 
 with its stately tombs, the grand records of England's 
 glories, learning, and faith ; with its historic chapels and 
 crumbling stones and time-stained walls hung with 
 dropping banners or crowded with suggestive inscrip- 
 tions, is one of those places which, like Niagara, cannot 
 disappoint. One need not fear to see it lest the sight 
 should dissolve cherished dreams or beautiful images. 
 No matter what one's range of reading, no matter what 
 one's fund of learning, no matter what one's sweep and 
 realm of imagination, the fair fabric of fact stands for- 
 ever, grander than dream or fancy, a living sermon in 
 stone. 
 
 I could not help thinking, whenever I passed this 
 historic spot, of the riches with which England is 
 dowered in this single church, and my mind reverts to 
 the reflection again and again as I think how long, 
 long, long it must be before we can be equally favored. 
 It is a foundation with which no college can ever be 
 endowed, — a perpetual lesson and education. " Re- 
 member the days of old ; consider the years of many 
 generations." 
 
 Wandering through Westminster Abbey, as in all the 
 churches of England, there is forced on one a sense of 
 the great honors which England pays to her soldiers.. 
 I think that in the cathedrals and churches of the 
 kingdoui a larger proportion of soldiers lie buried in 
 state, or have their names recorded in memorial legend 
 if they have died on foreign fields, than any one other 
 class, not even excepting the clergy, whose homes have 
 been these buildings, and who themselves in former 
 times have played so great a part in history. At every 
 step their stately tombs or eloquent tablets arrest you ; 
 
WESTMINSTER ABBE r. 173 
 
 their still stone effigies rest under the gathering dusts 
 of every century ; '' their good swords rust'' on every 
 wall : " their souls are with the Lord, we trust." 
 
 It is this cultus of courage and force which has made 
 England, and it is these honors which make her men 
 soldiers. While there is something in her present mil- 
 itary organization and structure which seems to produce 
 deficient generalship, or prevent the development and 
 coming forward of the real military genins which is 
 snrely in her armies, the soldierly qualities of the body 
 of her officers are something wonderful and w^orthy of 
 the highest admiration, — their fidelity, their personal 
 chivalry in moments of danger, their perfect willing- 
 ness and readiness to die. Her gentlemen leave homes 
 of loveliness and cultivation and refinement unequalled 
 on the face of the globe, and die every year, every day, 
 almost, old and young, on the plains of Asia, in the 
 forests of Africa, in fever-swamp and desert-sands, 
 cheerfully and uncomplainingly. Hardly a country 
 home in England but has its soldier's grave somewhere 
 in the uttermost parts of the earth where England is 
 pushing her imperial arms. And that all this sacrifice 
 is made in the face of a general sense of uneasiness and 
 want of confidence in the ability of the directing power 
 makes it all the more wonderful. "Somebody blun- 
 dered" at Balaklava, just as they did at Braddock's 
 Field and Bunker's Hill, and before the cotton-bales 
 of New Orleans in 1812, and among the kraals of Zu- 
 luland, and in the canons of Afghanistan this fatal 
 year ; but still the British soldier, gentleman and yeo- 
 man, is ever ready, with his life in his hand, to go for- 
 ward. It is these tombs in the old cathedrals. 
 
 Passing from the ancient abbots' palace, now the 
 dwelling of the dean, by private entrance to the church, 
 just before we entered the transept of the main build- 
 ing Dean Stanley, to whom my presence started recol- 
 lections of Philadelphia, said, " Stop a moment ; I want 
 
 15* 
 
174 LONDON. 
 
 to show you something that will remind you of home," 
 and ascending by a side entry three narrow steps, into 
 a little chapel shut off by an open railing from public 
 entrance, we stood suddenly before the handsome me- 
 morial window of Mr. Chi Ids to the two English poets, 
 — a grand blaze of illumination, covering almost an 
 entire wall of the chapel. It is a beautiful and costly 
 work of art, in the conventional ecclesiastical style of 
 glass-painting, rich and impressive. 
 
 It is the usage in the Abbey to inscribe on all monu- 
 ments the incident of their erection, and the story of 
 this one is very simply and frankly told in a single line: 
 
 " D. D.^ Georgius Gtclielmus Childs. Clvis Aonericanus." 
 
 This is the first appearance of our country in the his- 
 toric Abbey. There are a few other American names, — 
 some loyal refugees in the war of 1776-83, some colo- 
 nial worthies, some British soldiers killed in the Revo- 
 lution and French wars, — but this is the only inscription 
 which distinctly places the new nation of " the United 
 States of America" in the monumental archives of 
 Westminster. 
 
 LONDOlf. 
 
 * Donum dedit. 
 
 , \ 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. 175 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE L0ND02^^ PULPIT. 
 
 Dean Stanley in Westminster Abbey — Canon Farrar at 
 St. Margaret's — St. Paul's Cathedral — Cardinal 
 Manning in the Pro-Cathedral at Kensington — Rev. 
 Mr. Haweis at Marylebone — The English Clergy as 
 Public Men. 
 
 To an American imagination there is no preacher in 
 all the world who has a grander pulpit than he who 
 speaks in Westminster Abbey. It is an inspiration to 
 stand there. The scene of an ordinary afternoon ser- 
 vice is itself a dramatic one. From the little pulpit at 
 the corner of the transept the preacher sees a living sea 
 of heads stretching out every broad aisle as far as the 
 voice will reach. The wave of his audience overflows 
 even the generous provision of the seats and surges up 
 and over the tombs of the historic dead. On the con- 
 fines of the seated congregation throng dark clouds of 
 standing listeners, moving restlessly for some coign of 
 vantage, pressing forward anxiously and expectant as 
 when some great speech is to be delivered in a Parlia- 
 ment. This, at least, is the scene which every Sunday 
 greets the eye of Dean Stanley, who is one of the liiost 
 popular preachers in London. This popularity comes 
 solely, too, from the spirit and tone of his sermons, for 
 tlieir delivery breaks their eflFect rather than adds to it. 
 The dean reads his sermons, which is the murder of ora- 
 tory, and few voices if any can reach the outer edges of 
 the vast audience which gathers in the spacious gray- 
 stone halls of the nave and transept. It is the ex- 
 quisite English of these sermons and their gentle cath- 
 olic spirit which draws all London and all the world of 
 travel to hear them. Dean Stanley's spare form and 
 
1 76 LONDON. 
 
 kindly features are so well known now in our country 
 that the American traveller does not feel as a stranger 
 when on entering ^he church he sees the familiar face 
 in the reading-desk or pulpit. 
 
 London is the vortex of the world, Westminster is 
 the heart of London, and its preacher is so thoroughly 
 in all the currents of modern life that one loses in every 
 sermon of Dean Stanley^s the more delicate touches, the 
 keener allusions, — the more effective because so deftly 
 veiled, — if he is not thoroughly familiar with all 
 the higher movements of the hour. Here in a very 
 striking sense '' the parish is the world,^' and Dean 
 Stanley has all the tact of a born journalist in harness- 
 ing the events of each day to the chariot of his work. 
 
 When I first heard him the text was a clause of Scrip- 
 ture, — '^the service of the sanctuary." The theme, how- 
 ever, was strictly "the Book of Common Prayer," its 
 historic associations and growth, its spirit, and mainly 
 and practically the question of the expediency or pro- 
 priety of its emendation now. However scholarly or 
 critical the treatment of this subject, — and this sermon 
 ^vas both,— the theme, in such a temple and before a 
 Church-of-England audience, must of necessity involve 
 panegyric, and that it might not lead to narrowing 
 opinion or the nurture of prejudice the preacher with 
 fine tact prefaced his discourse by recalling as appro- 
 priate to the subject and the day that this very Sunday 
 was the anniversary of that historic occasion when the 
 service of the Established Church of England was read 
 for the first time and the last time in the national 
 Church of Scotland. Then, in perfectly impartial and 
 dispassionate words and in a tone and voice colorless of 
 the slightest trace of feeling or judgment, he related 
 the story of that famous scene in Edinboro^ when Janet 
 Geddes threw the footstool at the dean of Edinboro's 
 head just as he began to read the collect for the day, — 
 the same collect in which we had all joined that very 
 hour, — the uproar and confusion, the broken and ended 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. 177 
 
 service, and the historical consequences of the event. 
 That picture, drawn so cahiily, all the passions of the 
 time faded out with the years, as lifeless and departed 
 as if veritably entombed with the dead of centuries 
 that lay all around us, made its own argument. The 
 audience stood at once on the catholic plane of the 
 preacher. 
 
 On the question of amendment now — the practical 
 body of the discourse — the dean was direct and ex- 
 plicit. Noble as was the book, grand as were its asso- 
 ciations, it was a living growth and must change. It 
 had defects, the legacies of times not so fortunate or 
 blessed with light as ours, and they should be amended; 
 the sooner the better. The specific changes suggested 
 and pointed out as desirable were one and all in the 
 line of broadening the Church and opening wide its 
 doors, — wide and loving as the arms of its Founder. 
 Among those instanced were the expurgation of the 
 sweeping damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed ; 
 also the abolition of that rubric which forbids the burial 
 prayers of the Church to be read over the body " of a 
 man of the purest and most blameless life if he be- 
 longed, say, to that most excellent and pious people, 
 the Friends, instead of the Established Church," or 
 '' even over the most innocent of little children, those 
 little children of whom Christ Himself said, 'Of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven.^ " Anotiier change urged 
 was the wording of those special prayers for rain which 
 seem to assume that the favors of nature are sent upon 
 the just and its disfavors upon the unjust, contrary to 
 tlie now clearly acknowledged teachings of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 In Westminster Abbey the service is rather a medium 
 between the High Church intoning of England and the 
 severely plain enunciation demanded with us. When 
 it was over and the sermon finished the congregation 
 slowly dispersed, not with a rush to the streets, but 
 lingering kindly and lovingly in the cool gray shades 
 
178 LONDON. 
 
 of the tombs and arched aisles, and there were no im- 
 patient vergers or janitors hanging around to hustle out 
 the last lingerers and close inhospitable doors. 
 
 In the yard of Westminster Abbey, a solid pavement 
 of flat tombs, stands the parish church of St. Margaret. 
 St. Margaret's Parish is the flrst parish in the kingdom, 
 for in its bounds rise both Houses of Parliament, and, 
 I think, the official residences of all the government. 
 The Speaker of the House of Commons, the Speaker of 
 the House of Lords, and most of the great officials of 
 state are always members of this parish. Until within 
 a very few years the House of Commons was accus- 
 tomed to attend this church in state, as provided in the 
 Prayer-book. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, although it fills so large a space 
 in London in American imagination, has no territorial 
 jurisdiction. An abbey is something to which we have 
 no equivalent in Protestant America. It is a college of 
 priests, — a point or foundation purely for worship of 
 God, unclogged by any congregational cares or limita- 
 tions. It has no congregation in our sense. There is 
 regular service and it is free to all, but it goes on 
 whether any persons from outside come or not. 
 
 Dr. F. W. Farrar, whose name as a popular author 
 is so familiar on both sides of the sea, is the rector or 
 pastor of St. Margaret's, and he is so by virtue of holding 
 a canon ry in Westminster Abbey. St. Margaret's, too, 
 is a stimulating house in which to preach. It is part 
 of the fabric of the English Constitution; the strongest 
 legislation in the world throbs at its very side, and the 
 congregation must always hold some of the ablest and 
 most influential men living. Add to this that there is 
 not a Sunday but when, in addition to the permanent 
 congregation, there are to be found among the hearers 
 distinguished men of all peoples, — statesmen, thinkers, 
 writers, soldiers, — who come as strangers and travellers, 
 unknown and unseen, but none the less critical and ob- 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. 179 
 
 serving. In fact, they are making up the verdict of the 
 world. 
 
 The interior of St. Margaret's is very plain. It was 
 the ordinarv rectano-ular American church or meeting- 
 house, with four white walls, and the entire floor filled 
 with plain wooden high-backed pews. Fine stained- 
 glass windows and some historic names graven on mural 
 tablets, — Sir Walter Raleigh lies in.the chancel, — relieve 
 the room from absolute sameness and furnish that rest 
 -to the eye which one finds so grateful in the churches 
 of Europe, and which he so soon learns to look for. 
 
 The conduct of the service was correspondingly 
 simple. Both the prayers and the psalms were read so 
 that each word was intelligible. There was neither in- 
 toning nor drawling. Going to St. Margaret's with the 
 consciousness that I was seeing one of the high-places 
 of the Church of England, it was something of a sur- 
 prise to hear the first hymn given out, — 
 
 "Come let us join our cheerful songs 
 "VVitli angels round the throne," 
 
 and to have it followed by — 
 
 " How sweet the name of Jesus sounds 
 In a believer's ear !" 
 
 two hymns in common use by every denomination in 
 the United States. And both were sung to airs famil- 
 iar in all Presbvterian and Con2:rea:ational churches, 
 and the singing was by the entire congregation. 
 
 Dr. Farrar, a dark, brown-faced man with a pleasant 
 countenance, preached from Galatians, the first verse of 
 the fifth chapter, — " the liberty with which Christ hath 
 made us free." It M^as the broadest of broad-church 
 sermons, the special dangers to Christian freedom 
 from the side of ecclesiastical organization being the 
 drift of the discourse, and at times the argument seemed 
 to press certain practical applications on home issues 
 not immediately discernible to a stranger. I could 
 
180 LONDON. 
 
 only quote from recollection, and should be afraid to 
 attempt" for fear of being charged with misquotation, 
 but it is sufficient to say that Canon Farrar was as 
 latitudinarian as St. Paul himself, and would probably 
 have been pronounced unorthodox on the Church ques- 
 tion from many a Baptist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian 
 pulpit in the United States. He went the length of 
 accepting literally the sayings of the New Testament, 
 translating them into the language and applying them 
 to the situation of the day. He is out and out a 
 disciple of St. Paul. Indeed, it is observable how 
 thoroughly Pauline preaching is the rule in the Church 
 of England, wliich is suffering a kind of recoil from 
 theological disputation, and to-day sees the old doctrinal 
 lines broken at many a point without apparently think- 
 ing of even an effort to defend them. 
 
 I have mentioned that this sermon seemed to be 
 bearing on some home question of church government 
 or policy not entirely clear to a passing visitor. It is 
 worthy of remark that nearly every sermon I heard in 
 London bore directly on some imminent matter, — some 
 great question of modern thought or action, — and that 
 the preacher spoke as a lawyer before a bench of judges 
 or a jury does, directly to the point, with the view of 
 convincing some person or persons on a given issue and 
 at that time. 
 
 I w^as not fortunate enough to hear Canon Liddon, 
 of St. Paul's Cathedral, who is ranked by many at the 
 head of the London pulpit in the way of combining 
 both scholarship and popular oratorical power. He 
 was sick and off duty during my three visits to London. 
 
 St. Paul's, although dwarfed in American interest by 
 Westminster Abbey, is to Englishmen probably the 
 greater church of the two, and it is always and for any 
 one a most impressive house of worship. It is the 
 cathedral church of the diocese of London and the 
 most prominent building in all that huge city, being in 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. \^\ 
 
 size tlie third largest church in Christendom. It is the 
 great monument of its architect, Sir Christopher Wren, 
 who got $1000 a year for building it. The bishop of 
 London now gets $50,000 a year. The dean of St. 
 Paul's also now receives $10,000 a year, and a staff of 
 canons $5000 a year each, for conducting service in it. 
 Then there are also archdeacons, prebendaries, minor 
 canons, and the usual equipment of lesser officers, — chan- 
 cellor, register, and clerks of many kinds. 
 
 St. Paul's Cathedral stands now right in the heart of 
 business London. Its once cloistered walks are busy 
 marts, and it is a dramatic surprise to pass in a few steps 
 almost, out of the Bank of England, heated, panting 
 with the pulses of the trade of the world, into the cool, 
 calm shades of a still cathedral where the service of 
 w^orship is nearly always in progress. There are, I 
 think, four services every day, and perhaps more on 
 Sunday, but it would be, it struck me, a glorious asser- 
 tion of religious life if they were made continuous day 
 and night, and this magnificent temple, right in the 
 heart of the dominion of Mammon in this world, were 
 constituted a place where literally "prayer is made to 
 God without ceasing." This idea flashed on. me like a 
 wave of emotion within ten minutes after I first entered 
 the great cathedral. I suggested it afterwards to an 
 English clergyman, but could not impart to him my 
 enthusiasm. He thought it w^ould 'Mvill the clergy." 
 I would sav, " Kill them." If men can die for their 
 country on a desolate and barren battle-field, why not for 
 the glory of God in a comfortable cathedral ? 
 
 The service of St. Paul's is a great work of art con- 
 ducted w^ith all the highest accessories of music and 
 ecclesiastical stage effect. It was entirely intoned, and 
 not a word of the priest was intelligible, at least to a 
 non-English stranger. For one not accustomed to the 
 traditional stage delivery of the English altar the tongue 
 might just as well have been Latin or Hebrew. The 
 preacher and reader, however, were perfectly heard. 
 
 16 
 
X82 LONDON. 
 
 The ablest sermon I heard in St. Paul's was by the 
 senior canon, Rev. Mr. Gregory. The bishop of the 
 diocese had ordered prayers for good weather in all the 
 churches, and Canon Gregory on this day preached to 
 the order, taking for his theme the whole question of 
 prayer for the specific direction or suspension of the laws 
 of nature. The marked feature of this sermon was the 
 extreme candor and fairness with which the preacher 
 stated the position of his opponents on this matter in 
 all its strength, without the least disposition to contort 
 it or to blink the danger. He fairly admitted that the 
 ground had shifted since the days of mediaeval thought, 
 and made not the least attempt to hold it by appeals to 
 transmitted ignorance or prejudice, but grappled with 
 the issue in a way that showed a masterly study of the 
 whole range of modern reading. It was the work of a 
 strong man who knew there was a fight ahead and was 
 ready for it. 
 
 Like nearly all English clergymen. Canon Gregory 
 preaches with a vigor, physical and intellectual, which 
 tells of the broad foundation of the university and of 
 generous and conscientious care of the body from youth 
 upwards. He is a large man, of hearty address and 
 that rare honesty of expression and manner that in- 
 spires immediate confidence and trust. The close of 
 St. Paul's, in which these canons live in low-roomed old- 
 fashioned houses, with wrought-iron extinguishers and 
 hooks for the link-boys' torches yet attached to their doors, 
 is a most quaint old place which I despair of describing 
 to those w^io have not seen it or something like it, but 
 it is one of the best living reminiscences of Old London. 
 It is in such out-of-the-way places not in the guide- 
 books, or out of the reach of tourist curiosity, that one 
 gets his freshest and best conception of past England. 
 An old castle with the family still in it, their comfort- 
 able every-day life blending through the slow succes- 
 sion of centuries with the half-barbaric magnificence of 
 their ancestors, a dark gray close with a deanery full of 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. 183 
 
 girls inheriting the substantial chib comforts of a line 
 of dead abbots and their bachelor monks, are worth all 
 the routine ruins and well-trodden ivy walls in the 
 island. 
 
 I first heard of the Rev. Charles Haweis many years 
 ago, when I found his " Music and Morals^' in the 
 meagre hut of a miner in the Rocky Mountains of 
 Colorado, into which I had been driven by stress of 
 weather to pass the night, and the singular contrast of 
 the incident kept his name fixed in my attention. In 
 London, Mr. Haweis is a very popular preacher, and 
 his church rather a fashionable one in its own stratum 
 of society. 
 
 St. James of Marylebone is an old-fashioned church 
 building such as you see yet in old parts of Philadel- 
 phia and in many of the interior towns of Maryland 
 and Pennsylvania. The old architectural interior has 
 been religiously preserved, — low, long galleries, quaint 
 pillars, high wooden pews, — but all the plain walls and 
 woodwork are now done over in the glory of modern 
 decorative effect, in gray and red and gold and glass. 
 Indeed, it rather looks as if an energetic aesthetic club 
 had been let loose on all the walls and wooden fronts. 
 The rear end of the church, which serves as a back- 
 ground for the altar, looks something like a huge il- 
 luminated title-page, so elaborate is it in pictured glass 
 and gold and neutral-tinted panels, all blazoned over 
 with ecclesiastical and religious symbols. The altar 
 itself was a narrow ledge against the base of the great 
 w-indow. On it rested an elaborate cross in opaque 
 glass or some similar material revealing itself very pret- 
 tily with a kind of subdued brilliancy out of a wealth 
 of flowers. Above the ledge arose a large rigid old- 
 fashioned square arch or triangle, thus : A. Inside of 
 the arch was a perfect circle of scroll-work of some kind ; 
 inside of the circle a Greek cross, its four even arms 
 touching the circumference, while its centre was a great 
 
184 LONDON. 
 
 garnet-colored stone or piece of glass, which burned or 
 glittered like a fiery eye, and more or less recalled the 
 Shah of Persia or one's boyhood recollections of the 
 " Arabian Nights." 
 
 The congregation was ajDparently of the middle class, 
 wealthy, comfortable, and uneducated. It was the 
 most congregational service, however, I have ever seen. 
 The Confession, Lord's Prayer, Creed, and most of the 
 prayers were said by the whole people so well and 
 spiritedly that the voice of the priest was never heard at 
 all save when he sounded the leading note. The psalms 
 of the day and the hymns were sung by the people, 
 who carried on the whole service. In fact, the whole 
 congregation seemed one body, a living being throbbing 
 and pulsating with worship. It was a congregation 
 very easy and pleasant to preach to, if one was its 
 choice. It was harmonious, very earnest, and entirely 
 satisfied with itself. Without knowino; anvthins: of 
 them, I should venture the assertion that the body of 
 the people are of the same class of society and have a 
 high opinion of their own ^^ culture." 
 
 Mr. Haweis is a good specimen of the popular 
 preacher toned down by the social limitations of the 
 Church of England. He has all the elements of a 
 stump-speaker, but has never learned to sink the pulpit 
 below the level of the stump, which is the usual work 
 of an American sensational preacher. Mr. Haweis 
 does not even approach this, for neither his education 
 nor Marylebone would suffer it ; but somehow his man- 
 ner suggests that under less fortunate conditions of cul- 
 tivation he might have drifted that way. He has the 
 best elements and force of the sensational preacher, 
 without his vulgarity. In person Mr. Haweis is a dark, 
 average-sized man, with black side-whiskers, and of a 
 sanguine, bilious-looking temperament. His elocution 
 is very English, apologetic, and with a great deal of 
 hem-ing and haw-ing and aw-ing. His tones are also 
 somewhat nasal, which is not English. 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. 185 
 
 The Roman Catholic pro-catheclral, which is said to 
 be a kind of provisional tabernacle until the Church 
 can make good its claim to St. Paul's or Westminster, 
 is situated away out on the Kensington road, one-half 
 mile by underground railway from Portland Place, and 
 the aristocratic section of which that place is the centre. 
 It is a fairly capacious but very plain church, with 
 pews, little decoration in the way of painting and stat- 
 uary, and looking not at all in its interior like the Ro- 
 man churches of Ireland and Italy. Here I went to 
 hear Henry Edward, Cardinal Manning, Archbishop 
 of Westminster. 
 
 Cardinal Manning is a tall, spare man, of feeble 
 frame, with an emaciated and almost pallid face, ren- 
 dered still more wan by hungry, cavernous eyes, — the 
 true ecclesiastical type. He called up at once the polit- 
 ical ecclesiastic of the sixteenth century. His wasted 
 features are refined, scholarly, and intellectual. A 
 movable scalp, causing his red skull-cap to move up 
 and down, imparts ratlier a sinister effect and mars the 
 general impression of his appearance. The thin figure 
 and meagre, fleshless face suggest the mediaeval an- 
 chorite, the sharp, severe outlines the Middle- Age in- 
 quisitor, a man who would be honestly cruel, — cruel to 
 himself as well as to others. 
 
 And Cardinal Manning has been cruel to himself, 
 mercilessly honest to his convictions, in leaving the 
 green pastures and pleasant waters of the Established 
 Church of England for the arid and unintellectual 
 wastes of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain. 
 There was no fashion at the pro-cathedral, no good so- 
 ciety, no university, no influence, no cultivation. There 
 were ignorant, new-made wealth and dull credulity and 
 heavy mediocrity, but nothing better. It was a real 
 sacrifice of the highest kind for this cultivated, learned, 
 able man, the flower of English education, to be there. 
 
 Cardinal Manning's sermon, as indeed was to be 
 expected, was masterly and powerful. It was very 
 
 16* 
 
Igg LONDON. 
 
 earnest, and full of the wisdom of an old and wise 
 man. It was severely plain in language and often 
 very practical, but the whole interior train of thouglit 
 and argument was entirely above the very inferior con- 
 gregation which listened to it. They undoubtedly got 
 good from it, but they never knew the perfection of 
 the work. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to me that the 
 great preacher was preaching two sermons simulta- 
 neously, — one in the spirit to himself and any stray 
 hearer that chanced to drop in, and another in the 
 flesh of the word to the pitiful audience of the pro- 
 cathedral. I think no educated man could have wit- 
 nessed this scene without regret, no matter how w^idely 
 he might have diifered from every word and conclusion 
 of the ex-fellow of Oxford. The text of the sermon 
 was the words, " Gold, frankincense, and myrrh," the 
 subject, " Offering,'' — the dedication of everything to 
 God ; one's whole self in every part, estate, body, 
 mind. The treatment revealed a great deal of patristic 
 reading, and the language recalled at times the late papal 
 syllabus, " The characteristic of the XIX. century is 
 mental aberration," and the remedy of the cardinal was 
 simple and mechanical : Offer your mind as a sacrifice 
 to God, — i.e., to the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 Cardinal Manning's delivery is very defective, and 
 keeps one on the stretch all the time. Owing to loss 
 of teeth, perhaps, one word out of every eight or ten 
 drops out entirely, and, as his sermons are of that un- 
 usual order that one wants to hear every word of them, 
 the loss is very serious. In speaking. Cardinal Man- 
 ning clenched the rail of the pulpit-box with both his 
 ])allid fists, like an English statesman on the hustings, 
 and ejected rather than delivered his words, as if half 
 embarrassed. He wore a scarlet cap and scarlet robe. 
 In quoting Latin, it was rather significant that he used 
 the continental pronunciation, abandoning the English 
 system of his own university training. 
 
 The pro-cathedral is not the first Roman Catholic 
 
THE LONDON PULPIT. 187 
 
 cluircli in London. That is St. George's Cathedral, 
 across the river from Westminster bridge. In this 
 pro-cathedral, when Cardinal Manning preached, the 
 pews were gnarded and a sixpence demanded for an 
 ordinary seat, a shilling for the better ones. The ser- 
 mon was preached for a charity, and the money thus 
 secured went to it in addition to the special collection 
 taken up. The force of priests at the altar was not 
 strong. Mass was more reverently gone through than 
 in the perfunctory Italian style, but with less regard 
 to the scenic proprieties, and with an utter want of 
 tlie sense of dress and drapery that was thoroughly 
 English. 
 
 The preachers with a Transatlantic fame of other 
 churches were not as conspicuous in the winter of 
 1879-80 as some years before. Irving, the leader of 
 the famous apostolic movement, was dead. Spurgeon 
 was in Italy in search of health, perhaps of life. The 
 great orator of the Congregationalist denomination was 
 in the divorce court. And so it happens that the view 
 of this letter is confined to the Roman and English 
 State-Churches. 
 
 In London the pulpit is a much stronger social force 
 than in any city in our country, and the men who fill it 
 take a much greater and more influential share in the 
 general public life. There are reasons in the structure 
 of English society for this. 
 
 The bishops sit in Parliament, and thus have a direct 
 political influence. Again, the entire body of the 
 clergy is a definite class, entitled always to be heard in 
 a society which rests on a basis of class and is itself 
 only a federation of many class-interests. This priestly 
 class, in its highest rank too, reaches into the peerage. 
 It requires a personal knowledge of English life tc 
 know how much this means. 
 
 Once more, the English clergy have a better and 
 happier education than the main body of ours, which, 
 
188 LONDON. 
 
 indeed, they share with the leaders of thought of all 
 England, but it works out special advantages in their 
 profession. Owing to a greater breadth of learning, 
 and as its resultant a larger freedom of thought and ex- 
 pression, many of the great intellectual and social ques- 
 tions which are fought outside of the Church with us 
 are fought inside of it here. Then the good fortune of 
 a university education in England is a great blessing 
 which widens with the years. All the best life of Eng- 
 land goes to school either at Cambridge or Oxford. 
 Until more recent years this has been the case almost 
 without exception. The graduates of these two univer- 
 sities divided among themselves all England, and have 
 done so for hundreds of years. Their alumni have 
 been simply a club formed of the leaders in the state, 
 in the Church, in society, in the army, at the bar. 
 England is a small place,, where men constantly meet 
 one another. The young university clergyman starts 
 with an acquaintance embracing all that is best in the 
 kingdom, and that will last for life if he is w^orthy of 
 it. He has, therefore, a much more intimate associa- 
 tion wdth the whole life of the nation than the American 
 clergyman, who starts from the first in the seclusion of 
 a denominational college and further segregates himself 
 by finishing his education in an admittedly sectarian 
 theological school. 
 
 Finally, the Established Church itself is an alliance 
 with the politics and good society of the kingdom, and 
 its leaders have necessarily intimate relations with and 
 responsibilities to these interests. 
 
 There is another solid reason why the clergy of Lon- 
 don should stand to the front of their calling. All 
 England is behind them. The men who preach in St. 
 PauFs and Westminster, at Smithfield or the Temple, 
 and who live at Lambeth Palace, would be less than 
 mortal did they not draw strength and inspiration from 
 the historic theatre of their work. 
 
THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. 189 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. 
 
 The Primitive Inn-Yard Stage of Old England — • 
 Disappearance of the English Drama of the Soil — • 
 The Saxon Play and the Modern Theatre — London 
 Theatres and Law-Court Kooms — Hknry Irving at 
 THE Lyceum — The Sceptre of Eashion — Sara Bern- 
 hardt over from the Theatre Fran^ais. 
 
 Several ancient London inns, with spacious interior 
 court-yards surrounded with galleries in the shape of a 
 continuous porch running around the second story, are 
 still pointed out as the rude and simple play-houses of 
 Old England. The stage here was the pavement of 
 the court-yard. The spectators gathered on the upper 
 porches, or perhaps could even sit at their chamber 
 windows and see and hear the play, as I have done this 
 year in a provincial Italian town, and seen good acting. 
 The servants of the inn and hangers-on clustered in the 
 corners of the court-yard, standing on the ground, or 
 maybe indulging in the kitchen-stools and stable- 
 benches. It is, perhaps, in survival of this tradition that 
 in most of the London theatres of to-day the best part 
 of the house is called the pit, and that seats in it are 
 sold at a cheap price and fashion rigorously shuns it. 
 The modern pit is the survivor of the old inn court- 
 yard, and the flavor of the stable and kitchen still 
 clings to it. Many of the plays of Shakespeare were 
 brought before the people on just such simple boards, some 
 of them in some of these very inns. This was in the days 
 of Merrie England and of strolling players, — the time 
 when England was a })lay-going nation. She was then 
 Catholic and monarchical in heart. To-day she is 
 
190 LONDON. 
 
 Protestant and republican, and her native drama is 
 gone. 
 
 There is something in democracy and Puritanism 
 which drives the theatre out of a national life. The 
 people have risen to higher interests. When the Puritan 
 became ascendant in England he closed up the play- 
 houses, burnt the plays, branded the poor players, and, 
 perhaps, drove them with cropped ears out of the land. 
 They have never come back. England has her theatres 
 to-day, but they are no more an institution of the people. 
 They are simply a conventional amusement of the higher 
 classes common to the world. They flourish only in her 
 cities. The '^ play'^ of English literature has disap- 
 peared. 
 
 A popular love of the drama among the humble 
 body of the people only exists in that condition of civi- 
 lization where there is a high development of the dra- 
 matic element in Church and State. Wherever there 
 are elaborate rites and forms in the Church, and scenic 
 displays in the Government, there the heart of the 
 common people is really moved by its drama, which, 
 howev^er humble it may be, answers to and satisfies a 
 popular craving. A drama of the soil flourishes best 
 wlien the High-Church principle rules in the Church 
 and the monarchical principle in the State. In Italy 
 to-day, where the people are born actors, the daily ser- 
 vice of the Church is always an impressive picture, and 
 it flowers all the time in imposing "functions" in 
 grand cathedrals so built that the chancel railings 
 enclose a mao^nificent sta":e where a hundred or more 
 })riests and acolytes can countermarch, intone, swing 
 censers, and group themselves in effective tableaux. 
 From the England of the play and play-houses come 
 down scenic coronations and spectacular openings of Par- 
 liament, which are performed yet to-day, but to irre- 
 sponsive audiences. The whole order of life of the peer- 
 age is, in fact, a colossal play for the amusement and 
 impression of the common people. When the people 
 
THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. 191 
 
 get behind the scenes then comes democracy. Democ- 
 racy has come for England, and the drama as a native 
 institution has disappeared before it. The old name, 
 even, is gone. The Saxon ^' play" of the people has 
 given way to the Latin theatrum of fashion. The 
 English theatre of to-day does not differ from the 
 American. Tlie same plays are acted in the same way, 
 and the same kind of people go to hear them, — viz., 
 the well-off world of fashion and the very dregs of 
 the cities. The vast body of the people have no more 
 interest in them than have onrs. 
 
 The theatres of I^ondon, therefore, although good in 
 their several ways, offer no field for the study of Eng- 
 lish life except incidentally. The houses themselves 
 were not materially different from ours, and they 
 seemed to grade themselves fashionable, middle class, 
 low, much a.s ours do. 
 
 In this similarity to ours they resemble every other in- 
 stitution whose development in England and our country 
 has been under similar conditions. I took a stroll one 
 day through the law-courts of London under a barrister^s 
 guidance, and was surprised to find how little they dif- 
 fered from ours. Even the men in them were the same. 
 There was the little, withered-up, old lawyer, the portly, 
 substantial, prosperous one, the hurried, fuU-of-busi- 
 ness advocate, the hungry, shabby attorney, who has 
 given up the race, and haunts the court-room by 
 habit; the judge who tried the case himself, and did 
 all the talking; the judge whose docket was always 
 behindhand ; the barrister with unclean linen and un- 
 brushed clothes. They were all there just as they are 
 sitting in the court-rooms of Pennsylvania to-day. It 
 may be that Pennsylvania, accepting the common law 
 in full and the old English system of pleading, and 
 changing very little of anything until within this gen- 
 eration, has carried down somethino- more of the detail 
 of the English court-room than other States, but it is 
 not much. The controlling reason for the likeness is 
 
192 LONDON. 
 
 that for three hundred years the law, always a con- 
 servative profession, has advanced with equal steps 
 and under nearly eqnal conditions in England and this 
 country. The American lawyer has added to his pro- 
 fessional labors the burden of politics, which, in Eng- 
 land, has been generally shouldered by another class, 
 but that is abont all the difference in their lives. He 
 threw away the wig, also, and that is about all the 
 difference there is in the coup cVceil of an English 
 and American court-room. And that is a difference 
 to our advantage. I failed entirely to see the dignity 
 and impressiveness which, to the English mind, lies in 
 a horse-hair wig. They give a slovenly and unclean air 
 to a whole room. Few were well kept, none of them 
 looked fresh, and many were nasty. 
 
 All theatre-going London, in 1879, was divided in 
 its worship of Henry Irving and Sara Bernhardt, both 
 of whom are promised to America, and both of whom 
 have made conquest of the world of fashion as well as 
 of the stage. 
 
 Henry Irving has unquestionably achieved a wonder- 
 ful success in holding the sustained attention of Lon- 
 don. His plays are mostly of a high order,— mainly 
 Shakespearian. His Merchant of Venice has held the 
 stage for hundreds of nights, and there are no symptoms 
 to show that the interest is flagging. One must go a 
 week beforehand to secure seats, and this has been the 
 case for several years. His theatre is the Lyceum, — 
 on classic ground just off the Strand. Mr. Irving is a 
 spare, rather fine-looking man, with an intellectual face 
 and the carriage of a gentleman. He has the sem- 
 blance of a bend in his shoulders greater than the 
 reality. When acting you see Henry Irving all the time, 
 but it is not offensive. He blends with his character, 
 but he never loses himself even to the incidents of 
 his appearance. There is, for instance, a certain melo- 
 dramatic air about him, recognizable plainly in his 
 
THE FLAY AND THE THEATRE. I93 
 
 photographs^ which never forsakes him and leaves on 
 one a suspicion that he is forever posing. He wears a 
 "melancholy mien/^ as one who carries around from 
 hour to hour the burden of a great grief, a secret 
 mystery, perhaps even a delicious crime. This manner, 
 however, is one of chaste repression, and the highest 
 finish of subdued refinement. There is not the least 
 suggestion of the possibility of a scene or of anything that 
 might violate the minutest conventionalities of good 
 society. It is an air eminently calculated to charm and 
 interest a sympathetic woman with time on her hands 
 and plenty of money. 
 
 This charm Mr. Irving has worked, and it is the 
 danger which confronts him now in coming to our 
 country. Although an excellent, conscientious, and 
 scholarly actor, INIr. Irving owes his sovereignty of the 
 London stage to the stamp of aristocratic endorsement 
 set on him personally. Society, in a country where 
 society is thoroughly organized, has approved him. It 
 has taken him up, it has opened its drawing-rooms to 
 him, it has made it the mode to go to the Lyceum. 
 Bishops hear him, the clergy of good society discuss 
 him with religieuse peeresses; the journal with social 
 ambition hymns his praises. It is very meet and right 
 and proper now in England to hear Henry Irving. 
 
 Now in this country we have nothing at all to answer 
 to the direct and powerful influence of the English 
 aristocracy in general society. It can take up a pet of 
 any kind, for a mere whim, perhaps, and his fortune is 
 made. And it does take up these pets all the time, and 
 in the most capricious way. Sometimes it is an actor, 
 sometimes it is a clergyman, sometimes it is an artist, 
 sometimes it is a beauty, sometimes even the whim may 
 be to buy at a certain shop or patronize a certain trades- 
 man. Whatever it is, the success of the pet is assured. 
 All London kneels at the feet of the beauty, throngs the 
 theatre of the actor, buys the pictures of the artist, or 
 crowds the shop of the favorite tradesman. Perhaps 
 in 17 
 
194 LONDON. 
 
 society even tolerates or half invites a mild and cautious 
 snubbini^ from its pet. This is the perilous position of 
 Henry Irving. He is the pet of London society, and 
 specially of that wing of it which affects to be non- 
 worldly. He stands at the head of the English stage, 
 but how far he owes that position to an arbitrary degree 
 of fashion, and liow far to a genuine mastery of his 
 profession, it may take the verdict of an American pub- 
 lic to decide. 
 
 When Sara Bernhardt first comes on the stage you 
 see a meagre-looking, rather impassive soubrette, with a 
 plain thin face and a body that looks like an unin- 
 teresting fabrication of w^halebones and corsets. You 
 are looking anxiously at every entrance for the great 
 actress to make her appearance, when it breaks on you 
 with a disappointment that this inferior young woman 
 is she herself. It can hardly be, it cannot possibly be, 
 but a moment or two and the inexorable caste decides. 
 Yes, it is she, certainly. Soon the " divine skeleton^' 
 begins to breathe, the eyes of the soul light up the 
 sunken face, and the worn body clothes itself with flesh 
 and grace. 
 
 There can be no question as to the Bernhardt's right 
 to her throne. Disendowed with a body carrying which 
 many a rustic girl would give up the village race, she 
 has placed herself at the head of the actresses of her 
 day, flooded the capitals of two continents with her 
 face, and dictated the mode in dress and adornment of 
 the civilized world. And this resistless power of hers 
 which holds London and Paris at her feet, and sends 
 her fame wherever there is Avritten language, is the 
 more strange that it is so purely intellectual. With none 
 of the sensuous charms of physical attraction, she has 
 nevertheless always made men the slaves of her body. 
 On the stage it is the passion of the soul which achieves 
 her triumphs. You see forever the fiery mind flaming 
 through the frail body. Her power is that wondrous 
 
THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. 195 
 
 Hebrew force in civilization which flashes out all 
 throuo;h history, and which in onr own day we confess 
 in a Disraeli, a Gambetta, a Rothschild, and a Rachel. 
 Almost any woman with Sara Bernhardt's body would 
 look like a faded little seamstress all her life and feel 
 like one. She has set that body on a throne and made 
 all the women in Christendom do homage to it. The 
 experienced modern eye will see modes of dress and 
 little achievements of feminine embellishment in every 
 town of the United States, which were conceived and 
 brought forth solely to rectify certain lines in Miss 
 Bernhardt's physical frame or to draw off attention 
 from certain others that would not be successfully recti- 
 fied. What greater triumph is open to woman than to 
 thus chain her whole sex to her chariot wheels? 
 
 When Sara Bernhardt came to London success was 
 immediate and assured. The commission of the classic 
 Theatre Frangais — the first stage of the world — had, 
 perhaps, made this a sure thing, but nevertheless society 
 undertook her cause, and made it a social necessity to 
 have seen her. Under the segis'of His Royal High- 
 ness the Prince of Wales the comparatively Puritanic 
 drawing-rooms of London were opened, with some 
 qualms it is true, to " Miss Sara Bernhardt and son," 
 and Matthew Arnold in the elaborate pages of the Nine- 
 teenth Century paid the compliments of the world of 
 scholarship and higher letters. 
 
 As an actress, there is no doubt of her power. Her 
 very presence grows on one with a fascination he cannot 
 understand. There is a finish, a consummate grace, a 
 trained force in every movement and position that 
 throw around her the real histrionic nimbus and estab- 
 lish her divine right to the succession of the sov- 
 ereignty of the stage. Her genius is a perfection of 
 simulation of which, perhaps, our heavier Saxon race 
 is not capable, and therefore admires the more. 
 
 The special circles which respectively chaperoned 
 Henry Irving and Sara Bernhardt represent rather 
 
196 LONDON. 
 
 antipodal elements of London society, but it is all a 
 matter of the upper classes. The people of England 
 know nothing and care nothing for either of the stars 
 that reign in the theatrical firmament. They have 
 nothing to do with the London stage of our day, which 
 is not English. It may be cosmopolitan, electic of the 
 world, better than all England ever did or could afford, 
 but it is not national. 
 London. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE LONDON TIMES. 
 
 In the Fortress of the Thunderer — Mechanical Plant 
 AND Management of the Establishment — Presses — 
 Type-Founding — Electric Light — Electrotyping-Shop — 
 The Canteen — Telegraphic Service — Printing by Ear 
 — Night-Work — The Paper of the Future — American 
 AND English Journalism. 
 
 Peinting-House Square, which sounds so grandly 
 from across the seas, is in London so modest a place 
 that one can readily pass by it unwittingly, as I did, 
 even after having fixed its general locality from the 
 map, and started out to find it. This, however, is not 
 because " the Square'^ is an inconsiderable structure, 
 but because of the magnitude of London, which is so 
 immense that one only comes to a conception of it 
 slowlv and by experience such as this. 
 
 The Times building is really a massive pile of solid 
 brick of fair architectural effect, which in New York or 
 Philadelphia might be one of the features of the city. 
 In London it is simply lost, — crowded away among 
 square miles of similar structures densely packed and 
 pressed together. 
 
 Printing-House Square, the castle of the modern 
 
THE LONDON TIMES. 197 
 
 Thunderer, stands on the reputed site of an old Xorman 
 fortress. There is something dramatic in this coinci- 
 dence which makes the spot the suggestive vignette of 
 whole centuries of history, and starts a thousand poetic 
 and philosophic dreams on the local correlation of 
 force. 
 
 I had had no acquaintance with The Times, but a 
 note of introduction sent by kind thoughtful ness of a 
 leading New York editor opened widely and hospitably 
 its doors, and I spent a portion of a day most profitably 
 in an exhaustive inspection of its plant and watching 
 somewhat the process of its daily work. Let me tell 
 of some of its wonders. 
 
 In this letter I shall confine myself chiefly to the 
 mechanical features, as being of most popular interest 
 and best picturing the establishment to the non-profes- 
 sional world. The editorial side is of professional 
 rather than public interest, and, besides, why should the 
 arcana of the profession be laid before those ej^es which 
 see not ? 
 
 I shall avoid also the familiar figures which simply 
 prove a colossal business, and wdiich would be equally 
 impressive in recording the results of a pork-packing or 
 brick-making establishment, and attempt to briefly out- 
 line some of the features which are distinctive to The 
 Times and characteristic. 
 
 Solidly established for years, founded on the strong 
 bases of the University and the governing classes of 
 England, conducted by men every one of whom is an 
 expert and veteran in the business, The Times enjoys an 
 income that now comes in of itself, and stretching out 
 like some of our great railway companies, it now em- 
 ploys a portion of its surplus revenues every year in 
 buttressing itself, by extending its works out to the per- 
 manent manufacture of its own supplies. These things 
 are permanent investments, not expenses, and, although 
 costly in the start, in the long course of years save 
 money. 
 
 17* 
 
198 LONDON. 
 
 Let me enumerate some of the most important as 
 illustrative of the sco])e of the plant. The Times — 
 I. Manufactures its own presses. 
 II. Founds its own type. 
 
 III. Provides its own light — electric. 
 
 IV. Feeds its employees on the spot. 
 V. Has its own electrotyping-shop. 
 
 VI. Has its own telegraphic service and wires — in 
 the main ; and 
 
 VII. Repair-shops for all these different machineries. 
 All tliese great shops and offices are under one roof, and 
 
 the clusterof them, with the other ordinary departments 
 of a newspaper-office, — editorial-, composing-, proof-, 
 stereotyping-, making-up-, press-, business-, advertising-, 
 and distribution-rooms, — form The Times building:. 
 
 The Walter presses are made here for the market as 
 well as for the proprietor's own paper, and in these 
 shops I found the workmen in the busy clatter of 
 turning out great machines, as in any great factory or 
 foundry. 
 
 In the press-room of the paper stand eight ; six go 
 every night and two stand by as a reserve brigade. 
 Each press prints a whole copy of The Times, both 
 sides, sixteen pages, and at the rate of twelve thousand 
 per hour. The edition, therefore, goes off at the rate 
 of seventy-two thousand per hour. These presses are 
 ranged in three columns in an immense room on the 
 first floor of the building, the enormous w^eight sup- 
 ported by arches. The paper-room, another large space, 
 is just below the press-room, the paper being hoisted up 
 by a lift (American elevator) into the centre of the 
 press-room. In the spacious paper-rooms below you 
 wander through long avenues of huge rolls of paper, 
 each roll four miles long. I watched at one of the 
 presses the four-mile run of one of these rolls, and it 
 was striking to see how quickly it was done. 
 
 Much of the mechanical interest of The Times cen- 
 tres in its type department. I brought away with me 
 
THE LONDON TIMES. 199 
 
 some type made under my eye in the founding-room. 
 But that is only the beginning of the wonder. Fol- 
 lowing this type into another department you see it set 
 by machinery. All publishers are familiar with the 
 history of the long effort of Mr. Waher in this direc- 
 tion. Here is tlie result : 
 
 One-half of The Times every niglit is set by ma- 
 chinery. One machine does the work of six to eight 
 skilled compositors. It cannot correct, however, and 
 here is its weak point, or the whole paper would be set 
 with it. As it is, the work is about divided. Doubtful 
 copy and all revisions are done by hand, the steady, 
 regular work by machinery. 
 
 A young man sits before what looks like a piano- 
 board, with four or five banks of keys all lettered. 
 He })lays on these keys with forefingers of each hand 
 rapidly, and the type are as rapidly shifted into a kind 
 of minute steel galley, the exact width of the body of a 
 type. There is no system of fingering as with piano 
 music, — only the two paws fly like lightning. 
 
 The distributing-machine just reverses the process of 
 the setting instrument, and in the last stage each letter 
 of the alphabet is rapidly shunted off on to its separate 
 side-track, where they stand like long trains of freight 
 cars in the yard of a colossal depot. It is a wonderful 
 machine, but there are others, I think, now surely ap- 
 proaching perfection of nuich more interest and impor- 
 tance to newspaper property. 
 
 The last permanent investment of The Times has 
 been the manufacture of its own light on the electric 
 system, using carbon points. The cost for the plant of 
 this has been very great, but it is so far successful, and 
 the cost of now producing light is very moderate. 
 
 The entire building is lighted by sixteen electric 
 lights, each light of from eight hundred to one thousand 
 candle-power, far more than is needed. Sixteen wires, 
 each starting directly from a battery, are used to dis- 
 tribute the light, and the battery is worked from a solid 
 
200 LONDON. 
 
 and powerful steam-engine. This engine had to be 
 built expressly for the electric battery, and its power 
 cannot be used for any other purpose ; the light would 
 waver and be unsteady. Quite thick porcelain globes 
 are used to temper the fierce power of the light, and the 
 dark shadows are in part corrected by reflection from 
 white bowls. I see no reason why the new Edison 
 light should not be attached to this plant, if desirable. 
 
 This electric manufacture has been an advertisement 
 for The Times, but so far it is not an economy. They 
 have more light than they need or want to have, and the 
 cost of the plant is the capital of a gas company, not a 
 legitimate expense of a newspaper establishment. 
 
 The employees of The Times are fed in the building, 
 — a great saving of time to employer and employed. 
 The canteen consists of a fine large kitchen and two 
 dining-rooms. Food is supplied at cost rates to the 
 men, — '^ everything except beer, on which is charged a 
 little profit, which saves the canteen always from loss, 
 and the margin of profit, whatever it may be, is always 
 turned in to an employees^ relief fund which we have," 
 it was explained to me. 
 
 " That is very excellent ; but we do not call beer 
 ^food' in America," 
 
 The canteen is a very good and saving institution. 
 It supplies a kind of cheap club to the men, but there 
 could be no better illustration of the difference of 
 habits and manners on the liquor question between the 
 two countries. Here was a careful and conscientious 
 employer furnishing liquor to his force; and, more 
 than that, long rows of bright, burnished pewter ale- 
 mugs, each with ^' The Times" proudly engraved on 
 its beaming face, greeted my vision as one of the em- 
 bellishments of the canteen. 
 
 The electrotyping-shop is a well-appointed room, 
 equipped with all the modern appliances of the trade, 
 where are made the plates for the weather diagrams 
 published daily in The Times, and also maps, charts, 
 
THE LONDON TIMES. 201 
 
 etc. So well is this shop perfected that a moderate- 
 sized plate can be turned out in a few minutes. Prac- 
 tical newspaper managers will recognize the economy 
 and desirable use of this attachment. 
 
 The Times has its own wires over much of England 
 and most of the cojitinent, and its own service of them 
 by accomplished correspondents, — men of ability and 
 influence. It uses Renter (tlie Associated Press of 
 Europe), but only partially and as an incident, its page 
 or more of telegraphic news being generally exclusively 
 its OW'U, and the Renter news coming in only in a supple- 
 mentary way. It is a common expression among news- 
 paper men in our country that we only use the telegraph 
 largely. I think that the special telegraph service of 
 The Times exceeds that of any American newspaper, 
 saving, possibly, the New York Herald and the Chicago 
 Times. It does not strike the popular and uneducated 
 eye, perhaps, so strongly as ours, because it does not deal 
 in criminal news, small fires, petty accidents, sensations, 
 etc. ; but every morning The Times does have a de- 
 spatch from every capital in Europe from a " stick" to 
 a column and a half or two columns in length, giving 
 the political situation of the day and the great business 
 and social features, — the matter that statesmen and 
 scholars and leaders read and talk about. They are 
 its constituency. Its telegraphic service of special 
 matter averages, I think, al)Out a page a day, and a 
 page of The Times is equal in superficies to over 
 twenty per cent, more than a page of the New York 
 Hei'ald. 
 
 It is all solid news, too, — no padding or whipped 
 cream. 
 
 The reception of the telegraphic news of The Times is 
 something unique. The lines from the continental 
 capitals, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna, etc., all, of 
 course, converge in one room, and the despatches are 
 received over an instrument that prints. The print- 
 ing, however, serves merely as a record. The despatch, 
 
202 LONDON. 
 
 as it is received, is read off by the telegraph operator 
 to the operator of a type-machine, who plays it off by 
 ear, and the despatch, thus reduced to written form, is 
 supplied to the editors in printed proof. Of course, 
 only the work of responsible correspondents, likely to 
 need no alteration, is honored in this way. It would 
 be too expensive to treat thus matter requiring editing. 
 
 The type-setting-machine compositors are, of course, 
 a class to themselves, or, rather, to The Times. Every 
 ordinary compositor going on The Times obligates him- 
 self to abandon all Unions or outside organizations. 
 
 Indeed, in many things the office is exclusive in this 
 way. It does not employ men who serve on other 
 papers, and those who work on The Times are pro- 
 tected in many ways from outside affiliations. As a 
 curious instance of this feeling, I was shown, in a 
 distant portion of the building, a rather desolate, 
 cheerless-looking room for casual employees or tem- 
 porary contributors, " persons that we don't want to 
 mix up with our own men, you know." 
 
 But all this costly mechanical plant did not make 
 The Times. It was before all these things were, which 
 are but its menial equipment. The being of The Times 
 is in the brain-power and character of its founder and 
 directors. It is a power and an authority and an in- 
 fluence because of their strength and social force. So 
 high is the personal character of the direction of this 
 paper, so judicial and scholarly its editing, so careful 
 and judicious its expression, that it has, at home and 
 abroad, all the responsibility, standing, and influence 
 of a living and responsible man. It has, in fact, the 
 social position, political weight, and personal, character 
 of the best-born, best-educated, and highest-minded 
 man in Britain, and in its circulation, therefore, has 
 just the association, relations, and influence which such 
 a man would have. And it has all this and keeps it 
 just because it is owned and edited by just this class 
 of men. 
 
THE LONDON TIMES. 203 
 
 A marked feature of the place is the large amount 
 of hard work and unremitting attention bestowed un- 
 ceasingly on The Times by its proprietors and editors. 
 
 Here is an old paper, perhaps the best established in 
 the world. Every man on it holding any responsible 
 position is an expert in the business. The experience 
 of some of them is hereditary. Every employee on the 
 paper is of the highest grade of scholarship or business 
 training, but the managers and editor are working as 
 hard and closely as if they were starting a new enter- 
 prise. Let me give some facts : 
 
 All the editorial work is done at night, the editors 
 not coming down at all in the daytime. 
 
 Mr. Chenery, the editor, sees the first paper off the 
 press every night. 
 
 Mr. McDonald, the managing publisher, sees the 
 whole edition off the press every night. 
 
 The paper goes to press at 3.30 a.m., but these men 
 know that from midnight to 3 A.M. is the quarter-deck 
 in action of a morning paper, and they are on it. Mr. 
 Walter's (the main proprietor's) own house is adjoining 
 and runs into The Times building ; is substantially a 
 part of it. The dwelling of Mr. Delane, the late 
 editor, stood quite near the office, between Printing- 
 House Square and The Temple. He, too, always was 
 on deck at night until the paper went down. Both of 
 their dwellings are far down town ; infinitely farther 
 from the social life and rest of London than w^ould be 
 Third and Chestnut from that of Philadelphia. But 
 the night is the life of a morning paper. 
 
 The Times having no long railway routes to travel, as 
 all England is covered in a few hours, and running off 
 its edition at the speed of seventy-two thousand an hour, 
 can afford to wait until a later moment before going to 
 press tlian a paper of Philadelphia or New York. I may 
 say here, the editors of all kinds each hav^e a room to 
 themselves, and work under all the advantages of seclu- 
 sion and silence. These rooms, nearly every one of 
 
204 LONDON. 
 
 which I visited, are spacious, often about sixteen by 
 sixteen or twenty feet, and substantially furnished, 
 have high ceilings, are well ventilated and comfortably 
 lighted. They have, in fact, something of the com- 
 fortable air of a university chamber. 
 
 Another marked feature is the watchful economy 
 practised in the daily management. While all the first- 
 cost or investment expenses have been on the most lib- 
 eral and solid scale, the daily running expenses are very 
 closely guarded. The story of the rags in The Times 
 composing-room, I suppose, is familiar to all interested 
 in the newspaper business, but I saw other things quite 
 as remarkable. For instance, I saw in a comparatively 
 small package the entire waste paper of the previous 
 day's seventy thousand edition of The Times, — i.e., the 
 sheets of defective paper or paper spoiled on the press, — 
 and it was not as large as often is the waste of a Phila- 
 delj^hia paper. Per contra, it is to be said the paper is 
 of better quality and less likely to tear or break. The 
 same economy — the child of thorough knowledge of 
 the business — ran through every department of the es- 
 tablishment, editorial and manufacturing. There was 
 no waste, no splashing, and close saving. The cost of 
 specials and of travelling expenses is much better worked 
 down than with us, — indeed, this is so on all English 
 papers. The composing-room is closely watched, — no 
 union rules, of course, interfering. Repeat advertise- 
 ments are not distributed and reset as in one of our 
 American newspapers, but held as long as the type re- 
 mains in good order. When I mentioned the custom 
 of a New York journal on this point to The Times 
 manager, he w^as unaffectedly astonished, exclaiming, 
 Oest magnifique mais ce 71* est pas la guerre. 
 
 The distinguishing characteristic of The Times is 
 solidity. 
 
 The editorial department, like everything else of in- 
 fluence and weight in England, rests squarely on the 
 university, and what that means it takes some insight 
 
THE LONDON TIMES. 205 
 
 into the English life to understand. The paper ad- 
 dresses the leaders and thinkers and statesmen of the 
 world, and it must have the best trained power to speak 
 to them. 
 
 The solid paper that it is printed on is equal to book 
 paper in grade. Three of the sixteen-paged numbers 
 of The Times go to the pound of printing-paper. 
 
 The proof-reading is perfection, — more scholarly and 
 faultless than that of the average American book. 
 
 Of the solidity of the manufacturing plant this letter 
 has amply spoken. 
 
 But while everything is solid and perfected on The 
 Tunes, while every man on it is trained and tried in his 
 profession and there is no experimenting in the business 
 of the establishment, there is no cessation of mental 
 energies or invention, for these men are veterans, stand- 
 ing ready to hold their paper abreast of the times and 
 to seize first the vantage-ground of any new discoveries 
 that might aifect the property or the new^spaper life. 
 The Times, indeed, has always been a college of inven- 
 tion and discovery in the newspaper workl, spending 
 large sums of money in reaching after new processes 
 and improvements in machinery or management. 
 Among the achieved results of its labors in this way 
 are the Walter press and the type-setting machine,— two 
 endurino: monuments. I was rather startled to find in 
 this connection that among the problems revolving in 
 the fecund womb of The Times office was one to which 
 I have for several years given a good deal of thought 
 and some practical labor, — viz., the publication simul- 
 taneously of a great daily paper in a dozen cities. That 
 is certainly the newspaper of the future, and the future 
 may be near at hand. 
 
 There is no excitement or nervous hurry in The Times 
 building, — nothing, perhaps, that would impress an un- 
 skilled visitor, — but the mental atmosphere is very 
 stimulating. In fact, one feels tired and, exhausted — 
 that familiar experience of our Centennial Exposition 
 
 18 
 
206 LONDON. 
 
 — after inspecting honestly its plant and workings, so 
 great are the achieved results, so limitless the range of 
 the thousand suggestions which start themselves in re- 
 viewing in the sympathetic companionship of its own 
 management the first newspaper office of the world. 
 
 In such a visit one's mind constantly tends to run- 
 ning a parallel between the English journal and the 
 American, but such a contrast is fair to neither, and 
 very illusive. In the first place, the functions or uses 
 of the two papers are very different. As 7iew7spa[>ers 
 we undoubtedly excel ; but the English papers do the 
 thinking for their communities in a way that our jour- 
 nals do not, and, as a consequence, their conductors 
 have a higher influence and stronger standing in so- 
 ciety. Then, the English idea of *' news" is something 
 very diflerent from ours, and the Continental concep- 
 tion is something different again from either. And 
 the English journals, like English society, are divided 
 by classes between which there is a wide gulf such as 
 does not exist with us. The leading papers are very 
 strong, dignified, scholarly, and powerful ; the lower 
 papers are very low, and the classes do not grade into 
 each other by insensible shades as with us. 
 
 In fact, the papers of a country are the outcome and 
 development of its life. What that is they will be. 
 A comparative study of the great papers of the world, 
 say The Times of England, Independence Beige of Brus- 
 sels, Gblos of St. Petersburg, Figaro of Paris, and 
 others of like representative character, will lead one 
 more and more to this conclusion just as far as he gets 
 a real insight to the representative journals themselves, 
 their editorial direction and work, the character of their 
 news and the methods of its presentation, and, finally, 
 the reception and support of the journals by their re- 
 spective communities. 
 
 London. 
 
HISTORIC TAVERNS. 207 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 HISTORIC TAVERNS, 
 
 In the Haunts of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson — The 
 English Inn — The Tavern Clubs of the Seventeenth 
 AND Eighteenth Centuries — The Somerset Tavern and 
 THE Junius Letters — The Kainbow Coffee-House — 
 Doctor Johnson and the Mitre — The Cheshire Cheese 
 — The Cock — History and Politics in the Inn Names 
 OF England. 
 
 All through English literature there come down to 
 us certain names of homelike London inns, which, 
 although familiar by their oft recurrence and the flood 
 of associations which sweep through them, — the memo- 
 ries and recollections of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, 
 of Goldsmith, Burke, Garrick, Dean Swift, Pope, Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds, Gibbon, bluff old Dr. Johnson, Bos- 
 well, Pepys, and a host of worthies, — are yet mostly 
 thought of by us only as pictures, as something utterly 
 gone and passed away, like the silent forum or the des- 
 olated mansions of Macsenas. 
 
 It is, therefore, a pleasant surprise to find many of 
 them here in the flesh, and they are quite worth visit- 
 ing and picturing, as in addition to their intrinsic 
 interest their existence to-day is thoroughly illustrative 
 of an inside phase of English life. Many of these his- 
 toric taverns exist now almost exactly as they did in 
 the days of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, less changed 
 in their outward appearance than would be the doctor 
 or the deathless " Vicar'' if living now, while in their 
 inner life and traditions they are essentially the same as 
 a century or more ago. 
 
 The English tavern never dies. Landlords may 
 come and go, servants grow venerable and pass into 
 local traditions, barmaids bloom and fade into but 
 
208 LONDON. 
 
 toasts and memories, but " the inn'' goes on forever. 
 Heirlooms accumulate on its time-stained walls ; corners 
 and seats grow famous as the men who once claimed 
 them reveal themselves in history ; the genii loci gather 
 with the centuries ; but the inn is fresh and young and 
 warm and cheery forever. I have already mentioned 
 that at Stratford-on-Avon an inn at which Washington 
 Irving rested in 1830, I think, and mentioned in liis 
 published letters, still lives on his genial recommenda- 
 tion and deserves it. At Waltham I found an excel- 
 lent country inn reputed through the kingdom, which 
 dates from A.D. 1260, an undoubted case of Bonifacial 
 succession. The Four Swans blazons to-day this ancient 
 date on its quaint signboard, and confidently appeals to 
 a respectable ancestry of six centuries as its best claim 
 to the patronage of the travellers of 1880-1900. 
 
 So it is with the London taverns of literature. Some 
 of them, it is true, have yielded up the ghost under 
 the inexorable hand of Time, demolished by Boards 
 of Public Improvement, or reconstructed into gilded 
 modern meaninglessness by vulgar enterprise, but many 
 of them yet live, respectable just as they were respect- 
 able of yore, and sober and responsible, with the charac- 
 ter of centuries to maintain. " The Somerset Tavern," 
 the "Cheshire Cheese," the "Rainbow," the "Mitre," 
 and the " Cock," every one of which is grandly illus- 
 trated in English literature and history, are all here yet, 
 living and moving and having their being in the daily 
 life of this our nineteenth century, but bringing down 
 to us in hourly detail something of the daily life of the 
 England of two hundred years ago, and perhaps more. 
 
 All of these that I have mentioned are found in Fleet 
 Street and along the Strand, and quite near together. 
 They all stand now, however, off the street in courts, or 
 what were once courts, and are reached either through 
 dark archways or by extremely narrow and modest 
 little alleys wdiich a stranger would readily pass un- 
 noticed. Consequently, they are saved from the pro- 
 
HISTORIC TAVERNS. 209 
 
 fanatlon of vulgar and ignorant custom. The customers 
 of these inns have mostly come to them by inheritance 
 or congenial introduction. These courts were likely at 
 first gardens, such as stand around the country inn now 
 in most villages. In time, as the town choked the 
 fields, they were built up close around to the very 
 palings of the little garden ; the roses and pansies and 
 marigolds gave way to flagstones and solid pavement, 
 and the hard-stone court was thus developed, — the evo- 
 lution of the city. Carpenters' Court in Philadelphia, 
 inclosing the Carpenters' Hall, where the initial Conti- 
 nental Congress sat, is a good American illustration of 
 these still old English courts. 
 
 The Somerset Tavern stands out clear in the memory 
 of everv student of constitutional law and Eno-lish his- 
 tory. Through the humble hands of its barmaid passed 
 the MSS. of the famous Junius Letters before they 
 saw the light of print. , This seems to us a very in- 
 secure and fortuitous mode of communication, but it is a 
 thoroughly traditional English one, and is yet largely 
 used. At many an English inn I have seen stuck in 
 a glass behind the bar or placed upright against the 
 shelf or decanter on the sideboard broad, square letters 
 addressed in the modern conventional English hand to 
 *^ Mr. Harry Chauncey," or "William Henry Howard, 
 Esqre.," frequenters of the hostelry, who get their home 
 letters here just as their fathers did in the seventeenth 
 century. This unconventional post-office is generally 
 in charge of the barmaid, who is, in fact, an institution 
 of the place, and the " next friend" of everybody who 
 comes about it. 
 
 The MSS. of the Junius Letters were left at this 
 Somerset Tavern, addressed to *^ Mr. AVoodfall, 
 printer," who probably ate his midday meal or spent 
 his evenings here. His shop, still here, is about three 
 minutes' walk from the tavern and behind it. It is 
 now as then a printing-office, and the name boldly 
 o 18^ 
 
210 LONDON. 
 
 painted on the wall is the same,- — Woodfall. The letters 
 were left at the tavern by a boy. 
 
 As a picture this inn is the least interesting of those 
 mentioned. The old house is the same, but it has been 
 remodelled tliroughout within, after the style of a 
 modern hotel, and a drin king-saloon of the ordinary 
 pattern pushed out so as to give a street entrance. 
 Historically it is a mere shell. The old ^^ interior'^ 
 and the charm of the old life are both gone. 
 
 " The Rainbow," No. 15 Fleet Street, is consecrated 
 with the elusive memories of Shakespeare. Here, too, 
 it is said, came Ben Jonson and Beaumont and 
 Fletcher and Donne, and flashed wit and jest and story 
 with the London actors of that long-ago day. The 
 Rainbow, in early history, stood probably in a garden 
 between the Thames and the Strand. The garden pos- 
 sibly became a court ; but if so, now the court — gone 
 after the garden — is built solidly over, and the Rain- 
 bow, away off the street and enveloped in a solid mass 
 of building, is reached by a long and very narrow pas- 
 sage — a mere right of way — which opens on Fleet 
 Street almost un perceived. 
 
 The Rainbow has kept pace with the times, carefully 
 preserving the old features of the place, the old charac- 
 teristics, and the old life. The comfortable building is 
 the same. The old-fashioned bar is still there with 
 the little office, — for the Rainbow was and is a spacious 
 hostelry, — the two together presided over still by that 
 remarkable young woman who, in the English inn or 
 hotel of average size, does civilly and agreeably and 
 thoroughly the duties of three conspicuous American 
 officials, — the hotel-clerk, the barkeeper, and the book- 
 keeper and cashier. The pleasant fire in the open 
 chimney-place and i\\Q shining pewter are still there. 
 The perfect but unpretentious service is the same which 
 Englishmen shared with you two hundred years ago. 
 The heavy spotless linen, the clear-cut glass, are prob- 
 
HISTORIC TAVERNS. 211 
 
 ably of our own day. Here you get a good modern 
 London dinner, based, however, on the old English 
 tradition of two or three plain courses. The wines are 
 traditionally known and excellent, — solid in body and 
 in price. Old usages, too, are as far as possible scru- 
 pulously observed. Your haunch of mutton or great 
 roast of beef is wheeled up to your table and your cut 
 taken off in your presence and under your own direction 
 if you are particular. The custom of this place, as I 
 saw it, was of a high and most reputable kind, solid 
 bankers, merchants, and lawyers, apparently doing busi- 
 ness in that locality, — the same class of men who for 
 two hundred years have been using it in midday and 
 afternoon. In the evening there is probably more 
 smoke and wine and clinking glasses. 
 
 The Rainbow has a further and better-authenticated 
 historical interest as having been a " coifee-house," a 
 younger institution in English history than the tavern, 
 and one that passed at once and largely into literature. 
 The first house opened in London for the drinking of 
 this new beverage was in 1650, the second was in 1652, 
 and was the Rainbow. It figures as a fashionable resort 
 in tlie Spectator. The drinking of coffee instead of ale or 
 canary was considered rather a swell thing when it was 
 first introduced. It was decried by the common people 
 as effeminate, an affectation of fashion, and a sign of 
 degeneracy on the part of Englishmen, and the coffee- 
 houses were denounced by the lower classes, and looked 
 on very much as our most exclusive club-houses are 
 now. 
 
 Previously to the opening of the coffee-house the 
 Rainbow seems to have been a book-stand. " At the 
 Signe of the Rainbow in Fleete Streat, near the Inner 
 Temple," is an imprint of the early part of the sev- 
 enteenth century. It is probable that it was in this 
 connection its name became linked with those of Shake- 
 speare and Ben Jonson. 
 
 The Rainbow is an excellent hostelry of this day, as 
 
212 LONDON. 
 
 well as of two hundred years ago, and the American 
 traveller who delights in clothing himself with the 
 wealth of the associations of the past as he travels will 
 serve himself well by putting np here, if he chooses 
 this locality of the town, instead of at the common run 
 of hotels advertised in the guides and time-tables. He 
 will be thoroughly comfortable and well fed, and will 
 see at once an English " interior/' He will be inside 
 of a real old English inn, not merely honeycombed in 
 a cell of a mammoth modern caravansary. 
 
 The Mitre lives in tradition as the special haunt of 
 Dr. Samnel Johnson and the brilliant group that clus- 
 ters around his rude, strong person as its central figure, 
 — Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Boswell, — and I suppose 
 it was, for you can see at once the reason of it being 
 chosen as a stated rendezvous. It was a case of natu- 
 ral selection. Goldsmith lived immediately back, in 
 Mitre court; Dr. Johnson just across the way, in Bolt 
 court ; while Burke had his chambers in the contiguous 
 " Temple/' and, I presume, Boswell, too. From the 
 central point of " The Mitre" they could all stagger 
 home at midnight, covering the least possible distance, 
 and with comparative safety. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 who perhaps joined them sometimes, on more formal 
 occasions, — for he moved more generally in a society in 
 which Johnson did not go, — lived quite near, first in 
 St. Martin's Lane, and then in Leicester Square, then a 
 very fashionable neighborhood. 
 
 The Mitre Tavern is found somewhat ofP Fleet Street, 
 in Mitre court, a quiet, retired little recess or eddy. In 
 front rolls down from the Strand the troubled current of 
 London life, in the rear the busy waters of the Thames, 
 but the Mitre is as still as a cloister. The suddenness 
 with which in a few feet one can turn, in London, 
 from the surging roar of the noisy, driven streets into 
 absolute stillness is one of the dramatic surprises of 
 the city. Oliver Goldsmith's grave, close by the fa- 
 
HISTORIC TAVERNS. 213 
 
 mous Norman Round Temple, the altar of the old cru- 
 sading knights, lies only a few hundred yards from his 
 homely tavern, in the hush of a country churchyard. 
 Shut your eyes, and you would almost fancy the fra- 
 grance of the fresh grass and English herbs and expect 
 to hear the birds sing. You look around you and see 
 not a green blade or tiny flower or a solitary spot where 
 one might spring, — nothing but stone and crumbling 
 effigies and tottering buttresses and high gray walls. 
 Again, out of the thronging precinct of Westminster, 
 throbbing with the pulses of the Parliament of an em- 
 pire; you pass in a few steps into the peaceful cloisters 
 of the Abbey and plunge at once into the Middle Ages. 
 And so the close of St. PauFs and dozens of places. 
 
 In a part of the spacious building, by the way, shut- 
 ting ofP the Mitre court from Fleet Street, but fronting 
 on it, and known as the Mitre property, are found the 
 London offices of the New York Herald, an historical 
 succession worthy of being noted as something more 
 than a passing coincidence. As the representative of 
 the most advanced journalism of the time, The Herald 
 is the legitimate successor of The Bamhler, Spectator, 
 and the Idler, and occupies, with something of right, 
 the abandoned tribune of Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 In the interior of the Mitre, which evidently stands 
 now much as it did a century ago, you can readily trace 
 the outline of the scenes which passing allusions in 
 literature and tradition have made so famous, — the 
 dimly-lighted room dedicated by long pre-emption to 
 private uses, the smoke-laden atmosphere, the brandy 
 and hot water, the white-clay pipes and t-obacco, the 
 MSS. and current pamphlets, and the long table from 
 whose head, night after night, the stout old Bohemian 
 Tory preached ponderous philosophy, or railed at the 
 Scotch and hurled angry invective against the American 
 traitors making history at Philadelphia and Lexington. 
 A bronze bust of Dr. Johnson fills a niche above the 
 spot where his chair familiarly stood, and placidly re- 
 
214 LONDON. 
 
 gards to-day those nineteenth-century customers of the 
 Mitre who have curiosity or influence enough to find 
 their way into the little back bar-room, which is the 
 arcanum of the house. 
 
 It is fair to say that there are several other Mitre 
 taverns in London which claim the honors and prestige 
 of those distinguished literary connections, but the 
 weiiJ:ht of evidence and the argument from localities 
 incline to the one I am describing, and whose cheer I 
 have tested. 
 
 Contemporary authority of the best kind fixes the 
 Mitre Tavern of Mitre court. Fleet Street, as the site 
 of the traditional Jolinsonian symposia. I have no 
 doubt, however, that if the other claimant taverns were 
 in existence at that time Dr. Johnson and his friends 
 gave them a visit. 
 
 ^' The Cheshire Cheese,^' another favorite haunt of 
 Dr. Johnson, well known in history and literature, is 
 perhaps the most unchanged of all these taverns, and 
 gives one the best idea of the life of those old times. 
 It is very plain, and all the marked features of the old 
 style are preserved with fidelity. In fact, it is not 
 preservation, but continuance. I sipped some canary 
 here for a half-hour one night with a friend distin- 
 guished in journalism and politics and deeply versed 
 in the scholarship of English literature, and spent 
 some time watching the custom and incident of the 
 evening, and I am sure that our eyes beheld the very 
 same sights and objects which of old met the vision of 
 Burke and Goldsmith and Garrick, — the same men 
 and the same things. It stands in Wine-Office court, 
 just across the street and nearly opposite to Mitre 
 court. 
 
 One-half of the large room is fitted up with plain, 
 l)are, wooden tables of the simplest kind of construc- 
 tion, that would seat four to six persons. Each table 
 stands in a kind of stall, formed by the high, upright 
 
HISTORIC TAVERNS. 215 
 
 backs of the straight, hard, uncovered seats. The whole 
 looks like the great wooden pews in our old-fashioned 
 churches. The seats are about as uncomfortable as 
 tliey can be, but the English — as their Parliament 
 House and the church pew (their evolution) attest — 
 have little idea of the luxury of rest. A large open 
 space of sanded floor, with arm-chairs and a small table 
 or two of freer ])osition, complete the room. An open 
 chimney-place, with a burning grate, on which fizzled 
 away a kettle of boiling water, gave a cosey and domes- 
 tic air to the room. At the right-hand corner of this 
 fireplace stood tiie chair of Dr. Johnson. Long white 
 earthen pipes, fresh, and some pouches, evidently private, 
 of tobacco, lay on the mantel-shelf. Two good but 
 somewhat smoke-discolored oil paintings of old ser- 
 vants of the inn hung on the walls. Their legend 
 recited that they were contributed as a mark of respect 
 by gentlemen who frequented the inn, and they were 
 dedicated as special heirlooms to pass with the tavern 
 property. 
 
 The Cheshire, contrasted with its famous fellows, is 
 " poor but respectable." Everything was extremely 
 plain, simple^ and almost coarse, but all was neat, 
 clean, and honest; the quality both of food and wines 
 good for the cost. In this it is, as it has been probably 
 for centuries, thoroughly solid and English. The 
 cheaper inn in England is not a mere dirty and pre- 
 tentious imitation of a higher class of house. It has 
 its own character and is proud of it, and as far as it 
 goes is solid, good, and honest; and, as a rule, this 
 holds good with other English things than inns, and 
 also with the people. 
 
 It was from this tavern one day, when Goldsmith 
 was confined in it by the landlady for his score, and 
 watched by a bailiff outside the door, that Dr. Johnson 
 went out and sold a MS. for him for sixty pounds. 
 The MS. was the "Vicar of Wakefield." . ' 
 
 " The Cock," 201 Fleet Street, a tavern of the same 
 
216 LONDON. 
 
 age and general character and uses as the Rainbow or 
 the Mitre, has more modern associations, its sponsor 
 in literature and chiefest treasure being Alfred Ten- 
 nyson, — 
 
 " O plump head- waiter of the Cock !" 
 
 The plump head-waiter is still living and on duty, 
 and the junior bar of London assure you that the best 
 " bitter" in the town is to be had in this most reputa- 
 ble hostelry, which bears a diploma from the Poet 
 Laureate, — 
 
 "To each his perfect pint of stout." 
 
 You sit in old-fashioned stalls, as at the Cheshire 
 Cheese, — the floors are wooden and uncovered, as at 
 all these taverns,^= — your quarters arg rather contracted, 
 but your company eminently respectable. There is 
 some old oak carving over the mantel- piece, and the 
 whole interior is said to be unaltered from the time 
 of James the First. The Cock is nearly opposite the 
 Rainbow, and, like it, imbedded in a conglomerate 
 mass of masonry, representing the resistless encroach- 
 ments of centuries, and you reach it now only by an 
 inconspicuous alley-way. It is now, too, a retreat. It 
 was to the Cock that Pepys was wont to take Mistress 
 Knipp and give her little dinners, much to the distress 
 of his wife. " Thence to the Cock Alehouse and drank 
 and eat a lobster, and mightily merry f it was a Mis- 
 tress Pierce this time, and Pepys faithfully relates the 
 domestic explanations which were necessary to explain 
 these tavern outings, to which he was apparently fonder 
 of treating his neighbors' wives than his own. 
 
 The Whyte Harte, where Jack Cade's peasant army 
 disbanded, and in whose court-yard Shakespeare's plays 
 were probably acted, is still an extant house. It was 
 burned down in 1676, but was rebuilt in the old style, 
 wooden balconies and all. It was from these interior 
 
HISTORIC TAVERNS. 217 
 
 wooden balconies that the frequenters of the inn watched 
 the open-air performance below on the rude flag-stoned 
 pavement of the court-yard. It was a rude stage, but 
 a common one, in the simple fashion of those days. 
 
 George's Coffee-house, at 213 Fleet Street, was fre- 
 quented by Shenstone, *^ who found his warmest wel- 
 come at an inn.'' 
 
 The dead centuries take form and flesh and color 
 and grow wonderfully near as you sit in one of these 
 old hostelries and see the life of London flowing through 
 it very much just as it flowed a hundred years ago, — 
 the same walls, the same furniture, the same cheer, the 
 same order and service, and much the same manner of 
 men. 
 
 It is a little difficult for us to understand in our day 
 the conspicuous part the tavern played in the lives of 
 men whose names now sound so grandly, and whose 
 forms, swelling to historic proportions, are so imposing. 
 We must bear in mind, however, a number of things. 
 Life was certainly somewhat ruder than it is now, and, 
 again, the inn of those days was relatively higher than 
 it is now. It was certainly much higher than our 
 American conception of a country tavern, which, with 
 its " bar-room" and noise, has nothing in common with 
 the quiet, home-like English inn of to-day, — the inn 
 of Shenstone and Coleridge. 
 
 Again, there were no clubs in those days, — none at 
 all in our modern sense, and but few of any kind, — and 
 the tavern was the club of the couimunity. Here men 
 of all kinds met and gathered in circles, according to 
 their several tastes, — sometimes in the private apart- 
 ments, sometimes in the common room. The "private 
 bar" is now, perhaps, a survival of those usages. Dr. 
 Johnson and his friends frequently, according to tra- 
 dition, sat in the public room, dominating it both by 
 their numbers and by the power and brilliancy of their 
 conversation. A stranger would probably have been a 
 K 19 
 
218 LONDON. 
 
 little crowded down unless he chanced to have been a 
 congenial mind. Here came from evening to evening 
 the young barristers from the adjacent Temple and law 
 inns, the worthy tradesmen of the neighborhood, who 
 lived above their shoj)S and banks (the famous "Childs" 
 bank was close to the Mitre), the Avriters for the 
 meagre journals of the day. Perhaps a stranger from 
 the country counties occasionally dropped in, or per- 
 chance an adventurous traveller from Penn^s far-off 
 Sylvania or Mary Land. The place was the primitive 
 "• Saturday Night Club'^ of a century or more ago, in 
 London, and of a rather humble class. 
 
 For these great names, we must remember, were 
 not in good society at this tavern stage of their exist- 
 ence. Shakespeare was, in early life at least, something 
 of a vagabond. Ben Jonson was a bricklayer ; some 
 of his work stood very near the Cheshire Cheese. 
 Later down, Dr. Johnson was to the last a congenial 
 Bohemian. He was the old man of the party, who 
 gathered around him young Burke and Garrick and 
 Goldsmith and other young men, unknown, or who 
 had just come up from the country to try their fortunes 
 in famous London town. Bos well was, perhaps, the 
 nearest to the gentleman of the crowd. The fine gen- 
 tlemen of London did not come to these taverns, nor 
 did Burke, likely, and many of the others when they 
 had made their mark and won fame. Tennyson does 
 not now frequent the '' Cock." These tavern days that 
 have gone into literature, and by which we know them, 
 were the days of their youth and poverty and obscurity. 
 
 It is a striking reflection on the eternity and immor- 
 tality of the human side of our existence, and of the 
 littleness or nothingness of business or fashion or co- 
 temporary success, that what lives of these men is the 
 hour they gave to rest and the play of human feeling. 
 The point at which they dropped their routine toil, 
 their daily life of publishers and business and briefs 
 and writs and fees and wages, was the point at which 
 
HISTORIC TAVERNS. 219 
 
 they touched fame and the common heart of generations 
 and nations yet to come. 
 
 A few hundred years ago the tavern was the club 
 and the newspaper of the community. But it Avas also 
 something more. Public opinion not only was formed 
 at these houses, but passed into tradition and was per- 
 petuated by them. One can read the history of all 
 England to-day in the names of its inns. When our 
 English ancestors wished to honor a cause or a man 
 they wrote their names on a tavern signboard and 
 swung it out to posterity. 
 
 Thus, the St. George and the Green Dragon record 
 the familiar mythic legends of our earliest history ; the 
 White Horse was the victorious standard of the Saxons 
 when they invaded England, — the battle-flag of Hen- 
 gist and Horsa ; the Angel is a mutilated survival of a 
 favorite old sign, the '^ Salutation of the Angel" to the 
 Blessed Virgin, recalling a time when the Ave Maria 
 was the evening song of England ; the Saracen's Head 
 is a record of the crusades ; the Mitre comes down 
 from the old days of Church and State, and the Church 
 first. Even as late as the last century Bos well, writing 
 of the Fleet Street " Mitre," says Dr. Johnson ap- 
 proved the " orthodox High-Church tone of its name." 
 In the " Cross-Keys," which is still a familiar sign in 
 many towns of Pennsylvania, few of us will recognize 
 the crossed keys of St. Peter, but that is just what they 
 are, — the very same sign that may be seen on the front of 
 the great St. Peter's at Rome. The White Swan is the 
 device of Edsvard of Lancaster and the White Hart of 
 Richard the Second. The humble Blue Pig is a sur- 
 vival of the Blue Boar, the crest of Richard III. The 
 Rose is the badge of the Tudors, and the rose and the 
 portcullis will be found blazoned alike on cathedral 
 and tavern all over England. The Bear is the emblem 
 of the Leicesters, the Antelope of the Boluins, and, 
 indeed, the family arms of all England are carved and 
 
220 LONDON. 
 
 painted over all the land on its inns, — the rude Herald's 
 College of the people. When once one becomes a little 
 familiar with these crests, it is always easy to tell in 
 what part of the country one is by looking at the village 
 inns. This adoption of the family crest as a tavern 
 sign is very natural, as these country inns are generally 
 kept by retired servants of the great families of the 
 place, — a fact which, in turn, accounts largely for their 
 comfort and excellent service. 
 
 This political nomenclature of the inns is proof that 
 they filled the office of clubs in our communities. 
 There were no Union League and Tammany clubs to 
 gather up and organize political opinion, but the poli- 
 ticians of every faith did have their special taverns, 
 where the men of each cause could meet, strengthen 
 each other, and propagate their ideas. The old Eng- 
 lish feeling had its White Horses, the Church party 
 their Cross-Keys and Mitres, the Nationalists their 
 Crowns and King's Heads. 
 
 It is solid evidence of the social advance of our land 
 that we have dropped this usage of naming taverns or 
 hotels as an expression either of popular esteem or of 
 political honor. There are a few Washington and 
 Jefferson and Lafayette houses, that have come down 
 from the Revolution, and a scattering Jackson tavern, 
 but the habit about ended with the rude time and life 
 of which Jackson was the last distinguished exponent. 
 We have Lincoln Universities now, but no Lincoln 
 Hotels, and there are no Grant or Sherman or Stanton 
 or Hancock Taverns, although we have just passed the 
 throes of a civil war. 
 
 The tavern is no longer a factor in American society. 
 
 London. 
 
SCOTLAND. 
 
 19* 221 
 
CHAPTER XXIY. 
 
 ENTERING SCOTLAND. 
 
 The Scotch Blood in the United States — Strong Stamp 
 OF the Scotch Character on our Nation — The Koman 
 Catholic and Presbyterian Clans — Margaret Wilson. 
 
 As you travel northward from the heated and murky 
 fogs of London a change comes gradually over the 
 scene. The smiling harvests of grain and corn give 
 way to slatternly-looking turnip-fields ; the trains and 
 coaches advertise to run on " lawful days ;" the children 
 by the wayside grow barelegged and barefooted ; green 
 hills and meadows are replaced by brow^n and red 
 ranges, whose infinite lines, stretching out one beyond 
 the other, sweep out against the sky ; the hats of the 
 men diminish to rimless cloth caps ; the petticoats of the 
 women shorten and thicken ; bright shocks of flaming 
 red and fair blond yellow hair vary the rather neutral 
 sameness of the English head ; the naked knees of the 
 men emerge; whisky redolent of peat becomes the 
 regular station refreshment, taken with a serious and 
 solemn air ; old ladies appear in the cars reading " The 
 Christian Herald," and seeming to find great satisfac- 
 tion therein ; the faces at each passing railway station 
 become more and more reflective, lined, and joyless ; 
 red heather, black-footed Cheviot sheep, tartan plaids 
 and half-military kilts greet your eye for the first time 
 on their native heath : you are in Scotland. 
 
 I have made a pretty thorough tour of this country, 
 which has done so much for our land, and which is it- 
 self so crowTled with incident in the history of freedom. 
 Starting from Edinboro', I have travelled by the great 
 
 223 
 
224 SCOTLAND. 
 
 Highland Railway — the backbone of Scotlanrl — to Inver- 
 ness, the capital of the Highland region ; thence down- 
 ward by the scenic Caledonian chain of lakes, — the 
 Rhine of Scotland ; thence from Oban out to lona and 
 through the Hebrides and back ; thence across-country 
 by stage and rail to Aberdeen ; thence back again by a 
 lower route to Stirling ; and then by the classic Lochs 
 Lomond and Katrine into Glasgow, and from there 
 again into Argyllshire. 
 
 It is interesting and instructive to see how thoroughly 
 the Scotch mind has stamped itself on our country, on 
 our manners, speech, and habit of thought. Although 
 the pure Scotch migration to the United States has been 
 comparatively small as weighed, for instance, against 
 the German or Irish, it has impressed its force more 
 definitely and lastingly than either. It almost seems to 
 be the substratum of our national character. 
 
 In Scotland one meets all the time customs, usages, 
 tones, inflections of speech, incidents, and little things 
 of all kinds which recall the interior country life of our 
 own land, and show how thoroughly we have been 
 cradled in these hills. It is from these cold, bracing 
 mountains that we get, first and last, and best of all, 
 that unquestionable love of liberty and sense of personal 
 independence which has made us what we are, — which 
 may be uncomfortable or unpleasant in some of its man- 
 ifestations and inimical to vast undertakings, but which 
 is the salt of true political and social advancement. 
 Scotland is a land of small undertakings, of small bus- 
 inesses, and of small fortunes, because the Scotchman is 
 not a ready tool or executive instrument for the uses 
 of others ; but then he is free, — the head of his own little 
 home, the master of his own movements. 
 
 While we have secured this strong bone and sinew 
 of the Scotchman as the framework of our new national 
 life, we have clothed it with a much more generous 
 body. We are essentially eclectic and able to take and 
 assimilate the best of all other nations, peoples, and 
 
ENTERING SCOTLAND. 225 
 
 races. Now, the Scot is a Celt, and the Celtic blood by 
 itself has never attained very great tilings. It is, how- 
 ever, the very best flux to mix with other bloods. Even 
 crossed with itself it improves. The Scotch-Irishman is 
 a much stronger man and race than either the Scotch or 
 the Irish by itself. It is through this fortunate blend- 
 ing that it affects particularly our national character. 
 
 The old distinctive characteristics linger longest in the 
 individual. My own blood in one line comes directly 
 from Argyllshire, and I was interested, of course, in 
 studying the characteristics of this especial people, 
 whom I do not think the lapse of the one hundred and 
 eighty years since I left them have much changed. 
 Manners, of course, have softened, ideas have broadened 
 and liberalized, but the old essential fibre and charac- 
 teristics are there yet. It is said of this people that 
 " they never forget a benefit or forgive a wrong," and 
 this rule of blood, whatever may be thought of it as a 
 rule of morals, is admirably adapted to perpetuate race 
 instincts and individuality. 
 
 And tliis is certainly so here. The friendships and 
 hatreds, the loyalties and enmities, of hundreds of years 
 ago are all extant forces yet and part of the counnon 
 life of the people. Often the remembrance is but senti- 
 mental, as in the feeling for the Stuarts, but it is there 
 still in that form. The Scotch of this day sing and 
 play the old Jacobite songs with a spirit and feeling 
 and power of emotion that in Celtic Paris would surely 
 evoke a revolution. 
 
 Families, although they do not murder each other 
 any more, retain the old traditions of feuds in jj/a»i 
 memoriam, and the old political divisions are still per- 
 petuated in a variance of faith and Church allegiance. 
 The old loyalist Scottish clans are Roman Catholic yet, 
 — staunch and devoted and true. The Protestant ascen- 
 dency in Church and State has not swerved them, and 
 in many parts of Western Scotland you still find small 
 districts — the clan territories of the old Stuart lieges — 
 2> 
 
226 SCOTLAND. 
 
 which are thoroughly Roman Catholic, high and low, 
 poor and rich, for they are all of one family, — the chief 
 and his followers. 
 
 These little sections seem quite an anachronism in 
 stern Presbyterian Scotland, but they serve to show the 
 undying tenacity with which the Scotch blood follows 
 a friend or fights a foe. 
 
 On a little steamer on one of the Highland lakes I 
 fell in with a young Roman Catholic priest, — a gentle- 
 man of education and of gentle birth, — an Englishman, 
 but on duty in the snows of Scotland. 
 
 I told him that " I thought he looked rather cold up 
 here, and was afraid he was sowing seed on pretty rocky 
 soil/^ 
 
 He replied, laughing, " that faith would remove even 
 Scotch mountains." 
 
 Another priest, of more years and with his enthusiasm 
 tempered by larger experience, summed up the situation 
 more practically with the candid statement that " it takes 
 more money to convert a Scotchman than he is worth.'' 
 
 When we got to the end of our journey the young 
 priest showed me, with a good deal of pride, quite a 
 noble pile of buildings which were going up as a mon- 
 astery and school, and to which he was attached as one 
 of the brothers. I did not think it right to dampen his 
 religious ardor and hope, even if I had had the heart to 
 do so, but I am very sure that he will not get a Scotch 
 boy in his school save from the old Royalist clans, who 
 are already Catholic, and would remain so without 
 schools or care. As he was an English gentleman, 
 however, his own faith was probably a matter of descent 
 and family pride, — I mean in the good sense of that 
 word. 
 
 It is very curious, indeed, to observe how all along 
 here a man's religion, or his Church relations rather, 
 follow" as an obligation to certain family traditions or to 
 a family's position. Even the head of a great house 
 does not presume to lead it or dictate to it in this mat- 
 
ENTERING SCOTLAND. 227 
 
 ter. He simply accepts the situation to which he has 
 been born, respects the collective sense of his tribe or 
 clan, and puts himself at the head of it. Said a very 
 large Scottish landowner of high rank to me one day 
 walking over his estates : " Two-thirds of my tenants 
 go to the kirk, and I think, therefore, I ought to go, 
 too. Don't you think so ?" I unqualifiedly said " Yes." 
 
 This gentleman's taste, in all probability, would have 
 led him to prefer personally the highly-finished and 
 artistic service of the Established Church of England, 
 but duty, as the head of an old historical family, led 
 him every Sunday to the bare walls of the little village 
 kirk. Now the country kirk of Scotland is something 
 " bluer" than the old-fashioned Seceder congregations 
 of Pennsylvania in early days, — harder benches, 
 longer psalms, just as disjointed tunes, longer prayers, 
 longer Scripture readings and more of them, and a ser- 
 mon utterly unrestrained by any sense of time. 
 
 For the same reason, many of the Scotch nobility are 
 Liberals in politics because their family and clan have 
 been Whigs in past times. 
 
 Scotland, politically, belongs to the " Liberal" party, 
 lords and people naturally inclining that way by reason 
 of their blood and history. It flows naturally from 
 their almost fierce sense of independence, which sho^vs 
 itself everywhere. 
 
 I have often talked with very humble members of 
 the " Free Kirk of Scotland," the people's Church. 
 
 ^' Is not the difference between you and the Estab- 
 lished Church only one of church government?" 
 
 "No; it is something a great deal deeper than a 
 question of government when the queen or the govern- 
 ment can send dow^n a minister to us against our will." 
 
 " Would such a thing ever be done ? Has it ever 
 been done?" 
 
 " I don't know. It is enough that it can be done. 
 We will never allow such an authority. It is not 
 right." 
 
228 SCOTLAND. 
 
 And the feeling with which such words were always 
 uttered showed that it was a real matter of principle 
 and belief, for which the Scotch peasant or croftsman 
 of to-day would sacrifice comfort and advancement, or 
 fight, or, if needs be, die, just as he has done again and 
 again for generations. 
 
 The memory of these humble martyrs or affiants for 
 the truth is cherished everywhere in Scotland in 
 memorials often touching in their rudeness. Janet 
 Geddes, who drove the Established Church of England 
 out of Scotland with a three-legged stool, is remembered 
 with a good deal of warmth in the popular heart. In 
 this town of Stirling, tlie central feature of the fine 
 park cemetery which lies grandly on a castellated hill, 
 is a monument to Margaret Wilson, whose story is a 
 household legend in Presbyterian America, and whose 
 death is one of the most wonderful of martyrdoms. 
 This young girl in her teens, tied to a stake in the 
 Sol way tide, died bravely and calmly rather than 
 acknowledge the Episcopal supremacy as a governing 
 power in the Church. She surely did not understand 
 the full scope and grasp of the question, — could not 
 by reason of her years and want of education. She 
 only knew that the Stuarts were forcing it on Scotland, 
 that it was a threat to the liberty of her country and a 
 danger to freedom, and she willingly gave her testimony 
 against it, even unto death. 
 
 The monument which commemorates this grand fact 
 and this great national characteristic is, I regret to say, 
 in the very worst of taste. Some marble figures are 
 inclosed in a glass case on a stone pedestal. The color- 
 less glass is bordered with strips of the same material 
 in deep blue and light green, while the whole body of 
 the monument is plastered over with texts and multi- 
 tudinous Scripture references too bulky for any particu- 
 lar appositeness. This when the whole Bible and all 
 history is ringing with single grand words that fit the 
 occasion ! 
 
ENTERING SCOTLAND. 229 
 
 The main inscription begins witli a gush about " the 
 virgin martyr of the ocean wave," and ends with the 
 information that she chose to die " rather than own to 
 Erastian usurpation." This heroic grave is one of the 
 worst instances of the Scotch want of taste and uncoutJi 
 tendency to obtrude theological technicalities every- 
 where. 
 
 While I was looking at this tomb three young Scotch 
 soldiers with kilts were slowly working out the cumber- 
 some inscription, and one, familiar with the story, was 
 trying to tell it to his comrades, apparently recruits. 
 He naturally found some difficulty in this, as " Eras- 
 tianism" was not a garrison word. He struggled 
 bravely with the trouble, however, and summed up 
 the whole matter by asserting that she was right any- 
 how, and died because she was. And with a hearty 
 oath the two new boys confirmed the statement — " Yes, 
 
 and , she was." And the story and its 
 
 lesson went rudely down to another generation. 
 
 I noticed the entire evening I spent in this old 
 graveyard that this grave was surrounded by humble, 
 plain people, reading its barbarous inscription sorrow- 
 fully, and honoring in respectful silence the martyr. 
 Being Scotch, they could not lay a flower on the tomb 
 or kneel in prayer at the grave, as French women or 
 men or Italians would have done at the shrine of their 
 saint; but they were taking it all in, nevertheless. 
 Margaret Wilson died in 1685. Her grave and her 
 memory are as green as if the relentless waters had 
 gone over her young body only yesterday. They are 
 the fads of Stirling remembered in the common heart 
 before all the deeds of the hundred chieftains who have 
 fought around this citadel and made it the central point 
 of Scottish history. Her grave lies in sight of twelve 
 battle-fields of Scotland, but she is the greatest warrior 
 of all. 
 
 We owe much to Scotland, but this legacy of per- 
 sonal independence and determination, this unwilling- 
 
 20 
 
230 SCOTLAND. 
 
 ness ever to yield, ever to submit to a wrong, ever to 
 compromise, is her best and greatest gift. 
 Stirling, Scotland. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 SCOTTISH NOTES. 
 
 The Lowek Side of Scotch Life — Scotch "Whiskey and its 
 Reign — The Hardness of Scotch Poverty — Higher 
 Scotland — Scotch Thrift — Scotch Newspapers — Scotch 
 Hotels — Kural Scotland going Forward — The Theo- 
 logical Scot. 
 
 Let me throw together some observations on certain 
 phases of Scotch life and some Scotch institutions as 
 seen in a pretty extended tour of six weeks over all the 
 kingdom. It is a land of sharp contrasts and salient 
 features, the old and the new existing yet side by side, 
 sometimes fusing but sometimes standing apart. 
 
 I had heard much of the bad condition of the lowest 
 classes in Scotland, but was hardly prepared for the 
 appalling truth as exhibited in the streets of their 
 larger towns. There is a misery and degradation here 
 which is perhaps unequalled in any civilized land. 
 There is a dirtiness that I think surpasses the filth of 
 Italy, and it is unrelieved by bright eyes and smiling 
 faces and beautiful forms and graceful movement, 
 Scotch poverty is simple, sullen, vicious-looking degra- 
 dation. Instead of song and music and pleasing lying, 
 the Scotch lazzaroni are given over to the beastly vices 
 of drunkenness and prostitution, which are fearfully 
 prevalent and whose results are clearly visible on the 
 lower streets of every town of any size in Scotland. 
 Begging, too, is prevalent, and the squalid mendicant, 
 with brutal slouch and rum-burnt visage, stoutly curses 
 and swears at you when you refuse him. 
 
SCOTTISH NOTES. 231 
 
 So degraded and unclean are the herds who swarm 
 even good streets that in Glasgow, for instance, after 
 night, I have left the pavement and taken the middle 
 of the street rather than run the risk of being brushed 
 against by beings reeking with the marks and odors of 
 disease, filth, and uncleanness. 
 
 But the saddest feature of Scotch degradation is the 
 way it seems to harden the individual and drive out 
 everything that is softening or gentle or relieving in 
 human nature. The faces of the poor are pinched, 
 meagre, calculating; their voices hardened and harsh ; 
 their tones angry and impatient ; their eyes sullen and 
 vicious. Everything of light and hope is gone even 
 from the little children ; all is ungracious and unlovely. 
 The little things start life with this dreadful heritage. 
 Some days since, on the outskirts of Stirling, being in 
 some doubt at the forks of a road, I asked my way of 
 a little girl who, with bare legs, uncombed hair, ill clad, 
 and no bonnet, was swinging alone on the fence, and 
 gave her a few pennies. The child seemed confused at 
 being kindly spoken to, and I fear the gift was an en- 
 tirely new revelation. After recovering from the sur- 
 prise the little thing, with a look of wonder still on her 
 face, and extremely grateful, began to explain the way, 
 offering to go along, and very anxious to do something 
 in return. It was painful to see her evident attempt to 
 speak in pleasant, gentle tones and the inexorable fail- 
 ure. Her voice was already hard and set, and against 
 her will and to her deep mortification and distress the 
 words would only come out in the old harsh, ungracious, 
 ugly tones, — the only sounds she knew. 
 
 Again, this morning in Glasgow, in one of the low 
 streets leading to the great cathedral, which now stands 
 in a dismal and dirty quarter of the town, I heard a 
 squalid, degraded woman, who was carrying a wretched, 
 meagre babe in her arms, both half naked, address it 
 thus : " Shet up your cryin', will you ? 1^11 choke you 
 ded and brek your hed against the wall. Whust now V' 
 
232 SCOTLAND. 
 
 The woman was not drunk. It was her own child, and 
 the words, although spoken in a rude and rigid tone, 
 were not unkindly meant. They were, in fact, a 
 Glasgow lullaby, the ^^ sounds from home'^ of this 
 quarter. 
 
 Much of this utter lowness and degradation of Scotch 
 poverty comes from the frightful habits of drinking 
 which prevail among the poorer classes of men and 
 women, but this will not account for it all, for the 
 drinking itself is, in part, only a result of the degrada- 
 tion. The Scotch people are making an earnest and 
 desperate fight against intemperance all over Scotland, 
 and well they may, for a more shocking exhibition of 
 national drunkenness, I suppose, is not to be seen the 
 world over than that which protrudes itself everywhere 
 on the traveller in this land. You see drunken men 
 reeling in the streets, and, women, too, in broad day- 
 light, and often quite early in the morning. And it is 
 not confined to what might be called the lowest classes. 
 I frequently see venerable-looking old men with white 
 hair, and whose countenances indicate that they have 
 led fairly intelligent and industrious lives, staggering 
 blindly, or, as is more often the case, attempting to 
 hold a drunken argument with any passer-by they can 
 fasten. To-day I saw in this town of Glasgow a very 
 respectable-looking young woman of about thirty, very 
 neatly and quite well dressed, apparently the wife of a 
 well-to-do mechanic, reeling for half a square in mid- 
 day through a crowded street. Old women, gray-haired 
 and bent, their faces bloated and burnt flaming red with 
 years of drink, meet you everywhere, and are to an 
 American stranger the marked and most repulsive 
 feature of the begging class. 
 
 It is needless to say that drinking-shops and small 
 retail shops of liquor "not to be drunk on the premises,'' 
 abound in all the streets. Their number is something 
 ghastly ; they are low, dirty, dingy, and squalid, and 
 in front of them hang around all day squads of vicious, 
 
SCOTTISH NOTES. 233 
 
 criminal-looking young men with that villainous slouch 
 and sullen gait so well known in the police and quarter 
 sessions courts. 
 
 The drunkenness of Scotland, like its poverty, is 
 something hideous, unrelieved by a single softening 
 feature, even in the way of glamour. There is no 
 attempt to mask it or excuse it or commend it. The 
 gin-shops are not palaces of gas and light, as in other 
 lands, to allure and tempt. They are foul dens, which, 
 in most countries, would repel and disgust, but here 
 they are sought. The Scotch drunkard evidently drinks 
 to be drunk, shamelessly, from the lowest and most 
 brutish of purposes ; and it is this which makes his 
 case so hopeless, and so warmly enlists one's sympathies 
 for the men and women who are fighting the up-hill 
 battle for the redemption of their land from its greatest 
 curse. 
 
 The cause or causes of the wretched and debased 
 condition of the poorest classes of Scotland is an inter- 
 esting and very difficult social problem, covering a vast 
 range of inquiry, into which there is not time to go in a 
 letter, or perhaps even in a single book. I aim here 
 only to present the facts, not to account for them. In- 
 dependent of its interest as a study in social science, 
 this question has a deeper importance for us Americans, 
 as there is a strong family likeness between our two 
 civilizations, or conditions of society. Scotland, as we 
 are, is a land of churches and Bibles; a land of schools 
 and newspapers and common education ; a land of read- 
 ing and a general diffusion of average and commonplace 
 information (even the drunken Scotchman is argumen- 
 tative and ludicrously hortatory); a land "Liberal" in 
 its politics, and the Liberal party here stands to the 
 Tory as the Republican does to the Democratic in our 
 country, the party of advanced ideas and progress ; 
 yet, in one of the first and fundamental trusts of the 
 Church and of the State — the care of the ])oor — it has 
 made a complete and terrible failure. I believe, delib- 
 
 20* 
 
234 SCOTLAND. 
 
 erately, that it is far better to-day, better for soul and 
 body, to be an Italian peasant, ignorant, in rags, 
 trodden under in politics, image worshipping, and 
 lying, if you will, but happy, full of the human 
 emotions, with grace of body and movement, able to 
 sing and to speak kindly and lovingly, with the power 
 to enjoy the beautiful in nature and art, than to endure 
 the brutal degradation of Scotch poverty as seen in her 
 cities, — a degradation which breeds coarse and debasing 
 vices, crushes the light out of the eyes of its victim, 
 self-respect from liis face, and hope from his soul ; 
 which not only leaves him nothing to enjoy, but takes 
 away even the power of enjoyment; which robs even 
 childhood of its birthright of love and careless pleasure. 
 
 But let us turn to something more pleasant. 
 
 Rural Scotland presents a pleasant contrast to the 
 towns and cities. If there is suffering there at least it 
 is not concentrated. Drink and its attendant evils there 
 are. Country Scotland, witii its new granite farm- 
 houses, looks solid, comfortable, and prosperous. In- 
 deed, large portions of it look like a new country, so 
 thoroughly has rebuilding or new building been going 
 on within the present generation. The old thatched 
 mud cottage, rudely built and very humble in appear- 
 ance, is giving way to neat new small buildings of solid 
 masonry, the gray granite looking not merely thrifty, 
 but quite substantial. In many places you see the old 
 quarters still standing, abandoned, perhaps, or used as 
 temporary shelter for cattle or animals, and the cluster 
 of new buildings, trim and comfortable, rising from 
 some better located site on the farm. This is the Scot- 
 land that is going forward. 
 
 There is a curious, raw-boned, theological cast to the 
 Scotch popular mind which crops out everywhere, and 
 the disposition to obtrude theological technicalities into 
 common life is very marked, and sometimes pro- 
 duces odd effects. I have mentioned how the dramatic 
 martyrdom of Margaret Wilson is blanketed on her 
 
SCOTTISH NOTES. 235 
 
 tomb as the death of one " who would not own to Eras- 
 tianism." On the gravestones in the cemeteries, instead 
 of a salient clause or effective word from Scripture, 
 are copious references to passages simply by chapter and 
 verse, thus : Deut., c. xxxv., v., vi., or 1st Kings, c. 
 xxiii., v., xviii. Often a stone is fairly covered over 
 with these references, in part to verses and sometimes 
 to whole chapters at once. A favorite mortuary in- 
 scription is a very positive " Covenant" reference im- 
 plying indirectly that this stone evidences a completed 
 contract, and sometimes with a kind of baldness that 
 rather jars on one's sense of delicacy, to say nothing 
 of reverence. To get the proper effect of an average 
 Scotch cemetery one must go through it Bible in hand, 
 and then it would be several days' good work. Again, 
 in a country Scotch church, when the minister announces 
 his text, reads it, and alleges that it comes from a cer- 
 tain chapter and verse, the whole congregation picks 
 up its Bibles and refers to the place to verify their pas- 
 tor^s word or satisfy themselves individually on some 
 other point. 
 
 In the bookstores and stalls there is a distinctly theo- 
 logical coloring to the volumes and prints exposed for 
 sale. In Edinburgh, for instance, they do not seem to 
 have gotten over the Reformation yet, and are still 
 fighting it out with polemic treatises and newspaper 
 articles. I have noticed also one or two popular peri- 
 odicals which announce a weekly " prophetic'^ article as 
 among their attractions. In Glasgow I passed a poor 
 blind beggar, who stood by the wayside begging in a 
 rather common and crowded street, and to attract atten- 
 tion was laboriously reading word by word by touch 
 out of a Bible printed in raised letters. He w^as tugging 
 away in the dust and dirt at a chapter from the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews by way of catching the popular ear. 
 
 There is one institution in Glasgow worthy of note, — 
 the Great Western Cooking Depot. This famed phil- 
 anthropic institution is something like the excellent 
 
236 SCOTLAND. 
 
 Philadelphia model coiFee-houses, — its object is to supply 
 cheap food, well cooked, for the poorer classes. It does 
 supply a good plain breakfast, substantial enough for a 
 hungry workingman, at a cost of six cents of our money, 
 and a dinner, soup, meat, potatoes, and pudding, for 
 nine cents. Now, Glasgow is a city which imports food 
 from us, grain, pork, canned meats, live cattle, dead 
 cattle, dead sheep, tallow, lard, butter, and cheese, and 
 many other articles. If Glasgow, importing from us, 
 can feed workmen at fifteen cents a day, what ought we 
 not to do ? 
 
 Indeed, in every way the prices of common things 
 seem to be very cheap in Glasgow, and from a super- 
 ficial look at the streets, I should say that the workman 
 making a dollar a day here was as well off as one 
 making say one dollar and forty cents a day in Phila- 
 delphia. I cannot speak as to rents, and base my 
 estimates only on food and clothing. 
 
 The Scotch newspapers resemble the American nearer 
 than do those of any other country. In the Scotch 
 towns the multiplicity of papers and of readers is quite 
 marked in contrast with England. You see it the mo- 
 ment you cross the line. Towns like Glasgow and 
 Edinburgh, and even much smaller places, all have 
 their crop of dailies, morning and afternoon. 
 
 On the other hand, these papers tend continually 
 to average and commonplace level, and do not have 
 the weight or influence of the English. They are 
 " snappy" and smart rather than thoughtful and 
 strong, of the terrier rather than the bull-dog style. 
 
 The reason for this similarity of the Scotch and 
 American paper is a similarity of social structure. 
 There is in Scotland the same vast mass of crude half- 
 education diffused through all the community as with us. 
 
 I am not speaking in condemnation of the Scotch 
 papers. They answer a very useful and respectable 
 purpose. They supply the kind of food that is wanted 
 for a large lower- and middle-class population of super- 
 
SCOTTISH NOTES. 237 
 
 ficlal intelligence which is numerous in Scotland. In 
 England there is no such class, the lower strata of so- 
 ciety being very ignorant, and not readers of anything. 
 The papers of England, therefore, appeal solely to the 
 upper and governing class, which is a class of educa- 
 tion, the class of the universities, of prestige of birth, 
 of wide experience of men and travel. Tliey are writ- 
 ten by that class for their own class. The Scotch 
 papers necessarily, with some few prominent excep- 
 tions, are not. 
 
 Scotland shares with us the fortune or misfortune of 
 leading in the drift of modern civilization, which in its 
 present stage is a movement towards the apotheosis of the 
 average and commonplace. Good men of both parties, 
 the Liberal and Conservative, tell me that there is a 
 growing tendency the same way in politics, — i.e., to the 
 evolution of commonplace men, the men who make an 
 impression on the crude and half-educated mind. 
 
 The Scotch hotels of the better kind — the laro-e and 
 newly-built houses — are more like the American ones 
 than any I have found anywhere in Britain or on the 
 Continent. They have our spacious public provision 
 for comfort nowhere found on the same scale in Euro- 
 pean hostelries, generous wash- and retiring-rooms, 
 billiard-rooms, writing-rooms, reading-rooms, public 
 parlors. While they thus approach the virtues of our 
 system, they also share its vices, — defective service, 
 hurry, and a mechanical routine. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that Scotland, from which 
 we took so much one or two centuries ago, is now taking 
 back from us the new institutions which we have devel- 
 oped under our new condition. 
 
 I close wdth a Scottish note of to-day, which illus- 
 trates how^ thoroughly the old Scottish S})irit of integ- 
 rity, the spirit which willingly sacrifices itself for right, 
 the spirit which utterly refuses compromise or half-way 
 settlement with wrong, is alive and burning in Scotland 
 to-day. It is one of the principles of the United Pres- 
 
238 SCOTLAND. 
 
 byterian Church not to accept money for sacred uses 
 from unclean hands. They decline to take for God, 
 and as His agent or minister, money that, as far as 
 they can see, has not been honestly made. 
 
 When the great Glasgow Bank failure took place 
 here some of the directors were members of the United 
 Presbyterian congregations of the city, and one or more 
 of them were large givers, — almost the support, I am 
 told, of their particular churches. When, by the judg- 
 ment of the civil courts, these directors were declared 
 to have been guilty of systematic fraud for some years 
 back, their liberal donations were all returned to them, 
 although it more than crippled the congregations who 
 did it. 
 
 This fact was told me not by any of themselves, but 
 by a learned clergyman of the Established Church of 
 Scotland, who bore honorable testimony to their devo- 
 tion to principle, and their own profession. 
 
 Glasgow, Scotland. 
 
 CHAPTER XXyi. 
 
 TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 
 
 The Highlands and the West Coast or Scotland — Home 
 or THE Clan Cameron — Presbyterian Scotland of To- 
 day — A Sabbath Eve in Argy'leshire — A Kirk Fair — 
 The Apples oe Oban — At a Scotch Kirk — The Trooper 
 Claverhouse in Silk Attire. 
 
 I STARTED for ^' loua's holy fane" from Inverness, 
 intending to give a summer's month to the bracing 
 storms and sheeted vapors of the Hebrides, seeking 
 health and youth in the shadowy land of Ossianic tra- 
 dition, that land whose song and legend are born in 
 
TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 239 
 
 one with Highland blood, and which the descendant 
 of Celtic ancestry visits, not as a strange country, but 
 as one going back into the mists and vague eternity 
 of childhood. It is wonderful how human existence, 
 through these nebulous vapors and the cloudy sweep 
 of storm and wind and spray, seems to almost tone and 
 merge itself into the infinite life of the universe. Clouds 
 here encircle the form of our fathers, their voices ride 
 on the winds, and the whole spirit and imagery of Os- 
 sian is as real as the rocks and the waves. 
 
 Inverness is a central part of departure on the north- 
 east coast of Scotland, although almost in the centre 
 of the northern counties, the great Moray Firth here 
 breaking into the shore for a hundred miles or more. 
 It. is a kind of base of supplies for the tourist under- 
 taking a campaign against Hebridian fogs and tempests, 
 — a place where you can buy stout hunters' shoes and 
 sailors' headgear and waterproof and wondrous Scotch 
 tweeds with yawning flaps and capotes. 
 
 From this point the best road to the west coast lies 
 through the Caledonian canal or water-way, cutting 
 right through the Highlands, and which is formed by 
 connecting several long, narrow lakes by short canals. 
 It is something like the old military water-line in pro- 
 vincial times of our own country, formed by Lake 
 George and Lake Cham plain. This route is known as 
 the Rhine of Scotland, and is always thronged with 
 summer travel. It is wild and beautiful, every hill 
 replete with legend and incident, and to a Scotch- 
 American every town and name recalling home associ- 
 ations. 
 
 Along here is the home of the Camerons, who are 
 pretty thick in their own section, — a thin-faced, active, 
 aggressive race, lords and liegemen, with a common 
 type of feature, like that of the distinguished Pennsyl- 
 vanian family. I also found the Buchanan family face 
 a very marked type through Scotland. You see on this 
 route a modest stone shaft, known as the Royal Charlie. 
 
240 SCOTLAND. 
 
 It is a granite pillar which marks the exact spot where, 
 in 1745, the Clan Cameron, seven hundred strong, 
 raised the standard of Prince Charles Edward, — an act 
 which was more plucky than long-headed, as seen in 
 our light, but which might have been a fair political 
 risk one hundred and fifty years ago. Here, also, they 
 show you the dramatic wreck of the house of Lochiel, 
 — the very spot on which the last of the name know- 
 ingly accepted death and ruin and the extinction of his 
 family name to save his honor and make good his 
 pledged word by a desperate and hopeless conflict. 
 
 Of a weather-beaten, kilted Highlander, who stood 
 near me at the time, I asked, — 
 
 ^' Have you many Camerons about here now ?" 
 
 " Yes ; a good many." 
 
 " Do they go much into politics over here ?'^ 
 
 " Well,'' laughing, " Ave think a good deal of them 
 in this part, and one of them is our member of Parlia- 
 ment just now." 
 
 " What's his name ?" 
 
 '' Donald." ' 
 
 In London I looked over the Parliamentary roll, and 
 sure enough the member for Inverness is Donald Cam- 
 eron. This Donald Cameron is a Conservative, while 
 the general political drift of Scotland is strongly Liberal. 
 But the individual Scotchman, as I have before said, 
 never forgets a friend or a foe, and the Clan Cameron 
 of 1879 is staunch to the tradition of 1745. 
 
 You end the Caledonia Canal route at Oban, "" the 
 Charing-Cross of the Highlands," where you make 
 ready to take the seas. It is a remote Scottish village, 
 situated beautifully on a bay, the inland extremity of 
 which its streets encircle very prettily. I got here on 
 Saturday, and remained over Sunday, engaging passage 
 in a coasting vessel for Monday to lona. I was anxious 
 to have an interior view of modern Scotch village-life, 
 and very glad of the opportunity to see it here in its 
 
TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 241 
 
 simplicity, away from the influences of any " great 
 house/' 
 
 We have a conventional idea in many parts of our 
 country that in Scotland the Sabbath begins on Satur- 
 day evening at sunset ; that the aged cotter at that time 
 gets out a ponderous family Bible, collects a cleanly-clad, 
 serious family around him in a picturesque tableau, and 
 begins the devotions, which continue, with slight 
 changes, for twenty-four hours. I had long since given 
 up the " cleanly-clad" touch of this picture, but I held 
 on to the main design. 
 
 I dined in Oban at six o'clock, and went out on to 
 the streets of the little village at about eight. It was 
 wet and drizzling, of course, but the children of He- 
 bridian mists pay not the least attention to such light dis- 
 comforts as rain and mud and darkness. Through the 
 leaden, vapory sheets of mist and the obscured clouds I 
 could see the faint lights all around the circular line of 
 the street and hear coming out of the dense fogs the 
 sounds of lively music at different points. Pushing out 
 along the water front, all the shops were open, the win- 
 dows lighted, the streets full of young men and women. 
 Bagpipes were going in one place, and farther oif a horn 
 and violin band were playing " Over the River to 
 Charlie" with vim and spirit enough to have started a 
 French barricade. Some young couples strolled with 
 locked hands rather aimlessly from one centre of sound 
 to another, steering expertly between the squads of more 
 or less drunken men. Generally the town was en fete, 
 although after the heavy northern fashion. Barring the 
 drunkenness, with the fishermen and the sailors and the 
 shepherds and the girls and the music and dreamy 
 lights on the sea, you might have fancied yourself in 
 Italy had there only been a little moonlight and a few 
 Madonnas. 
 
 At the far end of the village stood a rude, frame 
 school-house, decked with limp, wet flags, illuminated 
 through the chinks and cracks of the planks, and from 
 L ^ 21 
 
242 SCOTLAND 
 
 which the music of fiddles rang merrily Scotch reels and 
 the stirring old rebel Jacobite airs. To all appearances 
 things had gone so far that the Covenanter youths of 
 Scotland were having a Saturday-evening dance just like 
 the simple peasantry of Bretagne. It was not quite so 
 bad, however. Entering, there was no dancing or pro- 
 vision for it. It was only a kirk-fair. The village 
 kirk-house was in need of repairs. The repairs were 
 being made, and the maids and matrons of the kirk 
 were raising or helping to raise the funds. 
 
 The scene within was quite animated, and had the 
 ordinary features of a country church-fair in our land. 
 The girls, being Scotch, were pretty and lithe and bright; 
 the articles of sale as utterly impracticable and valueless 
 as if they had been exposed on aristocratic tables in a 
 city charitable bazaar. There were some matters of 
 detail a little different from our customs. The refresh- 
 ment-table, for instance, had a generous supply of wines 
 and certain gurgling-necked bottles, which, from their 
 familiar national character, I presumed to contain 
 whiskey. It would be unfair, however, to look on this 
 incident as we would on whiskey sold at an American 
 fair or bazaar. Its use is the general habit and custom 
 of the country, and there w^as no unseemly drinking or 
 noise in the hall. Had you gone into the private house 
 of the clergyman of the kirk whiskey would probably 
 have been offered you as a common mark of hospitality, 
 and I observe that Americans, when in Scotland, however 
 they may moralize at home on the evil consequences, 
 ^ generally take the whiskey. It is an incident of the 
 Ossianic mists, and has been so from the times of the 
 ^ Vikings. 
 
 The prominent and popular feature of the kirk-fair, 
 however, was the lottery. Everything was offered in 
 chances and shares, and raffling was evidently the most 
 successful " ways and means" of the enterprise. My 
 companion and myself, assailed on every side, earnestly 
 remonstrated with these enthusiastic young Covenanters, 
 
TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 243 
 
 representing that we had been raised as Presbyterians, 
 and could not conscientiously indulge in such practices, 
 even they bring the fair temptation ; further, that in 
 the far-off provinces from which we came all lotteries 
 were criminal offences ; that we could not break the 
 laws of our own country, even in a foreign land, and 
 especially so near to the Sabbath-day. But the young 
 women, as usual, were not amenable to reason. There 
 were half a dozen young male Americans of Puritan 
 training and descent at this village fair that evening, 
 and I fear they all ate of the apples of Oban. 
 
 Next morning, however, Scotland was herself again, 
 and the Sabbath morning broke upon an Oban as stiff 
 and silent and decorous as if there never had been a 
 violin or a kirk lottery or a Saturday evening fete 
 within its precincts. 
 
 I went to the Established Kirk, where the old faith 
 and the old worship hold the fort, strong and safe. It 
 was in the main a very familiar scene. The faces were 
 just the same as you would see to-day in any country 
 Presbyterian congregation in the Cumberland Valley. 
 You could pick them all out, elders and deacons, and 
 the men that expected in time to be, — the stern, rigid 
 faces that accepted nothing on trust, and weighed every 
 sentence of their preacher in the balances. The sandy 
 features were perhaps in the predominance, but there 
 was a strong infusion of the old " black Celt.^' Even 
 here the old race characteristics assert their individuality 
 and refuse, closed up together for centuries, to blend or 
 mingle. Everything was intensely Scotch in look and 
 sound and custom. A McDougall was the chief man 
 of the congregation, the head of the clan on the bay ; 
 an unregenerate young Camjibell, who kicked lustily, 
 was forcibly baptized during the services. I sat in the 
 pew of Duncan McGregor. The " local color" was all 
 an artist could pray for. 
 
 The services of the morning did not differ materially 
 from those of an ordinary Presbyterian or Congrega- 
 
244 SCOTLAND. 
 
 tional congregation in our land, save in the quantity. 
 I give the order : singing of a hymn, prayer, reading 
 from the Old Testament, singing of a hymn, reading 
 from the New Testament, singing of a paraphrase, the 
 sermon, prayer, singing of a hymn, baptism, singing, 
 benediction, — twel ve separate exercises. Tlie baptismal 
 services, which was an interpolation in the order of the 
 day, possibly added something. 
 
 There were some differences in the service and scene 
 between the old Presbyterian usages of our land worth 
 noting. The church building was in cruciform shape, 
 and the saints and angels looked down on you from 
 rich stained-glass windows. The hymnal was a modern 
 collection of two hundred good hymns, many of them 
 those in use in our congregational bodies. The Two 
 Hundredth, however, was the ordinary English version 
 of the Te Deum Laudamus, closing before the Kyrie 
 Eleison clauses. The Apostles' Creed and the Lord's 
 Prayer were introduced in the extempore pray ere, and 
 the Creed again in the baptismal service. The choir 
 sat in the apse. 
 
 The preacher was a young man, with red hair parted 
 in the middle, whiskers, and a moustache. He wore 
 the black gown and bands and a purple university 
 hood. He preached a vigorous and able sermon, Old 
 Testament throughout in tone and imagery and train 
 of thought. His delivery w^as demonstrative and sten- 
 torian, markedly in contrast with the quieter and more 
 scholarly tone of the English pulpit. It was, however, 
 well suited to the place and the audience, to whom, I 
 think, his effort — scholarly and thoughtful in its way 
 — was very acceptable. He fired a shot at the pope, 
 of course. 
 
 I think there are many just such congregations in 
 Pennsylvania to-day, and all through the country, even 
 out in Alamosa, where, three years ago, I saw the 
 atoms of organization arranging themselves, — just such 
 bodies of people listening to just the same doctrines 
 
TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 245 
 
 enforced by just the same argument. The preacher 
 here was, as his Jiood betokened, a university man, 
 and his sermon gave evidence of greater scholarship 
 and force of trained thought than the average Ameri- 
 can pulpit effort. The stained-glass ^vindo^ys and the 
 definite ecclesiastical architecture showed a broader 
 sense of power and a larger freedom of culture than 
 holds in many of our villages, but they have come in 
 the cities and will spread down. 
 
 Time was when the saint in the window and the 
 cross of nave and transept was a political emblem, 
 much more than anything else, and the sturdy Presby- 
 terians of Scotland were perfectly right and logical in 
 tearing them down. We are reaping the fruits in our 
 civil freedom and religious liberty now. But the time 
 is past when such things are to be feared, and there is 
 no reason now why all the beauties of art and estab- 
 lished aesthetic principles should not adorn the temples 
 of any faith in our land or England. 
 
 These changes in the aesthetic development of the 
 form and plan of worship have not weakened the vigor 
 or power of the faith. The old soul was there in the 
 kirk of Oban just as resolute and true, and a good deal 
 broader, and, consequently, stronger than a hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 It was very interesting to me to trace these simili- 
 tudes or divergencies between the Presbyterianism of 
 the old land and of our own. They mark and record 
 the mental and historical development of the two 
 })eoples. There are Presbyterian corners of our land 
 that are to-day perhaps more Scotch than Scotland. 
 We brought over the Scotland of 1700, and hold it 
 there unchanged still, while the General Kirk of Scot- 
 land, changing with history and life of a people, has 
 gone on to something different. On the other hand, 
 there are spots in Scotland which have never changed 
 for a hundred years, and will not for a hundred years 
 to come. The general religious life of both countries 
 
 21* 
 
246 SCOTLAND. 
 
 is, however, I think, iiDder somewhat diiferent condi- 
 tions, moving; forward much alike, and with very equal 
 step. The Presbyterianism of our country and of 
 Scotland to-day is much alike, although it is very 
 diiferent from what it was either here or there a gen- 
 eration ago. But the race holds together in its march. 
 I may mention here a little incident of interest in 
 this connection which I came across during the summer 
 at another point in Scotland. In the drawing-room of 
 the Earl of Strath more at Glamis Castle there hangs 
 with the family portraits a full-length painting of the 
 famous dragoon Claverhouse, whose nauie was once 
 such a terror to the Covenanters, and whose memory 
 yet is recalled only with unuttered imprecations by 
 their descendants. Much to my surprise, thinking of 
 him only from the conventional conception of Cove- 
 nanter tradition, I found the portrait of an entirely 
 different manner of man. He was sumptuously dressed 
 in a wealth of rich colored silk that in our time would 
 be effeminate, and his form and carriage bore the un- 
 mistakable impress of a man accustomed to good so- 
 ciety and trained to its amenities. His face was refined, 
 pleasing, and almost gentle, — very much the same face 
 as those which gather at the castle to-day, with ladies 
 and flowers and music, for luncheon and lawn-tennis. 
 In this mild, amiable, gentlemanly officer it was impos- 
 sible to see the rough and merciless mosstrooper of 
 Scottish tradition. There is nothing at all vindictive 
 or cruel in the face, and little that is indicative of force. 
 I can only infer that Claverhouse was not the motive- 
 power of his own action. He was probably an amiable 
 kind of man, receptive to the impressions of a stronger 
 will, the ready tool of a firmer hand and more cunning 
 head, — one of those men who are good for instruments 
 and to work under and for others. He had even, pos- 
 sibly, a strong religious tendency, which exercised itself 
 in following ignorantly and unthinkingly the instruc- 
 tions of any ecclesiastical authority to which he professed 
 
lONA. 247 
 
 fealty. I do not mean to say that he had ecclesiastical 
 instruction for his savage forays on the Scotch con- 
 venticles, but he was probably taught by his Cliurch, after 
 the unchristian spirit of those times, that it was doing 
 God service to crush out heresy by violence, and he was 
 honest enough to practise what others only preached. 
 
 Let us be thankful for our gentler and better times, 
 which enable us to think of this man without anger, 
 and to judge him dispassionately. 
 
 At this point of Oban I left the mainland for lona, 
 which, with its traditions, as the early seat of our 
 Christianity, the northern ark, when all the Avorld was 
 in chaos under the flood which swept away the Roman 
 Empire and civilization, and Staifa, with its grand 
 ^' temple not made with human hands," and Ulva^s 
 isle, I must leave for another paper. 
 
 Oban, Scotland. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 ION A. 
 
 The Auroral Light of Northern Christianity — A Storm 
 OFF THE West Coast of Scotland — A Eude Westminster 
 — The Funeral Cortege of Forgotten Lines of Kings — 
 Macbeth's Grave — A Dove of the Church — The Story 
 OF St. Columba — The Irish Saints Militant of Old — In 
 G^Lic Land — The Home of the Macleans — Iona of To- 
 day — The Holy Place of Druid, Pagan, Christian — 
 Sailing the Summer Seas of Scottish Romance — Fin- 
 gal's Cave, the Cathedral of the Seas — Lord Ullin's 
 Daughter — The Highlanders of the Sea. 
 
 "The Hebrid Isles 
 Placed far amid the melancholy main." 
 
 Monday morning broke with a fresh, whistling gale 
 sweeping along the west coast of Scotland, but as that 
 is rather the rule and calm weather the exception on 
 
248 SCOTLAND. 
 
 the Hebridean seas, our coaster boldly put off from the 
 black, slippery dock at Oban, and headed for the lower- 
 ing and leaden skies. After a rough passage, with no 
 worse disaster than the relentless ravages of the mal de 
 mer, wdiich took down a goodly proportion of the pas- 
 senger-list, the staunch little craft anchored off a reef 
 some distance out from the inhospitable shores of the 
 Holy Island, and we visitors were taken aground in 
 some little fisherman's boats. The coaster, which, in 
 summer-time, makes daily trips to lona, lands its pas- 
 sengers in this wise, and after driving them through 
 the main ruins of the island, much as you might con- 
 duct a herd of cattle, sails away again, all in an hour. 
 This seems to have been the unsatisfactory routine from 
 the time of Wordsworth, if I read aright the complaint 
 of some of his verses. Taking heed from the poet's 
 disappointment, my brother and myself concluded to 
 lay over the night in a humble inn which is found on 
 the island, and, after a day spent at leisure among the 
 Druidic and Christian remains, to take a fisherman's 
 boat and meet the coasting vessel at some farther point 
 out on its next day's trip, when it was to come down 
 from the north instead of up from the south. 
 
 This plan, which is the only one by which one can 
 see the place intelligently, and which I would adopt 
 again were I visiting lona another time, in this instance 
 cost us four days' solitary imprisonment on the little 
 island. The storm grew only more furious as night 
 came on, and the next day seemed only to increase in 
 rage. Until Thursday not a vessel ever came in sight, 
 or even put out from Scotland, as we afterwards learned, 
 and not a fisherman dare leave the shore. All the time 
 the entire seas around were lashed with foam, ceaselessly 
 breaking and charging on the giant rocks and deadly 
 reefs with demoniac fury. Sometimes the angry waters 
 seemed forced through clefts or caverns in the rocks, 
 and would shoot up into the air columns of foam and 
 spray apparently several hundreds of feet high. It 
 
lONA. 249 
 
 was a supremely magnificent spectacle, and it moved 
 all day long and all night to the rhythmic thunders of 
 the mighty surges rumbling awful basses away below 
 the range of the human scale. During the second day 
 the torn and mutilated body of a little boy was washed 
 ashore, utterly unrecognizable and unknown. From 
 the clothing and other indications the fishermen be- 
 lieved it to be some shepherd lad from one of the 
 neighboring islands, snatched from the earth by the 
 angry sea in one of its frenzied inroads. 
 
 The venerable religious and race associations which 
 centre m lona are familiar to the educated w-orld. It 
 was, stretching back into remote ages whose antiquity 
 cannot now be told, holy ground, — a kind of Mecca, or 
 Jerusalem, or Rome, for the savage clans of our fore- 
 fathers who rode the northern seas. Scandinavian, Pict, 
 Scot, Irish, Celt, Gael, revered its soil, worshipped at 
 its altars, and buried their great in its consecrated earth. 
 Dr. Johnson calls it ^'this awful ground." During the 
 sixth century, when the world was breaking up in the 
 convulsive dissolution of the Roman Empire, this little 
 isle held the light of Christianity and civilization for 
 the new race that was coming on to the scene. It was, 
 undoubtedly, a rude faith and a very meagre civiliza- 
 tion, but it held the spark, such as it was, and kept the 
 flame alive. 
 
 Perhaps the most touching, certainly the most im- 
 pressive, of all the remains of lona are its rude, kingly 
 graves. In the universal wreck and plunder which 
 marked the savage warfare of our Norse ancestors, all 
 peoples seem to have respected '^ the Blessed Isle," as 
 it was reverentially called, and the bones of the great 
 and the good were carried there from afar, that they 
 might be safe from spoliation, and await in peace and 
 under holy guard the morning of the resurrection. 
 
 Tradition says that for centuries the kings of France, 
 and Ireland, and Scotland, and Norway, and of far 
 isles were buried here. Here, also, were brought the 
 
250 SCOTLAND. 
 
 bishops and lordly abbots of legendary memory. The 
 cemetery of these royal tombs is shown, and the traces 
 of many graves are clearly visible. They lie in long 
 rows, many of them under monumental slabs of an 
 enduring slate, rudely etched with crosses, croziers, and 
 shields and swords and Runic symbols. These slate 
 tombstones have a hard, polished surface, and seem 
 almost imperishable, and much of the etching is bold 
 and spirited. A great Runic cross stretches its pro- 
 tecting arms over this sacred enclosure. It is evident 
 that there has been some restoration in the arrangement 
 of the graves of this yard, and some of the royal tablets 
 are certainly over the wrong bodies ; but the general 
 fact of the long sanctity of the spot and its kingly 
 occupancy is undoubted and established. It is the 
 rude Westminster of the unrecorded history of our race. 
 This was the burying-place, also, of the Lords of 
 the Isles, sung by Sir Walter Scott. Here, too, Mac- 
 beth is buried and his murdered sovereign. 
 
 Rosse. — " Where is Duncan's body ?" 
 Macduff. — " Carried to Colmekill ; 
 
 The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, 
 
 And guardian of their bones." 
 
 I should have stated before that the ancient name 
 of lona — the name of mediseval legend and history — 
 is I-Columb-Kill, the island of St. Columba of the 
 Church. 
 
 By the aid of a rude monkish chart or map pre- 
 served on the island, and giving the contour of the 
 shore in its historic days, my brother and myself traced 
 the whole outline of the land, and found the tiny bay 
 or cove which tradition asserts to have been the laud- 
 ing-place of these sad processions. It is a narrow, 
 rock-walled entrance of several hundred feet, termi- 
 nating in a few yards of smooth, sandy shore covered 
 with white and richly-colored pebbles worn almost 
 purely round by the endless wash of the waves. I 
 
lONA. 251 
 
 hear yet the grating rattle of these sounding stones 
 ceaselessly rolling alone for centuries. In good weather 
 small row-boats might land here with comparative 
 safety and in decent quiet. Once on land, a level and 
 sheltered stretch of ground affords an appropriate spot 
 for a temporary halt and any preliminary services. 
 This favored landing is, however, on the opposite shore 
 of the island from the cemetery and ecclesiastical build- 
 ings, — the cathedral, convent, and consecrated ground, 
 — and in a diagonal direction. They bore, therefore, 
 the bodies of their kings in stately procession a distance 
 of some two miles or more, and over the mountain 
 range, which is crossed by a moderate pass, through 
 which an imperfect road now winds. 
 
 It was from this far shore of the island that came 
 the precious green stones, which, in the Middle Ages, 
 ])roperly consecrated and blessed, circulated all over 
 Europe as holy amulets. 
 
 Our enforced confinement on the island, although 
 involuntary, was a pleasant and gainful episode. Four 
 days of the storms of the Scottish seas are a substantial 
 investment in the way of health, and in no other way 
 could we have so entered into the life and spirit of the 
 place. Shut out from the world, its solemn traditions 
 came slowly back out of the ages, and were part of the 
 hour and moment. 
 
 With this time at our disposal we traced out the 
 whole plan of the primitive ecclesiastical establishment 
 as it stood in the eleventh century, and probably in the 
 sixth ; for the later, or restoration, buildings seem to 
 have been faithfully erected on the site of the ancient 
 sanctuaries built by St. Columba and his disciples, and 
 destroyed by the pagan Danes, a.d. 807, when the 
 whole island was pillaged, the inhabitants slain, the 
 priests sacrificed, and every stone razed to the ground. 
 
 Of St. Columba, whose name is the savor of this 
 spot, and whose work gave it a place in history, it is 
 difficult to speak truthfully at this time without con- 
 
252 SCOTLAND. 
 
 veying an erroneous and damaging impression, the 
 lights of his age and ours are so different. He comes 
 down, of course, in the tradition of the Church, en- 
 dowed with all the Christian graces ; a priest burning 
 with love ; the ^'Dove of the Church,'^ as his legendary 
 name tells; a worker of miracles; a teacher of civili- 
 zation ; and the legend always closes with the hal- 
 lowing shades of a venerated death- bed, when, full of 
 years and honor, and in the odor of sanctity, the saint 
 went up in peace and joy to meet his God. These are 
 the shades, and this the coloring of the picture drawn 
 in the convent and mellowed by time and the softening 
 distance of ages. 
 
 Viewed nearer, the lines are much harsher and less 
 romantic. We now know St. Columba to have been a 
 saint militant of the most aggressive and pugnacious 
 kind, for whom even Ireland was too gentle and peace- 
 ful a land. We know that his record there was one of 
 strife and trouble, and that he finally left it by the 
 advice of his ecclesiastical superior. Even when he 
 had settled lona, reared his triumphant crosses on its soil, 
 erected his convent and set his matin and vesper bells 
 a-ringing over its waves, his life then was probably 
 nearer that of our Indian frontier than of a modern 
 missionary. He had foes within and without; wars 
 with the pagan clans of the North seas and with preda- 
 tory monks of his own faith, eager as he for conquest 
 and adventure. On one occasion some Irish saints of 
 a rival order, having landed, gained a footing in lona, 
 and built their convent and chapel on the far shore of 
 the island; the dove-like Columba, after some inef- 
 fective controversies, moved in force, with a detach- 
 ment of his saints, against the invading brethren, drove 
 them out, and razed to the ground the offending sanc- 
 tuary, "as was the law in such cases," gravely annotates 
 the faithful chronicler. Every trace of this fated 
 mission is now gone, but from the old chart one can 
 exactly locate its site, which Is, in all respects save a 
 
ION A. 253 
 
 commanding sweep for its tower and bells over the 
 seas, better than that of St. Columba's. Again, the 
 simple biographer and disciple : " Now a question arose 
 between St. Columba and St. Comgar concerning a 
 church near Coleraine," and it, too, was finally decided 
 by a pitched battle between the fraternities of these 
 pious leaders. 
 
 I found on this lonely island an old monkish chroni- 
 cle, written in rude, mediaeval Latin, of the life and 
 adventures of St. Columba, extremely interesting and 
 picturesque when read on the spot. Of course, one 
 now can hardly believe in the accuracy or literal truth 
 of much of it, but, like Pompeiian frescoes or Middle- 
 Age tapestries, the whole gave a wonderfully vivid and 
 life-like picture of the daily existence of the time, — the 
 habits of the saints, the atmosphere of simple credulity 
 and childish ignorance in which they habitually moved 
 and thought. Everything was rude and humble and 
 primitive, their surroundings and accommodations of 
 the very simplest and most limited kind. 
 
 St. Columba worked miracles daily and endlessly 
 and on the very slightest provocation, but they were 
 all of the rudest and most humble incident, — exorcising 
 the devil out of a milk-pail carried by one of the 
 brothers, holding on a wooden wheel on a cart without 
 a linch-pin, or protecting the working brethren from 
 the cold and snows. The little road from the brothers' 
 house and stables to the church — hardly five hundred 
 yards long, and noAV marked at its angles with a fine 
 Runic cross, the reverent offering of later centuries — 
 was a perfect theatre of spiritual manifestations, the 
 angels dividing daily its poor and meagre accommo- 
 dations with the brethren. Jacob's glittering ladder 
 was hardly so grand a roadway. It was a condition 
 of life and thought we can hardly understand, and 
 perhaps cannot do justice to at all. The cold, rude 
 rocks of this barren islet, with their ruder people, were 
 a theatre of the warmest fervency of faith and devo- 
 
 22 
 
254 SCOTLAND. 
 
 tion. This place was, for these simple, half-barbarian 
 Christians, the very gates of heaven, and they lived 
 from year to year in a kind of sluggish, arctic ecstasis. 
 
 But this we do know of the heroic saint whose force 
 and fervency of character has thrown his name out 
 of dark ages far into the light and brilliancy of future 
 ones: he was a man of his time and a historic leader. 
 However rude some things may sound to us now, he 
 had all the education and advantages of his period, — 
 the education of the schools, of the monastery, of travel, 
 and, I think, of arms. He was also a man of good 
 birth, and had the power which always comes from 
 high social relations and experience. He was qualified 
 for his great work and the time in which he did it. 
 His labors were given, not to his own advantage, but 
 for his fellows, and his name still lives. 
 
 In the very darkest of the Dark Ages, about a.d. 563, 
 Columba, an Irish monk of noble blood, left Ireland, 
 and, sailing northward, sought an unknown island and 
 founded there a monastic home. He brought with 
 him, tradition says, twelve disciples, brother-monks, 
 and his avowed mission was the conversion to Chris- 
 tianity of the Northern pagan kings and the spread 
 of civilization among their tribes. He did convert first 
 Connall, king of the Dalriads, a name even that is lost 
 now. Successively he brought under the standard of 
 the cross the heathen Picts and the Scots, and the 
 savage clans of the Orkneys and even of far-off Ice- 
 land. From this little seat of learning and faith the 
 auroral lights of Northern Christianity were shed in 
 this early century even thus far out toward our own 
 .unknown continent. 
 
 The force of faith and love which St. Columba had 
 centred in this aggressive mission projected itself far 
 out for hundreds and hundreds of years, and its mem- 
 ory will never die now so long as Christianity en- 
 dures. Columba himself died before the century was out. 
 He had entered, by human acclamation, the goodly 
 
lONA. 255 
 
 fellowship of the saints long before death came, and 
 the legend of his departure, as told in the simple Latin 
 of the old chronicle, is a very beautiful and touching 
 story. For three years he liad prayed God without 
 ceasing for release, and at last, advised in the night- 
 time that his prayer was granted, he repaired at once, 
 unattended, through the inclement blasts and snow of 
 a boreal winter, to the simple stone altar which had 
 been his life-work and whose future was to be so great, 
 and there, in the act of prayer, ascended to heaven. 
 His body was immediately enshrined in this holy 
 place ; the saint was beneath the altar. 
 
 For two hundred years the fires of faith burned 
 brightly in lona, illuminating the northern horizon. 
 During the chaos of Europe this little island was the 
 lamp of the world. It kept alive in its slender flame 
 learning and civilization and Christianity. At last, but 
 not until a new civilization was emerging in Europe 
 from the chaos of the old, its flame, too, was extin- 
 guished in a dramatic tragedy. After hopeless strug- 
 gles, from time to time, with the Scandinavian pagans, 
 long years of fluctuating vicissitudes, of pillages, of 
 escape, of plunderings, of martyrdoms, in 807 the 
 Danes swept the island with ferocious vengeance, 
 destroyed every vestige of building, murdered or 
 carried off" the defenceless population, and offered up 
 the priests of Christianity on the triumphant altars of 
 Odin. Then there was night in lona. 
 
 Generations after, when quieter times came, lona 
 was repeopled by Christian converts, her fanes rebuilt, 
 her altars re-established. It was then she became 
 famous as the remembered cradle of British Chris- 
 tianity. It was then that her very soil came to bear 
 the flavor of sanctity, and that the kings of warring 
 tribes respected it as a common sepulchre. It is the 
 ruins of these times that we now see, some of them as 
 late, probably, as the thirteenth century, — that wonder- 
 ful epoch of cathedral-building all over Europe. It is 
 
256 SCOTLAND. 
 
 from this period that come the impressive monolithic 
 crosses, the slate and granite tombs with kingly helmets 
 and lordly mitres, — the emblems of princely abbots at a 
 time in British history when the abbot was a far more 
 important and powerful personage than is the bishop 
 of this age. 
 
 Tlie lona of to-day is a straggling fisherman's 
 hamlet of a dozen or so houses, with a few more 
 huts for shepherds at solitary points over the island. 
 Everything is rude, and, like the island, meagre, poor, 
 and scanty. The houses are low, but built of tremen- 
 dous thickness of walls, to stand the constant sweep of 
 the wind and the periodic break of tempests. These 
 poor, rude dwellings are covered with thatch, and the 
 thatch secured by a strong network of rope extending 
 over the entire roof, and held to its place by large, 
 heavy bowlders fastened to the ends. 
 
 Inside the houses everything is simple and primi- 
 tive : stone flags for floors, and sometimes only mud ; 
 a peg or two for the nets and fishing-tackle, a plain 
 stool, some humble kitchen utensils, are generally all 
 the furniture. The cleaning up seems to be done by 
 the ducks and pigs, which have the freedom of the 
 house. 
 
 So small and confined is the settlement, and the life 
 of the island so much in common, that the animals 
 seem to have lost their fear of mankind, and move 
 around like citizens conscious of their ^^ equal rights.'' 
 Even the dogs which ran out to meet us in the village 
 and over the bare, heathered hills never pkmged out 
 angrily, but came forward for the first time with wag- 
 ging tails, friendly bark, and every demonstration of 
 pleasure, glad to greet a new form. 
 
 There is no coal on the island and no wood, the bar- 
 ren hills growing only heather, gorse, and nettles. This 
 alone adds fearfully to the poverty of a place that is 
 cold and wet nearly all the year round. I make this 
 note September 2d, and we are having fire every day, 
 
ION A. 257 
 
 and all day, in our rooms, and outside the poor farmers 
 complain of the lateness of the season. Buttercups, too, 
 are blooming now — September — instead of May, as 
 with us. 
 
 This island, three miles long by one to two wide, 
 has an area of two thousand acres, only six hundred 
 of which are capable of cultivation. It yields to its 
 owner, the Duke of Argyll, a rental of four hundred 
 pounds, — -just a dollar an acre for all the land, good 
 and bad. At least one-half of it is rock, and none 
 of it would be tilled at all by the average American 
 farmer, who would not consider life worth livins; in 
 its wet sands. 
 
 When we remember that Ave can buy in Kansas or 
 Colorado the best wheat-lands in the world at less per 
 acre than the rental for one year of a bleak Scotch sand 
 shore, inaccessible and inclement, we can j udge how much 
 better is the lot of the poor man with us than here. 
 
 Nevertheless, the place has charms of its own for 
 men of this race. The family we are staying with 
 came here five years ago as a matter of choice, and I 
 made the acquaintance of a Scotch stranger on the land- 
 ing who afterwards told me he came here many sum- 
 mers from the love of the place. 
 
 The language of the island is Gaelic, and the people 
 speak it in a tiiick, guttural tone, and with a shy, half- 
 alarmed manner that prevents your even getting at all 
 the real sounds. Seeing no one at all save some tour- 
 ists for a few weeks in the year, the children run 
 around like young savages, barelegged and bare- 
 footed, and with thick, black horse-hair falling from 
 their heads and over their faces, like our Indians. 
 There is no beauty among them, either of face or form. 
 Life is too hard. Little children with hard, unlovely 
 faces follow you on a trot over sharp stones or through 
 coarse wet grass, dirty, unkempt, and almost unclad, 
 to sell their meagre treasures of shells or pebbles. 
 The little girls we saw wore commonly a short petti- 
 r 22* 
 
258 SCOTLAND. 
 
 coat, not reaching to their knees, and that generally partly 
 torn away by exercise and long nse. The color of this 
 garment was indiscernible ; the color of their skin was a 
 dark, ruddy red, almost that of our savage. Although 
 the ground of this island is hard and stony, the winds 
 sharp and cutting, and the soil productive of generous 
 crops of thistles, nettles, and thorny plants, its inhab- 
 itants go about with bare feet and legs with impunity, 
 less protected even than the sheep or pigs. 
 
 There is no corn-mill in lona, and the scanty crop 
 of grain is carried over to an adjoining island to be 
 ground. When this support fails by reason of con- 
 tinued storms or absence of the men fishing, resort is 
 had to the "quern," or hand-mill, the same as men- 
 tioned in the Bible. There are two of these primitive 
 mills on the island. 
 
 lona is the home of the Macleans, a stalwart tribe 
 well known in Scotch-Irish America. A few genera- 
 tions ago every soul on the island bore this name, but 
 with the dying out of the clan system this has disap- 
 peared, and there are several varieties of family names 
 in lona to-day, — all pure Scotch, however. 
 
 The ruins of lona as they stand to-day are very 
 moderate and modest compared with those of other 
 centres of attraction in this way, — the falling walls of 
 the old cathedral, in which you can still trace transept, 
 nave, and the usual chapels, the convent, the conse- 
 crated burial-ground of the kings, another cemetery 
 immediately around the church, the unique crosses at 
 these different points, and the staunch, towering cam- 
 panile from whose open windows the Christian bells 
 hundreds of years ago rang out over the fierce Northern 
 seas. The interest of these modest remains is not in 
 themselves, but in the vast body of associations which 
 they call up and marshal in lengthening hosts that ex- 
 tend back through centuries. 
 
 In the middle of the island are found some Druidic 
 
lONA. 259 
 
 remains of traditional interest. These are not seen at 
 all by the visitor who trusts himself to the one-hour 
 tour of the vessel's guide, as they are not on the routine 
 programme, their distance being too great from the 
 landing. Before the times of St. Columba, lona was a 
 famed centre of Druid worship, and the traces of the 
 familiar contour of a Druidic holy of holies are yet 
 visible to patient search, — the central mound and the 
 circle of stones, the seats of the angels. We discov- 
 ered their location after a good deal of labor, for much 
 of it is covered with the drift of a thousand years ; but, 
 once ascertained, you can quite definitely locate the 
 tumuli and understand their former relations and uses. 
 The central mound is quite a hill, — a sharp, green knob 
 of uniform curve. 
 
 Later researches, it is claimed, prove that these stone 
 circles all over England were not, as is popularly sup- 
 posed, built by the Druids, who were Celts, but are the 
 work of a far anterior race, — the men of the Stone Age. 
 The Stone Age came to an end in Europe about tw'o 
 thousand years before the birth of Christ. Its shortest 
 duration is estimated at a term of two thousand years. 
 This calculation would place the erection of these primi- 
 tive temples, say, about three thousand to four thou- 
 sand years before the Christian era. Other chronolo- 
 gies of the Stone Age would place it still farther back. 
 
 lona is one of those remarkable spots which, from 
 prehistoric times, seem always to have been held as 
 sacred localities, — points where God came in contact 
 with the world, and where He was worshipped and 
 revealed without regard to creed or chronology of 
 Church speaking " in divers manners in times past." 
 In spite of the rudeness and simplicity of its modern 
 face, of the meagreness of its remains, of its bleak and 
 forbidding location, it is well worth visiting and study. 
 Few theatres of human history are more impressive. 
 It is one of " the places of the earth." It is a splendid 
 page in the militant history of Christianity. There the 
 
260 SCOTLAND. 
 
 bloody altars of Thor and Odin have smoked, tended by 
 our Northern ancestors. There God at sundry times 
 in the twilight of the ages spake to our Druid fathers. 
 
 On Thursday, when the winds were calmed and the 
 angry ocean had quieted down to comparative reason, 
 we hired a fisherman's sail-boat, and, with a pair of 
 small but sinewy Gaelic seamen at the oars, pulled off 
 for a cruise among the neighboring islands to explore 
 the classic seas of school-boy legend and memory. 
 Our morning's destination w^as Staifa, with its wondrous 
 columnar formation ; our hope, that we might be able 
 to enter with our little boat the surging portal of the 
 grand nave of Fingal's solemn cave. Every wave 
 this morning was crested with associations and story, 
 — behind, the campanile of lona, with Oronsay and 
 Colonsay, twin islets of saints and mediaeval miracles 
 and sacred tradition ; ahead, the frowning masses of 
 Mull, the famous stronghold of the Lords of the Isles, 
 and " Ulva dark" and the broader lands of the Lords 
 of Ullin. 
 
 ' Oh ! I'm the chief of Ulva's isle, 
 And this Lord Ullin's daughter." 
 
 We skirted the shores of the tragic escapade, and 
 sailed over the spot where the " waters wild'' went over 
 the fated lovers. 
 
 Fingal's Cave, with its strange basaltic columns, its 
 curiously ecclesiastical effect of Gothic roof, {)illared 
 nave, and choir of thundering surges, with its dim 
 religious lights of green and purple and gold reflected 
 from the waves below, is a most impressive and unique 
 sight, but it hardly deserves its relative rank among 
 the wonders of the world gotten from our crude geog- 
 raphies, written at a time when the modern world was 
 unexplored, Avhen America and Australia and Africa 
 and the great table-lands of India and Central Asia 
 were unknown. 
 
ION A. 261 
 
 This picturesquely imposing cavern is a great cleft 
 in the primeval rock, two hundred and twenty-two 
 feet long, forty-two feet wide at the entrance, and in 
 height sixty-six feet at mean tide. The bottom is 
 always a flood of roaring water. The sides are nearly 
 parallel, and rise up perpendicularly, closing away up 
 in a vaulted roof. They are not })lain walls, however, 
 but solid masses of pentagonal and hexagonal columns 
 of w^onderful symmetry, and many of them monoliths. 
 They present the effect of innumerable corridors of 
 columns, — aisles and aisles of them. As a picture, the 
 cave most resembles the mighty nave of some great 
 cathedral arched in the foundation-rock. Into this 
 grand church the waves, with a noise far below the 
 range of any human organ, grander and deeper, surge 
 forever forward and backward, singing unto each other 
 in eternal antiphone. 
 
 Staffa's Island is but a little bit of grass and soil, 
 just enough to respectably cover the basaltic ribs of its 
 great wonder. You can climb to the top of it and get 
 a grand view of the entrance of the cave from over- 
 head. You can climb around the side over hundreds 
 of broken pillars washed down during the ages by the 
 ceaseless violence of the waves, and enter the cavern, 
 finding your way from one rude pedestal to another 
 along the edge of the columnar wall until you reach 
 about where the altar would be in a church, and here 
 the spot where the thunderous surges break against the 
 massive rock foundation of the island wdth a noise 
 mightier than that of the waves, and with deep re- 
 sounding bass echoes that never die away. 
 
 Unfortunately, the condition of the waters was such 
 that the Gaelic fishermen would not attempt to put their 
 boats in, and w^e had to be content with this kind of 
 view of the cave, landing on the rear of the island and 
 clambering around over the slippery bases denuded of 
 their shafts. 
 
 This rude Gaelic land of the Argyllshire coast and 
 
262 SCOTLAND. 
 
 the Hebrides is known as part of the Highlands of 
 Scotland, although, of course, it is on the level of the 
 sea. Highland is now an ethnological rather than a 
 topographical distinction. The people here, too, rude 
 and meagre as is their life, have all the fierce spirit of 
 freedom and the strong self-respect of the clans of the 
 hills. They prove their blood. The only man, woman, 
 or child in all Europe who ever refused a gratuity at 
 my hands was a little Highland boy of lona, and I put 
 it on record to the credit of his land. One who has 
 travelled in Europe will know how much it means. 
 
 The Scotch have certainly acquired all the world 
 over an unfortunate low-grade reputation for being 
 " canny,'' and canny, in the way it has come to be ap- 
 plied as their national characteristic, means only self- 
 ishness and cunning. It certainly, however, does not 
 come from the Highlands. The Highlanders to-day 
 are mostly poor, and they always have been so. They 
 are not a money-making or a money-loving race, and 
 they have always been 'ready to sacrifice their property 
 for their principles, their reputation, or their vengeance. 
 
 lONA. 
 
NORTHBRlSr ITALY. 
 
 263 
 
CHAPTER XXyill. 
 
 VENICE. 
 
 St. Mark's Grand Grave — Gracious Influences of the 
 Sea — A City Set as a Stage Scene — Street Life in 
 Venice — The Lares and Penates — Church and State — 
 The Sacred Birds of Venice — Venus Aphrodite. 
 
 Venice blazons as her city arms the Lion of St. 
 Mark, — the winged beast of the Apocalypse, — and the 
 selection is appropriate, for in a certain sense the city 
 herself is apocalyptic in being like to no other place on 
 the face of the earth or in the waters under. 
 
 This lovely city, that floats like a picture on the sea, 
 is in fact and in spirit the splendid mausoleum and 
 monument of St. Mark, the humble shoemaker-evan- 
 gelist. They bore his remains here one thousand years 
 ago from Alexandria, and his worship, the honor of his 
 name, the glory of his legends, became at once the civic 
 life of the town. It was a quaint, mediaeval habit, sug- 
 gestive of the historic life of those times, for all the 
 cities to take to themselves some saint as a local deity, 
 and their existence thenceforth took life and color from 
 his name and spirit, — was bound up with it. The city 
 and the saint went on together when once their fortunes 
 were thus joined. He prayed for his people in heaven 
 above, and sometimes came down with spear and shield 
 to fight their battles below. In return they glorified 
 his name on earth. 
 
 St. Mark sleeps his final rest in the grand cathedral 
 
 which bears his name and fronts the magnificent piazza 
 
 San Marco. The cathedral is one of the great churches 
 
 of the world ; the piazza is unique in brilliancy and 
 
 M 23 265 
 
266 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 splendor and pleasing life, — a picture that, perhaps, no 
 other place can offer. The whole city to-day is crested 
 and carved Avith the images and legends of its patron 
 saint. His lion crouches and sleeps and rears and flies 
 on column and porch and palace and church and pave- 
 ment, and the loyal artists of Venice have faithfully 
 wrestled on canvas and in stone with the kindred beasts 
 of the Apocalypse to do him company. St. Mark is 
 fortunate in his apotheosis. His is the city of poetry 
 and splendor. 
 
 Just think what Venice gained over the cities of the 
 earth when she was taken under the protection of the 
 sea. 
 
 No grimy locomotive, breathing smoke and soot, can 
 ever go groaning and shrieking through the streets, 
 leaving a trail of black dirt in its offensive rear. 
 
 No wagons rattle and rumble, no horses clatter with 
 dissonant noise, over her streets and stones. Her 
 sounds are all of music. 
 
 Washed forever by the slowly falling and rising 
 waters, there is no dust in her streets or on her marble- 
 floored squares: one leaves windows up as safely as in 
 country groves. 
 
 Being no dust, there is comparatively little dirt. 
 Even rough work hardly soils the clothes of the toilers, 
 and her gondoliers — the stable-smelling hackmen and 
 cabbies of other towns — do their work to song and in 
 bright, clean linen. 
 
 Finally, the cool sea-breezes forever sweep her stones, 
 and there are freshness and bracing salt air in-doors and 
 out from morning till night, and till morning again. 
 
 It is these softening and gracious influences of the 
 sea on its daily life and being that give to Venice her 
 peculiar charm and distinctive beauty. It has been my 
 good fortune to see the city in the splendor of pure sun- 
 shine by day and under the mellowing softness of moon- 
 light by night. It is a picture — a dream — something 
 one feels too lovely for the prosaic life of mortal men. 
 
VENICE. 267 
 
 The life of all Venice converges and centres in the 
 grand Square of St. Mark^s, and in the evening, — it 
 seems then a perpetual scene set for the representation 
 of some grand spectacular opera, only that the proper- 
 ties, instead of being pasteboard, are the finest palaces 
 and architecture in the world, and the music is human 
 life and pleasure. You think the curtain must fall. 
 It does fall towards midnight, but it rises again next 
 evening. 
 
 Imagine a vast space say in length from the Union 
 Ivcague House to the Academy of Music in Philadel- 
 phia, and in width perhaps three times that of Broad 
 Street, paved smooth with marble and blocks of 
 trachyte, shut ofiP from the noise of Avheels or horses. 
 On the one side the floating domes of the great Byzan- 
 tine cathedral and its grand arched fronts, with their 
 golden mosaics lustrous in the night-time, on the 
 other the famous Palace of the Doges, wasteful in 
 magnificence ; the towering shaft of the Campanile, 
 with its colonnades of white arches fluttering in the 
 air, and up to whose very pinnacle you could ride a 
 horse, so wonderful is the engineering of the interior 
 ascent ; the three tall red mast-like spires draped with 
 the colors of Italy, — columns so ancient and strange 
 that tradition can hardly tell their origin, — and all 
 around a continuous chain of stately marble palaces, 
 stained with age and time. Imagine all this, and you 
 have the faint outlines of St. Mark's piazza. Around 
 three sides of the square there runs a covered archway 
 lined with shops and supported by a corridor of col- 
 umns, on which rest the fronts of the palaces. In the 
 evening these shops are brilliantly lighted, a glittering 
 line of fire encircling the piazza. In front of this cor- 
 ridor of columns, when the falling shadows draw towards 
 sunset, hundreds and hundreds of chairs and little tables 
 are set out before the cafes. At these tables citizens 
 and strangers gather in families and parties to eat ices, 
 sip coflee, eau sucre, light wines, drink beer, and smoke, 
 
268 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 children, women, old men, young, middle-aged, and all. 
 In fact, Venice does its visiting at these tables, and one 
 can pick out the belles of the city at a glance by the dark, 
 bee-like clusters which surround their mothers' tables. 
 
 On to this grand stage the whole city throws itself 
 every evening, — all classes, all ages, all the world of 
 Venice. A large military band of many pieces takes 
 its station in the centre, and there is good music all 
 evening for everybody, — free. In the mean while, those 
 people not sitting, or who do not come to thus enjoy 
 themselves, promenade under the brilliant corridors or 
 down and up the long aisles formed by the masses of 
 chairs, filing, passing, returning, all the evening. 
 If you sit in the front rows of chairs you can see, thus 
 at rest, the whole life of the city stream before you, and 
 it is this scene which is so irresistibly operatic in its 
 effect, — the whole town moving and living for an even- 
 ing to music. 
 
 All classes mingle and jostle, and in such a setting the 
 sailors of all climes, gathered here from East and West, — 
 sufficiently rough and prosaic elsewhere, here all washed 
 and clean, — look like wandering tenors, disguised noble- 
 men, lost heirs. There pass before you Venetian 
 dames stately in black-lace veils, and demoiselles with 
 wondrous blond hair and the open slipper dear to the 
 heart of feminine Italy ; swarthy Lascars in white cot- 
 ton ; water-girls ^^ with rings on their fingers ;" flower- 
 girls (somewhat mature, — another theatrical touch) ; 
 merchants of the Orient all-brilliant in slashed scarlet 
 robes and fez caps; gay gondoliers in blue and white; 
 the d^ bonnair officers of Italy's army in blue and 
 gold ; naval officers from the ships in port of all na- 
 tions; Greeks with their clear-cut cameo-like profiles ; 
 beggars happy for the evening and avoiding "shop" 
 for the moment as a point of honor ; the handsome men 
 of Italy, lithe, active, dark ; travellers of all tongues 
 and lands, labelled with red books ; and the ever-present 
 British female tourist with stout boots, — all the world. 
 
VENICE. 269 
 
 This is the every-niglit opera of Venice, — music, 
 flowers, costumes, statuary, columns, arcaded vistas, 
 moonlights, star, legended trophies, golden paintings. 
 Do we wonder that, with all this luxury as an inheri- 
 tance and education, the Venetian of to-day has grown 
 somewhat indolent, and takes his exercise in sleeping 
 in a gondola or inhaling the fragrance of a flower in 
 some arched and grated palace window? 
 
 This brilliant panorama lasts till about midnight. 
 At ten o'clock the shops begin to take in their glitter- 
 ing wares and close ; at half-past ten o'clock the music 
 ceases, and the ladies then begin to leave. Shortly after 
 eleven o'clock the place is abandoned to gentlemen. 
 Then the waiters begin to stack up the chairs, the 
 lights one by one go out, and shortly the dark shadows 
 of the palaces fall on an empty square. 
 
 Venice goes to bed as early as Philadelphia or Bos- 
 ton or New York, and earlier than Paris or London, 
 notwithstanding all the fascinations of sea-air and moon- 
 light that might well tempt her to stay up all night. 
 It is a commonplace of travellers, and sometimes even 
 of the guide-book, yet to assert that the Venetians turn 
 night into day. There was a time long ago when they 
 did, when the city was powerful and rich, and was 
 lived in and ruled by a class of wealthy and luxurious 
 nobles. Then all this grand square was lined with 
 gambling-rooms and houses of pleasure, and men ate 
 and drank and played and lost their fortunes, and the 
 whole place was a blaze of light until morning. 
 
 Now, Venice, like the rest of Italy, is poor, and her 
 habits are simple. One of the most marked features 
 of an evening on the piazza is the innocence and ex- 
 treme simplicity of the pleasures of this people. They 
 will s})end a whole evening with almost no expendi- 
 ture of money or movement. A tiny cup of coffee will 
 last a gentleman the whole evening, and he appears to be 
 always busy in its consumption. A very small saucer 
 of ice or a small glass of water colored by a drop of 
 
 23* 
 
270 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 anisette does the same service for a lady. A single 
 " pony'^ glass of beer and a two-cent cigar employ an 
 officer of the army for an hour or two. I do not think 
 the average visitor at these cafes spends ten cents a 
 night. For this he has a table and chair all the even- 
 ing, a cool seat, excellent music, the view of the prome- 
 nade, the opportunity to make calls or receive visits, 
 rest, conversation, moonlight, flowers. 
 
 The flower-girls are a feature and a part of the en- 
 tertainment. They circulate among the chairs with a 
 basket of flowers, giving one to each gentleman for his 
 button-hole and to the ladies with him. This is a gift 
 oflered wnth all the coquetry and compliment in the 
 vender's power. The stranger, who is addressed in 
 French, returns his gift at once in money. The Vene- 
 tians do not, but at intervals, and not at the tables, give 
 their flower-friend some gift. She, in return, regularly 
 decorates them every evening with a little bouquet. 
 
 There is music all the evening, but, with the national 
 inclination to inaction, no dancing. I have remarked 
 this all over Italy. On the fete-days and in the even- 
 ings in the villages there is always good instrumental 
 music, but the people never dance, only move gently 
 around from place to place, half walking, half standing. 
 
 Venice's great impression is its street life, — so bril- 
 liant, so highly colored, so unlike that of any other 
 city. The commonplace shows of the guide-books are 
 flat and disappointing, — the prisons, dungeons. Bridge 
 of Sighs, and so forth. The school-girl glamour thrown 
 over these places is mainly traceable, I suppose, to 
 Byron's sentimental verse. 
 
 The daily picture of all Venice, however, is some- 
 thing of which one never tires, and which changes ever 
 with the hour. Gondola life is something deliciously 
 dreamy and luxurious in the soft light of day or under 
 the sheen of moon and starlip^ht. Let dark nio^ht come 
 and ram, however, and these long, narrow, deep, black 
 boats, seen mysteriously from the faint point of light 
 
VENICE. 271 
 
 on their prow, take to themselves the likeness of float- 
 ing coffins steered by the shades. The effect is inde- 
 scribably sepulcliral. You seem to be alone in the 
 waters of Hades among the spirits. The gondolas are 
 all of a funereal black, — painted black, carved in black, 
 with black draperies over the dark cabin. Many cen- 
 turies ago a Venetian law ordered this pattern and 
 color, for a good reason of that time. The laws in 
 Venice do not change, and the gondolas are all black 
 and ghostly to this day. 
 
 The streets are very narrow and blaze with light. 
 Their narrowness — sometimes not over three feet — 
 makes a very little light serve to brilliantly illuminate 
 them, and the jets in the shop windows, kept open till 
 late at night, keep them bright and blazing almost 
 without the out-door lamps. Through them the peo- 
 ple surge in constant streams, — all nations, all classes, 
 all colors. You study the world, but even the Vene- 
 tians themselves present some strong contrasts, for they 
 in time are made up of the blood of many people. 
 One striking contrast, which you soon note, is that the 
 Venetian men, as a body, are dark, their women blond. 
 The sounds, too, are polyglottal, and everything is 
 international. Venice will likely be, for instance, the 
 tourist's first experience of Greek money, which is cur- 
 rent coin here. 
 
 At every corner you come are the little shrines and 
 altars to the Virgin and the saints, built in dwelling- 
 houses and over the shops, with lamps burning before 
 them. These bright-colored shrines, with their glass 
 frames and swinging, censer-like lights, produce a very 
 picturesque effect, especially when the niches are reflected 
 by the water. You feel \\\i\\ a new meaning the poetry 
 of the litany, Ave Maria, stella maris. Indeed, the 
 sea is very gracious and beneficent to Venice, in that it 
 doubles all her beauties and splendors. She has her 
 stars in the heavens and under her feet, her palaces 
 above the earth and under the waters. Her beautiful 
 
272 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 bridges span their solid piers and tremble in the waves 
 below them. Everything has a double form of grace 
 and beauty, — a life of marble and a life of motion. 
 
 To return to the shrines : their images are here, as 
 elsewhere in Italy, the Lares and Penates of the modern 
 Romans, and this domestic worship, perpetual and 
 hourly, and the devotion and love and apparent faith 
 of the homely service, is something very pleasing and 
 touching. It is only a pleasant illusion, however. 
 The cultus of these shrines is, I fear, but an inherited 
 habit, — a custom, a usage, — not an intelligent act. I 
 regret to say that no amount of shrines or altars in an 
 Italian shop will prevent your being shamelessly treated 
 there. I do not think a Madonna on the very counter 
 of daily fraud would protect you. 
 
 In Venice they sell fresh water on the streets in 
 bottles and by the glass, and people are constantly 
 drinking it. I have not seen so much water-drinking 
 in all Europe, and the habit seems to be a confirmed 
 one. There may be an useful hint for temperance 
 societies in this little fact. 
 
 The cathedral church of St. Mark is perhaps the 
 central architectural feature of Venice; at all events, it 
 divides the honor with the rich Palace of the Doges. 
 It is the great triumph of Romano-Byzantine archi- 
 tecture, and in its profusion of ornament and wealth 
 of decoration mingles the splendors of two civilizations, 
 — of the East and of the West. In its shrines are 
 the most precious workmanship of Constantinople, 
 costly gems, rare marbles of Europe, pillars from the 
 temple of Solomon. Under the great altar rests the 
 stolen body of St. Mark. Its treasury of relics contains 
 some of the most precious memorials of faith, — a piece 
 of the head of St. John, a fragment of the sacred 
 column of the Passion, a vial of the blood of Christ. 
 Its pictures of the masters and its old statues teach 
 tradition, history, and religion to the people, whose 
 thronging, treading feet for centuries have worn the 
 
VENICE. 273 
 
 marbles of its floors uneven and fluctuatino; like the 
 waves ot the sea. It is a temple, — an eternal monu- 
 ment and lesson to Venice. 
 
 In the vestibule of this cathedral, itself a stately 
 hall larger and grander than most of the churches of 
 our country, they show three great red, flat stones, 
 forming a broad stairway, as the spot of the historic 
 reconciliation between the Emperor Frederick Barba- 
 rossa and Pope Alexander III., an affair in which the 
 conciliation, as was the fashion of those times, was all 
 on one side. "iVb?i tibi sed Petro" (" Not to you, but 
 to St. Peter"), said the dishonored emperor Avhen he 
 knelt, probably feeling that he was doing something 
 wrong, although he may not have known how great 
 was the magnitude of the trust he was betraying, and 
 which he had better have died to protect. ''' Ilihi et 
 Petroi'^ {" To me and Peter"), said the modest pope. 
 
 And so it is everywhere in Europe. There is hardly 
 a great church on the Continent which, in some shape 
 or other, in painting or marble or brass or ostentatious 
 relic, does not contain some deliberate and insolent 
 affront to the civil authority, — some perpetual assertion 
 of the claim of Rome to supreme political powder. St. 
 Peter's, the first church of the world, is full of them, 
 and they are repeated so systematically everywhere 
 that their presence seems to be the result of a policy 
 and an order. Remember that in Europe the churches 
 are the common schools of the people, who frequent 
 them daily from childhood, studying their ])ictures, 
 carvings, statues, bronzes, columns, and receiving their 
 first and most lasting impressions from them. I do not 
 wonder any more at Bismarck^s relentless and uncom- 
 promising warfare on the ecclesiastical organization of 
 Rome. I only wonder that any strong men who have 
 ever attempted to found a state or been intrusted with 
 the keeping of the civil liberties of the people have not 
 made the same war, and made it more bitterly. 
 
 Every one knows the story of the civic pigeons of 
 
274 NORTHERN IT ALT. 
 
 Venice, and meets them like old acquaintances when 
 he goes there ; and the birds meet all the world in the 
 same way. They belong to history and legend, and 
 have been translated from their lower life and taken 
 into the fellowship of men. Within an hour of my 
 coming one of these pigeons looked in at my window 
 facing on the grand piazza, and after a few moments^ 
 cautious reconnoitring was trustingly and fearlessly 
 feeding from my hand. Seeing what was going on, a 
 whole flock came swiftly trooping in from all sides, en- 
 tirely bankrupting my limited commissariat provision 
 in a moment or two. 
 
 Many hundreds of years ago some pigeons "assisted" 
 at a great victory had by the Venetians over Candia, 
 I think, by carrying very important despatches. The 
 victorious general sent them home with the news of his 
 triumph, and grateful Venice adopted the birds as the 
 " wards of the nation." To this time their descendants 
 are fed every day in the great square of St. Mark, at 
 the expense of the city, and no one in Venice ever 
 touches a pigeon. They rest at night in the eaves of 
 the palaces and the cornices of the great cathedral, on 
 triumphal columns and arches, and in the airy arcades 
 of the campanili. They nestle with the winged lions 
 and dart noiselessly through the churches. They brush 
 the sacred altars and the tombs of kings and doges and 
 bishops. They walk the marble pavements in groups 
 and in hundreds, unmolested among throngs of passers. 
 They play with the children and fly up on to your caf§ 
 table for their share of the cake or water. They do 
 just what all other birds and animals would do if man 
 only treated them with humanity, — but gave them their 
 "civil rights." 
 
 Venice is a mirror in which you study the influence 
 of the sea on the human race, — on its physical, political, 
 and intellectual development. It has conditioned and 
 determined the physical appearance, the daily life, the 
 history, the art, of this people. 
 
VENICE. 275 
 
 They were sailors, of course, and became a naval 
 power, and their whole outside history and political 
 relations started from that point and have been condi- 
 tioned by it for ten centuries. The cleanliness and ease 
 of trans})ortation induced luxury and magnificence, a 
 wealth of coloring and costume, which the daily life of 
 no other city could support. One can go anywhere 
 over Venice in a soft dress shoe. The pavements are 
 smooth as floors and spotless, the gondolas are car- 
 peted. The protection to dress is as great out-doors as 
 in. The gorgeous costumes of Titian and Tintoretto 
 and the Venetian school are but the legitimate develop- 
 ment of the social life of a class of nobles in a city built 
 as this is, and drawing on both the Orient and the Oc- 
 cident for treasures of sumptuousness, luxury, and dis- 
 play. Their pictures, of course, breathe the luxurious 
 and color-loving spirit of their time, for they, too, are 
 part of its development, but they are also portraits, 
 faithful copies of the very picture of the city. 
 
 More directly in the famous glass of Venice you see 
 imprisoned the elusive colors of the sea itself. Art has 
 simply taken its lesson from the waves. 
 
 Again, the moment you enter this town you meet 
 everywhere, at random among all classes, perhaps most 
 noticeably among the poorer, that beautiful female face 
 which is the glory of Venice, and which her painters 
 have made immortal, — a soft sea-shell complexion of 
 delicate loveliness, Titian eyes, and a wealth of golden 
 blond hair, — a kind of Venus Aphrodite face. It is 
 the sea again. 
 
 And so you may trace endlessly its visible influence 
 here at every turn and every way you look. The old 
 traditional ceremony of state when the new Doge, on 
 behalf of Venice, in solemn form, celebrates its nuptials 
 with the sea and casts into its waters the wedding-ring, 
 is something more than a legend. It is history and 
 fact. Venice — the Venetian race — is the child of Man 
 by the Sea. 
 
276 NORTHERN ITALY, 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 GENOA. 
 
 The Great Dead and the Little Living — Five Hundred 
 Years without Sunlight — The Cross of Malta — 
 Poverty, Want, and Wretchedness that we call the 
 Picturesque — Priests and Soldiers — San Lorenzo — • 
 An Italian Sunday-School — The Practical Side of 
 the Italians — Eailway Management — The Marble 
 Wealth. 
 
 A SORT of dreamy listlessness falls over one in Genoa, 
 which it is hard to define, and harder still to resist. 
 The weight of the centuries seems to come down, and 
 repress individual action or vigor by dwarfing its 
 results in contrasting them with the movements of 
 ages. Men have lived on this spot — in this town — for 
 twenty-five hundred years of recorded history; have 
 worked, loved, fought, died. What is one human 
 atom, however brilliant his momentary position or 
 achievement, in all the vast stream of life ! 
 
 I think this feeling must unconsciously oppress this 
 people, and bar the way to that individual energy and 
 vigor whose sum makes human progress. At all 
 events, they act so. For thousands of years life has 
 gone on quietly or stormily, and the Genoese of to-day 
 live and act as if they had thousands of years yet to 
 come, and a day, a week, or year was of no account. 
 Why hurry, with whole centuries yet of time ? 
 
 For this very reason, perhaps, Genoa is such a 
 picturesque and pleasing city. Spared largely from 
 the destructive rush of travel, it preserves somewhat 
 of its mediaeval flavor, and retains the charm of dis- 
 tinctive sight and sound which all European cities are 
 losing so fast. 
 
GENOA. 277 
 
 It is bard to describe Genoa and its unique life and 
 ways to tbe American mind used to regularity and 
 construction. You live bere from tradition ; your 
 houses, your streets, are all banded down from cen- 
 turies. You only accept tbera ; you are not responsi- 
 ble for tbem or expected to account for tliem. There 
 is no city surveyor with a whole digest of brand-new 
 municipal ordinances. No two streets run parallel, and 
 no one street runs for any length in one direction. No 
 two houses stand on the same line. No wall even stands 
 perpendicular. The windows appear where they have 
 a mind to ; the doors are mere holes in tbe wall at any 
 place, behind a buttress or around an angle. I chose 
 for my temporary residence "the Hotel of the Cross 
 of Malta,'' an old historic pile, consecrated as the head- 
 quarters, hundreds of years ago, of the Knights of 
 Malta, who gathered here to plan their campaigns and 
 embark for the Holy Land. Hardly any two rooms 
 have exactly the same level. The floors are hopelessly 
 involved, and strange doors tempt you to mysterious 
 passages at every corner. The place is yet lordly in 
 its lowered uses. Corridors of marble stairways lined 
 with exotic plants and flowers greet your entrance. 
 You dine and read and smoke in noble rooms twenty 
 feet high, frescoed by great artists, and whose walls 
 are heavy with historic pictures. Statues of great men 
 in bronze and marble look down on you from pedestals 
 and niches at every turn. As a matter of fact, Scipio 
 Africanus was the first figure which met my eyes as I 
 entered this hotel, and he presided, grave and thought- 
 ful, Avhile I watched the transfer of my baggage and 
 bargained for rooms. 
 
 This communion of the great dead with the little 
 living is a feature of Italy. At the railway depot in 
 Turin I awaited the lazy pleasure of the custom-house 
 officials in a magnificent hall thirty feet high, frescoed 
 with lovely Cupids and grotesque Bacchuses, larger 
 than life, lit with clusters of handsome chandeliers, and 
 
 24 
 
278 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 paved with marble. The other side of the picture was 
 that this ducal palace of a depot was cold and chilly. 
 But one-sixteenth of the jets were lighted, and the 
 place was so dismally gloomy you could hardly read 
 your ticket. A guard stood at each door of this room, 
 and at every possible entrance or doorway in the really 
 vast station-building, and effectually prevented any 
 rapidity of movement. 
 
 The streets of old Genoa range from three feet to 
 twenty in width. Of course, sunlight never strikes 
 the flagstones of the three-feet avenues. They must 
 be delightful summer resorts, but at this time are rather 
 chilly, even when some parts of the town are bright 
 with warm sunshine and redolent with exotic perfumes. 
 My own room in this aristocratic old hotel has proba- 
 bly never seen the sunshine for five hundred years. 
 When I want sunlight I do as I suppose the old 
 Knights of Malta did, — go out and find it on the hills 
 or open piazzas, where the Genoese eat confections and 
 drink the Falernian wines so thoroughly advertised by 
 Horace. 
 
 In these narrow streets, which close in on each other 
 like Colorado canons, and where the houses, which, 
 kept at a formal distance on the first floor, kiss each 
 other at the roofs, fountains splash dreamily all day, 
 and the venders of small wares transact their business 
 in song, exactly as in the representation of an opera. 
 All day long and far into the night tenor, baritone, and 
 chorus snatches float into my room, now swelling, now 
 dying away in faint echoes. It is the work of Genoa, 
 the rhythmic labor of Italy, the chant of the poor peo- 
 ple working hard for their daily macaroni. It does 
 not seem to us as if work thus set to music and carried 
 on by refrain could be very onerous, and perhaps it is 
 not; although it is certainly ceaseless, but it does not 
 matter much. There is very little work to do, and very 
 many to do it, and the man who hurried through a day^s 
 work in an hour would only be idle the rest of the day. 
 
GENOA. 279 
 
 Out of the window just opposite mine, and only a 
 few feet from it, all day long there lolls an Italian girl, 
 beautiful, dirty, lazy, badly dressed, and always eating 
 something. Priest and soldier and beggar and donkey 
 and tourist and sailor flow on beneath in a steady 
 stream to slow music. She gazes listlessly on the hu- 
 man current forever, but takes no human interest in it, 
 and shows signs of intelligent life but about once every 
 half-hour, when she retires to a cupboard to fill her 
 pockets again with cake. It is Italy, — only the bulk of 
 the people do not have cake, and get along with garlic. 
 
 There is everything in Genoa to make the place 
 quaint and grotesque. Not only do the dark and nar- 
 row streets refuse to run anywhere with certainty, and 
 curve and wind and twist with lal)yrinthine complex- 
 ity, but they run under and over each other. Occa- 
 sionally a great church tower or spire serves as a land- 
 mark or beacon for a few minutes, but it, too, is soon 
 lost behind a hill or under some huge mediaeval wall, 
 and the situation is more hopeless than ever. It is 
 useless to attempt to know the streets or find one's way. 
 The Genoese do it by tradition, but for a stranger it is 
 lost time." \Yhen I go out I only walk and walk and 
 walk among sights and sounds ever new and shifting, 
 and when I am tired hire a small boy or a large man 
 — it is immaterial which — to lead me back to my hotel. 
 This service, from boy or man, costs exactly five mills. 
 In fact, five mills is a very respectable sum here, and 
 with a pocket full of copper centesimi one feels rather 
 princely. 
 
 In truth, it is very sad to see what a copper coin 
 will do in Italy. It is the only money many of the 
 people ever see. I have had small shopkeepers refuse 
 to take gold because they did not know what it was. 
 We in America — in Colorado, Nevada, and California 
 — decline daily to take in change the sums which 
 would support a poor Italian in comparative comfort. 
 Could there be any stronger contrast ? 
 
280 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 In fact, amid all the quaintness and picturesque effect 
 of Italy, so pleasing to the passing stranger, it is a de- 
 pressing reflection ever recurring that it is all the result 
 and evidence of an awful poverty, ---a poverty which 
 the average American is so fortunate that he cannot 
 comprehend. For the unhappy Italian, however, of 
 the lower class, it is his only inheritance and the only 
 legacy he can hope to leave his children. Yet, withal, 
 he sings through life like the plantation negro of 
 American tradition, but his song, as the slave's was, is 
 largely a moan, a minor monotone like the endless cur- 
 rent of the ocean. Better a thousand times the crude, 
 prosaic comfort of our prairie settler than the poetic 
 squalor of Italy,— the hopeless slavery of misery and 
 want. 
 
 It is strange, however, how the result of centuries of 
 ignorance and poverty and oppression is to make a land 
 outwardly picturesque and beautiful. In all Genoa 
 there is hardly a point from which every view is not a 
 picture. You stand anywhere in the old streets, turn 
 in any direction, and you wish you had the painter's 
 pencil. There is a poetic effect of the lines of the 
 buildings as well as in the movement and pose of the 
 people, and when you add the skies of Italy and the 
 fruits, flowers, and perfumes of the Mediterranean, life 
 is a poem, and you feel as if it might be better to live 
 here in bodily poverty than to exist elsewhere under 
 colder suns and a less sympathetic nature. 
 
 Nevertheless, this loveliness is all on the outside. 
 An army of priests hold the land in spiritual subjec- 
 tion, and heavy siege-guns frown on all the walls. 
 Genoa, in fact, is a huge fortress, compared with which 
 our heaviest fortifications in war times were but toys. 
 Here, as all over Europe, you see heavy artillery 
 mounted in the parks, sweeping the beautiful fields 
 and the busy streets. Between cathedrals and cannon 
 the people have had a poor chance, and their condition 
 after centuries of this kind of guardianship proves it. 
 
GENOA. 281 
 
 Cardinal Wiseman, in his writings of years ago, 
 claimed especial credit for Italy on the point of her 
 free schools, — conducted by the Church, of course. 
 Last Sunday I saw in several churches Avhat we would 
 call a Sabbath-school, and the sight was so novel and 
 different from our own that I thought its description 
 would be interesting. 
 
 Hearing music in the cathedral church of San 
 Lorenzo — the great church here — as I was passing it 
 about four o'clock in the afternoon, I entered. It was 
 so dark you could hardly distinguish human figures at 
 first, the wax lights being mere fire-flies in the vast 
 vaulted arches, and the long rows of columns interfer- 
 ing with even their feeble light. Slowly the eye, how- 
 ever, adjusted itself, the shadowy forms became visible, 
 and one could find his way about. Some fifty priests 
 and choristers were chanting a low, wailing music, and 
 with them, out of recesses from every side and aisle, 
 joined the voices of the congregation. The service 
 here is, so far as I have seen, largely congregational, 
 and the Italians being good singers^ the effect is artis- 
 tically pleasing, as well as devotional. 
 
 During this service, which was just closing, I dis- 
 covered that a general interest seemed to centre in the 
 middle of the church, where a crowd was gathered. 
 Moving over to it, I found some thirty children ranged 
 on two lines of rude wooden benches, facing inwards. 
 At .each end on chairs, and facing each other, sat two 
 teachers, elderly gentlemen of benign countenance and 
 in priestly vestments. Around the children, who were 
 all of the poorer class, knelt or stood a crowd of their 
 relatives and friends, their mothers, their grandparents, 
 their sisters, their cousins, and their kindly neighbors. 
 Some private soldiers in uniform were among the 
 group, and other soldiers, with their swords on, were 
 kneeling praying near us. A vender of soap and 
 matches had brought in his basket of wares and knelt 
 by it, praying half audibly. Three ladies, well dressed 
 
 24* 
 
282 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 and of Italian face and figure, came in, took the group 
 in at a glance, casting a momentary look of curiosity 
 at the foreign-dressed stranger, and then dropped down 
 on their knees in the outskirts of the crowd, with their 
 backs to it, however, and facing some minor altar, and 
 in a moment were deeply absorbed in their own prayers. 
 Near by, a black-eyed baby was dabbling its little hand 
 in the holy-water fountain, its sister and nurse, a laugh- 
 ing girl of about fifteen, trying to teach it to cross itself 
 properly. 
 
 As the singing ceased and the altar force marched 
 out in procession — an ecclesiastical military company 
 — the teaching began. The children stood up and 
 answered such questions as were put to them. There 
 were no books used. One of the teachers seemed to be 
 a superior of some kind inspecting the work, and what 
 was probably the stated teacher frequently prompted 
 his pupils. In answer to some question, one of the 
 little ones made some reply which I did not under- 
 stand. Both the priests, or teachers, smiled kindly, 
 and a good-natured laugh broke out from the entire 
 crowd. This crowd, some kneeling, some sitting on 
 the floor, some standing, as was easiest, and a number 
 of them women with infants in their arms, took the 
 liveliest interest in what was going on. A murmur 
 of applause often rewarded some of the children for 
 good and ready answers, and when a child could not 
 answer or was confused, a look of mortification and 
 wounded pride always came over the little group of 
 friends and supporters at its back. 
 
 The instruction was thoroughly conversational and 
 kindly, but intelligent and earnest. The scene was 
 picturesque and pretty, and you felt the work was 
 doing good. You could not but wonder, however, at 
 its small scope compared with the population and the 
 dignity of the machinery. Genoa is a town of over 
 one hundred and sixty thousand souls. San Lorenzo 
 is its cathedral. Attached to this cathedral there is 
 
GENOA. 283 
 
 an ecclesiastical force which no Protestant church ever 
 has, yet the Bethany Sunday-school in Philadelpliia 
 every Sunday brings more children under instruction 
 than are taught in ail Genoa for a month, if last Sunday 
 was any metre. There were about thirty in the 
 cathedral, and from forty to fifty more in each of two 
 other churches I visited. 
 
 There is something inexplicable to us in the devo- 
 tion of the Latin mind. No incongruity of outward 
 circumstances seems to disturb or aifect it. There is 
 no consciousness of sight, sound, or smell when once 
 the Italian drops down to pray. Things that would 
 aifect us as physically intolerable, or that we would 
 resent as profane intrusion, they do not seem to be even 
 conscious of. Children play on the floors and creep 
 around among the groups of worshippers, or right 
 under the pulpit, while the priest is preaching. Men 
 and women come and go, mutter half-audible prayers, 
 kneel and pray in all directions, facing the altar of 
 their choice; but as long as there is no very loud noise 
 and intentional display of irreverence, it seems to dis- 
 turb no one. We would insist on better outward order 
 at a political meeting. 
 
 In this beautiful and picturesque city, where every 
 view is a scene striking with arches and terraces and 
 statuary and ruined walls; where the air is redolent 
 with the perfumes of almond and magnolia and orange; 
 where brilliant flowers flash from half-concealed gardens 
 and droop down from balconies and towers ; where 
 light-hearted people, clad in the brightest of colors, go 
 singing all the day long; where the altars of the 
 churches are set with stage effect, and in them music 
 rolls and surges from morning to night; where the 
 streets, crowded with priests and soldiers in contrasting 
 uniforms, with ragged muleteers and laughing children, 
 present the effect of a continuous carnival, you cannot 
 for the life of you avoid the feeling that the whole 
 thing is a play, an elaborate and well-produced opera, 
 
284 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 whose scenic effects will dissolve, and whose music will 
 hush with the near tinkling of the call-bell as the cur- 
 tain drops. Nevertheless, these people have been living 
 this life for centuries, and their fathers, who were like 
 them, have done some great things. The Italians of 
 to-day are great grown-up children. They have the 
 happy carelessness of children and their outward aban- 
 don, — their love for the beautiful, their enjoyment of 
 the moment, their unselfish kindness and sympathy. 
 
 It is hard for us, perhaps, to understand them or 
 give them due credit for what they can do. With all 
 their immense superiority to us in politeness, in 
 thoughtfulness and personal culture, they reveal, at 
 times, a practical side which, under equal conditions, 
 might prove them to be our equals in even that practi- 
 cal development of which we are so. proud, and which 
 exists with us along with so much of coarseness and 
 vulgarity. They have an excellent and efficient army, 
 the result of discipline and organization. Their rail- 
 ways are so much better administered than those of 
 France that you feel the difference the moment you 
 cross the border. • I have not often been in a better- 
 managed or more thoroughly well-ordered hotel than 
 that in which I write to-day, and regret to leave to- 
 morrow. In all these matters of physical achievement 
 they are our equals. In the higher culture of mind 
 and heart, in the thousand amenities of life which 
 make human association pleasant and agreeable, they 
 are immeasurably our superiors. 
 
 In all their common life they carry out the desire to 
 please in a wonderful manner. The railway depot at 
 this place, for instance, is not an altered palace, as are 
 many public buildings here, but was built by the com- 
 pany for its own use. Its conception, however, is not 
 that of a shed as is the conventional American mam- 
 moth depot. It is a noble hall. You sit in waiting- 
 rooms twenty-five feet high or more, frescoed and 
 panelled with excellent painting, and the front of the 
 
GENOA. 285 
 
 building, in tlie effect of its rich carvings and marble 
 columns, is more imposing than the Academies of Music 
 and opera-houses of our large cities. It is, too, very 
 spacious, thoroughly well arranged and adapted for its 
 special use. In many of the banks and buildings for 
 business offices you find interior courts of most artistic 
 effect, well lighted, warm with rich flowers, cool and 
 musical with sparkling fountains, and elaborate with 
 carving and statuary. 
 
 As it is a gateway into Italy, one of the most striking 
 impressions of Genoa is the profusion of statuary and 
 carving which here begins to meet you. Most of the 
 old palaces have fine work on the fronts, and it be- 
 comes more elaborate and imposing inside, where mag- 
 nificent halls and massive stairways, w4iose entrance 
 is very frequently a pair of colossal, crouching lions, 
 lead from room to room and floor to floor. In the 
 streets, the very walls of the common houses, particu- 
 larly at the corners and over the doorways, at odd 
 angles and in curious niches over little shops you find 
 the images of an innumerable army of saints, the effi- 
 gies often set up in the fashion • of a little altar. 
 Through the hotels and banks, and public buildings 
 of every kind, are the statues of great men, modern 
 and old. All this besides the churches and parks and 
 cemeteries and public gardens, which are crowded with 
 rare and costly w^orks. It is this wealth of marble, 
 pure and white, and shaped with exquisite art, that has 
 justly won for this city its well-merited title, "Genoa 
 la Superba.^* 
 
 Genoa. 
 
286 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 PISA. 
 
 Entering into Tuscany — Tuscan Civilization — Quattro 
 Fabbriche — The Civic Kepublics — National Baptis- 
 tries — GrROTESQUE CaRVING AND ErESCOES — ThE ArTIST'S 
 
 License in the Cathedrals — Pisa of History and or 
 To-dat. 
 
 At Pisa you enter on the Tuscan civilization, the 
 glory of modern Italy, — and modern here means the 
 last thousand years, for these Italians were learaed and 
 accomplished people when our Saxon forefathers were 
 rude savages, — when England was a forest filled wnth 
 warring tribes, and the Howards were " hog-wards.^' 
 It was to Italy that Milton came for travel and polite 
 education when his own country was so rude that it 
 was a question whether to write for it in its own tongue. 
 It was from Italy that Shakespeare borrowed plots and 
 thoughts when he would seek a higher plane of civili- 
 zation than Tudor England afforded. In fact, until 
 within a very brief time English literature has regularly 
 fed from the crumbs of the table of Italy. It has been 
 the school of letters, manners, and art for the modern 
 world. 
 
 Pisa is a railway junction where five roads centre. 
 This is equivalent to about ten in the United States, 
 and consequently the traveller need take no thought of 
 how to get there. Pie will be coming to it all the time, 
 and can always have half a day there and will often 
 be forced to stop over several hours. Happily the 
 railway restaurant is very good, carriages abound at a 
 franc or two an hour, and the wonderful Quattro Fab- 
 briche are very near. Time need never hang heavily 
 on one's hands, and the beautiful cathedral, with its 
 
PISA. 287 
 
 close of glittering white architecture, looks handsomer 
 every time it is seen. 
 
 Pisa itself is rather a modern-looking town com- 
 pared with many of Tuscany. It has no city gates, for 
 instance, nor massive encircling walls, but lies open on 
 the plains, while at Sienna, Orvieto, Rome itself, and 
 many others you enter through huge gates, with 
 ponderous doors which swing heavily open or shut, 
 and are in real use. At Rome the gates remain open 
 until toward midnight, but in some of the country 
 towns they close at eight or nine o'clock ; and once shut 
 for the night they never open till morning. Should 
 any one linger without until after this hour he stays out. 
 Fortunately there is little outside of the walls of an Ital- 
 ian town to tempt a stranger either to ramble or linger. 
 
 It happens for the ease and instruction of tourist and 
 student that all that is best in Pisa is summed up in 
 the celebrated Four Buildings, which are grouped in 
 one spot, — a miniature quadrilateral of architecture, — 
 and which, taken together, afford an admirable intro- 
 ductory study of Tuscan art and architecture, as they 
 are representative and finished specimens of the style. 
 
 These buildings are the great Cathedral of Pisa, the 
 famous Leaning Tower, which is a detached tower of 
 exquisite symmetry, raised for the purpose of swinging 
 the cathedral bells; a huge Baptistry, and a walled 
 Holy Field, or cemetery. All the buildings are of pure 
 white marble, of faultless design and masterly finish, 
 and together constitute a group which is without equal 
 in the world. They illustrate well, too, the wealth 
 which, in the Middle Ages, was lavished on church- 
 buildings, and the splendor and elaborateness of their 
 establishment. Of this splendid group, each one of 
 which is a masterpiece, taking rank among the great 
 buildings of the world, the Cathedral is, of course, the 
 centre; all the others are mere adjuncts to it. 
 
 The Leaning Tower, or Campanile, is simply a de- 
 tached belfry. This was the customary way of build- 
 
288 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 ing them in the Middle Ages. There are many such 
 in Italy, and one, at least, is now extant in England, — 
 at Elstow. The Baptistry is a colossal font under its 
 own separate building. It was a mediseval usage that 
 all the baptisms in the Republic should take place, not 
 in the several churches, but at the Cathedral. Hence 
 arose rather a necessity for a separate building for this 
 special use, and very naturally an imposing provision 
 for the rite. Specimens of these national fonts remain 
 at Florence and Pistoja. The Campo Santo is but a 
 graveyard, but this one is walled with costly statuary, 
 and the burial-ground made with numberless shiploads 
 of earth brought from Jerusalem. At Florence there 
 is the same magnificent equipment for the cathedral 
 church there, — the Campanile, — a square tower, rank- 
 ing as the first of its kind in the world. 
 
 And when this wonderful endowment of a single 
 cathedral is considered, it must be remembered, too, 
 that Pisa is a small place. It has but twenty-six thou- 
 sand inhabitants, and is the centre of a district of about 
 fifty thousand people only. Nevertheless, the Pisans, al- 
 though a little, have been a mighty people. They were 
 great soldiers and sailors in their day, and their physical 
 energy was always animated by the force of education 
 and high culture. There was, therefore, little of lost 
 power in their development, and thus they carried their 
 arms into all parts of the world, and their name into 
 history. At one time they dominated Italy, and through 
 it the world, displaying military and executive genius 
 of the highest kind. The Bonaparte family was of 
 Tuscan descent, and although Napoleon came on the 
 field when the glory of Pisa was but tradition, he 
 seems to have only gathered up and renewed in himself 
 what was once a common inheritance of Tuscan blood. 
 
 It is no wonder, therefore, that the Pisans are proud 
 of their city and its history. Indeed, Italian history, 
 up to to-day, is but the record of a brilliant constella- 
 tion of civic republics. There has never been a na- 
 
PISA. 289 
 
 tional growth. Its life has been municipal, and there- 
 fore limited. This spirit exists yet. The Pisan, the 
 Genoese, the Venetian, the Milanese look on each other 
 as foreigners. They hav^e been fighting with each 
 other for a thousand years, and Italian unity to-day is, 
 therefore, a conception rather than a growth. The 
 Pisan's instinctive allegiance is to Pisa, the Genoese to 
 Genoa, just as with us tlie Virginian's first impulse is 
 to Virginia, the Carolinian's to Carolina. The greater 
 idea of a nation is yet to come. Moreover, our State 
 rights doctrine is but the fruit of a hundred years of 
 rude, provincial existence. The city independence and 
 individuality of Italy is the growth of a thousand years 
 of culture, power, and glorious tradition. We must 
 recognize this historic fact when we would appreciate 
 properly the wonderful political ability which has brought 
 about the unification of Italy and made it a nation. 
 
 The Pisa of to-day sleeps in rest and beauty after 
 the toil and achievement of centuries. A summer's 
 sunlight floods the town, and the calm of the clear 
 Arno spreads from street to street. The quiet of a 
 New England Sunday broods over the place, and the 
 picturesque inhabitants, poor but robed with a Tuscan 
 wealth of color, hardly seem to move. They stand 
 around like artistically-grouped figures in tableaux. 
 Indeed, the worship of the tortoise seems to have pre- 
 vailed at Pisa at some time. On the bronze doors of 
 this church, rich in rare and costly work, the tortoise 
 figures again and again, the legend, " taixlo sed tuto/^ 
 engraven over his elaborately-recorded exploits. It is 
 hard always to trace in their time-stained and quaint 
 figures the incidents of the long story, but the bottom 
 of a door generally winds up with a complacent, self- 
 satisfied tortoise, sitting or sleeping calmly some paces 
 in advance of a very demoralized and apologetic-look- 
 ing stag. In the shop-windows, too, all over the town 
 are alabaster and marble figures of the contented deity. 
 
 What the legend may be I do not know, but the moral 
 
 N t 25 
 
290 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 has worked its way into the life of Pisa. The worship 
 has had fruition, and the Pisan of to-day has been 
 absorbed into the soul of his divinity. 
 
 On entering Italy one immediately begins to come 
 on traces of that singular marriage of impiety and 
 religion which so strongly characterizes the Middle 
 Ages. A traveller tells of finding in an old shop a 
 solid carved crucifix of costly work and worn and 
 stained by long use. On touching a concealed spring 
 there shot out from the long arm of the cross a mur- 
 derous knife. It is mediaeval Italy all over. It was 
 in this town of Pisa, I think, that a verger, unlocking 
 the chancel -railings, took me to the rear of the great 
 altar and showed a nude Eve, of life-size, tempted by 
 the serpent. The picture was a fine painting, but so 
 impure and suggestive that it was considerately kept 
 covered where only priests could study it. 
 
 This shameless profanation of the churches, which is 
 not uncommon, seems to have been, in part, owing to a 
 singular license enjoyed by the builders and artists, who 
 were allowed to carve or paint almost anything they 
 pleased, and who used this freedom to its widest stretch. 
 Often their work took the form of satire, often it is 
 merely grotesque and vulgar. Sometimes the entire 
 meaning is lost for us. On a famous church door at 
 Verona there is carved a figure of a pig clad in priestly 
 canonicals and reading out of a breviary. In the judg- 
 ment-hall at Pistoja, facing the seat of the judges, there 
 is a fox robed in the judicial ermine. Much of this 
 satire is coarse in the extreme, even to obscenity, but, 
 after reading the literary efforts in this direction of Eras- 
 mus, who was a polished and cultivated man of his 
 time, one need not be surprised at anything from 
 unknown and nameless lampooners. 
 
 What is stranger to our sense is the use of the cathe- 
 dral for such purposes. It was, evidently, the Punch 
 or Puch of those ages, where, among saints and angels 
 and by noble tombs, the comic artists of the day carved 
 
PISA. 291 
 
 their satire, their censure, and their fun ; and all of it 
 very rough to our gentler life. That there were some 
 limits to this strange license is seen in the fact that 
 these odd extravagances are generally partly hidden,' 
 being, as a rule, found in dark recesses or under the 
 capitals of columns, or only traceable with difficulty in 
 the secondary lines of frescos, and not visible at all, 
 perhaps, to the careless observer. A favorite field for 
 these grotesque carvings is under the carved seats of 
 the stalls in the choir. 
 
 Although sleeping in a century that has no more 
 meaning for it, Pisa itself, outside of its marble wonders, 
 is a place full of quiet beauty and picturesque attraction 
 for the American stranger. Here, travelling from the 
 North, he, probably for the first time, comes on a town 
 where all society is strictly classed, and the classi- 
 fication emphasized by uniforms on the street. The 
 women are all dark and beautiful in their black lace 
 and veils. The priests are those of Northern Italy, 
 intellectual in their countenances and looking clean 
 and gentlemanly in their black-silk stockings and 
 silver shoebuckles, — alas, how different from their 
 Southern brothers ! The gentlemen w^ear cloaks in 
 brigand fashion. The laboring-men are picturesque 
 in clean blue blouses, and their wives in all the bright 
 colors of the rainbow. Then comes the army, the 
 handsome infantry-officers in soft blue and white, and 
 the swaggering hersaglieri (sharpshooters) in their 
 rolling bandit hats and plumes of black-cock feathers. 
 
 In the great cathedral at Pisa hangs a massive bronze 
 lamp — a group of four figures suspended at a vast 
 distance from the ceiling — which, tradition says, gave 
 Galileo the hint of the pendulum. It is not an eccle- 
 siastical relic, but is a shrine of a good deal of interest. 
 My guide told me, with only half-repressed irritation, 
 that the English people always asked after it, and he 
 seemed to regard this conduct as an eccentricity hardly 
 excusable, even in the barbarian forestieri. I think he 
 
292 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 knew the whole history of Galileo, and considered him 
 yet a dangerous man. But, in spite of his qualms of 
 conscience, he had learned that not an altar in all the 
 cathedral was so prolific of barbarian fees. So he took 
 the heretic silver, and balanced his account Avith an 
 extra prayer or two. 
 
 The corridors of grand pillars in this splendid house 
 of God are trophies of war brought away by the Pisans 
 in their conquests in many lands when Pisa was mis- 
 tress of the seas and her ships brought tribute from 
 almost every foreign "shore. The cathedral itself is a 
 monument in honor of a great naval victory had near 
 Palermo, and most of the churches commemorate 
 triumph by sea or land against Turk or rival Italian 
 cities. The idea of building a church as the monument 
 of a field of blood is something that has passed out of 
 our American civilization. We could hardly consecrate 
 a cathedral of Gettysburg or a church of the Holy 
 Field of Shiloh, or dedicate an altar to Our Lady of 
 Stone Piver, but all Europe is full of just such monu- 
 ments. And they could build their temples with pil- 
 laged columns and marbles, adorn them with plundered 
 statues, and, if need be, sanctify the altar with the 
 stolen body of an apostle. 
 
SIENA. 293 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 SIEXA. 
 
 An Enchanted Town of the Middle Ages — A Living 
 Tomb of the Past — The Fourteenth Century in the 
 Nineteenth— A Medieval Survival — Siena's Grand 
 Cathedral— A Broad-Church Temple— The Vanished 
 Sibyls Sleeping with the Saints — Socrates and Hermes 
 Enshrined in A Christian Pantheon — The Golden Age 
 OF Tuscany — The Lost Kepublics of Italy — And We 
 Too? 
 
 All through the interior of Italy there are interest- 
 ing cities — towns of from fifteen thousand to forty 
 thousand inhabitants — which are more striking in 
 tlieir general effect than Rome, or Genoa, or Naples, or 
 Milan, or any of the cities of travel, and more really 
 instructive in the way of picturing vividly the mediaeval 
 life of Europe. These towns have been kept unspotted 
 from the world. The eager currents of modern life 
 have never poured through them, and they stand the 
 spared monuments of ages gone by. 
 
 Of all this group of quaint towns, there is none more 
 curious or picturesquely representative than Siena, — a 
 name which is to many, perhaps, only a vague recol- 
 lection, the faint memory of a footnote in some history 
 of art or dictionary of dates. Nevertheless, it w^as once 
 a grand factor in European history, — a centre of art 
 and civil freedom which died out together; then a 
 theatre of fierce passions, intestinal Avars, tragedies, 
 tyrannies, and endless and bloody revolutions; then 
 the lifeless quiet of exhaustion. 
 
 As the modern railway carries you out of the dreary 
 sepulchre of the Roman Campagna, and into the gar- 
 landed and smiling fields of Tuscany, that pleasing 
 land flowing with oil and wine, you see afar oft* what 
 
 25* 
 
294 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 seems to be a huge fortress, throwing out its battle- 
 mented turrets sharply against the sky. As you draw 
 nearer the heavy walls lengthen and broaden and 
 divide into the lines of a town. It is Siena, — a solid 
 mass of masonry set on the steep, sharp crest of a hill 
 bristling with bastions and frowning towers. Nearly 
 all of the mediaeval towns are so placed. They were 
 simply fortified camps, and in times when warfare w^as 
 carried on by hand-weapons the natural site of a fixed 
 camp was the highest hilltop in the neighborhood. 
 From that point it commanded all the country in sight. 
 This was the origin of the castle, — castellum meaning, 
 etymologically, a little camp, — and in time, by the law 
 of the survival of the fittest, the best-located castle be- 
 came the city. 
 
 As a consequence of this hilltop location, the rail- 
 ways in Central Italy usually do not go into any town, 
 the grades being simply impossible, but land you at a 
 depot bearing the town name, and sometimes some four 
 miles away from it. The hill itself is often shaved 
 down on all sides, so that its native rock may form not 
 only the foundation, but part of the outer walls, of the 
 town which crowns its crest. The smooth face of this 
 wall may thus be one hundred feet in perpendicular 
 height, and one often cannot tell what part is built 
 masonry and what part natural rock. 
 
 In the case of Siena it is a little better. The train, 
 by a powerful effort, backs up a zigzag something like 
 the celebrated approach to the great St. Louis bridge 
 in our country, and lands you within a mile of the 
 town. 
 
 At this outside depot you are received in state. The 
 daily ceremony of going to this station, by which Siena 
 touches the outer world, is, I think, a solemn form ob- 
 served with religious care. I was the only hotel pas- 
 senger on the express train, and I am inclined to think 
 the arrivals of that day were a little above the average. 
 Two four-horse vehicles, stately and black, were drawn 
 
SIENA. 295 
 
 up in line at the gate of the yard. The force of guards 
 and porters and station-men were far more rigid in 
 their demeanor and less cheerful in their manner and 
 movements than a body of average Italian priests and 
 ecclesiastics officiating at mass. When I apj)roached 
 the gold-laced and uniformed official in charge of one 
 of the funereal wagons, handed him my baggage receipts, 
 and told him I was going to honor "The Grand Hotel 
 of the Royal Black Eagle" with my presence, he 
 seemed staggered and stunned at the unwonted sound, 
 and by the magnitude of the responsibility so suddenly 
 cast upon him. Recovering from the shock, however, 
 he very soon directed some one else, who in turn ordered 
 still another, to go and get my trunks, and in due time 
 everything was accomplished decently and in order. I 
 entered my hearse-like carriage of state, the empty om- 
 nibus drove off slowly in silence and dignity, three 
 officials mounted my wagon, the procession moved de- 
 corously up the hill towards the town, the gates of the 
 train-yard were softly closed, the station-men sank 
 back in repose, and the quiet of a Sabbath fell upon 
 the Siena depot. 
 
 About half a mile up you enter the walls of the 
 town, and as the great iron gates close behind you this 
 world is shut out, — the nineteenth century, the life 
 that you know. You are shut in with the fourteenth 
 century. You feel an unknown sensation in which the 
 whole life of the mediaeval times envelops you, — takes 
 possession of you. You are in an un buried Pompeii of 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 It is, indeed, a most singular and wonderful study. 
 Here is a massive city, full of stately palaces, grand 
 churches, softly-splashing fountains, spacious squares 
 paved with fine stones and ornamented with beautiful 
 columns, its streets thronged with people, — childreu are 
 at play, men move in their shops, soldiers stand guard 
 before the palaces, priests silently steal along the ways, 
 — but the city is dead, absolutely dead, to all that we 
 
296 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 call life and to all that we know. It has, so far as we 
 can see, no meaning or place in this world now. It 
 exists — these people live and move and have their daily 
 being — solely by the impulse of a force originally pro- 
 jected in the Middle Ages, and which, never renewed, 
 is lessening every day. 
 
 Siena is a segment of the Middle Ages projected into 
 the nineteenth century, and held there like a fly in 
 amber. Let us look a little more closely at the wonder- 
 ful picture. Siena is to-day an inland town of some 
 twenty-three thousand or twenty-five thousand inhabi- 
 tants, — about the size of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. 
 Hundreds of years ago it had a population of over one 
 hundred thousand souls, — busy men of action, soldiers at 
 a time when arms was the great profession, artists of first 
 fame in the world, learned priests and scholars, powerful 
 citizens, merchants trading over all the seas, architects, 
 builders, workers of every kind. These people built 
 their city and their houses for defence and for eternity, 
 with walls from three to twenty feet thick, and they 
 are all there yet. Consequently, the Sienese of to-day 
 live in castles and palaces almost for nothing, and the 
 town remains a perfect mediaeval picture. It is more 
 than a picture : it is a survival. 
 
 Once inside of Siena, closed in its narrow streets 
 paved with smooth, flat stones joined as regularly as 
 the masonry of the walls that rise up abruptly almost 
 within arm's-length on each side of you, one never sees 
 the green fields or the sky, except as a thin line of blue 
 or soft gray directly overhead. In the night-time there 
 is seen likewise only a segment of the stars. It is a 
 gloomy, sombre city of heavy shadows and cool, moist 
 atmosphere, — an atmosphere that breathes forever over 
 stone and cold marble. You see no woodwork in the 
 streets, save, perhaps, an occasional ponderous door, — 
 a modern injection and anachronism. The palaces join 
 each other and face on the narrow, irregular streets in 
 long lines as do our houses, but every house is a fort- 
 
SIENA. 297 
 
 ress, built of massive masonry, — sometimes buttressed, 
 — its walls capable of resisting cannon. The great 
 stones are firmly set one on and in another till the 
 whole looks like a natural rock. Solid stone benches 
 often stand along the front of the house in the street- 
 way. There are no windows, but only apertures cov- 
 ered with immense wrought-iron grates, and these are 
 very sparing. To the side of each window and door 
 on the lower floor are fastened huge iron spikes, from 
 each one of which hangs a great ring, also of tough 
 wrought-iron. Intelligent Italians of this day could 
 not tell me the ancient use of these fastenings, and for 
 a time they were mysterious puzzles. History seems 
 to show that they were used to stretch great chains 
 across the street in times of fighting. 
 
 It is impossible to describe the monumental appear- 
 ance of old Siena, or how these ponderous, castellated 
 dwellings call up the life and legend of mediaeval time. 
 These houses have seen tragedies within and troubles 
 without. Men have scaled and stormed them ; men 
 have been flung dead and living from their frowning 
 windows ; seditions, revolutions, and riots have streamed 
 around their base. But through all changes, conspira- 
 cies, revolts, plunder, confiscation, barbarous revenges, 
 depopulation, crime, and fierce passions within, lawless- 
 ness and violence without, their great walls, gigantic, 
 gloomy, severe, have stood passionless and impartial, 
 like the gods of the classic pagans. Every stone seems 
 to tell of the frightful tragedies, the play of ungovern- 
 able passion, the wild license, the desperation of hu- 
 manity, in the dense darkness of the night of supersti- 
 tion, which make even the reading of mediaeval history 
 so stifling and oppressive. 
 
 Siena seems to have been forgotten of history, and 
 allowed to stand untouched in the stream of time as its 
 currents washed out almost all over Europe the traces 
 of the w^orn-out feudal life of the Continent. Until 
 within a few years no railway came near it. The lines 
 
298 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 of trade had changed^ and it was left out of the world 
 of commerce and human relations. A new art, a new 
 religion, a new system of government, had come up, and 
 the world knew it no more. It had nothing to give, 
 and dropped out of human care or thought. It was a 
 two days' journey by horse or carriage, through an un- 
 defended country, and men did not come near it. So 
 it remained unchanged. Even now its isolation is 
 curiously strange. It has lived so long out of the 
 world that with a railway at its door it cannot come in. 
 It has no sympathies with our modern life, and our 
 blood will not flow into its corpse. There are but two 
 great hotels, — that is, hotels for the use of strangers. 
 I was the first guest for a week at mine. I came alone, 
 ate alone, sat alone in the empty chambers, went away 
 alone. At Rome I had unfortunately left my Baede- 
 ker, covering Central Italy, and was entirely without 
 any detailed information as to the history of the place 
 or local points of interest, only knowing of its great 
 cathedral and its importance as an early school of art. 
 I went out to buy anything that would help me 
 through, either one of the standard guide-books or any 
 local publication, but I could not find even a book-store. 
 I have reason to believe from what I have learned since 
 that there is now such a store in the place, but it is cer- 
 tainly not conspicuous. All along the rather brilliant 
 shops of the Corso or main street I searched for it in 
 vain, and had to come aw^ay as poor as I entered. 
 Again, in the stone-covered porch of the side entrance 
 to the grand cathedral there were posted on the church 
 walls, as is the custom in Italy, public notices, — some 
 civil, some ecclesiastical. There were in all but some 
 six or eight on the wall, and one of them was dated 
 as far back as 1870. Only one, I think, bore date of 
 this year. Time has no more any meaning to Siena ; a 
 day is as a hundred years. 
 
 It is the cathedral which the travellers that find Siena 
 
SIENA. 299 
 
 come to see, and it is one of the great churches of 
 Europe, whether you view it in itself or in its relation 
 to the history and development of art. This noble 
 edifice was built in the thirteenth century, in the early 
 Italian-Gothic style, in many respects the most effective 
 order of church architecture. It made on me a much 
 stronger and more pleasing impression as a church than 
 St. Peter's, which has something of a polytheistic char- 
 acter, — a pantheon for the modern mythology of Rome, 
 — or than the handsome ball-room effect, inside and out, 
 of the graceful Madeleine at Paris. 
 
 In this remarkable church, which exists now just as 
 it did five hundred years ago, whichever way you look, 
 long aisles of Gothic arched columns stretch away like 
 the trees of the forest. Under them kneeling groups 
 cluster, or entering worshippers move noiselessly for- 
 ward like ants. So great is the grand nave, so wide 
 the dark aisles, so high the fretted ceiling, that you do 
 not hear the feet of rude men and wooden-shod peasant 
 women as they tramp the marble floor. The noble 
 dead of mediaeval ages sleep in their stone coffins about 
 you in peaceful and eternal rest. The organ rolls, the 
 clouds of incense float upward, and by their tombs the 
 same rhythmic prayers ascend that these men heard 
 here in their lifetimes. All around in niches and 
 chapels stand fine statues, not the morbid and ascetic 
 w^ork of a later period, but after the more human fash- 
 ion of the antique, rejoicing in the beauty and loveliness 
 of the human figure. In front, against a dark back- 
 ground of ancient, rich wood-carving panelling the 
 walls and covering the stalls of the choir, stands out 
 the great main altar, splendid in its mass of silver and 
 its hundred lights, glittering with jewels and gleaming 
 crosses, and the gold-worked robes of the priests, and 
 you think of Jupiter come down to see DansB. The 
 time has passed when religion can be taught or en- 
 forced by dramatic effects. The aesthetic fVible of classic 
 legend, and the lower theatrical splendors of the 
 
300 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 medlseval altar, liave both had their day, — have both 
 served, perhaps, a useful purpose, and are both equally 
 useless for good in this day and generation. 
 
 In this old cathedral, where every quaint corner is a 
 study, there is one very curious and striking feature 
 of rare historical interest. We all know that in the 
 earlier history of the Christian Church there was a 
 peculiar veneration and honor for the pagan sibyls. 
 They were held in great esteem, and perhaps some- 
 thing more ; but just what were the honors paid them, 
 or how far the respect verged on something higher, is 
 not clear. A great saint, in a great hymn yet used in 
 the burial-service of the Catholic Church, did not 
 scruple to write, — 
 
 " Teste David cum Sibylla." 
 
 Did they rank with the prophets ? Were they a 
 little lower than the angels ? 
 
 Here they are all in the great cathedral of Siena 
 with the saints and martyrs, and their presentation is 
 on such a large scale as to make them one of the dis- 
 tinguishing features of the church. On the broad 
 pavement of the two great aisles which flank the nave 
 I found them all in colossal form. Their representa- 
 tion is in fine and almost imperishable etching, — the 
 etching done in white stone, inlaid in a surface of black 
 marble. The designs are spirited, free, and strong, and 
 the general effect very impressive. The sibyls them- 
 selves — ten or twelve in number, as I remember — are 
 all fine, large, comely women, most of them apparently 
 about thirty-five, of full form and rounded contour. 
 The figures are colossal, — about four times human size. 
 Each sibyl has a brief legend in old script set in the 
 black ground, giving her shadowy credentials ; some- 
 times it is a sentence from an old classic, sometimes a 
 monkish rescript, reciting the substance of her prophecy 
 or foreshadowing. I much regret that I did not copy 
 
SIENA. 301 
 
 these. Often they ran about thus : " The [Thracian] 
 sibyl concerning; whom [Epaminondas] wrote." And 
 that is about all we know of most of them. There 
 they live in marble, the dead goddesses of two religions, 
 and men have to-day only the faintest and most elusive 
 traces of their being. 
 
 The spirit of that easy-going catholicity of classic 
 Rome which accepted and assimilated the gods of all 
 people lingered long in Italy. In the goodly fellow- 
 ship of this impressive temple are Moses and Samson 
 and Socrates, Solomon and Judas Maccabseus, and on 
 the pavement near the door, Hermes Trismegistos, — 
 that mythical personage whose name carries one far 
 back into the shadows of the morning seons. Hermes 
 — Mercury — Thoth — the Logos of Egyptian tradition. 
 
 In fact, this grand old cathedral, out of the world 
 now, sleeping in the cool shades of history, is the most 
 hospitable pantheon I have ever seen. It is a broad- 
 church temple of mediaeval faith, whose doors opened 
 wider and more freely than anything in Anglican 
 England to-day. There are no national limitations 
 to its honors, and it has leaped the bounds of any one 
 religion. The gods and the heroes, the popes and the 
 philosophers, the saints and the martyrs and the leaders, 
 of many times and many people are gathered here ; 
 and they rest among civic crests and municipal standards 
 and flagstaifs and crucifixes carried in battle by the 
 victorious Sienese six hundred years ago. 
 
 If possible, a visit to this place should cover the 
 sixth day of May, which is the festa of the great St. 
 Catharine of Siena, when her head is exposed for the 
 edification of the faithful, and the whole scene affords 
 an excellent " interior'^ of Italian life which it is getting 
 harder to see every year. St. Catharine is one of the larger 
 luminaries of the Roman mythology and the divinity 
 of Siena, remembered here and throughout the Church 
 after the popes and the princes of Sienese splendor 
 have been long forgotten. She is one of the represen- 
 
 26 
 
302 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 tative saints of Europe, and her curious story one of 
 the best illustrative studies of mediaeval society and the 
 mediaeval Church. And nowhere can it be studied to 
 more advantage than in its natural setting, this quaint 
 old town. 
 
 Historically for the student, politically for the 
 thoughtful American citizen, Siena is a point of instruc- 
 tive study, its rise and fall a lesson pregnant with 
 interest. Hundreds of years ago, before the present 
 states and governments of Europe were, it was a centre 
 of learning, art, and civilization, — and it was a republic ! 
 From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries Pisa and 
 Siena were the brightest stars in that brilliant historical 
 constellation — ^the lost Republics of Italy. 
 
 At that time they were the centre of a wonderful 
 revival of art, the seats of a school of painting and 
 sculpture, and particularly architecture, of fine charac- 
 teristics and great promise, whose sudden appearance 
 and equally sudden and complete disappearance have 
 never been yet philosophically explained. It is one of 
 the vexed problems of history. This period has been 
 felicitously called ^^ the Renaissance before the Renais- 
 sance.'^ We know little of this interesting time, and 
 cannot trust that, for it has been written by priests and 
 monkish chroniclers who came into power over its 
 ruins. This we do know, — that these little republics 
 threw the morning rays of art and learning and pros- 
 perity and modern civilization over Europe. Men 
 built great cities, carved grand sculptures of force and 
 originality, painted great paintings, traded with distant 
 lands, grew rich and powerful, and governed them- 
 selves. There was freedom and glory and prosperity, 
 but weakness somewhere, for in a brief time the priest 
 took the place of the statesman, and night fell upon 
 Europe. Then came the lethargic stupor of the Middle 
 Ages, unbroken until the Reformation and the Renais- 
 sance. 
 
SIENA. 303 
 
 This strange episode of this time is a social and 
 political tragedy, — a catastrophe in the evolution of 
 human advancement. 
 
 There is one record which remains to tell of the life 
 of this fated people, — its architecture. That, fortu- 
 nately, is impartial, accurate, and unimpeachable, for 
 it is itself the product and result of the national life, 
 and it cannot be altered or tampered with. It is here 
 that the cathedral of Siena becomes of historic value, 
 as well as that of Orvieto and the wonderful group of 
 buildings at Pisa, of which I have before written. 
 The Pisa of to-day sleeps and is meaningless, but on 
 its confines, in the little field which holds the famed 
 cathedral, baptistery, campanile (Leaning Tower), and 
 Campo Santo, the Pisa of history still lives in beauty 
 and speaks with eloquence. 
 
 The architecture and sculpture of this time, as it 
 comes down to us, has a positive and distinctive char- 
 acter. It is instinct with life, and freshness, and youth. 
 Its material, pure white marble relievos, or the outlines 
 emphasized sometimes in black, gives the work a pecu- 
 liar delicacy and attraction, and not only admits but 
 seems to demand the graceful ornamentation and rich- 
 ness of finish which characterize the buildings of this 
 period. They abound in airy colonnades, superim- 
 posed, one row on another, in ranges of arches and 
 arcades often raised into the air in light and graceful 
 columns multiplied and repeated and rejoicing in charm- 
 ing Corinthian capitals and an affluence of leaves and 
 flowers. The fa9ades of some of these churches are a 
 wondrous mass of elegant figures, covering the whole 
 front like a delicate veil of marble lace-work. In all 
 this exuberance and wealth of ornament there is, of 
 course, occasional crudity and immaturity, as there 
 always must be in everything which has yet the power 
 to grow, but you lose it all in the feeling of life and 
 joyousness and freedom. The people who developed 
 this style of architecture were in the youth of their 
 
304 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 political state, strong, active, buoyant, and full of the 
 conscious pleasure of life and the sense of progress. 
 There was freedom of individual action and civil liberty. 
 
 They had a pleasure in the life and strength of the 
 human body ; they delighted in depicting the beauty 
 and symmetry of its form. Their art was the child of 
 Greece as well as of the hardy Gothic North, and there 
 is often a curious simplicity in the mixture of classic 
 and Christian legend in their sculpture. Their churches 
 are bright with statuary fashioned after the antique, 
 light and graceful with an architecture of delicate lijies 
 and tracery that s'eem to float and carry up the build- 
 ings into the air. They are lavishly dowered with 
 ornament. All that is beautiful in art, all the treasures 
 of wealth, have been poured into them without stint or 
 measure, — lovely statues, precious stones, rare paintings, 
 curiously-carved pulpits with whole lives of legend 
 told in marble on their panels, altars that are solid 
 masses of silver. The people who built these churches, 
 so white and pure and delicate, had a cheerful religion, 
 a faith of love and trust and hope. It was something 
 that was the natural outgrowth and development of the 
 sunshine and smiling fields of Tuscany, lustrous with 
 the rich foliao^e of their olives, and wreathed and fes- 
 tooned and garlanded with grapes. It was the natural 
 incense of happy Italy ascending to heaven, — something 
 very different from the slavish superstition and morbid 
 religion that hang like a pall over this land to-day, 
 when men have lost their sense of the living Christ in 
 the worship of His dead body and of death. 
 
 What might have been the future of Italy and of the 
 Continent and of the world if this auspicious aurora of 
 freedom had not been quenched ! How different might 
 history have been if the republics of Tuscany instead of 
 Rome had guided Italy ! 
 
 And we too? It is the tragic fate of these early 
 Italian republics which is the European argument 
 against republicanism. Men of learning and experi- 
 
ORVIETO. 305 
 
 ence in the conduct of affairs meet you with it all the 
 time when you challenge a discussion of our free insti- 
 tutions and form of government. The dead republics 
 of Italy — dead in their youth — w^ere relatively as 
 powerful as we are ; they carried their arms and com- 
 merce over tlie known world. Their people were as 
 prosperous as we are ; they had more of learning and 
 cultivation and higher education. But — it is the ver- 
 dict of history — their institutions and popular form of 
 government tended to develop and bring into power 
 the average and commonplace man. The state fell 
 under the control of this class of men, and went rapidly 
 to pieces. Now, says the European statesman, "Are 
 you in America not travelling the same road ?'^ And 
 it is a pretty hard question to answer. 
 Siena. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 ORVIETO. 
 
 The Hill-set Cities of Tuscany — Ashes oe the Middle 
 Ages — A Palace Watting at Ten Francs a Day — 
 Mediaeval Crime and Paganism — Devoted Service — The 
 Legend-Fa^aded Cathedral of Orvieto — The European 
 Cathedrals — Sharp Contrast between the Buildings 
 AND the Worship in Them — Vin du Pays of Orvieto — 
 The Wines of Italy — A Good Bishop's Death— Est, Est, 
 Est, of Monte Fiascone — The Falernian Fields of 
 Horace. 
 
 Orvieto, like Siena, is the fortressed and castellated 
 crown of a hill frowning Avith defiant bastions of solid 
 rock, and with great gloomy gates that look treacher- 
 ous and inauspicious. One almost fears to enter their 
 black and yawning shadows, and recalls instinctively 
 the venomous ferocities and merciless passions that 
 u 26* 
 
306 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 scorch- the pages of mediaeval Italian history. But the 
 gateways are unguarded now, the threatening parapets 
 empty of helmet or weapon, the ditches dry and dusty 
 and unclean with the foul refuse of a modern Italian 
 town. To violence and the unbridled play of lust and 
 fierce, passions have succeeded exhaustion, extinction, 
 ashes. Only the harmless form remains like the skele- 
 ton fibre of a dead and worm-gnawed leaf. 
 
 These hill-set cities, so distinctive and suggestive, are 
 one of the charms of the lovely landscape of Tuscany, 
 and Orvieto is one of the most picturesque and striking 
 of them all, not even excepting Perugia. Its walls are 
 steep and precipitous, sheering down for hundreds of 
 feet, the solid masonry growing into the hewn tufa rock 
 so that it cannot be seen where the one ends and the 
 other begins. Its battlemented outlines stand clear- 
 cut against the sky, grim walls and clusters of dungeon 
 towers and open eampanili and ascending masses of tall 
 Italian dwelling-houses forming a fine gray setting for 
 the white marble relief of the famed cathedral. At sun- 
 set, when the slanting rays fall across the valley, light- 
 ing up the gray tops with a glory, and flooding plain 
 and stream below with glowing color, it is a perfect 
 picture. 
 
 "The splendor falls on castle walls 
 And snowy summits old in story ; 
 The long light shakes across the lakes. 
 ******* 
 
 They die in yon red sky ; 
 
 They faint on hill or field or river 
 
 There is a shadowy, elusive sketch of Orvieto by 
 Turner in his collection in the National Gallery in 
 London, all slanting lines of sunset and dissolving 
 landscape ; and it is very like, for the whole spirit of 
 the scene is the spirit of Turner's genius. It is Tur- 
 neresque : that best describes it. 
 
 The picture of Orvieto, however, is all from the out- 
 
ORVIETO. 307 
 
 side. Once inside, the streets are narrow, dirty, mean- 
 ingless, and liot. They are commonplace, too, for 
 Tuscany, devoid of legend and special monument, full 
 of smells, wretchedness, and uncleanness. The historic 
 cathedral, brilliant in black and white, is the sole mod- 
 ern attraction. There are other churches in plenty, but 
 they are shabby, uninteresting, and wanting in any 
 special significance. 
 
 Few strangers find Orvieto^ for it is not a halting- 
 place on the modern lines of travel ; nevertheless, the 
 accommodations for the traveller are very good. He 
 can have a whole palace to himself if he wants it, and 
 a whole train of servants, at very little cost. Orvieto 
 was once a powerful city and the home of the Guelphs, 
 a family who built tlieir houses as strongholds and 
 sorely needed that style of residence. It is now a deso- 
 late town of a few thousand souls, but the strong rock- 
 walled houses are all there yet, and the dwindled Or- 
 vieto of to-day resembles a small boy struggling in his 
 father's ulster. This eifect is very general over all 
 Italy. 
 
 My hotel was a palace of past generations, desolate 
 and pathetic in its sunken fortunes, but grand yet. 
 The rooms were spacious and stately in height and pro- 
 portions. The walls were pictured in bright color 
 and moving design from top to bottom, — a great serial 
 story in fresco that ran through halls and chambers ; 
 a tale of lords and ladies, of love and wars, of olive- 
 groves and stormed fortresses, of banquets and knightly 
 halls and fountains and blushing gardens, — a reminis- 
 cence of Boccaccio, in fact. Along the solemn stair- 
 ways, in the silent corridors and vast dining-hall, stood 
 marble statues, looking so shut up and lonesome that 
 it seemed as if they must speak at the dear sight of a 
 human face. It was a whole lordly palace waiting for 
 one, and glad to see its lord at ten francs a day. 
 
 My bedchamber was a grand apartment on the first 
 floor, so nobly high that you lost the demeaning sense 
 
308 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 of there being any one domiciled above you, so long 
 that when you placed your two wax candles in one end 
 of the room you could not see the other. A glory of 
 romantic frescos, too, ran all around the spacious walls. 
 It was well appointed, also ; everything Avas clean and 
 neat and fresh, and my assiduous retainers were only 
 happy when they were bringing in continuous cans of 
 hot water. The baronial floors, however, were all of 
 marble and bare stone, innocent of carpet, rug, or 
 matting, and there was no lock on the doors, — that had 
 gone with the centuries, — although some huge wrought- 
 iron clamps and hasps showed that one of no little 
 strength had once been necessary. The stone walls, 
 however, were four or five feet thick, and gave an emi- 
 nent feeling of security. 
 
 The table was full and good, and even elaborate, 
 while the service was excellent. It was more : it was 
 devoted. The traditions of the centuries of the grand- 
 eur and state of the house seemed to come down upon 
 the dignified, stately old servant who officiated as but- 
 ler and footman and gar9on, and he did his best to 
 meet the accumulated responsibilities. He struggled 
 manfully to supply in himself the services of a whole 
 retinue and conceal the deficiency of the troops of 
 servitors that once lined the hospitable halls. At my 
 private apartments he announced in stately form, " The 
 dinner is served, signor," and bent with grave obei- 
 sance as I passed through the solid stone doorway. He 
 disappeared deftly, and as I approached the great door 
 of the old dining-hall there he was again, drawn up in 
 the shadowy similitude of two invisible lines of solemn 
 footmen. I walked between him in serious state, and, 
 lo ! he was behind my chair as I made ready to sit down 
 to my solitary dinner, served under courtly frescos and 
 statuary and a wealth of drooping flowers. The eflbrts 
 of this ancient servitor to support the departed glories 
 of the house, his simple fidelity to the name and blood 
 and dignities that had drifted away hundreds of years, 
 
OR VIETO. 309 
 
 was almost touching. It never relaxed for a moment 
 during the twenty-four hours of my stay, every meal 
 being served with equal state commensurate to its rank 
 in the service of the day. And when on leaving I 
 played my American part in the comedy by giving 
 from the parting "good-hand^^ a five-franc note, I 
 think the old fellow dreamed for a brief moment that 
 perhaps the good old days of princes and Cencian 
 ladies and brigand cardinals had come back again. 
 
 In-doors Orvieto was very pleasant and comfortable. 
 Out of doors the sun-baked town is unattractive and 
 worse than comfortless. The whole place, perched on 
 a high mass of rock and forever exposed to the beating 
 rays, is parched and heated. The whole life of the 
 place is dry and miserable. The sweet breath of the 
 fields never blows here. No fragrance of fresh leaves 
 and flowers ever reaches this parched town swung high 
 in the hot air. The streets glare, the walls are the 
 home of the glittering lizard. The whole impression 
 of the place is disappointing, it is so unlike the soft 
 and gentle wine of Orvieto, famous even down to 
 Rome, or the graceful tracery of the cathedral, — the 
 two associations of the spot. 
 
 In solid Siena, with its comfortable bourgeois exist- 
 ence, you seem to feel even at this day something of 
 the real life of the Middle Ages. It is passionless and 
 still, but living yet, although without relation or mean- 
 ing to our time. Orvieto is dead, — an extinct volcano, 
 — an ashy residuum of mediaeval crime. There is 
 nothing in the history of society more appalling than 
 Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is 
 hard to conceive of it now, — impossible to reconstruct it 
 even in imao^ination. AYe are all somewhat familiar 
 with the Borgias and the Cencis, whose annals blister 
 the history of Rome and are conspicuous because of that 
 theatre, but all interior Italy was filled with just such 
 great families, of whom the world now knows nothing, 
 
310 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 but who were just as wdcked, just as passionate, just as 
 defiant of God and man. They pkmdered and fought 
 with each other. They poisoned and intrigued and cast 
 each other into merciless prisons. Their very love was 
 defiant and criminal and shameless. The struggles of 
 these families, dissolute, abandoned, and unrestrained 
 by any conventions of society or religion, w^ere the poli- 
 tics of the time. They made popes and added the 
 prostitution of the headship of the visible Church to 
 personal and private vice. It was an age of delirium, 
 — a kaleidoscopic whirl of guilt, — an age of ungovern- 
 able passions, of barbarous ferocities, of vicious pleas- 
 ures indnlged in openly as by pagans. The picture of 
 that day is a confused panorama of morbid superstition 
 and measureless crimes; of masses and miracles and 
 murders ; of poisonings and appalling incests ; of fla- 
 gellants; of conspiracies and treacheries ; of dungeons 
 and tortures and atrocious cruelties. This was the Italy 
 of Orvieto. 
 
 The modern renown of Orvieto is its beautiful cathe- 
 dral, another of those magnificent Italian Gothic struc- 
 tures, all clad in white and edged in black, after the 
 striking fashion of the Pisan, Sienese, and Florentine 
 work. The whole facade of the front is covered with a 
 Avhite net-work of miniature statuary, — the history of 
 the world, apparently, according to mediaeval tradition, 
 in a series of tableaux. There are thousands of figures. 
 The pictures begin with Adam and Eve. Many of 
 the scenes are recognizable, but quite a number are 
 evidently legends that are now entirely lost. All the 
 designs are intensely realistic, and many of them ex- 
 ceedingly quaint. In the Creation of Eve, for instance, 
 Adam lies in a dead sleep on tlie ground while God, 
 a venerable old man with a carving-knife, is making a 
 slit in his side with one hand, while with the other He 
 drags out Eve, whose well-coifPured head and shoulders 
 are just visible. 
 
 The building of this cathedral itself is a curious - 
 
OR VIE TO. 311 
 
 illustration of the wonderful contrasts of its time. It 
 is built in comruemoration of a miracle establishing the 
 dogma of transubstantiation. There was a sceptical 
 })riest who doubted the truth of this doctrine. Once, 
 when offering mass, he tempted a physical test of the 
 sacred w^afer, when it immediately bled in the five 
 gashes, the great drops of blood falling upon and stain- 
 ing the napkin. The fact of this bleeding is perfectly 
 well authenticated by such evidence as attests the mass 
 of mediaeval church history. It was officially attested 
 by Pope Urban IV., and a cathedral ordered to be 
 built in its honor. Now, the wonderful contrast is 
 between the coarse conception of the miracle and the 
 refined, artistic conception of the cathedral, the bloody 
 thaumaturgy of the altar and the pure and delicate 
 work of the temple. The miracle tells of a barbarous 
 condition of mind and society ; the cathedral, although 
 of the same age, is a work of the highest order of art. 
 And this strong contrast between the men who built 
 the cathedrals and the men who conduct the worship 
 in them confronts one all the time in Europe. The 
 architecture of the buildings is of the highest reach of 
 art, always dignified, and sometimes approaching a 
 sublimity that cannot be transcribed in words. The 
 altars are nearly always tawdry with tinsel or barbaric 
 riches, while the devotional decorations are coarse and 
 puerile beyond conception, — ghastly, writhing images, 
 grinning skulls, dried human limbs or whole corpses, 
 wax figures gorgeous in green and yellow hues and 
 encased in cheap glass fronts, marble images with tin 
 crowns or clothetl in silk and cotton skirts. Sometimes 
 the altars are furnished with imitation ornaments — 
 counterfeit candlesticks and tin splendors — and from 
 the rear they look as shabby, fraudulent, and dreary as 
 the " behind the scenes" of a second-rate theatre. The 
 builder seems always to have been educated and vigor- 
 ous, the priest ignorant and vulgar. Were the builders 
 an unknown order of men who have disappeared, or 
 
312 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 was the Church of the thirteenth century something 
 immeasurably superior to the Church of the nineteenth 
 century ? 
 
 At Orvieto you touch the finest wine-growing dis- 
 trict of modern Italy. The wine of Orvieto itself is a 
 gentle, straw-colored liquid, much esteemed both for 
 its delicate flavor and soft acidulous properties. It is 
 known at Rome and is good there, but, like all the 
 Italian wines, should be drank in its own district. 
 They are all of them so delicate as riot to bear trans- 
 portation even for fifty miles. The districts are also 
 very limited, so that one changes his wine nearly every 
 day when travelling in Italy. Even if the wines of, 
 Italy were strong and rough enough to bear transpor- 
 tation, the vineyards of any one grape are too small to 
 establish any given brand in the markets of the world. 
 
 At Montefiascone, a few miles south of Orvieto, the 
 traveller tastes the queen of all the wines of Italy to- 
 day. It is the Montefiascone, or wine of the country, — 
 a Muscatel, the finest brand of which is popularly known 
 as Est, Est, Est. Its name is flavored with a legend. 
 Many hundreds of years ago a princely bishop of 
 Bohemia (the Bohemia of geography and not of letters) 
 was travelling to Rome in state. Before him a whole 
 day's journey always went a tried retainer, who tasted 
 the wines of the land and left for his lord a report, 
 writing '^ Est" on the doore of that inn where the best 
 was to be had. When the lord bishop came to Monte- 
 fiascone, on the doors of the village hostelry was 
 written, " Est, est, est." So good was the wine that 
 the bishop never got any farther, but died there shortly 
 afterwards. Sir John Evelyn, travelling in 1644, 
 says that he saw here the tomb of the bishop, with this 
 inscription : 
 
 ^'Propter Est, Est, Est, 
 Domimis mens mortuus est.^' 
 
ORVIETO. 313 
 
 The modern story is broader, and relates the in- 
 scription as — 
 
 ^^Est, Est, Est. Propter nimium est, 
 Dominus mens mortuus est." 
 
 Evelyn, in his quaint and simple diary, seems to con- 
 found this wine with the Falernian of Horace, con- 
 fusing, most likely, Falerii, the modern village of Civita 
 Castellana, near Moutefiascone, with Falernus. What 
 is given one now in Italy as Falernian wine is rather 
 poor stuff, but red and powerful as Horace sings it. 
 The modern Moutefiascone is a very mild wine and 
 light in color, its flavor so delicate and elusive that it 
 needs quite a cultivated taste to judge its virtues. At 
 first trial it feels in the mouth almost like pure, soft 
 rain-water, but the full benediction of its blessings 
 comes in time. The Horatian Falernian fields had 
 grown poor and harsh in Pliny^s time, and it is proba- 
 ble that they have entirely disappeared now. But, in 
 drinking the soft and limpid Moutefiascone, one begins 
 to understand what may have been the generous inspi- 
 ration of the warmth with which Horace sings the 
 wines of his country, — a warmth which an experience 
 of the modern wines of Italy hardly justifies. 
 
 27 
 
314 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 PISTOJA. 
 
 The Local Color or the Italy of To-day — A Roman Pre- 
 TORiAN Palace — A Mediaeval Hall oe Judgment and 
 A Modern Court-House — The Feast of Corpus Christi 
 IN A Rural Diocese — The Miracles of Provincial Italy 
 — A Dying Eaith — A Touching Peasant Bambino — An 
 Italian Provincial Inn — The Smiling Fields of Tus- 
 cany. 
 
 Pistoja is another of those picturesque Tuscan 
 towns so interesting as having had their day in the 
 early ages of the lost republics of Italy, — that aurora 
 of art and freedom in Europe, but a morning that 
 never saw the fulness of noon. It is full of the art 
 and architecture of the Pisan and Sienese school, and 
 abounding in quaint remains of the feudal times of 
 mediaeval Italy. 
 
 It is in these hidden cities rather than in the mod- 
 ernized towns that one can best study the past and see 
 the present life of Italy. Here you find the native 
 manners, the dress and costumes, of the different classes, 
 and, most interesting of all, see the every-day life and 
 faith of the people. Here are the open-air altars ; the 
 provincial festas ; the miracles of the soil ; the quaint 
 old churches, with their mediaeval legends graven in 
 stone, their feudal tombs worn and dusty ; the curious 
 black Madonnas ; the beasts of the Apocalypse in all 
 their grotesque ugliness ; the devotional wax-works for 
 the peasants, dressed with beads and crown and satins, 
 male dolls as well as female, and framed and protected 
 in glass cases ; the Bambinos, rude but often touching in 
 their earnest homeliness ; in brief, the local deities and 
 the local color of Italian religion. 
 
PIS TO J A. 315 
 
 PIstoja is an idyllic country town, and looks very 
 lovely under the summer foliage and in its provincial 
 festa dress. It is the feast of Corpus Christi when I 
 am in it. Although bright with the life of this time, 
 it is a very ancient place. Catiline was killed here be- 
 fore the time of Christ, and it must always have been 
 a fighting-point, as it is just at the foot of the Alps and 
 commands one of the passes into Italy. Nevertheless, 
 altliough abounding in picturesque and imposing palaces 
 and mediaeval buildings, it has not the narrow streets 
 and gloomy aspect of the ordinary Italian town whose 
 foundations were laid and conditioned either in the 
 feudal ages or the earlier times of imperial or repub- 
 lican Rome. It is light, cheerful, airy, spacious, — a 
 little Italian Paris. In the Middle Ages it had repute 
 for its manufactures of arms, and tradition says the 
 pistol was invented here and took its name from the 
 town. 
 
 The distinctive feature of Pistoja to-day, perhaps, is 
 its ancient Pretorian Palace, now serving for a court- 
 house, as it did of old under another name. In the 
 "Hall of the Tribunal" you see yet untouched the mas- 
 sive stone benches of the old judges, and in front of 
 these the great stone table, — a suggestively-gloomy 
 court-room of the Middle Ages. Directly facing the 
 seats of the judges there is a curious picture on the wall 
 of a fox dressed in robes and sitting in judgment, — one 
 of those singular freaks of fancy or satire which you 
 come across all the time in mediaeval researches. In 
 fact, this whole hall is remarkable for its wealth of 
 feudal heraldic lore, and is known and prized the world 
 over for its riches in this line of study. 
 
 This entire hall, which is vaulted and supported by 
 massive square columns, is wholly covered — ceilings, 
 walls, stairways, and columns — with feudal coats-of- 
 arms graven or painted on the stone; some are set in, 
 others cut in, others frescoed. There is not an inch of 
 woodwork in the whole hall, — nothing but stone and 
 
316 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 wrought iron, — or, if I remember aright, any windows, 
 the light coming in from an opening in the ceiling. 
 Among the other striking remains is a set of feudal 
 standards, twelve in number, "the gonfalons of the 
 companies of the people," proud memories of republi- 
 can civic glory. The place is rich also in antique in- 
 scriptions. The modern contribution to this interest- 
 ing historical monument is a large tablet, set in the main 
 stairway, in honor of the soldiers who died in achieving 
 the union and independence of Italy. 
 
 There is a quaint mediaeval feature in these towns 
 in the constant repetition in all places — on the public 
 buildings, in the churches, in the piazzas, on the foun- 
 tains, in the streets, on columns and doors — of the 
 figure of some animal, the symbol and popular crest of 
 the town. In addition to all this, each ward is desig- 
 nated by a column surmounted with the "city arms" 
 in shape of the symbolic statue, and numbered with 
 the number of the district. In Siena it was the wolf 
 suckling Romulus and E-emus, and the design — always 
 the same — was very spirited and much superior to the 
 carving in Rome. Here it is the lion. You see him 
 everywhere, grim, worn, and stained, and, as some of 
 these effigies have come down from the twelfth century, 
 sometimes he is rather decrepid. 
 
 It was my fortune to be in Pistoja on the Sunday of 
 the feast of Corpus Christi. I had seen the procession 
 also in Massa, a much ruder place, a few days previous. 
 The feature of this feast is a procession in which the 
 consecrated wafer — or, as it is always popularly called 
 here on this feast, the body of Christ — is carried by 
 the bishop through the streets for the adoration of the 
 people. The sight of this spectacle gives one a very 
 good idea of the popular religion. In Massa the sacred 
 burden was followed immediately by a brass band, and 
 was preceded by bands of peasants and little children, 
 marshalled by nuns, bearing tapers and singing hymns, 
 
PJSTOJA. 317 
 
 — a rude procession, but rather eifective at a distance. 
 Here the ceremonies were more elegant, and the scene 
 in the church very brilliant and in good taste as well 
 as picturesque, — the white masks of the penitents, tlie 
 long white veils of the girls, the lilies and the roses, 
 the gleaming wax-lights, the bending and kneeling 
 worshippers, the clouds of incense, and the radiating 
 splendors of the altar, a shaking mass of flame and gold 
 and silver, making a very dramatic tableau. 
 
 The devotion and reverence was absolute. I have 
 never seen it equalled save once, in the Mormon temple 
 at Salt Lake City, in Utah, when the late Brigham 
 Young was speaking, and after a while bluntly an- 
 nounced in coarse English that the Spirit of God was 
 on him and he was going to reveal. The vast assem- 
 blage of devout Mormons then seemed to feel the 
 bodily presence of God in their midst, just as the de- 
 vout Roman peasant does to-day all over Italy. There 
 is no mistaking the feeling and belief of this people in 
 this matter. It is no question of trans or con, no re- 
 finement of scientific theology, with them. They have 
 a corporeal God, and worship Him just as truly and 
 earnestly and with as simple faith as their forefathers 
 worshipped Jupiter on the same spot. And therein 
 lies the mortmain grasp — the dead hand — of the priest- 
 hood of Italy. The whole scene irresistibly reminded 
 me of the insolent retort recorded in history of a me- 
 diaeval prelate to some civil ruler: "I hold your God 
 in my hands every day." The indiscreet priest who 
 made this famous reply only phrased in other words 
 the " What are you going to do about it ?" of the New 
 York political rough. And the situation was very 
 much the same. 
 
 Both here and at Massa the bishops had dull, heavy, 
 gross faces, — the faces of men given to overeating and 
 blind following. In fact, in Italy, ecclesiastical promo- 
 tion depends on mediocrity, for it rests on servile obe- 
 dience. The Roman bishop, as far as my observation 
 
 27* 
 
318 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 goes, is not the equal, morally or iDtellectually, of the 
 average American priest. 
 
 The absence of the young and middle-aged men and 
 the men of the better classes from these religious cere- 
 monies was marked and suggestive. (Neither at Massa 
 did they take part or still less here.) The whole attend- 
 ance and participation was by peasants and little chil- 
 dren. The better classes were represented solely by 
 women. In fact, the religion of Italy is a shell. Faith 
 is in a transition state, just as in the time of Constan- 
 tine. The upper classes and educated people do not 
 believe at all in the popular religion, nor, I think, do 
 the higher ranks of the clergy, who administer it as a 
 political machine, and either laugh at the credulity of 
 the common people or defend it as the best thing for 
 them in their ignorant condition. A monk, for instance, 
 in a well-known church of Rome, for ten cents uncov- 
 ered and showed me the imprint of the feet of Christ, 
 made on a marble slab on a certain occasion when He 
 miraculously visited Italy. The shape of the foot 
 was neither Hebrew nor Arabian. The size was co- 
 lossal and the contour clumsy. I cannot think that 
 the learned cardinals, many of them men of scientific 
 and historic erudition, believed what this simple monk 
 believed. Nevertheless, they — English and American 
 as well as Italian cardinals — accept principalities in a 
 kingdom whose revenues are raised from the offerings 
 of poor peasants who come to kiss and kneel before 
 just such relics. This relic, too, was quite respectable 
 compared with many of them, and their quantity is 
 innumerable, as well as are the miracle-working images 
 and shrines. I had my rooms in Rome on a short street, 
 about the length of two Philadelphia squares, and sit- 
 uated in the middle of the city. At one end of the 
 street was the decapitated head of St. John and at the 
 other a picture of the Madonna — quite a good work of 
 art, by the way — which has spoken from its frame, and 
 is, in consequence, very much adored. Lights were 
 
PISTOJA. 319 
 
 always burning at its shrine, which I never found 
 deserted of worshippers. I met several Madonnas who 
 had spoken or moved their eyes, and were in conse- 
 quence objects of special adoration. Indeed, the popu- 
 larity of certain images in Italy to the exclusion of 
 others apparently equally deserving is one of the curi- 
 ous features of the churches. These inanimate idols 
 of wood or wax or marble have their fortunes just like 
 popular preachers or actresses. In the fine old church 
 of St. Ambrose, in Milan, on a slight metal column 
 in the middle of the nave, I saw twined a brazen ser- 
 pent which popular belief accredits as that which Moses 
 lifted up in the desert. 
 
 Pistoja is strong in mediaeval churches, abounding in 
 graven images, odd statues, quaint tombs, curious in- 
 scriptions, legendary paintings, and the conventional 
 rural presepe. Some of these things are rude, others 
 works of high art and sometimes of great costliness. 
 There is a famous silver altar here on which men worked 
 for two entire centuries, the fourteenth and fifteenth, a 
 splendid and enduring monument of patient and con- 
 secrated labor that assuredly deserves its well-known 
 and well-won place in the history of silver-work. 
 
 Over the tomb of a great old feudal family — a family 
 that furnished cardinals and warriors in the history of 
 Pistoja hundreds of years ago — I found the following 
 Latin puzzle. The tomb lies in the pavement in front 
 of the main altar of one of the old churches : 
 
 Terra Teras Terram 
 Te Terram Terra 
 Tenebit. 
 Terra Trahet Transit 
 Torrida Terra 
 Trahet. 
 
 This play on tetra is not infrequent in the mediaeval 
 epitaphs. 
 
 In another old church there is a Bambino, with its 
 little legs tightly wrapped and swaddled, just as Italian 
 
320 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 women swaddle their babies to-day, which is very much 
 the same way as Indian papooses are bound up in our 
 country, excepting that boards are not used. The hum- 
 ble homeliness of this representation seemed at first sight 
 very odd and ignorant, but it probably is the literal 
 truth. I suppose the middle and lower-class Roman 
 women in the time of Augustus swaddled their children 
 in just the same way as the same classes do here now, 
 and if so, then these provincial peasants, in their child- 
 like simplicity, are right, and the conventional picture 
 of the Madonna and child, the world over, is wrong, 
 so far as the accurate representation of fact is concerned. 
 Among so much that is rude and coarse and ignorant, 
 one comes all the time on fine paintings, beautiful fres- 
 cos, and grand carvings and statuary. 
 
 At this provincial place I had the experience of a 
 purely Italian reception. There was not a servant or 
 attendant of any kind at the inn who spoke a word of 
 French, German, or English. The table, which was 
 excellent, was of Italian cooking. The service was 
 unexceptionable and the rooms were good and clean, 
 but how these Italian inns exist is a continual mystery. 
 Here again I was the only guest, enjoying the undivided 
 attention and service of the whole establishment, which 
 was complete and full. At Bologna I met an acquaint- 
 ance who had followed my visit to Pistoja about a week 
 later and gone to the same inn. He also had had the 
 house to himself during his stay. Nevertheless, these 
 inns, though existing apparently on the casual chance 
 of an occasional visitor, are excellent and often admirable 
 hostelries, — everything clean and good, the service of a 
 high order, the table plentiful, even to a fair selection 
 of wines, and the host cheerful, attentive, and obliging. 
 The rooms, and halls too, are generally lined with old 
 oil-paintings and bric-a-brac carvings, and in the eve- 
 nings there is good music on '^ the piazza." 
 
 Pistoja is a fairly pleasant place to rest in, because 
 
PISTOJA. 321 
 
 f'oming from the north you enter here on the lovely 
 land of Tuscany and meet its early charms. Here you 
 begin (o see the laughing vineyards, with the vines and 
 grapes festooned in graceful sweeps, until all the fields 
 seem to be dancing like little loves and Bacchuses. 
 Here you find again — after the ashen and leaden gloom 
 of England — the dear blue skies of our own land. 
 Here in this very Pistoja you can sit in the open air in 
 the streets or piazzas (public squares) and drink your 
 wine under groves of blushing oleanders. Here are 
 tiie golden lemon-trees and flowering almonds, the fra- 
 grant orange-blossoms, and avenues of grieving cypress. 
 Here are the dark-green olive-trees, the generous breast 
 of the earth. 
 
 Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the landscape 
 of Italy is the human shape which the olive-tree takes. 
 It seems always to be a human form struggling to 
 escape from the imprisonment of a lower life. Some- 
 times these shapes are of a grotesque and goblin effect, 
 but more often they are writhing, twisted, and contorted 
 as if in pain. In the very fields and hillsides all around 
 him, one reads Ovid again, and all that weird legend 
 of torture and suffering in an outer life so strong in 
 Italian literature. It needs no imagination to see in 
 these gnarled trunks and struggling roots the im- 
 prisoned souls of Dante's verse and Dore's pencil. 
 They are there. These ghostly trees inspired the poet 
 and the painter. 
 
 Tuscany has always been the native home of beauty. 
 It was the land of the Etruscans, that wonderful 
 people whose sense of form is yet a marvel. It was 
 the ^^ Tyrrhenian shores" of the Greek, but it was 
 never lovelier or more fascinating than it is now. 
 
322 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIY. 
 
 EAVENNA. 
 
 An Abandoned Imperial City — Christian and Arian 
 EuiNS — The Cradle of Pure Christian Art and Civil- 
 ization — The Old Mosaics — The Honor oe Melchisedek 
 IN THE Churches of Kavenna — Tomb oe The.odoric — 
 Dull Bologna. 
 
 To get to Ravenna from almost anywhere^ as tlie 
 lines of travel are now arranged, one is forced to go 
 through Bologna, and as the Italian railways connect by 
 w^hat Italians themselves call '^ coincidences,^' one has 
 usually some time on hand there. It is a fatal railway 
 centre, to which one comes again and again in seeing 
 North Italy, for Bologna is a dull, heavy town, monoto- 
 nous from its perpetual arcades, which soon lose their first 
 effect of novelty, and serve only to darken and depress. 
 The place has the gloominess without the picturesqueness 
 of a mediseval-built city, and in its general effect is 
 unpleasing, devoid of lightness, elegance, or cultivated 
 taste. Even its famous leaning-towers are heavy, dirty, 
 and drunken- looking. It is coarse, solid, very sub- 
 stantial, but shapeless,' — something like its famous 
 sausages, which are its symbolic product and devel- 
 opment. It has contributed some other achievements 
 to the meat-market of the world, which are proudly 
 displayed in its shops. The mass of the people whom 
 you see on the streets are like their town. They have 
 heavy forms, gross, round faces, the lines almost ob- 
 literated by corpulence, — the faces and bodies of heavy 
 feeders, well-to-do, vulgar bourgeois. 
 
 The architecture is solid, monotonous, and much of 
 it rough. Perhaps the central point of interest which 
 
EA VENN A. 323 
 
 they show one is a singular pile of churches, coming 
 through several ages down from the fifth century, and 
 now all worked into one. These churches, seven in 
 number, were built in a confused kind of way, at 
 different times, on the site of an ancient temple of Isis. 
 They are of different levels, one being clear under the 
 main one and serving now as a crypt, of different orders 
 of architecture, mostly quite rude and early, of differ- 
 ent sizes, sha|)es, and dedications. As they could not 
 all exist in this tumbled-over condition, each encroach- 
 ing on the other and pushing it into ruin, they have all 
 been restored, made to communicate interiorly, and 
 built or pressed into one conglomerate mass known now 
 as St. Stephen's. It is quite interesting and suggestive, 
 but it is a kind of sausage, too, in its way. 
 
 I have been laid over at Bologna twice, and am always 
 glad to get out of it. It is a town where the sense of 
 the predominance of the physical is oppressive and re- 
 pulsive, — Bologna " la grassa." 
 
 From heavy Bologna you run down to Ravenna 
 returning, unless you are going to make the coast-line 
 tour of Italy. Ravenna, once the capital of the Occi- 
 dental Empire, the city of emperors, exarchs, and regal 
 bishops, though rude and fallen, stripped of its former 
 wealth and possessions, and a very picture of desola- 
 tion, is a most interesting place. 
 
 It is of vast historic significance, as the point where 
 Christian art and social life had opportunities to de- 
 velop their own growth, free from the dominating 
 intellectual influences of the Roman civilization which 
 they succeeded and displaced. Here Christian civili- 
 zation flourished on its own soil and was powerful. 
 It could develop freely its own germ and law of society, 
 affected only by the Byzantine culture which it met on 
 even terms, fighting and trading with the East. 
 
 The town in its general effect is rude, humble, and 
 inelegant, poorly laid out, and the few palaces yet 
 
324 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 standing showing little traces of magnificence or 
 luxury. The dwellings of the commoner kind are 
 very poor and coarse, the streets narrow and confined. 
 There are no grand piazzas or promenades, or great, 
 luxurious, open spaces. The tombs of euiperors and 
 empresses are solid and enduring, but their decoration 
 rude and primitive. In fact, it is hard to think of 
 Ravenna as an imperial centre. The churches are 
 interesting in their early half- Byzantine order of archi- 
 tecture and their quaint mosaics, picturing rudely the 
 Christian thought and legend of early mediaeval his- 
 tory. 
 
 They show how strong was the influence of the Old 
 Testament on the thinking and life of the early cen- 
 turies as compared with ours. Moses, Abraham, Elijah, 
 Joshua, Abel, Melchisedek, Samson, Solomon, Adam, 
 were real men for Europe in that age, whose influence 
 was daily felt and appreciated. The churches of Italy 
 are full of their images. In these churches of Ravenna 
 the influencing force seems to have been the patriarchal 
 and earlier life of the Old Testament. Melchisedek 
 offering bread and wine is everywhere. It is one of 
 the features of Ravenna. The quaint representations 
 of this scene pictured on altar after altar in old mosaic, 
 prove how minute is the change in the daily habits of 
 life here even through the length of a thousand years. 
 Melchisedek, the friend of God and King of Salem, 
 generally stands behind or near a humble wooden table 
 on which are the bread and wine. The stiff" little table 
 is precisely such as is found in a common Italian dwell- 
 ing now. The wine is in a cheap crane-necked flask, 
 just as it is sold in any Roman shop now, and the bread 
 is a pile of the same execrably sodden wads served one 
 in any trattoria to-day. The meal of Melchisedek, as 
 set forth in these antique Ravenna mosaics, is pre- 
 cisely that which has been served me more than once 
 this year when I entered a wayside inn in rural Italy 
 and asked for lunch. Next after this scene comes 
 
 
RA VENN A. 325 
 
 Abel with his sacrifice of a lamb, and the offering 
 up of Isaac. Abraham entertaining the three angels 
 — the table witli the food on it being always con- 
 spicuous — and Elijah fed by the ravens occur often. 
 Briefly stated, the sacrificial legend of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and those stories from it which relate the giving 
 or taking of food from heaven, are the motif of these 
 walls. The pictures of these scenes generally occur in 
 chronological succession, closing with the life of Christ, 
 — a kind of illustrated historical argument. The actual 
 scene of the Crucifixion does not often appear, as it rarely 
 ever does in the Catacombs, and for the same reason, 
 that the event was yet a matter of deep shame and 
 mortification to the struggling Church. The symbol 
 of the cross does not appear in the Catacombs, I think, 
 at all until the fourth century. 
 
 The predominant influence on the early Church at 
 Ravenna was not only the Old Testament, but, very 
 singularly, the first few chapters of it. This is strongly 
 evidenced by the old mosaics. These pictured walls 
 were the church history of the time, and the great bulk 
 of their history does not get beyond the biblical record 
 as contained in the book of Genesis, short of the story 
 of Joseph. Indeed, if a travelling Japanese scholar, 
 ignorant of our history, were to drop down in Ravenna, 
 he would probably think that Melchisedek was the di- 
 vinity to whose worship these strange old churches had 
 been erected. 
 
 This revelation of these almost forgotten walls is an 
 evidence of how insularity or ignorance may amplify 
 any fragment that seizes on its imagination, and perhaps 
 swell it into an imposing fabric. These early Christians, 
 rude and simple and earnest, knew nothing more of 
 Melchisedek than we do, but his brief story, appealing 
 in some way to their hopes or wants, became a vivid 
 reality, directing their devotions and coloring their whole 
 theological thought for several centuries. This name of 
 Melchisedek, which is not named perhaps once a year 
 
 28 
 
326 NORTHERN ITALY. 
 
 in a modern Protestant church, was to these Ravenna 
 Christians a name second only to that of Christ. 
 
 The Ravenna which we see is the Ravenna of the 
 sixth centnry, and these old basilicas are therefore not 
 lumbered up with the importunate crowd of mediaeval 
 saints who press nearly everything else out of most of 
 the modern Italian churches. They are filled, how- 
 ever, with scenes in the lives of the Christian emperors, 
 who seem to have been held in the Church at that time 
 in much the same honor as a saint in the Middle Ages. 
 Church and state were evidently bound up far more 
 closely than anything we know of now. 
 
 The mosaics, for which the town is so celebrated, and 
 which are the specialty of its art, are all, to a modern 
 trained eye at least, conventional, stiff, formal. It took 
 later centuries of half pagan and classic study to give 
 them that perfection and finish which has made them 
 the highest order of painting for churches. The Byzan- 
 tine architecture, which, with the aid of Roman cul- 
 ture, grew into such glory and splendor under the 
 worldlier influences of Venice, is here constrained, 
 primitive, and humble. There is no splendor, no 
 grandeur, no magnificence, little of luxury and cultiva- 
 tion. In fact, Ravenna, in its social and aesthetic pre- 
 sentment, is the legitimate development of the social 
 ideas and Essenic teachings of the New Testament, 
 which declare war against luxury, refinement, elegance, 
 personal ease, temporal power, riches, all that goes to 
 make up the civilization or, as it is called in the New 
 Testament, "the spirit" of this world. 
 
 Ravenna was a stronghold of Arianism, which has 
 left its traces here in Arian crosses imbedded firmly in 
 the walls and in the records of the wanderings of the 
 ashes of some of the dead emperors and leaders who 
 had embraced this faith. The Roman Church, on re- 
 gaining power, not being, perhaps, honestly satisfied in 
 its own mind of its power to execute its threat of 
 burning their souls, took out its vengeance in violating 
 
EA VENN A. 327 
 
 their graves. Theodoric, however, after some adven- 
 tures, got his bones carried back to their original rest- 
 ing-place prepared by his daughter, and he now sleeps 
 peacefully in the fields outside of the walls, in a perfect 
 stronghold of a mausoleum. I visited this last castle 
 of the old warrior by moonlight, and, as you entered 
 the vaulted and covered outway and passed the moat 
 and ascended a kind of drawbridge-stairway, now per- 
 manent, you felt how savage were the instincts of the 
 Middle Ages, when a distinguished and honored and 
 powerful ruler had to fight for the repose of his ashes 
 against a Church which professed to have the exclusive 
 monopoly of teaching on earth the doctrines of Christ 
 and the gospel of peace. 
 
 This tomb is a round tower of solid masonry, against 
 which even a modern cannon-ball would fall harmless. 
 It is surmounted by a single block of stone of enormous 
 size and weight, which answers as a roof. The whole 
 structure looks as if it were carved out of rock, or 
 placed there by giants rather than built by men. 
 Within this dense mass of stone — like the hollow for a 
 kernel in a shell — there is a small altar and a huge 
 sarcophagus. There were no guards to watch the ashes 
 now ; no janitor even to break the solemn proprieties 
 of the place by a Imiigry whining for pour-boire. So, 
 finding the massive grate, which opened to let air and 
 dim light into the dungeon of the altar of the tomb, we 
 dropped through its iron bars some lighted matches : 
 tlie stone floor fortunately was dry ; the shadows fell 
 quickly back before the leaping lines of ephemeral 
 flame, and for a moment we had all to ourselves a pri- 
 vate illumination of the mausoleum of Theodoric the 
 Great. 
 
EOME. 
 
 28^ 329 
 
CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 ROME THE CENTRE. 
 
 The Eternal City — The Spell of Eome. 
 
 When one first reaches the Eternal City it seems 
 almost hopeless to write of Rome. All the centuries, 
 all the civilizations, all the religions seem to centre here, 
 and the mind refuses to grasp in symmetrical concep- 
 tion the mighty whole. Although but a small town 
 now of only a quarter of a million of inhabitants, Rome 
 has a wonderfully cosmopolitan atmosphere, by virtue 
 both of historic tradition and of present fact. 
 
 Her ruins are the record of successive strata of civil- 
 izations, stretching back into the shadows of history 
 until the shadows are lost in the darkness of total night. 
 Her palaces are built on the seats of lost empires ; her 
 cathedrals on the buried temples of abandoned faiths. 
 As a matter of fact, during what is substantially known 
 history, she has been the imperial city of the world, 
 ruling it either by arms, learning, or ecclesiastical 
 power, and the monuments of her past glories are 
 splendid arid instructive even in ruin. 
 
 To-day the men of influence of all countries, and 
 of all followings, come to her to learn. And so it lias 
 been for centuries. Since the last two or three hundred 
 years, when travel was possible, there has hardly been 
 a distinguished name in Europe that has not in some 
 way left its record in Rome. There is not to-day a 
 better centre to meet the controlling men of all the 
 world, one by one, than Rome ; and it has been so for 
 years and years. Sooner or later they all come, either 
 in the glory of power, or to study in art, letters, religion, 
 
 * 331 
 
332 ROME. 
 
 or statesmanship, or driven by the stress of misfortune, 
 to die. Indeed, the tombs of Rome are more eloquent, 
 perhaps, than anything else of her world-wide rule and 
 sympathy. You are startled every now and then by 
 meeting the graves of men of distant ages, of far-off 
 countries, of strange faiths. John Lascaris, of Constan- 
 tinople, found rest here, as did Charles Edward, the 
 young pretender to the throne of England, and his 
 brother. Cardinal York. Daniel O'Connell, the great 
 Irishman, gave his heart to the keeping of Rome. 
 Shelley, Keats, and Howitt lie near together in the 
 Protestant burial-ground outside the walls, where sleep 
 with them brethren from Greece and Russia and Amer- 
 ica and Asia. In fact, this little graveyard, set apart 
 as an exclusion, has become the catholic resting-place 
 of all the world save those of thQ Roman faith. An- 
 gelica Kauffmann is buried in a chapel only a few houses 
 from where I write. In that magnificent mausoleum, 
 the crypt of St. Peter's, are the burial-urns of the three 
 last princes of the unfortunate house of Stuart, who lost 
 the crown of England ; of Queen Christina, of Sweden; 
 the Emperor Otho II., and others of the great ones of 
 earth of every tongue and clime. The central building 
 of the powerful Jesuit order is the grand and fitting 
 tomb of Loyola. St. Peter and St. Paul, or what re- 
 ligious tradition accepts as their bodies, sleep in the very 
 heart of the greatest church of all Christendom, and so 
 all through the city. Great basilicas at almost every 
 corner are the tombs of great men who have founded 
 states or orders, while out the wonderful aisle of the 
 Appian Way generals and senators and magnates of old 
 Rome, and their friends or victims, the kings of for- 
 gotten nations, are marshalled for miles and miles in 
 unknown and despoiled graves. 
 
 Even in the character of to-day, that present which 
 seems so infinitesimally small in the presence of her 
 endless past, Rome keeps her claim for catholicity and 
 world-wide range of interest and control. The features 
 
ROME THE CENTRE. 333 
 
 of cosmopolitan influence and connection are stamped 
 everywhere. On the streets Greek, Jew, and barbarian 
 jostle each other. In the hotels, among the ruins, in 
 the churches, you hear every tongue and see the men of 
 all nations. Not the least of the impressive features of 
 St. Peter's is the seemingly endless succession of the 
 confessional-boxes, each one labelled with a different 
 tongue, until all the ends of the earth are provided for. 
 It seemed a little thing at first, but as you wali^ed until 
 wearied through arched aisles, ever on your left the 
 perpetually-recurring confessional-niche, — pro lingua 
 Illyrlca — p7^o lingua Hispana — p7^o lingua Anglica^ etc., 
 — you felt the force of a claim in greater strength than 
 any words could formulate it. 
 
 Then again, in a visible assertion of imperial rule in 
 the faith of the world, is the great institution of the 
 Propaganda, with its massive central building, its poly- 
 glottal printing-press, whence issue books in all tongues 
 and languages, and its schools of priests for all nations. 
 There are Koman Catholic churches, too, and colleges 
 for all peoples, not merely of the Latin races, but for 
 those of Scotland, the United States, England, and the 
 essentially Protestant blood of the North. The print- 
 ing-office of the Propaganda is particularly rich in 
 Oriental type, — an evidence of its wide range and ex- 
 haustless scope. 
 
 Even outside of the Roman Catholic Church, which 
 fora thousand years has held Rome in its exclusive grasp, 
 the cosmopolitan impress and representation here are 
 strong. Of course the foreign travel is from the whole 
 world. You see not only priests in the national vest- 
 ments of all nations and of all shades and colors of 
 skins, but you daily meet educated visitors from all 
 parts of the globe. At a dinner-party in good society 
 here one frequently hears four or five languages, and 
 generally two or three. The literature of the book- 
 stores is consequently German, French, English, Italian, 
 Spanish, with a sprinkling of the less frequently used 
 
334 ROME. 
 
 tongues. The servants are forced to know at least 
 French, and the tradesmen attempt bravely to answer 
 in any language in which you address them. 
 
 To-day there are Hebrew synagogues and six or eight 
 Protestant churches, German, English, and American. 
 When one remembers that for centuries the Roman 
 Catholic service has been the only form tolerated, and 
 that the traditions of ages have been against any other, 
 it can be seen how wide the doors are already opened, 
 and how the last vestige of mediaeval provincialism and 
 insularity is disappearing. Under the reigns of Victor 
 Emmanuel and Humbert, indeed, there is practical 
 liberty of faith. Should a Chinaman now wish to wor- 
 ship God in Rome, in his own way and as his fathers 
 have taught him, I suppose he has the same civil right 
 to do so as he has in San Francisco, and I think he 
 would probably be as honestly protected in that right 
 as in California, nor would there likely be any popular 
 interference with his devotions. 
 
 These Protestant churches, of course, are, in the 
 main, for the use of the foreign and travelling popula- 
 tion of the city, but so, for that matter, is all Rome. 
 Its luxuries, its best accommodations, its galleries, its 
 ruins, are all now for the enjoyment of the Northern 
 barbarians, who, from far-off countries, press in to-day, 
 —not as of old as soldiers, but peacefully as tourists and 
 occupying the land. Without its travellers Rome would 
 be in eternal sleep. 
 
 It is this thoroughly cosmopolitan character — taking 
 in its embrace the whole world of to-day and stretch- 
 ing back through the ages in one continuous line farther 
 than recorded history — that gives Rome its peculiar 
 charm to men of thought and influence. Hardly a man 
 of power or education in all history who has not been 
 here and left in some way the record of his impression. 
 And in a country whose literature of travel embraces 
 such names as Addison, Ruskin, Shelley, the i>oet Gray, 
 Hemans, Hawthorne, Hi 1 Hard, Howitt, Dickens, Dis- 
 
ROME THE CENTRE. 335 
 
 raell, Cardinal Wiseman, Byron, Goethe, Bunsen, 
 Niebuhr, Hans Andersen, Ampere, About, Montaigne, 
 Chateaubriand, De Stael, Castelar, Taine, Gautier, and 
 farther back Chrysostom and St. Paul and Cicero, is 
 it any wonder that one feels appalled at ever attempting 
 to write, and hardly knows how to begin, or where? 
 
 It is this greatness of Rome, swallowing up time and 
 history, which, like the infinity of the ocean, draws all 
 men to it with an irresistible fascination, as if it were a 
 pleasure to lose themselves in its limitless existence, and 
 which creates that insatiable longing to return, to be 
 forever in it and of it, which every strong man who 
 ever saw the Eternal City has confessed. This inde- 
 finable sense of Rome which takes possession of one 
 witli a kind of pantheistic force, and often by some odd 
 power of association involuntarily floods his whole 
 being at the mere passing memory of its laughing-eyed 
 beggars, its incense-smelling churches, its corporeal 
 smells wandering from dirty courts, its aromatic Pln- 
 cian or the sunny, humble Trasteyere, — this strange 
 compelling sense is the evidence of the spell of its his- 
 toric incantation. And those blessed ones to whom it 
 comes are they who have drank of the real waters of 
 the fountain of Trevi. 
 
 KOME. 
 
336 ROME. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 SAINT PETER S, A^T> ITALIAN PREACHING. 
 
 The First Chukch of the World — Tsr the Shade of a 
 Forest of Marble Columns — Modern Indulgences — - 
 The Pallas Athene of Rome — Italian Preaching — An 
 Educating Pulpit. 
 
 I AM not going to attempt a pen-painting of St. 
 Peter's, the first and greatest church of Christendom. 
 It would take a volume to merely index its wealth of 
 present treasure and range of suggestive and historic 
 association, or picture the outlines of its magnitude. 
 Even then one could hardly achieve a conception of its 
 magnificence and grandeur unless he had something to 
 measure it by, and in our country as yet, unfortunately, 
 we have not. 
 
 Let me suggest, however, a point from which one 
 might begin to work up to some approximate idea of its 
 size. Its effect and historical relation are something 
 entirely apart from that and higher. In all the United 
 States I suppose the largest and most imposing pile 
 sprung from a single design is " The Public Buildings," 
 at Broad and Market Streets, in the city of Philadelphia. 
 This great structure has a base of four hundred and fifty 
 feet by four hundred and fifty feet — a grand square — and 
 is to be over five hundred feet high. Now, you could 
 take up this entire immense mass of building and set it 
 bodily down inside of the piazza or portico which is the 
 magnificent threshold of St. Peter's; and then you 
 would have so much room to spare that you could throw 
 around in the crevices such of our home churches as 
 those of Holy Trinity at either New York or Philadel- 
 
ST. PETER'S, AND ITALIAN PREACHING. 337 
 
 phia, and they would be lost and hidden in the shade 
 of the corners. Even our longitudinal Capitol at Wash- 
 ington with all its extensions could be placed within this 
 wonderful portico without materially interfering with 
 the passage-way. 
 
 This porch or piazza is five hundred and eighty-eight 
 feet wide by one thousand and thirty-four long, and 
 some authorities give even greater dimensions. It is 
 flanked on either side by a magnificent forest of marble 
 columns, arranged in semicircular avenues and roofed. 
 Under these pillars, of which with the massive pilasters 
 there are some three hundred and fifty, there is per- 
 petual shade and coolness even throughout the whole 
 summer's blaze of an Italian sun, for sunlight never 
 penetrates their cool recesses. And this was their in- 
 tention, as the Latin superscription legended above them 
 eloquently tells : '^ A tabernacle for a shade in the day- 
 time and a security and covert from the whirlwind and 
 from the rain." And all this they literally are to-day. 
 More than this, with the immense fa§ade, this noble 
 approach serves to hide all the adjacent and rear build- 
 ings of the place, and one draws towards the entrance 
 of St. Peter's without seeing a single other structure in 
 the world. It stands alone in the heart of a great city. 
 Among the buildings very happily thus kept out of 
 sight is the iniquitous "Palace of the Holy Office," or, 
 in English, The Inquisition. In the centre of this por- 
 tico rises tlie needle-like spire of an Egyptian obelisk, 
 one of the earliest of religious monuments, erected 
 originally to the sun, now a captive adorning the tem- 
 ple of the God who made the sun. Around it play 
 colossal fountains, which cast up massive jets of water 
 that, after reaching a height over that- of an ordinary 
 American three-story house, return downward in deli- 
 cious spray, swept by the winds over a vast area of the 
 stone-flagged pavement of the piazza, keeping it moist 
 and cool. 
 
 All this k but the threshold and entrance to a won- 
 F w 29 
 
338 R^^E- 
 
 derful church, whose nave is a magnificent sweep of 
 over six hundred feet in length, in whose transepts you 
 could place cathedrals, and where the chapels in the 
 side aisles are as large as a common American church. 
 Withal, everything within is pleasing and harmonious, 
 light and beautiful, and so symmetrical that, until you 
 think and compare, you do not see or feel the awful 
 size. The baby cherubs that hold up the basins of 
 holy water are colossal giants when you note the girth 
 of their limbs and compare them with those of the 
 human form. The doves are enormous birds, and the 
 angels recall the far-ofP shadowy days in the morning 
 of the world when the sons of God came down to the 
 fair daughters of men. The surpassing splendor of 
 this great temple, which gathers up in its walls a vast 
 congregation of churches, its uncounted wealth of mar- 
 bles and precious stones, its lofty arches, through which 
 you ever catch new vistas of cathedral grandeur, its 
 labyrinth of the tombs of the great ones of the earth, 
 its storied sculptures, its enduring mosaics, its endless 
 altars laden with gold and gleaming with sacred lights, 
 all seem to lift it out of the limited range of the handi- 
 work of man and up to the proportions of some great 
 work of nature. In ^^ God's first temple" to-day you 
 feel '^the primeval forest,^' the mysterious influence of 
 rock and water and endless nature. 
 
 While there is a studied attempt in the interior dec- 
 orations of St. Peter's to assert and record the sectional 
 characteristics of the Koman Church, particularly its 
 claim to temporal sovereignty and its historic struggle 
 against national independence, still the general effect is 
 so overpowering and grand that you lose in it the sense 
 of these blemishes just as you do of all petty details. 
 Protestants, at all events, ought not to quarrel with St. 
 Peter's, for it is the cradle of the Reformation. The 
 immense burden of its construction, — the main building 
 alone cost over fifty million dollars, and the annual re- 
 pairs and keeping up now demand forty thousand dol- 
 
ST. PETER'S, AND ITALIAN PREACHING. 339 
 
 lars per year, — the immense burden of this construction 
 at a time when money was more costly than now led 
 to the sale of indulgences as a source of revenue, which 
 abuse was the popular lever of the Reformation. It 
 stiffened up Luther to take the decisive step, and 
 gave him something with which to go before the 
 people. 
 
 A word here about indulgences, the profuse adver- 
 tisements of which over the church doors are one of the 
 first things which strike the ordinary Protestant travel- 
 ler and give him a slight moral shock. The scandalous 
 and public abuse of the system, which gave birth to the 
 Protestant development, is long since gone here. In- 
 dulgences are not any more issued on paper and de- 
 livered, except, perhaps, in occasional and exceptional 
 cases. In legal phrase, they take effect, not by delivery, 
 "but })y operation of law." Whenever the conditions 
 are fulfilled they inure to the benefit of the sinner. 
 These "conditions'^ are the essence of the whole thing, 
 and are what are not popularly understood by the non- 
 Catholic world, which commonly looks on an indul- 
 gence either as a bare license to sin or an absolute and 
 unqualified remission of sin. The modern Roman in- 
 dulgence, in its operative clause, is strictly limited in 
 its own terms, just like the "absolution'' of the Protest- 
 ant Episcopal and some other Protestant denomina- 
 tions. It is only an authoritative declaration to those 
 who perform certain acts of devotion that their sins will 
 be forgiven them on condition of true repentance. This 
 "condition" is the consideration. Whether the average 
 Roman worshipper understands the condition is another 
 question. This condition is, however, the theory and 
 technical definition of "indulgence" as officially giv^en 
 here to-day, and we can hardly fairly go beyond that. 
 The advantages accrue only to such as truly repent of 
 their sins. 
 
 Traces of the old abuse and of the popular miscon- 
 ception, however, abound everywhere. Being an 
 
340 ROME. 
 
 irredeemable promise as far as the Chnrcli is concerned, 
 — that is, a promise which some one else must pay or 
 redeem — the thing works out exactly like an irredeem- 
 able issue of paper money. There is an uncontrolled 
 and reckless emission of them of all sizes and values, 
 from one day up to, I believe, in one case, one hundred 
 thousand years. Rival orders, rival churches, rival 
 chapels, compete in granting them, and the whole town 
 is flooded with them. The devotional element of Italy 
 not being mathematical, the poor peasants will work 
 away, repeating prayers, going up steps on their knees, 
 making pilgrimages to shrines, etc., for a thirty days' 
 indulgence, when the same acts, differently directed, 
 would bring them the same results for a thousand 
 years. 
 
 Again, practically there is a commercial flavor to 
 the whole transaction, and the contract is often drawn up 
 witli such looseness as not only to make it bristle with 
 problems to a legal mind, but to suggest in equity a 
 " false pretence." In several churches in Rome, built 
 under French auspices, you read this official declara- 
 tion : " Ten days' indulgence to all who pray for the 
 soul of the King of France granted by bull, or decree, 
 
 of Pope , A.D. ," many hundred years ago. I 
 
 suppose some king of France in former days sold away 
 the liberties of his subjects or gave away their moneys 
 and took his pay in this coin. But who is to be 
 prayed for, the unnamed king who made the bargain, 
 or the living king reioning at the time the prayer is 
 offered? And, if the latter, is it a personal boon or a 
 franchise of the French crown ? And, if this, does it 
 inure to President Grevy now, as successor, or to the 
 National Assembly, more or less infidel, or to the body 
 of the French people, the ultimate and collective sov- 
 ereignty of France ? Or has it utterly lapsed, and does 
 the simple Italian peasant lose his ten days entirely? 
 Or does it matter at all whether the peasant has any 
 idea of what or whom he is praying for ? 
 
ST. PETER'S, AND ITALIAN PREACHING. 34I 
 
 There are some curious phases in the religious life 
 of Rome. The dominant power of the old polytheistic 
 faith crops out all the time. The groups of minor gods 
 displaced by Constantine reappear still in the popular 
 saints. Apollo with his arrows survives in the beauti- 
 ful youth, St. Sebastian, shot to death by Roman 
 archers near the Colosseum, and always painted or 
 sculptured with the shafts from the bow in his body. 
 I have seen the Virgin Mary in the old churches of the 
 Trastevere and in the ant^ient city of Pistoja with the 
 moon depicted at her feet, the old symbol of Venus, 
 and thought of Milton's — 
 
 " Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horn." 
 
 The divine honors paid to the emperors in the cor- 
 rupt decadence of Rome are reproduced in the doctrine 
 of the infallibility of the Pope. There are saints, too, 
 for the seasons, saints for cities and provinces, saints for 
 lovers, saints for harvest-time, saints for the horses, 
 saints to be invoked for diseases, just as in the familiar 
 mythology of our school-books, and shrines and special 
 altars for their worship in these special characters. 
 
 But the most striking development of this tendency 
 is comparatively recent; at least, its " push'' is modern, 
 and of our very time. Rome is to-day as thoroughly 
 dedicated to the Virgin Mary as ever Athens was to 
 Pallas. The Christian Roman of this generation asks 
 of the Virgin just what the patriotic Athenian of classic 
 times asked of Minerva, and looks to her for the same 
 aid and protection. Her churches are far more numer- 
 ous than those of any other dedication, and her altars 
 in the churches are those most popular and frequented. 
 Her images work the miracles and have the throngs of 
 worshippers. 
 
 But the modern worship of the Virgin is not a mere 
 popular impulse which miglit be apologized for on one 
 hand or explained away philosophically on the other. 
 
342 ROME. 
 
 The order comes from the Vatican, and is a part of a 
 policy deliberately adopted and boldly lived up to. 
 Tlie Church of the country avows it and glories in it. 
 On the doors of the churches of Rome there appeared 
 in May of this year official ecclesiastical notices, signed 
 by high prelates, speaking of this city proudly as 
 *^ Rome, the city of Mary, and Rome, the city of Jesus," 
 giving to the woman in written language the precedence 
 Avhich she always has here in the hearts of her wor- 
 shippers. 
 
 The religious Roman art of this generation will go 
 into history, too, as distinctively consecrated to this new 
 deity. Pius IX. raised in the central Piazza di Es- 
 pagna a towering obelisk in honor of the triumph of 
 the dogma of the immaculate conception. He panelled 
 the tribunal of St. Peter's Avith a great tablet com- 
 memorating its official promulgation by the (Ecumen- 
 ical Council, and recorded on side panels the names 
 of the cardinals, archbishops, and bishops of all the 
 world voting for the measure. He added to the cele- 
 brated stanze of the Vatican — a suite of state rooms 
 frescoed by the great masters — an additional room 
 wholly devoted to the history of the new dogma, its 
 passage in the council, its promulgation by himself, 
 and the reception of the news in heaven ! On one of 
 the fagades of the square base of the obelisk just men- 
 tioned there is an attempt to represent in marble the 
 very act of the conception of the Blessed Virgin by the 
 Holy Ghost, — a peculiar but characteristic illustration 
 of the morbid bent of the Roman ecclesiastical mind. 
 
 Every Roman girl, the Italian women tell me, is 
 baptized Maria. She may have as many other names 
 as her parents choose to give her, but Maria is obligatory. 
 
 Did classic Athens ever do as much as all this for 
 her Pallas ? 
 
 I close with a word on the way they preach in Italy, 
 which has some decided advantages over our usage. 
 
ST, PETER'S, AND ITALIAN PREACHING. 343 
 
 While the sermon has become the central feature in 
 Protestant worsliip instead of a mere incident, as in the 
 old Catholic service, it is not a little singular that the 
 preaching in the Roman churches should be so much 
 freer and more natural than with us, and, of course, as 
 a consequence, more effective. In the first place, it is 
 more dramatic. In the churches of Italy a platform 
 or scaffoldino; of some kind is often built in front or 
 out of the pulpit. On this the preacher stands in full- 
 length view of his hearers, whom he addresses all 
 around, facing at Avill in any direction. On this plat- 
 form, a little to the rear of the speaker, there is gene- 
 rally a high crucifix, a chair in which he may rest by 
 sitting from time to time as he talks, and sometimes 
 a little table for a glass of water, a Bible, or a handker- 
 chief, but not for manuscript. I have never seen a 
 Roman Catholic priest read a sermon. This platform, 
 which is raised six or eight feet from the floor, is, in 
 some churches, hung with tapestry, illustrating sacred 
 legends. The whole makes a pleasing picture, and 
 gives the s])eaker a much greater freedom and power 
 of oratorical action than the rigid, straight-line, box- 
 pulpits of our land. 
 
 And the freedom of the people is equal. AVhen 
 the sermon is about to begin they all settle themselves 
 around in chairs in the best positions to hear comforta- 
 bly. The churches are so large that a vast audience 
 can be thus accommodated, each in his chair, but in 
 irregular groups, families or friends together. When 
 the audiences number thousands they become more 
 compact, and around the seated hearers are dense 
 crowds of men and women standing. No one is obliged 
 here by stress of custom or the pressure of respectability 
 to hear a sermon. When the service is over " church 
 is out,^' and you can go, unless you think the preacher 
 has something to say worth listening to. You are as 
 free as at an American political meeting. If the ser- 
 mon is dull or stupid you can leave at any moment. 
 
344 ROME. 
 
 You can go out of tlie building, or walk through its 
 grand aisles, crowded with sculpture and paintings and 
 liistoric tombs. At your convenience you can go back 
 to the speaker when he grows more eloquent than the 
 tombs or master-pieces of art. If he is not equal to 
 the situation, you can let him alone. 
 
 In fact, the service exactly resembles our political 
 meetings in the freedom and mobility of the audience. 
 The preacher holds his hearers by his abilities and his 
 eloquence and not by outside force. If he has nothing 
 to say, or cannot give his sacred message as it should be 
 given, he has no hearers, and no opportunity, therefore, 
 to discredit his high oiBce, or to make the Gospel dis- 
 tasteful through his own weakness or ignorance. It is 
 just to the discipline of this training that I ascribe the 
 general eloquence of the Roman clergy and the popular 
 impression made by their preaching. They have the 
 same incentive to speak well that the American poli- 
 tician has when addressing his fellow-citizens, or the 
 American lecturer, who must even do more, — attract 
 people to pay for the privilege of hearing him. 
 
 Often the scene during sermon-time in an Italian 
 church is a very picturesque one. Women sit nursing 
 their babes in comfortable cane chairs ; others are on 
 their knees in silent prayer ; little children are playing 
 quietly among the listening groups at the chancels of 
 adjoining altars ; squads of ecclesiastical students, in 
 bright scarlet or blue gowns, drop in on their way to or 
 from college to hear the noted orators, and remain as 
 long as their critical judgments are satisfied -j soldiers in 
 uniform hang on the outskirts, and men come and go 
 as if the sermon were a thing of life and interest and 
 not a dead body of words. In brief, the hearers listen 
 or the preacher has no hearers, and in either case there 
 is not the loss of a sermon. 
 
 The average American clergyman, accustomed to hold 
 his audience by some force outside of himself, will prob- 
 ably object to all this as irreverence, but I do not see 
 
ST. PETER'S, AND ITALIAN PREACHING. 345 
 
 that it is. I do not think it is more irreverent for chil- 
 dren to play in the house of God than to be tortured 
 there by unnatural confinement on high benches that 
 drive the blood out of the legs. I do not believe it is 
 more irreverent for poor women to nurse their children 
 in the house of God than to stay away because they 
 have no one to nurse them at home. And, finally, it is 
 not more irreverent to get up and leave in the middle 
 of a soporific sermon than to go to sleep. Moreover, 
 if this honest freedom develops a higher order of ser- 
 mons, it is the very highest kind of reverence. I 
 notice further, on the question of reverence, that when 
 the Roman priest is about to begin to preach he kneels 
 on the open platform for a few moments in silent 
 prayer, and the whole congregation kneels and prays 
 with him. 
 
 As a training-school I can think of nothing better 
 adapted to develop the oratorical power and real effi- 
 ciency of the preacher than this custom. It is a practi- 
 cal use of the law of the survival of the fittest. It is 
 exactly the training which our secular speakers un- 
 dergo, and those of them who are not speakers soon 
 ascertain it, while the conventional preacher never finds 
 it out. 
 
 It is customary for us to speak and think of the Ro- 
 man Catholic form of worship as rigid and " formal.'^ 
 It is, in fact, in its whole ritual and service, the most 
 flexible in the world, and it is this very power of self- 
 adjustment and adaptation that has given it its great 
 hold on all times, all countries, and all peoples. 
 
 KOME. 
 
346 ROME. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXyil. 
 
 THE PANTHEON. 
 
 The Oldest House of Contiis"uous HuMAisr "Worship iisr the 
 Civilized World — Graves of Raphael and Victor Em- 
 manuel — Old and New — Modern Paganism — Cleaning 
 UP THE Pantheon. 
 
 When you enter the Pantheon, and passing by the 
 cheap adornment of pictures and altars look through 
 the floating dome up to the sky " where God sitteth 
 eternal in the heavens/^ you are in the oldest place of 
 human worship in the civilized world which yet retains 
 its ancient form and structure. The very building, as 
 it stands to-day, is the one in which the vanished gods 
 of classic Rome were worshipped with sacrifice and in- 
 cense and prayer before Christ was born in Bethlehem, 
 and it is the only spared monument of the kind that 
 comes down from before the Christian era. 
 
 Robbed, plundered, defaced, now closed and voiceless 
 in the transition of faiths, now filled with soldiers, a 
 fortress fought around by rival Popes proclaiming 
 themselves the vicars of a God and new gospel of 
 peace, now given over to neglect and profane uses, the 
 debris of mediaeval night and ruin rising around its 
 base and portico and threatening to bury it with the 
 ages, it still stands as it stood before the angels sang 
 the hymn of the nativity in Judea, and men worship 
 God within its walls. In its endless associations and 
 its perfect beauty, which cannot be torn away from it, 
 it is the most eflPective and suggestive of all the temples 
 of Christendom to-day. In the old days when the fires 
 on its altar were kindled to Jupiter, its dead brick walls 
 of massive masonry were outlined with pure white 
 
THE PANTHEON. 347 
 
 marble, glittering in the sun and soft in the moonlight. 
 Popes and princes have carried this off to embellish 
 their palaces and enrich their favorites. Its wonderful 
 dome blazed within and without with brass and bronze. 
 Emperor Constantine came to Rome between 600 and 
 700 A.D., to worship at the shrines and adore the relics 
 which then had found a home in the Pantheon, and 
 balanced his devotion by stripping and carrying off 
 shiploads of its metal wealth. The plunder was com- 
 ])leted by Pope Urban VIII., who took what was left 
 to build a gaudy baldachino for a chnrch and cast can- 
 nons for the castle of San Angeh), — four hundred and 
 fifty thousand pounds. Benedict XIV. committed the 
 latest spoliation, in taking away all the precious marbles 
 that lined the vast attic. 
 
 Nevertheless, so grand is the conception of this build- 
 ing, and so perfect its proportions, that you do not see 
 or feel the loss of these incidents. The temple stands 
 there yet as it came from the brain of its unknown 
 architect. You do not see the mutilation and scars of 
 the warring centuries, just as you do not see the tawdry 
 ornaments and wretched tin crowns and hearts and gew- 
 gaws witli which modern Italian devotion has desecrated 
 its altars and defaced its walls. The temple crushes 
 out its ignorant priests to-day, as it has defied time 
 itself in the past, and stands sublime in the grandeur 
 of its simplicity. 
 
 This most effective of all buildings for worship is, 
 in its interior, a simple dome, supported by a plain, 
 round wall ; no corridors, no naves, no transepts, — 
 nothing to break the force and simplicity of idea. 
 There is but one great door, whose massive bronze folds 
 close in with the line of the wall and seem part of it. 
 There are no windows, but the light streams in from a 
 great circular opening in the centre of the dome, twenty- 
 eight feet in diameter, never closed, flooding every 
 recess and every portion witli an equal ray. 
 
 There is something wonderfully effective in this idea, 
 
348 ROME. 
 
 which puts the temple, as it were, in direct coramuuica- 
 tion with the skies of heaven, and makes it already the 
 threshold and vestibule of the other world. It im- 
 presses one at once as the natural conception of a place 
 of worship. This world, wdth all its little noise and 
 struggles, is utterly shut out and closed from you. 
 You look up and see the clouds with the birds in them 
 sail by. The rains of heaven fall on the porphyry pave- 
 ment at your feet and lie there. They are of God and 
 come into His house. Or the warm sunshine streams 
 in and rests on some chosen altar, — a golden pathway 
 on which the angels ascend and descend. In the night 
 the moon and the stars look in and watch with men the 
 still shrines and voiceless tombs. 
 
 It is a temple where God is in communion with man 
 and speaks without a liturgy or formulated ceremony. 
 
 There is such a unity of effect, with nothing to dis- 
 tract or divide attention, it is so light and cheerful 
 and calm and loving, that you feel you are in the house 
 of the living God and loving Father, and not the God 
 of death and the grave, — the feeling which steals over 
 one in the gloomy shadows of the Gothic cathedral. 
 
 It is a humiliating reflection which bears down on me 
 every time I enter the impressive portal of this wonder- 
 ful temple that what is grand here, what is elevating, 
 what is beautiful, is pagan ; what is false, what is de- 
 grading, what is ignorant, is of our time and age. The 
 religion which is in the building was put in by its 
 classic builders ; the superstition and vulgarity we are 
 responsible for. 
 
 I have attempted to outline the simple grandeur and 
 majesty of this temple as it sprung into life, — the best 
 development of ancient Roman art and civilization. 
 Let us see how the priest of to-day has dealt with the 
 finest legacy of the old faith. 
 
 We will pass by the plunder of columns and marble 
 and bronze for private uses, — the deliberate mutilation, 
 the wholesale military profanation of the church by 
 
THE PANTHEON. 349 
 
 bishops. They may be charged to the civilization of 
 the time, although a Church that claims the temporal 
 rule of the world should be held responsible for its 
 civilization. 
 
 Let us inspect the nineteenth-century contributions to 
 this time-honored temple. As you enter, the first un- 
 pleasant sight which is apt to catch the eye is a dirty 
 mass of white and black drapery, fastened up to some 
 ])illars just to the right of the main altar. They are 
 the muslin banners and faded, dusty wreaths of some 
 civil and political societies, and an object of much in- 
 terest to the native Italians who throng the temple. 
 An old sergeant or veteran in a half-civil, half-military 
 uniform and not very neat or soldierly in appearance or 
 carriage, keeps a kind of slouching guard over the spot. 
 This gloomy and rather shabby pile of crape, muslin, 
 and mechanical-looking immortelles, so common in 
 Latin-Europe, is the grave of Victor Emmanuel. It is 
 a great grave in a great spot, but we would make it far 
 more impressive in one of our churches. 
 
 Around the niches are paintings of various scenes 
 and quality. The old masters are not here. A ghastly 
 life-size representation of the crucifixion in some kind 
 of dark-red material, with a crown of thorns and a real 
 white cloth around the loins, adorns one panel. A 
 number of the altars have cheap tin votive offerings 
 nailed up around them. Others have small common 
 engravings or prints framed and hung up or placed 
 near them. 
 
 The altar which attracts most attention, however, 
 both from priest and people, and before which one 
 nearly always finds some persons in prayer, is that of a 
 popular Madonna, — the third one from the left of the 
 main or high altar. It is a singular fact that certain 
 Madonnas here, sometimes oil-paintings, two or three of 
 whom have spoken, and sometimes marble statues, be- 
 come popular favorites and the subjects of great adora- 
 tion, to the entire exclusion of their neighbors. There 
 
 30 
 
350 ROME, 
 
 are several other Madonnas in the Pantheon, but I never 
 saw prayers said to them, whereas I have several times 
 heard mass being said in front of this one, and never 
 saw her without some one kneelino; before her. 
 
 This statue is the altar-piece of an altar under which 
 Raphael is buried, and was made by a friend and pupil 
 for the tomb of his master. It is a much finer image, 
 therefore, as a work of art than many that are the 
 subjects of popular adoration. Nevertheless, this fine 
 sculpture has a metal crown on its head, a coral neck- 
 lace on its neck, and a tin heart tied on its arm. The 
 marble babe in the arms of the Madonna has also a ffilt 
 crown and a petticoat of embroidered gray cloth around 
 its stone legs. A rude arch of tin shapes — votive offer- 
 ings sold in the shops for a penny or two — framed the 
 entire altar. Hung up on the side of the niche, over 
 the grave of Raphael, were two or three most wretched 
 daubs of paintings, representing some cures in a hospi- 
 tal-ward effected by the miraculous intervention of the 
 Virgin, and apparently painted by the patients. After 
 saying their prayers in front of this image, the devout 
 worshippers generally kiss its feet. A rude framed 
 print of the image was placed at its base, and I have 
 seen peasant women take that down too and kiss it and 
 teach their children to do the same. 
 
 Such is the altar which is the centre of the nineteenth- 
 century worship in the Pantheon. 
 
 I must add an incident illustrative of the curious con- 
 dition of mind of this people, by reason of which no 
 incongruity in the house of God seems to offend their 
 taste or feeling, provided that it is not intended as de- 
 liberate irreverence. One day while I was in the Pan- 
 theon, mass was being said at this altar of the Madonna, 
 only a half-dozen of worshippers assisting. Inside of 
 the chancel of the main altar, only a few yards off and 
 very near its base, stood an open flask of native wine, 
 half drank. It belonged to some workmen who were 
 cleaning the rear of the altar, and the rasping sound of 
 
THE PANTHEON. 351 
 
 whose scraping and sanding mingled with the intoning 
 of the priests at the adjoining shrine, and was quite as 
 audible through the church. While the whole thing 
 was grating and offensive to us, it was evidently not 
 meant as irrev^erence, and did not annoy either the wor- 
 shippers or the officiating priests. 
 
 It is to be said, too, for the credit of the clergy in 
 immediate charge of the church of the Pantheon, and 
 in their behalf, that the decoration of the altars and 
 walls is in better taste and less offensive than that of a 
 large number of the churches of Rome. The altar-fur- 
 nishing is mainly limited to candles of plain style. 
 There are no wax figures, no glass cases, and no skulls 
 or bones or other horrors. An instinct of reverence, 
 perhaps, has saved it from much of the trumpery and 
 tinsel, and gewgaws and frippery images, and bad mil- 
 linery which disfigure many other churches here and 
 seem to be the fitting devotional aids to the ignorant and 
 superstitious faith of the place. 
 
 Of old the Pantheon stood in an elegant and spacious 
 quarter of the city, and was raised on a slight elevation, 
 which gave its symmetrical form proper effect. To-day 
 it is found in the distant and most squalid portion of 
 Rome — the Ghetto, from which it is not far off, ex- 
 cepted — and below the level of the ground. The flight 
 of steps by which it was originally approached is buried 
 absolutely, and you step down from the wretched 
 modern piazza on to the floor of the ancient portico, the 
 finest of its kind in the world. It is the centre of a 
 network of narrow and confusing Roman streets, many 
 of them not the width of our alleys, lined continuously 
 with high stone buildings, densely packed with people, 
 full of foul smells and offensive dirt of all kinds. Old 
 houses lean up against a portion of the walls and are 
 built into it, and beggars camp all day around and 
 among its Corinthian columns. During the Middle 
 Ages these grand columns had booths and stalls built 
 into them, and vegetables and cheap meats were sold 
 
352 ROME. 
 
 literally in the gates. How has the glory of the old 
 temple departed ! 
 
 The proportions of the main lines of this building 
 are as wonderful in their simplicity as the building is 
 itself in its effect. The interior, remember, is a pure 
 rotunda, simply covered with a dome. 
 
 Diameter of rotunda 142 feet. 
 
 From floor to top of dome 143 " 
 
 Height of wall of rotunda Ilh " 
 
 Height of dome 7l} " 
 
 or just one-half of the whole elevation. The diameter 
 is given from inside measurements. The walls of the 
 Pantheon are said to be 20 feet wide. The great dome 
 of St. Peter's is 139 feet in diameter at its base, 3 feet 
 less than the Pantheon, but it is vastly higher, the dis- 
 tance from the top of the cross on the dome to the floor 
 of the church being 448 feet. It was Michael Angelo's 
 boast, in building St. Peter's, that he would swing the 
 Pantheon in the air, and he has done it. 
 
 But the Pantheon is a grander church than St. Peter's 
 to-day. It is a wonder, while St. Peter's is an eccle- 
 siastical labyrinth, and, greater than all, it is the place 
 in which God has been continuously worshipped for 
 nineteen hundred years. 
 
 EOME. 
 
PRISON OF ST. PAUL AND ST. PETER. 353 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 PRISON OF ST. PAUL AND ST. PETER. 
 
 Twenty-five Centuries of Dissolving Kingdoms and 
 Faiths on One Spot — The Confusion of Ruin — St. Paul 
 AND St. Peter in the Political Prison of Rome — The 
 Mamertine Dungeons — The Church of the Ara Cceli — 
 The Altar of the Capitol. 
 
 Wandering through an obscure portion of the city 
 to-day, on my way for an afternoon dreaai in tlie Colos- 
 seum, I came suddenly upon a rude out-house of some 
 kind, leanino; ai^ainst and built into a tenement house 
 for modern Romans of tlie poorer sort, over the grated 
 doorway of which was inscribed in still clear, legible 
 letters the Latin legend, "Blessed are the dead who die 
 in the Lord.'^ It was the entrance probably to the 
 vault of some ruined and forgotten Christian church 
 which, itself, had likely been built over and out of 
 some destroyed temple of old, for it stood near and in 
 sight of tlie Forum. To-day the cheerful and airy tem- 
 ple of classic faith, beautiful in symmetry, proportion, 
 and graceful Corinthian columns, — the gloomy church 
 of mediaeval religion, — heavy, dark, and dismal, with 
 ghastly pictures and the rude votive offerings of super- 
 stition, alike are gone, and all that remains of either 
 serves the mean use of eking out the wretched dwelling 
 of an Italian beggar. 
 
 It is a picture of all Rome, and serves well as the 
 vignette of a letter which shall attempt to give some 
 faint outline of a group of ruins of mingled religious 
 and classic interest, which in this city of ruins fitly 
 illustrates the way in which the remains of different 
 ao-GS are merg^ed into and mixed with each other. 
 
 X 30* 
 
354 ROME. 
 
 It is the embarrassing and confusing feature of the 
 ruins of Rome that they lie massed and piled and con- 
 torted one on another, and in and with each other. 
 They are the survivals of chance and accident in the 
 wreck of centuries, and hold now neither topographical 
 nor historical relation to each other. You cannot see 
 what you want nor anything when you want, but must 
 take them as they come, — -jumbled and piled and mixed, 
 — Pelasgic, Etruscan, Roman, and mediseval, in one 
 disastrous burial blent. There is no help for it now. 
 Imperial Rome, in the splendor and solidity of her 
 works, crushed out all that had gone before, forcing 
 into disappearance even the massive Etruscan masonry. 
 In later times degenerate emperors stole from their 
 greater predecessors, taking their statues and arches 
 and labelling them with their own disgraced names, 
 changing the sculpture, and altering the inscriptions to 
 suit. At times of civil war, too, one party, when suc- 
 cessful, razed to the ground all traces of the trophies 
 and power of the other. 
 
 But the storm of destruction came in with the estab- 
 lishment of the Christian religion. As this took a 
 political form, it became, of course, evidence of both 
 patriotic and religious fervor to destroy the temples 
 and glories of the old faith, and it is a wonder that as 
 much survives as does. Temples were everywhere con- 
 verted into churches, and statues of the classic deities 
 into those of the popes, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. 
 
 The wanton and inexcusable destruction took place, 
 however, in the Middle Ages, when popes and cardi- 
 nals built great palaces out of the temples and public 
 buildings of antiquity, — when the walls of the Colosseum 
 itself were torn down to get the iron braces out of them, 
 — -and when tombs and palaces and temples were 
 robbed of fine statues by thousands, that they might be 
 burned down for lime. To the intelligent mediaeval 
 mind this was the most satisfactory way of obtaining 
 a supply of iron and lime. Two popes at different 
 
PBISON OF ST. PAUL AND ST. PETER. 355 
 
 times — seized no doubt with an attack of development 
 — erected manufactories for woollen goods and saltpetre 
 in the Colosseum and out of its plundered walls, and the 
 history of all Kome is full of similar atrocities of van- 
 dalism. 
 
 To-day the most interesting ruins of Rome lie in the 
 dirtiest quarter of the town, and are mixed up inextri- 
 cably with the commonest kind of dwellings and small 
 shops, stables and mean out-houses. The same piece 
 of masonry may be common, or what in modern law 
 we call "a party wall,^^ to a half-excavated Roman 
 temple and a squalid hovel of to-day, reeking with 
 filthy odors, fleas, and young beggars. Ruins, churches, 
 and hovels, and sometimes inhabited palaces, lie thus 
 up against each other, one bit of wall or foundation 
 representing the different uses of successive centuries 
 far apart. Even the streets have been pushed aside by 
 the fortunes of ages, and run sometimes over, sometimes 
 under, sometimes clambering around, a pile of pictur- 
 esque and traditional brick and marble. AYhen you 
 add to this the fact that human habitation for thou- 
 sands of years has gradually raised the level of the 
 surface of the earth from thirty to a hundred feet, — 
 that all the Forum, for instance, once the centre of mu- 
 nicipal life, is now reached only by excavation, and 
 that you look down steep banks into the halls where 
 Roman senators once walked and Roman orators ha- 
 rangued the populace, — you have some idea of how 
 utter the ruin is, and how fragmentary and piecemeal 
 are even the best survivals. 
 
 Following up the rude grate with its scriptural le- 
 gend, now diverted to such thoroughly unconsecrated 
 uses, I found that the house to which it served as an 
 attachment gradually merged, after about a hundred 
 feet of " row" tenement buildings on no particular line, 
 but all closely joined together by a kind of growth 
 rather than construction, into the well-known land- 
 mark, the prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, where they 
 
356 ROME. 
 
 are said to have suffered confinement for nine months. 
 The entrance to the prison, which was a common Roman 
 house-front, is on the ground, and over the prison-door 
 is now a rude marble carving representing St. Peter with 
 his keys and St. Paul with a sword, looking out of an 
 iron grate, — something like the common bars which 
 form the windows of an ordinary Pennsylvania county- 
 
 jail. ^ 
 
 This humble building, invested with such sacred 
 interest, and which is the entrance into one of the 
 ugliest dunojeons of history, horrible in the merciless 
 ignorance of its construction, and frightful with a 
 record of weary ages of atrocious and inhuman cruel- 
 ties, has been converted, with some of the interior cells, 
 into a chapel or oratory — a low-ceilinged room known 
 as the church of San Pietro in Carcere. There is built 
 over it and into the hillside another church — Saint 
 Joseph, of the carpenters — which answers for the guild 
 of that trade something of the purposes of the ancient 
 " Carpenters' Hall,'' of Philadelphia. As the whole face 
 of the hill is apparently one building, and the entrance 
 to the prison is almost under ground, visitors frequently 
 enter Saint Joseph's Church, supposing they are in San 
 Pietro in Carcere. These ugly dungeons, known as 
 the Mamertine prisons, although chiefly visited now 
 for their religious traditions, have a historic interest 
 reaching back nearly six hundred years before the time 
 of Saints Peter and Paul. They — or at least the first 
 cells — were built over five hundred years before Christ, 
 in the kingly period, and the masonry is said to be the 
 best specimen of Etruscan work of the magnitude 
 extant. Here the Catiline conspirators were executed — 
 Cicero coming out of the prison and announcing it in 
 person to the people on the Forum, which is just ad- 
 jacent. Here, for a thousand years, the savage pun- 
 ishments of Pepublican and Imperial Rome were vis- 
 ited on State prisoners, and the list of victims is as 
 distinguished as it is sad. 
 
PRISON OF ST PAUL AND ST. PETER. 357 
 
 It is the tradition, and it seems to be a reasonable 
 one, that Saint Peter and Saint Paul were both confined 
 here awaiting death, and that from these gloomy rooms 
 were written the Second Epistle of Saint Peter: ^^ Shortly 
 I must put off this my tabernacle ;'^ and also the Second 
 Epistle of Saint Paul to Timothy: " The time of my 
 depai'ture is at hand.'^ Saint Peter and Saint Paul 
 were both distinguished leaders of a new faith, whose 
 followers were bound together by especial ties. Mar- 
 tyrdom was the highest honor of the church, and from 
 the very first the memory and the relics of the martyrs 
 were preserved with jealous fervor and handed down 
 with pious care — the heirlooms of the faith. Moreover, 
 during the early centuries, the management of the church 
 was more honest than in later times. I had rather 
 credit a tradition of the second century than a miracle 
 of the fifteenth. It is in every way reasonable, I think, 
 to accept this tradition, and to think and believe that 
 this was the very spot of the sufferings of the great 
 apostles. And knowing this, the situation becomes 
 intensely dramatic, for when the expected martyrs 
 entered this gloomy prison, or as they came out of it 
 for trial or for death, they faced, and saw grouped 
 around them, within a small centre, the Forum, the cit- 
 adel of the Capitol, the imperial palace of justice, the 
 great temple of Jupiter, arches, corridors of Corinthian 
 columns, the temples of a galaxy of deities — all the 
 splendor, glories, and power of Rome blazing around 
 them, or frowning on the imperial hill close above them. 
 
 Even to-day, from this little point of Christian inter- 
 est, standing in front of an obscure chapel as plain and 
 modest and unecclesiastical-looking as a prairie Meth- 
 odist meeting-house, the traveller can see and study the 
 historic citadel of the Capitol, bristling with the legends 
 of centuries, the great Forum, the famous palace of 
 the Csesars, the Colosseum, the arches of Constantine, 
 Septimus Severus, and that of Titus, with the ark and 
 the golden candle-sticks, — graven trophies commemo- 
 
358. ROME. 
 
 rating the capture of Jerusalem, — the temple of the sun, 
 the old Roman pavement of the via triumphalis that rang 
 so often to the returning tread of victorious armies, wind- 
 ing now like a snake in the sun by the ruined columns 
 that tell of a dead faith and the open porches of the 
 sleepy churches of the new, and ruins, ruins, ruins re- 
 ceding through the centuries — from mediaeval to classic 
 times, from classic to Etruscan, from Etruscan to pre- 
 historic, — the shadowless morning of the world. 
 
 Retracing our steps to the old grated out-house which 
 served as a point cVappui for our explorations, it is found 
 to be at the threshold of a dirty flight of small pebbled 
 stairs, which seems to lose itself shortly in a bank of 
 earth and ruined brickwork. Instead of being lost, 
 however, the staircase only disappears around the base 
 of a hill to appear on the other side with marble and 
 sandstone steps, and turns out to be a historic flight. 
 Up these steps, centuries before the birth of Christ, was 
 fought many a stout battle for the possession of the 
 Capitol. On this hillside had cackled the sacred geese 
 of Juno, and at the head of this flight had stood the 
 bold soldier Manlius when he defended the citadel. 
 Here for ages had trodden senators and generals and 
 high priests. To-day they were hung, not with tri- 
 umphal banners, but with dirty washing suspended by 
 strings from dilapidated windows and roofs. Unclean 
 children, goats, and dogs played together in the sand and 
 pebbles. Slovenly women sat or idly lounged at the 
 doors of the hovels which clambered up the hillside 
 line of the once imperial flight. 
 
 Pushing up these steps you come on an entrance to 
 the piazza of the modern Capitol, flanked on three sides 
 with historic and handsome marble palaces, and filled 
 with statuary familiar, and some of it dear, to the art 
 world. Even the roofs around the entire square are 
 lined with ranks of colossal statues of the heroes and 
 great men of Rome, standing like sentinels forever. 
 
PRISON OF ST. PAUL AND ST. PETER. 359 
 
 Resisting the temptation to loiter here, but going still 
 further on and up the picturesque stairs, worn half into 
 ruin by the use of ages, I came by a sharp turn on a 
 half-hidden side entrance to one of the most strikino; 
 and historically interesting of the churches of Rome, 
 the Ara CoelL It was a fete day, and as I pushed aside 
 the heavy leathern curtain which masked the entrance 
 a stifling cloud of incense swept out into the air with 
 the prayers and music. Endless wax lights from altars 
 in every direction half illuminated the vast building, 
 throwing moving shadows here, reflecting back there 
 with a half lurid glare from the scarlet-draped columns. 
 More like an English cathedral than a Roman church, 
 this building was crowded with the tombs and busts and 
 names of the great dead, — nobles, princes, cardinals, 
 popes. Every foot of the floor of this church was 
 paved with tablets, effigies, and strangely etched stones 
 covering graves. These etched })ictures were mostly 
 w^orn to barely traceable lines, the inscriptions almost 
 obliterated, and the effigies had generally their noses, 
 faces, and all salient limbs worn bare and flat by the 
 feet of the worshipping multitudes who had trodden 
 there for hundreds of years. 
 
 So crowded with religious associations and incident 
 is this church that the altar chapels succeed each other, 
 without interval, all around the three walls, front and 
 sides, and two are erected around the pillars of the nave. 
 Many of the altars are the burial-places of noble fami- 
 lies, their niches lined with tablets and sculptured fig- 
 ures. And well might religious tradition centre and 
 cluster here, for this Christian church stands on the 
 ancient site of the great temple of Jupiter Capitoliuus 
 — the national shrine of the old Roman State. It was 
 the great j)agan temple which crowned the Capitoline 
 liill — the heart of the power and glory of Rome. 
 Founded six hundred years before Christ, it was several 
 times destroyed and rebuilt as a pagan temple, and, 
 somewhere about six hundred years after Christ, was 
 
360 ROME. 
 
 finally transmuted into a Christian church — the church 
 covering the site of the temple of Jupiter, Avhich was 
 comparatively small, as were all the tem])les, and also, 
 as some authorities say, of the great basilica, or court 
 of justice of the capital, and built out of their ruins. 
 To-day the twenty-two great pillars which form the 
 aisles are of different sizes, shapes, materials, and archi- 
 tecture, showing that they were taken from temple or 
 palace just as they could be had. This great basilica 
 on the Capitol hill — the basilica of the imperial palace 
 — was the judgment hall where St. Paul stood his trial, 
 " an ambassador in bonds," where he was condemned to 
 die, and fro«iii whence he went out " ready to be offered." 
 It was down the ruined steps we have ascended that he 
 descended into the dungeon at the bottom of the hill, 
 which was the vestibule to martyrdom. The Christian 
 traditions and interest of the spot date, therefore, far 
 back of its formal consecration to Christian worship. 
 
 This church of the Ara Cwli, dim and dingy in the 
 fast-fading splendor of centuries, has been the site of 
 human worship for twenty-five hundred years of re- 
 corded history. Its history lias been the history of 
 religious faith and progress in Rome all that time. 
 The stones in its walls have seen sacrifices smoking and 
 heard prayers ascend to Jupiter for victory. In sight 
 of it in the long centuries a great arch was erected to Isis, 
 and crumbled away. Near by it a temple arose to the 
 sun, and in the course of years was buried under a new 
 city. Almost on its threshold the imperial decrees of 
 Constantine, establishing the civil rights of Christianity, 
 must have been published. To-day it is the home and 
 sacred shrine of the miraculous image of the Bambino, 
 which devout Romans gather in multitudes to adore. 
 
 The door by which I entered the Ara Coell was a side 
 entrance. From the front there sweeps down another 
 immense flight of steps, each step a venerable base of 
 worn gray stone. When the Ara Coeli was tlie temple 
 of Jupiter it was up this way that Julius Csesar climbed 
 
PRISON OF ST. PAUL AND ST. PETER. 3gl 
 
 Oil his knees to return thanks at the great altar, smok- 
 ing with grateful sacrifices, for his Gallic victories. So 
 even the devotion of the Scala Santa has a pagan pre- 
 cedent. 
 
 It was in this church — the very heart of the history 
 of Rome, listening to the lazy chanting of vespers — that 
 Gibbon, as he himself tells us, conceived the idea of 
 writing the "Decline and Fall." 
 
 The church has a further world-wide interest as 
 being, with the convent attached, the ecclesiastical head- 
 quarters of the Order of Franciscans, the barefooted 
 friars, followers of St. Francis of Assisium. The gen- 
 eral of the order resides in this convent, and the great 
 sunny steps leading into the front entrance to the church 
 are generally covered over with unwashed, brown- 
 gowned friars, with their bare heads and rope girdles, 
 and still dirtier beggars picking up pennies from tour- 
 ists and fleas from each other. In Italy this is called 
 poetic and picturesque ; in our land it would simply be 
 called filthy, and the crowd driven off by a policeman. 
 
 In virtue of the civic as well as religious interest of 
 this site and its traditions the church of the A7'a Coeli 
 is the municipal church of Rome, and over its doors, 
 along with an image of the Virgin Mary, is blazoned 
 the familiar monogram S. P. Q. R. It is still the 
 altar — be the cultus Christian or pagan — of the God of 
 the Capitol. 
 
 EOME, 
 
 31 
 
362 ROME. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 THE PALACE OF THE INQUISITION. 
 
 The Gloomy Palace of the Holy Office — A Deaf Stone 
 Grave in the Heart of a Moving City — An Inhuman 
 Construction — The Inquisition as it Exists To-day— 
 A Prisoner of the Inquisition of the Nineteenth 
 Century. 
 
 Just behind that noble grove of pillars which forms 
 the wonderful portico of St. Peter's and to the right as 
 you leave the church, but masked by some common, 
 irregular structures, there arises a gloomy and forbid- 
 ding pile of massive masonry known to Rome as the 
 '^ Palace of the Holy Office." This sacred or sacrile- 
 gious euphemism conceals a celebrated building which 
 is looked for with much interest by American visitors, 
 and regarded with singular emotion and profound 
 thankfulness that it too now belongs to Rome of the 
 past — the Rome of Caligula and Nero and the Borgias. 
 For reasons readily understood it does not figure very 
 conspicuously in the guide-books. 
 
 This . accursed building, in which they killed the 
 body, and sometimes the soul, is an immense structure 
 of solid stone- work, nearly four hundred feet in front. 
 It is almost rectangular in shape, the front being the 
 long side, and is a little over fifty feet in height. The 
 outer walls are many feet in thickness, and in places 
 buttressed. There are almost no windows in the entire 
 building. The immense wall of the north end is one 
 unrelieved blank, unbroken by an opening of any kind. 
 The entire north wing has but three small windows, 
 all of them thirty-six feet above the ground, equal to 
 the fourth story of an average Philadelphia house. In 
 
THE PALACE OF THE INQUISITION. 363 
 
 the main building there are a few windows, grated with 
 immense iron bars. In the south wing there are no 
 windows excepting at the height of the three in the 
 northern w^ing, although there are imitation windows 
 on a lower floor, so well constructed and painted as to 
 deceive one at first into the belief that they were real. 
 Built into the back is the rear of a large church, which 
 effectually closes up that side. 
 
 For all ingress or exit to this immense and terrible 
 building there is but one visible door, and it gave me 
 a sensation of pleasure to see standing on guard before 
 it, with bayonet fixed, a bright-eyed, red-cheeked 
 young soldier of the army of Italy. The people have 
 confiscated this palace of atrocities, and it is now used 
 as a military station and barracks. 
 
 In the Revolution of 1848 the gates of this merci- 
 less structure, at once judgment-hall and prison, were 
 opened and the prisoners set free. I marvel greatly 
 that it was not then razed to the ground, for it was a 
 more infamous building than the Bastile, and more 
 justly the object of wrath and vengeance, inasmuch as 
 it had been blasphemously conducted in the name of 
 God. In 1849 the Inquisition, as an institution, was 
 formally abolished by the Roman Assembly during its 
 brief tenure of power, but was re-established by Pius 
 IX. the same year when he regained his authority. 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, when he was made king, again 
 cleared out the building, and it may be a matter of 
 some interest to know that military possession was 
 taken of it by the present king, then a lieutenant-gen- 
 eral in his father's army. The Inquisition still sur- 
 vives, however, as an institution and court of the 
 Roman Church under Pope Leo XIII. The organiza- 
 tion is that established in the sixteentli century, — a body 
 of twelve cardinals with the Pope officially at its head, 
 — and its secret sessions are now held in the Vatican. 
 Its legal title is Sacra Congregatio Romance et Univer- 
 salis Inquisitionis, — The Holy Congregation for the 
 
364 ROME. 
 
 Inquisition of Rome and the whole Church. Its power, 
 liowever, is greatly limited and confined by the civil 
 law, and it dares no more arrest a Roman citizen. It 
 has full power, however, I believe, over the bishops and 
 priests of the Roman Catholic Church, and probably 
 over the entire population of the Vatican enclosure — 
 that curious little ecclesiastical imperium in a civil 
 imperio — which is too much. I suppose an American 
 ])riest or bishop could be imprisoned here if he chose to 
 come over and put his head in the tiger^s mouth. 
 
 While the lowering Palace of the Holy Office, with 
 its deaf stone ears and voiceless walls, is the representa- 
 tive monument of the Inquisition, designed and specially 
 built for its dreadful uses, it has not been the scene of 
 some of its historic crimes most familiarly known to 
 the civilized world. Galileo did not make within its 
 walls his famous recantation of the movement of the 
 earth. That shameful triumph of brutal ignorance 
 took place in the convent of the Church of Santa Maria 
 Sopra Minerva, long used as the tribunal and dungeon 
 of the Inquisition. Bruno, for teaching the heresy of 
 the Copernican system, was not burnt in its court, but 
 in the Campo de Fiori, a kind of Roman Smithfield, 
 across the river, where the barbarous autos-da-fe of 
 that time were customarily held. It is now a dirty 
 market-place, wide and open, filled with foul smells 
 and petty traffic. Savanarola was burnt at Floreiice. 
 
 But although this palace, only erected about 1600, 
 has been spared some of the dramatic horrors of the 
 history of the Inquisition, it is the building which 
 must ever be associated in the public mind with this 
 institution and bear its odium,. — an odium that will 
 grow stronger and deeper as men grow gentler and 
 juster and more Christian. It was the official head- 
 quarters of the Inquisition, the seat of the unjust judge, 
 the chamber of torture and of death, — built deliberately 
 and in cold blood for the worst purposes of the insti- 
 tution, when it was at the height of its power and 
 
THE PALACE OF THE INQUISITION. 355 
 
 cruelty. I do not propose in this place to enter into 
 any argument as to the nature or character of the secret 
 trials of the Inquisition. I am only describing the 
 character and appearance of the building prepared for 
 its operations, — a building constructed so that human 
 eye cannot see nor ear hear what is going on within it, 
 and which is stronger than a castle. In this building 
 the most appalling tortures, the most atrocious murders 
 might be carried on within twenty feet of a passer-by 
 on the street of a crowded city. It is a building whose 
 plan and construction is unholy — a building literally 
 conceived in sin and born in iniquity, and which has 
 no right to exist. 
 
 So much for the outside and the story which it tells. 
 I will let Mr. A. J. C Hare, a writer whose exhaust- 
 ive studies on Rome are known the world over, tell in 
 a few brief lines the story of the inside : 
 
 '^ In the interior of the building is a lofty hall with 
 gloomy frescos of Dominican saints, and many terri- 
 ble dungeons and cells, in which the visitor is unable 
 to stand upright, having their vaulted ceilings lined 
 with reeds to deaden sound. When the people rushed 
 into the Inquisition at the Revolution, a number of 
 human bones were found in these vaults, which so 
 excited the popular fury that an attack on the Domin- 
 ican Convent at the Minerva was anticipated." 
 
 While these things add to the dramatic horrors of 
 the place, they do not essentially increase its wrong. 
 To the AnQ;:lo-Saxon mind secret trial is a wrono- which 
 cannot be very well made worse. It is unfair ; it is a 
 harm to the State as well as to the prisoner. It is in 
 itself a violation of law and a prostitution of justice, 
 and a fit ground for violent revolution. And it is just 
 because this belief is grounded in us we have no bas- 
 tiles and no inquisitions. And I think the same good 
 day is coming for the Romans. It is customary to 
 charge the outrages, moral and ])hysical, of the Inqui- 
 sition on the alleo^ed crueltv of the Italian nature.. As 
 
 31* 
 
366 ROME. 
 
 the Italian people have, hovA^ever, within thirty years 
 three times driven out the institution, it can hardly 
 with fairness be laid to their doors. 
 
 It is said also in its defence that its terrible and in- 
 human punishments were medieeval, and to be charged 
 to the spirit of the age, and that they could not be re- 
 peated now under any circumstances. This is simply 
 not the case. The claws of the ecclesiastical tiger of 
 Rome are cut and his fangs muzzled, but claws and 
 teeth are both there yet. I suppose it perhaps would 
 not do to burn an offender in 1880 in the piazza of 
 St. Peter's for not thinking as you wanted him to, but 
 I have seen a man, yet comparatively young, who, a 
 few years ago, when Pope Pius IX. — who was claimed 
 to have been a gentle ruler — was in power, was arrested 
 without warning, hearing, or being allowed bail, con- 
 fined in the Inquisition, tried secretly, and sentenced 
 to a punishment of diabolic ingenuity and cruelty. He 
 was chained to the bottom of a flat-boat in the river 
 without a cover day or night, exposed to the glare of 
 the sun and the deadly damps of the night air. When 
 you understand that the Italian never walks in the sun 
 for fear of it, but seeks even the morning shade of the 
 street, never sleeps with an open window for dread of 
 the malarial air from the Campagna, you see the 
 fiendish intent of this punishment. And most of the 
 squad in this boat did die, as they were meant to, — 
 burned to death by the sun instead of the fagot, by 
 slow torture instead of quick torture. 
 
 The dismantled palace of the Inquisition is one of 
 the features of the Rome that has gone. It is one of the 
 few monuments that the world would not willingly 
 see restored. It has passed into the dust of history 
 only within living memory, but its sinister walls are 
 already as admonitory a theatre for republican musing 
 as the debris of the Forum or the vanished altars of 
 the Pantheon. 
 
 EOME. 
 
CONSTANTINE'S BATTLE-FIELD. 3^7 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 CONSTANTINE^S BATTLE-FIELD. 
 
 In Hoc Signo — The Liliputian Face of the Imperial 
 City — The Forum Komanum — Ruins, Ruins, Ruins — The 
 Marble People — On the Yia Trtomphale — The Red 
 Cross in the Sky. 
 
 This morning, while out in the saddle for exercise, I 
 rode over the battle-field which, sixteen hundred years 
 ago, decided the fate of Rome and the course of the 
 worhFs history — that decisive field overAvhich hung in 
 the sky the great red cross, and in hoc signo led Con- 
 stantine into imperial power and made Christianity the 
 religion of the State. To-day a body of Bersaglieri — 
 Italian zouaves — were being exercised in skirmish drill 
 on its skirts, peacefully playing at arms wliere the for- 
 tunes of the world had been staked and won. It is so 
 everywhere here — the tamer uses of the present stand 
 out in sharp contrast with the heroic memories of the 
 past, which seem to reprove and shame them. This 
 great battle was fought in the peaceful fields but a few 
 miles from the walls, and its nearness to the city serves 
 as a measure of difference in strategic movements brought 
 about by the use of firearms and long-range weajions. 
 To-day this field — the centre of the contest in olden 
 times — would be but the outer line of the city defences. 
 Crossing the Tiber on my way into Rome, I passed in by 
 the only bridge across the north of the town — the mod- 
 est little Ponte Molle flowing over the very spot where 
 Constantine threw into the river the dead body of his 
 defeated rival, Maxentius. It was in this battle and at 
 this crossing was lost the seven-branched golden candle- 
 stick brought from the temple of Jerusalem by Titus. 
 
368 J^OME. 
 
 It was at this little bridge, too, that the returning envoys 
 of the Allobrogi were arrested and the guilty letters 
 of the Catiline conspirators found on them — the letters 
 that cost Catiline his head and brought triumph and 
 political success and honors to Cicero. Attempting to 
 cross this bridge, too. General Oudinot, a few years ago, 
 met with a severe repulse, and the yellow waters were 
 crimsoned with French blood. It is thus that every 
 inch of ground here has its successive strata of historic 
 associations, and one cannot help feeling, even on a 
 pleasure party or when employed in the pettiest pur- 
 poses of every-day life, that he is walking among the 
 tombs and monuments of the great. Not a spot here 
 but has been the scene of heroic struggle and achieve- 
 ment and sacrifice. 
 
 Perhaps it is this very greatness of its memories, 
 stretching back through time in endless vistas, which 
 so dwarfs the impressions of modern Rome and makes 
 everything look and feel so small and little. You look 
 for a Roman senator — you see a dirty friar. Of course, 
 as regards physical impressions, the American eye, from 
 the grandeur of our continent, its mighty mountains, 
 great lakes, and noble rivers, is set on a large scale and 
 must be readjusted to Europe, where nature has been 
 less generous and has graven the face of the earth in 
 miniature. The seven hills of Rome which rise so 
 grandly on our school-books and boyish imaginations, 
 are really inconsiderable swellings of the surface of the 
 ground. A night or two after my arrival I attended a 
 dinner-party at Minister Marsh's, and left without the 
 least idea that I had been on the Esquiline hill, and 
 that we had been drinking champagne in the classic 
 precincts where of old Antony, and Virgil, and Horace, 
 and Macsenas had been content with the more modest 
 brands of Falernus, and thought them good enough to 
 send down to posterity in history and verse. It would 
 certainly be dangerous to fall from the Tarpeian rock 
 to-day, but there is nothing appalling in the baby cliff 
 
CONSTANTINE'S BATTLE-FIELD. 369 
 
 to an American eye. I have a friend in Colorado 
 who has in his private grounds a much more imposing 
 precipice. The magnificent artificial lakes, too, of clas- 
 sic fame must have been, many of them, mere basins, 
 or perhaps fountains. The old Roman highways, the 
 first military roads of history, are entirely too narrow 
 for the march of a modern army with any safety. 
 Even the great citadel of the capitol — the Capitoliue 
 hill of legend and tradition, still crested with palaces 
 and stately with statued flights of stairways — is yet a 
 very modest elevation. The Pantheon is but a small 
 church, as indeed were all the Roman temples, the ser- 
 vice being sacrificial and conducted by the priests alone, 
 or, at most, sometimes in the presence of a few distin- 
 guished personages of state. The Tiber, which gleams 
 like a golden thread through all the poets, is a dirty, 
 muddy, unpicturesque stream of inconsiderable width, 
 but of some military consequence by reason of its depth 
 and slippery banks. The Corso, with all the glamour 
 which the carnival has thrown about it, although now 
 the leading street of Rome, as in the days of imperial 
 glory, when it was the via lata, or Broadway, of the 
 capital, is quite narrow and unimposing, its shops 
 meagre, its sidewalks wretched — one of those places 
 that, if in Philadelphia, would be thrown up as a 
 reproach to Councils, and adduced as an instance of the 
 inefficiency of Republican administration in cities. 
 
 The Forum, that magnificent theatre which shines so 
 splendidly in imagination, is a space of very moderate 
 dimensions as seen on the ground. It hardly seems 
 adequate at all to the purposes with Avhich history cred- 
 its it. It is a lengthy quadrilateral area, narrowing 
 from one base to the other. The extreme landmarks, 
 from the standing arch of Severus to the ruined arch 
 of Fabius, are perfectly well known. This space in- 
 cludes the comitiam, an open place for holding mass 
 meetings, and the forum proper. Its dimensions, as 
 given by Bunsen, are but six hundred feet in length by 
 y 
 
370 ROME. 
 
 an average breadth of say one hundred and fifty feet. 
 And this area, although probably entirely flagged with 
 stone or marble pavement, was not an unobstructed 
 space, but was studded with public monuments, altars, 
 columns, tombs, statuary, besides the several rostra, the 
 corridors of pillars under whose shades the orators and 
 clients walked, and the legion of statues of the great 
 generals. It is not as large as the central Penn Square 
 in Philadelphia, in which stands a single solid building 
 whose foundations are four hundred and fifty feet 
 square. Yet Penn Square looks of modest size to an eye 
 adjusted to the American range. And how the Forum 
 dwindles, too, when contrasted with that magnificent 
 sweep in Paris embracing the gardens of the Tuileries 
 and the Place de la Concorde. Much of the splendor 
 of the Forum Romanum undoubtedly came from the 
 grand buildings which lined its limits, the shining tem- 
 ples, the imposing basilicas, the triumphal arches, and 
 the overhanging glories of the Capitol hill ; but allow- 
 ing for all this, it could have never have compared with 
 the grandeur of modern civic magnificence. 
 
 To be sure, it must be borne in mind that the attri- 
 tion of ages has worn down the hills, and that the con- 
 tinuous wreck of centuries has levelled up the surface 
 of the ground ; but still, the history of Pome is so far 
 greater than its physical features that the first sight of 
 them generally disappoints the traveller. The altar of 
 the world is a small one. 
 
 Again, the general impression of Rome which one 
 gets from the street is one of commercial pettiness. 
 Everything exposed for sale is in small quantities. The 
 shops are petty, and meagre almost to poverty. There 
 is no advertising, no display, nothing of any kind to 
 indicate that business is being carried on on a broad or 
 generous scale, or with any amount either of capital or 
 stock of goods. With the exceiDtion of a few of the 
 leading stores, the shops are such as one sees in Phila- 
 delphia and New York in the poorer streets. The 
 
CONSTANTINE'S BATTLE-FIELD. 37I 
 
 wholesale feature of trade is entirely absent. Men 
 work for small ends in a small way. 
 
 In fact, Italy, as well as all Continental Europe, lives 
 by small economies. 
 
 It is the lesson which we must learn in America, and 
 have been learning latterly by severe experience ; and 
 it is wonderful how much it means for the poor man or 
 person of moderate means. These j^eople here abso- 
 lutely live on what we throw away. For instance, beef 
 here, wholesale — a dressed beef or a quarter of it — is 
 more costly than in Philadelphia or New York ; but 
 the steak raw, from the small butcher- shop, or cooked, 
 from the restaurant, costs less than with us. The saving 
 is in the division, in the consumption of every portion, 
 and in the absence or strict limitation of the profits of 
 middlemen. Everything is counted to the centime (the 
 one-fifth part of our cent), in which figure all petty 
 amounts are kept. 
 
 The benefit of this severe economy to the whole 
 comnuinity is seen in the large number of Americans 
 and English people of moderate means who come here 
 to live. While residence here temporarily, or for those 
 whose tastes or calling compel them to associate with 
 people of distinction or influence, is as expensive as in 
 most other places, those who come to reside perma- 
 nently, and to live quietly and rather obscurely, can do 
 so with great comfort on incomes which would not 
 support bare life in America. The things which are 
 lavish here are the luxuries of culture. 
 
 There is a profusion of art and ruins, which cannot 
 be described. The heavens seem to have rained down 
 sculpture and statuary on the favored city. There are 
 statues of the great dead of history and tradition, of 
 Christian and pagan, and legendary fame, by thousands 
 and thousands. Whole galleries and corridors are lined 
 with them. Parks and public grounds and fountains 
 and squares and courts are thronged with a marble 
 population, while the hundreds of churches are all 
 
372 _ ROME. 
 
 stately and imposing, with a wealth of stone effigies, 
 angels and archangels, warriors, popes, cardinals, and 
 princes. Out the Appian Way mutilated statues, like 
 voiceless sentries, stand guard over the unknown dead 
 of unknown lands for miles. You cannot dig the 
 foundations of the commonest house but you come on 
 ruins, and these ruins may be rare and costly marbles. 
 In fact, there are people here who "prospect" the soil 
 for antiques and marbles, just as in Nevada or Cali- 
 fornia they prospect for gold mines. Statuary, a single 
 piece of which in our land would be the central feature 
 of a millionaire's residence, is here found in the most 
 out-of-the-way places, and consigned to the commonest 
 uses. In the house where I lodge, for instance, — not a 
 palace now or ever, but the dwelling of a citizen of the 
 middle class, — the landings on the stone stairways are 
 adorned with old Roman tombs; and all the time, in 
 some new niche or corner, I come on a burial-urn, an 
 inscription, or piece of sculpture; while over the inner 
 court of the garden a bust of Domitian frowns all day, 
 and looks miserable when it rains. 
 
 According to an official Roman record preserved, 
 there were, A. d. 540, in Rome 22 great equestrian 
 statues in bronze, of which only one remains to-day, 
 66 ivory statues of the gods, 80 gilt statues of the gods, 
 of which only one remains, and no less than 3785 
 statues of emperors and generals in bronze. Now, of 
 'these nearly 4000 great bronzes only the very slightest 
 number have survived, while we have thousands of 
 marble statues which apparently were too common to 
 be enumerated. What must have been the marble 
 wealth of Rome, distributed in her 17,097 palaces and 
 13,052 fountains and 39 theatres and 9000 baths of 
 that date, and in her numberless temples and wealthy 
 private houses ! It was a marble population as great 
 as that of many a busy and ambitious American city 
 of our day, — say Hartford, or Nashville, or Omaha, or 
 Denver. AndJ^his classic population was not confined 
 
CONSTANTINE'S BATTLE-FIELD. 373 
 
 to imperial Rome, but was spread over all Italy, even 
 to such purely commercial points as the shipping-port 
 of Ostia. This was the legacy which pagan civilization 
 left to the keeping of the mediaeval Church. 
 
 It is a curious fact, too, that while thousands of dol- 
 lars are spent annually in the restoration of classic 
 ruins, the ruin of to-day goes steadily on. Churches 
 are frequently falling into decay. Old arches and gate- 
 ways and walls that, a few centuries ago, defended 
 their owner's landed premises, are now peacefully fall- 
 ing down around farm-fields, mortified, perhaps, in 
 their decayed gentility at their lowered fortunes. 
 Even the faith of the hour cannot preserve its shrines. 
 Riding, the other day, out the Via Triomphale, only 
 five or six miles from the city, and on the open high- 
 way, I came on an abandoned roadside altar that, within 
 only a few years, had been one of some pretensions. 
 The bent cross had fallen from the top of the arched 
 niche, the lamp — its light gone out for ever — lay un- 
 tended and untouched, the once brilliant frescos, de- 
 picting in life-size figures the Crucifixion, were being 
 washed out by the rain. The glass and iron which 
 had protected the shrine were bent and broken. There 
 was no sacrilegious hand to mutilate or deface the con- 
 secrated spot, but there was none to tend or protect. 
 The service was over, the worshippers were gone ; the 
 faith of old had fled, and all this with a church almost 
 in sight and the fallen shrine itself built into the high 
 walls of a pile of substantial farm-buildings. I reined 
 up my horse, to look and think, before a Christian altar, 
 forgotten, as desolate, and silent, and abandoned of 
 human heart and prayer, as if it had been in Thebes 
 or Carthage, and all in sight of St. Peter's great dome. 
 
 Yes, in Rom^tself, on this spot which has seen the 
 dissolution of the greatest systems of human thought 
 and human power, ruin is at this l),our the law and 
 order of the day. The Church, its hold on the confi- 
 dence and trust of the people gone, is even now but a 
 
 32 
 
374 ROME. 
 
 historic " survival/' a picture slowly dissolving in the 
 approaching rays of some new dispensation, and the 
 civil government of Italy, in common with those of all 
 Europe, visibly trembles under the volcanic rumblings 
 of Red Eepublicanism. The red cross of Constantine 
 is in the sky again. 
 
 KOME. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 OSTIA. 
 
 A Buried City — The Lost Shipping-Port of the Ancient 
 World — Campo Morto — In the Waste of the Maremna 
 — Ancient Roman Civilization — An Italian Pompeii — In 
 the Wilderness and Desert on the Confines of Rome — 
 Mediaeval Ostia — The Saracen in Italy. 
 
 This week, in company with a New England author 
 held in honor in Europe no less than his own country, 
 I drove down to the buried seaport of Ostia, at the 
 mouth of the Tiber, to spend a day among its ruins. 
 It w^as our purpose to visit this locality at our leisure, 
 and, by a somewhat careful examination of the ground 
 in person, establish clearly to our own minds the out- 
 lines and lost physical features of what was once the 
 first commercial metropolis of the world, and that, too, 
 at that splendid time when its imperial dominion cen- 
 tered in Rome. 
 
 This lost and ancient city, now seated in the heart of 
 pestilential swamps, and apart from any line of civil- 
 ized travel, is rarely visited, although it has been the 
 theatre of much critical study, and vast sums of 
 money have been spent on it, from time to time, in 
 intelligent archaeological explorations. It is, however, 
 a most interesting spot, and eloquent with the lessons 
 of history. In 'fact, its mute ruins give a vividness 
 and color to our conception of the busy life and ac- 
 
OSTIA. 375 
 
 tivities of imperial Rome which you do not get in Rome 
 itself. 
 
 Ostia was the seaport of Rome, the Tiber at Rome 
 itself furnishing no facilities for extensive wharfage 
 or the reception of vessels of large draught. At the 
 flush period of the Roman power it was the Liverpool 
 of the world. It was greater than Liverpool, for it 
 was the shipping city of the world at a time when 
 there were no railways or telegraphs. It was, for 
 manv centuries, the point from which the great Roman 
 expeditions to conquer, one after another, the countries 
 of the known world debarked. From here Scipio 
 Africanus sailed with his fleet for Spain, and Claudius 
 for Britain, and by this shore long, long before, apneas 
 had sailed up the "yellow" tide. From here for hun- 
 dreds of years set out the fleets of many oared merchant- 
 men for Carthage and Corinth and Tyre and Sidon. 
 
 To-day this city, once throbbing with the commerce 
 of the world, and floating its triumphant navies, is 
 absolutely abandoned, desolate, and silent. Human 
 life has left it. The degenerate Rome of to-day hardly 
 knows where it is, forgetting it, with its hundreds of 
 other forgotten glories, and even the Tiber has changed 
 its banks and deserted it. It lies under ground and 
 under water in the centre of a deadly waste. This 
 mal-aria is known, in the picturesque tongue of Italy, 
 as the Campo Morto ; so fatal is its breath that it 
 is popularly believed to be death for a traveller to 
 spend a night at Ostia. And, even before the shades 
 of night fall, the passing stranger shudders — with good 
 reason — as he sees spectral arms of pale mist stretch- 
 ing out from the marsh to clasp him in their deadly 
 embrace. These fever-swamps that engulf the long- 
 doomed town stretch into dense forests of stone-pine, 
 mingled with thick underbrush and thickets, through 
 which roam buffalo and wild boar. And all this within 
 twenty miles of the gates of Rome ! 
 
 That an absolute wilderness should exist within a 
 
376 ROME. 
 
 few miles of a great city like this is something almost 
 incredible to an American mind. Yet so it is. There 
 being no public conveyance in this direction, we hired 
 a private wagon and driver, and set out under our own 
 leadership and guidance. The driver had never been 
 to Ostia, and did not know where it was, and we ex- 
 plored our way through guide-books and maps. The 
 road was sufficiently bad; at times, however, the sur- 
 face of the old Roman " way" came to the ground, its 
 massive, irregular stone blocks giving us, at any rate, 
 a substantial foundation. 
 
 Leaving Rome, for about two miles we had a pleasant 
 entourage of farms and fields. This, I believe, is a 
 rather modern reclamation, the whole interval between 
 Rome and Ostia having been for centuries a desert. 
 These few farms, however, seemed to feel themselves 
 on the frontier of life and near the confines of the land 
 of death. There was a stillness and want of motion 
 that seemed lethargic, and almost oppressed you, even 
 passing through it. There were a few closed chapels 
 and some abandoned wayside altars falling to ruins. 
 Every haystack was surmounted with a cross, as if 
 appealing to heaven. At about the extreme limits of 
 cultivation there is a monastery, which, however, the 
 monks desert in the summer, fleeing lor their lives. 
 In the winter they inhabit their possessions with com- 
 parative safety, tending some good vineyards, and, I 
 suppose, the chapels of the vicinage. Under the 
 stimulus of modern science they have recently under- 
 taken the cultivation of the eucalyptus tree, which they 
 raise in groves, and from which they manufacture a 
 liquor which is claimed to be a useful preventive 
 against the malaria and fevers. 
 
 Very soon this meagre life died away, and we were 
 in a desert, with the domes and campaniles of Rome in 
 sight. From here to Ostia we rode through a dreary 
 waste — dismal, silent, and barren of cultivation. The 
 soil is good enough if reclaimed from the malarial 
 
OSTIA. 377 
 
 swamps, but man lias given it up. The swamps, wliich, 
 even in the time of Troy, were known as unhealtliy, 
 had been abandoned in modern times entirely, and had 
 become a refuge for criminals and convicts. Here and 
 there a straw hut, not any better than our Indian 
 wigwam, attested the solitary presence of some outcast 
 or waif-life, but even these were few and far apart. 
 Within very recent years — since the government has 
 undertaken the work of systematic exploration at Ostia 
 — this kind of thing has been broken up, and travel is 
 safe enough, although there has been one known case 
 of brigandage this spring. 
 
 The sharp contrast comes when one remembers that 
 centuries and centuries ago this desolated waste over 
 which we rode was smiling with villas, the homes of 
 opulence and cultivation. History tells us that there 
 was once a time when Ostia, with its eighty thousand 
 of inhabitants, was an actual suburb of Rome, the 
 distance between the two being an unbroken line of 
 country houses and residences, built on a scale of 
 luxury and magnificence which has never been equalled 
 anywhere or at any time else in the world. The 
 classic writers speak of the "great mountains of white 
 marble" seen far out on the sea which guarded this 
 avenue of nations to the imperial city. 
 
 The Ostia which students go to see and savants to 
 explore to-day is a town of twofold corporeal shape — 
 old Ostia and new Ostia. Both are gone, and are to 
 be seen only in their ruins. The one is a wreck of 
 Roman greatness, pagan and imperial ; the other, of 
 ^oman power, mediaeval and Christian. 
 
 It is of old Ostia that I have been speaking so far, 
 which to-day is simply a rough surface of field, broken 
 by tumuli and ridges. Cropping out of this surface at 
 odd intervals you see broken bits and masses of massive 
 brick masonry, the surviving remnants of arches and 
 temples and forums and tombs. In the sheltered 
 niche of a storm-beaten and crumbling brick arcliway 
 
 82* 
 
378 ROME. 
 
 over the imposing gate of the city Ave fell suddenly 
 upon a half- wild bitch, of Campagna breed, with a 
 litter of pups — the only resident of the once-powerful 
 city. She looked as much startled as we were, but, 
 after a growl or two, settled down to friendship, and 
 was perhaps glad of an incident to break the unevent- 
 ful monotony of the wilderness. 
 
 Excavations at Ostia have been made during recent 
 years on a large scale and in an intelligent and judicious 
 manner. They are of peculiar historic value, as, the 
 story of the city being so well known, they cannot be 
 used to support theories or vague conjectures, but 
 become illustrative evidence of fixed history. Ostia 
 was also a purely Roman city. Its remains are the 
 remains of a purely Roman civilization, unembarrassed 
 by any Etruscan or Grecian admixture, and they reveal 
 in vivid form a perfect picture of the daily life of ancient 
 Roman society. Excavations have been made which 
 develop not only temples and baths and public build- 
 ings and detached walls, but long lines of streets enter- 
 ing into each other, and in one district running down 
 to the once-busy wharves. You can walk on the streets 
 in which these people walked, and enter the houses in 
 which they lived, see the frescos on the walls which 
 their eyes enjoyed, and go up the stairs by which they 
 ascended to the upper floors of their dwellings. You 
 see the ruts of their chariot wheels in the Roman pave- 
 ment of the streets. Going down to the wharf, you 
 find their commission-houses and shipping-offices. All 
 around you, in vast quantities, lie fragments of pottery 
 — the remains of the vessels and utensils they used. 
 This pottery is generally coarser and embellished with 
 less ornamentation than that found in the ruined Aztec 
 cities of New Mexico and Arizona. You may tread 
 the forum where they met for business and exchange ; 
 the temple where they gathered for worship — too bare, 
 however, of altar or image to know whom they wor- 
 shipped ; the baths, the great luxury of Roman life ; the 
 
 
OSTIA. 
 
 379 
 
 theatre where they sat for pleasure and relaxation. You 
 may go farther back up the hill, and meditate for half 
 a mile among the tombs where they buried their dead. 
 
 Of course, but a small portion of the vast city is 
 excavated, but enough is laid bare to give one a full 
 idea of its daily walk and manner of life. The streets 
 run in the same curving, irregular lines as those of 
 Rome to-day, and are equally narrow. The ceilings 
 are high, just as in the palaces of Rome to-day — the 
 same climatic conditions producing the same results. 
 The warmer and more delightful the climate the higher 
 the ceiling everywhere, and the colder and moister the 
 climate the lower the ceiling, as in Holland, England, 
 and other northern countries. 
 
 The colors of the frescos here are as bright as at 
 Pompeii ; the rooms higher, and the stairways quite a 
 marked feature, the Greek traditions which conditioned 
 the architecture of Pompeii not conducing to high 
 buildings. 
 
 Although a shipping-port and known only for its 
 commercial traditions, Ostia was the home of great 
 culture and taste, and her citizens must have been 
 largely people of cultivation and refinement. Some of 
 the finest treasures of antique statuary have been ex- 
 humed from these rooms, — exquisite works of art that 
 the average well-to-do citizen of Liverpool or an Ameri- 
 can manufacturing town would hardly appreciate. In 
 fact, the Vatican is full of them, a gr^at portion of the 
 excavations having been done under Pius V. And 
 not only statuary, but tombs of masterly designs, sar- 
 cophagi, carvings, mosaics, etc. Noted among these 
 rescued treasures are the familiar bust of the young 
 Augustus, the Ganymede of Phsedimus, and bas- 
 reliefs of Endymion and Diana. In fact, the reve- 
 lations of Ostia are conclusive evidence of the very 
 great culture of the Roman people as a whole. This 
 city was but an ordinary business-town, not pretending 
 to any literature or art reputation, but its treasures are 
 
380 ROME. 
 
 rare in quality and wonderful in number. The Ostian 
 merchant of eighteen hundred years ago would have 
 looked with curious contempt on the American million- 
 aire of to-day furnishing liis house with chromos or 
 auction-room paintings, or engravings bought on the 
 recommendation of a salesman. All this is the more 
 wonderful when we remember that the cost of works of 
 art was about equal to what it is now. A fairly good 
 statue of full life-size cost $150, while a work of Phidias 
 or Praxiteles brought $10,000 to $30,000. But to 
 understand these values we must recollect that a slave 
 could be kept for about ten cents a day, and that beef 
 could be bought in the markets for four cents a pound. 
 It is a humiliating contrast between classic and mod- 
 ern civilization, that for hundreds of years the rude 
 lime-kilns in the woods around Ostia have been sup- 
 plied with sculptures from the ruins to make lime for 
 Eoman peasants, and Roman princes and cardinals, too, 
 at times, I suspect. 
 
 ^ The approach to Ostia to-day is a very pathetic remi- 
 niscence of past cultivation and grandeur. You cross 
 the fatal Maremna, which here sinks into a water v^ 
 marsh to-day, but in past times may have been flooded 
 with the healthy waves of the sea, by a solid causeway 
 of hard Roman pavement, built on piles and protected 
 on each side by a low wall or railing of stone and 
 marble. All along this causeway of over a mile in 
 length, abandoned for centuries, half hidden by the 
 reeds and thistles or half sunken in the poisonous marsh, 
 stand on either side forgotten ranks of marble statues, 
 — vanished gods, limbless heroes, headless queens and 
 ladies, worn and time-stained senators. Some are 
 fallen, some are leaning, all are forsaken. And this 
 imperial approach, impressive even in its abandonment, 
 leads up to a wretched . Roman trattoria, the refuge of 
 outcasts and petty brigands. 
 
 One of the marked features of the walls of Ostia, 
 both interior and outside, is the variety of pleasing 
 
OSTIA. 381 
 
 effects worked out by the simple use of brick, both in 
 form and color — the very same effects within late years 
 so largely introduced into the United States. 
 
 Ostia is lovingly remembered in Cliristian tradition 
 as the home of St. Augustine, and the place where he 
 parted with his mother, Monica, to bear the gospel to 
 Saxon England. 
 
 Being the harbor and port of Rome, Ostia bore the 
 brunt of all attacks made by sea, and her traditions are 
 largely those of warfare and the repulse of pirates. 
 At last, in the fifth century, she was utterly destroyed 
 by the Saracens and razed to the ground. So utter was 
 the ruin that no attempt was ever made to rebuild the 
 town ; but three hundred years later another town was 
 laid out about a mile away from the river and became 
 a place of importance and interest. This was mediaeval 
 Ostia, known to-day as "the new town." Here began 
 again the fighting with the pirates, and the old Middle 
 Age fortifications yet extant tell the story very graphi- 
 cally. That stalwart, fighting Pope, Julius IL, when 
 a cardinal, built here a castle so massive and secure that 
 it yet stands in all its original strength, and is one of 
 the best illustrations of mediaeval military life which 
 has come down to us. This compact little fortress is 
 a capacious round-tower — a perfect circle— surrounded 
 by bastions, which are linked with a curtain, and the 
 whole encompassed by a wide and deep ditch. It is ex- 
 tremely picturesque, and, as it stands on level ground, 
 was capable of indefinite defence in a time when it could 
 only be taken by land. Nevertheless, the besieged were 
 safe only by sleepless vigilance. Half an hour's care- 
 lessness would have let in the enemy. 
 
 For hundreds of years these castles and towers of 
 Ostia — for there were others of them — maintained this 
 fluctuating and eventful warfare with Cilician pirates 
 and Saracenic armies ; but at last, in the utter exhaust- 
 ion which marked the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
 here, its life flamed away, and they, too, lay down in 
 
382 ROME. 
 
 ruin and weariness. We picked our way through a 
 marshy and treacherous plain that once was bright and 
 brilliant with the tents of the Saracen ; under decadent 
 forests that not many hundred years ago had heard the 
 evening prayers of the Moslem. To-day an exhausted 
 Roman workman or two scraping gently on the edges 
 of an endless mass of ruin, a frightened wild animal, a 
 wretched peasant, the child, perhaps, of a convict, and 
 born in a land of death, were all there was to break the 
 melancholy solitude. Yet, after all, how much better 
 than that the Turk should have succeeded in fixing a 
 European camp here as well as on the Black Sea ! 
 
 It is almost impossible for an American mind to con- 
 ceive that here, within twenty miles of Rome, the altar 
 of the learning and culture of the world, there is a wil- 
 derness as silent, as savage, as desolate, as on the empty 
 plains or our untrodden frontier, where buffalo and wild 
 game range undisturbed ; a sanctuary for criminals — if 
 there were anything to tempt crime or plunder; a soli- 
 tude that seems abandoned of man and of God. And 
 it is a solitude, too, oppressive and stifling and appall- 
 ing — for it is the silence of death and the grave, and 
 not like the fresh solitudes of our Western prairies, the 
 stillness of the morning. 
 
 Yet listen to Pliny as he pictures the scene of this 
 malarial desert nearly two thousand years ago : " Such 
 is its happy and beautiful amenity that it seems to be 
 the work of rejoicing Nature. For truly, so it appears 
 in the vital and perennial salubrity of its atmosphere, 
 in its fertile plains, sunny hills, healthy woods, thick 
 groves, rich varieties of trees, breezy mountains, fertil- 
 ity in fruits, vines, and olives ; its noble flocks of sheep, 
 abundant herds of cattle, numerous lakes, and wealth 
 of rivers and streams pouring in upon it; many sea- 
 ports, in whose lap the commerce of the world lies, 
 and which run largely into the sea, as it were, to help 
 mortals." 
 
 EOME. 
 
MODERN ITALY. 
 
 383 
 
CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 NEW ROME. 
 
 The City of the New Quartek — The Union Army of Italy 
 AND ITS Civil Uses — Modernization of Rome — Convents 
 AS Government Buildings — Unmuzzled Bookstores — 
 Politicians and Engineers — The American Church — 
 The Protestant Gravey^ard. 
 
 Not the least among the astonishing sights of this 
 famed and ancient city, and certainly the most unlooked 
 for, is the New Rome tliat is arising every day strong 
 and beautiful, clean and hygienic and kisty. 
 
 This is an entirely new-built section, where every- 
 thing is modern, fresh, and recent. Whole streets of 
 newly-erected houses meet one's view, the streets them- 
 selves wide and straight, well graded, and handsomely 
 laid out, and the whole is of a few years' growth. It 
 is such a quarter and development as one would ex- 
 pect to find in Cincinnati or Chicago, but the last thing 
 looked for in Rome. The buildings in this new quar- 
 ter are not architecturally handsome. The houses are 
 very large, rectangular structures, affording only plain, 
 straight lines to the eye. They are, however, palaces 
 in their spaciousness, being very broad, the fronts 
 measuring from fifty to one hundred feet, and as high 
 in elevation as the best blocks in our cities. They are 
 convenient to live in, but not picturesque structures, 
 and although entirely different in construction from the 
 American dwelling-house, the long succession of them, 
 all of the same style and pattern, gives the effect of an 
 American street. They are also as devoid of historical 
 interest or association as the w^ooden-paved '^ avenues" 
 of a ten-year-old Western metropolis. This new city 
 lies from'the Baths of Diocletian to the Esquiline Hill 
 R 2 33 385 
 
386 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 and extending back to the walls, taking in all the 
 ground from the Porta Pia to the Porta Maggiore. 
 The backbone of the section is the broad F^a iVa^iona^e, 
 running from the new railway station to the Via 
 Quirinale. The races were transferred from the Corso 
 to this street at the Carnival of this year. There are here 
 large modern hotels, a fine new theatre, a handsome 
 American Protestant church up, ground broken for an 
 English one, and grand rows of palatial " flats/^ Along 
 with all this development there is the usual incident 
 of rising prices and speculation. Italian speculation, 
 however, is something very childlike and innocent to 
 American experience. 
 
 This wdiole quarter is a result of New Italy, and has 
 sprung into life entirely since Victor Emmanuel got the 
 reins and Cavour effected " The Union.'^ It is the evi- 
 dence that Italy has awakened at last to the modern 
 life, and is swinging into place in the column of the 
 nations. While we may regret the loss of the pictur- 
 esque and the absence of scenic effect, it is an encourag- 
 ing and hopeful sign, welcome to all who do not believe 
 in the saving grace of squalor and wretchedness, and in 
 the godliness of dirt. 
 
 There are many influences at work now to push for- 
 ward the development of the Roman people. In many 
 respects the people strongly resemble us. They have 
 intelligence, versatility, adaptability to circumstances, 
 ready tact, and a very practical vein. There is the 
 same bright countenance, the same activity and light- 
 ness of motion seen in the best type of the American. 
 This is especially the case with the North Italians, who 
 will be the brain and power of the new kingdom. 
 
 The union of Italy, and the consequent birth of a 
 national instinct, has given a powerful impetus to 
 progress. Along with political freedom has come, too, 
 the removal of the frightful mental incubus of ecclesi- 
 astical tyranny. As long as an Inquisition could arrest 
 men in the night-time and try them in secret for their 
 
^'EW ROME. 387 
 
 beliefs and opinions, there was no hope for either moral, 
 intellectual, or political advancement. The only relief 
 lay through violence and bloodshed, and the odds were 
 fearfully against the suifering victims. Now all that is 
 changed, and the movement can go on, healthily and 
 under the law. 
 
 As matters now stand, and as they must stand for 
 some time, the bayonet Is the saviour of Italy. It is a 
 sad admission to make, but It is the truth, and measures 
 the vast difference between the unhappy condition of 
 this people and the fortunate circumstances of ours. 
 The struggling people of Italy have secured their rights 
 from the ecclesiastical aggression of ages only by the 
 bayonet, and they hold them only by the bayonet. 
 Disband the armies of free Italy, and the Church would 
 reassume temporal power and rule in a month. The 
 government of the people, for the people, would be re- 
 placed by the government of priests, with Its hideous 
 and appalling record of the last one thousand years. 
 Education would give way to enforced Ignorance, and 
 civil rights be lost utterly as the light of the courts of 
 justice v,ent out In the hopeless night and outer dark- 
 ness of the Inquisition. Americans, with their in- 
 stinctive love of freedom, often resent the constant 
 presence of the soldiery here, who throng the streets 
 and stand on guard at every turn ; but tliey are in this 
 case a necessary evil. It is unfortunate to have to rely 
 on military power even for a season, but it would be 
 still more unfortunate for Italy to abandon Its protection 
 at this moment. It would be a treason to humanity 
 and to the trust of government, for it would be sur- 
 rendering, without a struggle, all the work and cost 
 and blood of the last thirty years. 
 
 Again, the army at present, in addition to Its mili- 
 tary uses, serves as a good school to the young men of 
 new Italy. It educates tliem to the conception of 
 nationality, and accustoms them to the use of civil 
 force against ecclesiastical usurpation. Heretofore, to 
 
388 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 disobey a priest, who was in reality an unscrupulous 
 politician, or to resist a corrupt bishop, has been looked 
 on as a sacrilege and resistance to heaven, that might 
 be followed by supernatural punishment. The people 
 w^ere in the unconscious bondage of superstition, which 
 can be best broken up by the constant visible presence 
 of the power of the civil law. 
 
 The soldiers of Italy are a fine-looking body of men, 
 intelligent, cleanly, of resolute bearing, and in excellent 
 condition and discipline. They are so far beyond their 
 less fortunate brethren who are not in the ranks that I 
 think the best thing, both for the State and the people, 
 w^ould be to draft the whole remaining population, and 
 let every male in the kingdom have the benefit of a 
 few years' service. In each regiment the recruit gets 
 a good elementary schooling in the common elements 
 of education ; but beyond that he receives a moral 
 training, inducing habits of self-reliance and self-respect, 
 w^hich are just what the peasant and poor artisan need 
 after a thousand years of priest rule. The army is the 
 common school of Italy, and it is the best she can have 
 at present. 
 
 Again, it is the judicious usage of the war minister 
 to shift the troops about, placing the northern battal- 
 ions on duty in the south, the southern in the north, 
 and so on, the very thing which is needed to break up 
 the sectional and local feeling so disastrously strong in 
 Italy. The young soldier, after his military service is 
 over, feels that he is not any more a Genoese, a Pisan, 
 a Neapolitan, a Roman, or a Florentine, but something 
 better and greater, — an Italian. 
 
 One of the most conspicuous features of new Rome — 
 the Rome that is open and free — is the new American 
 church on the Via Nazionale. This handsome edifice, 
 built by the present rector. Rev. Dr. Robert J. Nevin, 
 of Pennsylvania, has been put up only since the open- 
 ing of Rome by Victor Emmanuel. It is of large size, 
 even for this city of basilicas, and is constructed in the 
 
NEW ROME. 389 
 
 early Gothic of Northern Italy. The walls are of 
 travertine, the stone of the Colosseum and St. Peter's, 
 and it is floored inside with Venetian pavement, — a 
 kind of rough mosaic. The plan of the building is 
 that of the basilica, with apse, nave, and side-aisles. 
 The tower is of the campanile order, with ascending 
 stories of airy windows, openings which let out the 
 clear sound of the bells, a style almost unknown in our 
 land, but which harmonizes admirably with the skies 
 and landscape of Italy. 
 
 This beautiful church, with its twenty-three bells 
 ringing every Sunday over the seven hills, is a perma- 
 nent monument to the free right of all men to worship 
 God according to their own faith. It stands in the 
 very camp of that great power which has always 
 denied this right, and we can justly be proud that it 
 has been placed there by American liberality, faith, 
 and courage. Already the example is bearing good 
 fruit. The Church of England is laying foundations 
 for a church on the Quattro Fontanel and some six or 
 eight congregations of various Protestant faiths are 
 organizing and building over a city where for long 
 suffocating centuries their worship w^nt up to God 
 only from the torture-chambers of the Inquisition or 
 the sacrificial piazzas of the auto-da-fe. 
 
 Another feature of free Italy are the enfranchised 
 bookstores. In the old times, under the dead hand 
 of the Index Expmyatorius, bookselling, as may well 
 be imagined, was not a very flourishing calling, and 
 the shops had rather a meagre supply of still more 
 meagre matter. To-day an hour in any good Roman 
 bookstore will almost startle the stranger. The litera- 
 ture of every nation greets one from the shelves and 
 tables, — German, English, American, French, Spanish, 
 and the Italian is not mainly theological or religious, 
 as one unconsciously assumes, but largely devoted to 
 the physical sciences and practical treatises on mathe- 
 matics and engineering. For some reason politics and 
 
 33* 
 
390 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 engineering go together in Italy, as they do also in 
 France, and this sympathy makes engineering a popu- 
 lar and prominent study. The average Italian candi- 
 date for political office is not a lawyer, as with us, but 
 an engineer. 
 
 Modern Italian literature, however, is comparatively 
 meagre and liniited in its range. The popular want 
 is, therefore, supplied by translating copiously from the 
 literature of other nations, and it is surprising to see 
 how thoroughly the better works of the world have 
 been appropriated. All the standard English books 
 and much of the current publications of the United 
 States and England are reproduced in Italian. This 
 is done promptly, and as that Canada thistle, the mid- 
 dleman, has not yet overrun Italy, books can be bought 
 there comparatively cheap. They are much cheaper 
 than with us, when our enormous markets are taken 
 into account. These bookstores of which I am speak- 
 ing are not confined to the new quarter, but have spread 
 all over Kome, and now in the low precincts of the 
 Pantheon or even under the spiked guns of San Angelo 
 one may see modern scientific tracts exposed for sale 
 among little tin hearts and cheap rosaries and the votive 
 offerings of all kinds so well known and so flimsy, rude, 
 and gaudy. 
 
 There is another movement which has operated 
 largely to the modernization of Rome. The civil gov- 
 ernment in succeeding to the estate of the ecclesiastical 
 government has taken many of the old conventual 
 properties for public use. Thus, all the departments 
 of State — the War Office, the Navy, the Post-Office, 
 the Foreign Office — are now quartered in fine large 
 monasteries, and brisk-walking, cleanly-clad officials 
 have replaced the filthy-habited, flea-haunted monks 
 who made the city picturesque and dirty only twenty- 
 five years ago. This kind of appropriation has been 
 on a very large scale, and quite changes the face of 
 many localities. 
 
NEW ROME. 391 
 
 Just beyond the Ostian gate through which the holy- 
 Apostle St. Paul was led to execution, and at the foot 
 of the colossal j)yramidal tomb of Caius Cestus, the 
 only surviving monument of Rome which witnessed 
 his martyrdom, nestles " The Protestant graveyard," 
 also a field of the Italy of the nineteenth century. It 
 is ^' outside of the walls," but a century or so ago Rome 
 was not either civilized or Christian enough for even 
 that. 
 
 This burial-ground is one of the loveliest places 
 around Rome, and is full of tender and suggestive 
 associations. It is the graveyard of those who die here 
 out of the Roman communion, and is already, perhaps, 
 the most Catholic spot in the city. Russians, Danes, 
 Germans, French, English, Americans, Italians, and 
 men I know not of what other tongues, lie here together 
 awaiting the resurrection. Under its dark cypresses, 
 and among its clustering roses, are some twelve hundred 
 graves — a silent congregation from all the world. The 
 title to the ground is vested in the German government, 
 through whose courtesy and Christian charity and na- 
 tional courage the j^eople of all the world find that 
 consecrated rest which is denied them elsewhere in Rome 
 by act of its Church. 
 
 This quiet and beautiful spot, covered with violets, 
 swept softly by fragrant winds, sleeping, as it were, 
 out of the world, is so restful and soothing that it has 
 a singular charm for all who see it. Shelly sang it long 
 
 ago- 
 
 " "Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 
 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread." 
 
 His heart rests in it to-day, right under the ruins of 
 an ancient loop-holed tower in the old Aurelian wall. 
 Keats is there, William Howitt, Gibson, the sculptor, 
 and long lists of names familiar to our English tongue. 
 Most of the graves are of the young — a touching me- 
 mento of blighted promises and broken hopes. They 
 
392 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 are those who, full of youth and hope, were cut down 
 on their travels — brides, perhaps, on their first jour- 
 ney, or those who sought life in foreign lands and 
 found death. By far the largest proportion of names 
 are from England. The English do not have that 
 semi-morbid desire for burial in their own land, under 
 any circumstances, which presses so heavily on the 
 American and Chinaman. On many of these tombs 
 are read the names of noble and wealthy families of 
 England ; but although England is so near, and her 
 family burial-grounds are more beautiful and impressive 
 than those of any other people, when an Englishman 
 dies in Rome, no matter what his rank or position, he 
 generally sleeps there. Here they are in force among 
 the roses and lilies and oleanders of Italy, lords and 
 ladies and children, admirals and generals with their 
 slumbering effigies, poets and artists and travellers, at 
 peace forever. Indeed, so peaceful and beautiful is this 
 spot, so full is it of catholic association, so emblematic 
 is it of the fellowship and brotherhood of the whole 
 world, as it shall stand on the resurrection day, when 
 all the tribes and tongues and nations of the earth shall 
 meet together, that I do not wonder so many persons 
 of note and educated tastes have accepted it as their 
 final rest. 
 
 EOME. 
 
UNITED ITALY. 393 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 UNITED ITALY. 
 
 Italian Politics — The Great Work of the Union' of 
 Italy — The Church in Politics — Settling an Estate 
 OF Kingdoms — Sectionalism — North and South Italy — 
 A Look into the Chamber of the Congress of the New 
 Kingdom of Italy — English Features of the House 
 — Monte Citorio — The Ministry — The Floor of the 
 House. 
 
 The union of Italy is the keynote of modern Italian 
 politics and political history, and it has been a grand 
 achievement. The more one sees under the surface, 
 and meets the leaders of the several interests and par- 
 ties, the more he is impressed with the consummate 
 abilities and energy of the men who achieved it. Our 
 own Union in 1776-83 was but child's play compared 
 with the work in Italy of the past twenty years, and 
 our pending question of reconstruction is simple aside 
 of the problems yet to be solved in this country before 
 it becomes one nation, thoroughly united in heart and 
 head, with common interests, common hopes, and a 
 common future. 
 
 Let me for a moment briefly summarize some of the 
 grand difficulties which have stood in the way. They 
 fairly bristle as we call them up, starting back far 
 through the centuries and enlisting all the human pas- 
 sions. They are historic — of blood, of climate, of 
 religion, of civic pride, of finance, of ignorance, of 
 toj)ography. 
 
 And first of blood. The Roman race is at its best 
 but a conglomerate one, but Italy is not even purely 
 Roman. Naples and the country round about it was 
 
394 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 settled by Greek colonies, and the people to this day 
 retain the peculiarities and show the traces of their 
 Grecian ancestry. Sicily has even a marked proportion 
 of Arab blood. Then, again, there is a North and a 
 South Italy, far more marked in their differences and 
 histories than the Northern and Southern States of our 
 country. Their differences come from twenty centuries. 
 Their special characteristics are rooted in the ages. But 
 the dangers of sectionalism here are not limited to the 
 clashing interests of two or three great natural sections. 
 
 In Italy sectionalism means city pride. As men- 
 tioned in a previous letter, the city has been the politi- 
 cal unit of Italy for all its known and even legendary 
 history. The walled city held no communication with 
 its neighbors, save those of war, and they knew each 
 other only by feuds and forays, or formal treaties with 
 each other against others. Even to-day the people of 
 one Italian town talk of each other as foreigners, and 
 speak commonly of Genoese, Milanese, Neapolitans, 
 Romans, Florentines, Pisans, just as they do of French, 
 Germans, English, or Americans. It is in their blood 
 and will not go out inside of this generation. They 
 have to be educated, not from the conception of a prov- 
 ince or a state up to the idea of nationality, but from 
 the very primitive start of the municipal idea. 
 
 Again, there are the geographical troubles. Large 
 portions of the new nation, such as Sardinia and Sicily, 
 are islands ^^ cut off," of course, from the instantaneous 
 communication of rail^ — the new artery of the modern 
 body politic. Even the mainland is not compact, but 
 straggles through changing climates, inducing different 
 modes of living, and therefore different habits and 
 customs. 
 
 There is a North and a South Italy, with differences 
 of temperament and tastes just as wide and deep-seated 
 as any that exist between our Northern and Southern 
 States. There is, indeed, a rather curious parallel be- 
 tween our two nations in this, North Italy holding 
 
UNITED ITALY. 395 
 
 much the same relation to South Italy as do our 
 Northern States to our Southern ones. In the North- 
 ern Kingdom of Italy the people are industrious, active, 
 and comparatively prosperous. Their children go to 
 school. They themselves fall in as far as they can 
 with the thought and movement of the age. The hold 
 of the Roman Catholic Church loosens first in the 
 North. Humbert, the Union king, comes from the 
 Northern house of Savoy. 
 
 As you go southward these characteristics gradually 
 weaken and disappear. Industry gives way to idleness, 
 activity to laziness, school training to ignorance, religion 
 survives In superstition, and the dirty mendicant monk 
 becomes the true representative man of the country. 
 The statistics of Italian illiteracy run exactly as do 
 ours, from North to South. From the latest data In 
 the Annuario Statistico, it appears that in every thou- 
 sand of the population the number that could neither 
 read nor write, in 1871, was. In Piedmont, five hundred; 
 in Lombardy, five hundred and twenty-eight; in Tus- 
 cany, seven hundred and twenty-four; In the Roman 
 provinces, seven hundred and seventeen ; in the Neapol- 
 itan district, eight hundred and fifty-six; and in Sicily, 
 eight hundred and seventy-two. It Is the same de- 
 scending scale as from Maine to Mississippi. 
 
 Worst burden of all for Italy is this appalling Igno- 
 rance of the mass of the people, habituated for genera- 
 tions to a galling slavery of body and mind, ruled and 
 owned from the cradle to the grave by priest or prince, 
 and unused to self-management, self-providence, or self- 
 control. These people, when brought face to face with 
 the question of self-government, are pitifully ignorant. 
 Ignorance is always suspicious, and they therefore mis- 
 trust experienced leaders, and are more apt to be con- 
 trolled by unscrupulous cunning than intelligently con- 
 vinced by argument. By a law of nature large masses 
 of Ignorance always gravitate against Intelligence, and 
 the party that raises and frees this people must expect 
 
396 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 to have them tarn against it. At this moment, Gari- 
 baldi, leading the radical element, and the Pope, rep- 
 resenting the reactionary forces of the Vatican, alike 
 agree in advocating universal suffrage. Garibaldi asks 
 it as a logical and necessary step in his plan, accepting 
 the immediate risk in the faith of the good that is to 
 come. The Papal power is willing for this revolutionary 
 step, knowing that it would bring to the polls legions 
 of the contadini, the ignorant peasantry of the villages, 
 who can neither read, write, nor think, and who are 
 controlled absolutely by their priests. At present suf- 
 frage is based on a property qualification, and is con- 
 fined to a comparatively small proportion of the popu- 
 lation. The qualified voters of Italy are, by last 
 statistics, just 2.26 to every one hundred of population, 
 and, on an average, only sixty per cent, of the vote is 
 ever polled. Were the doors opened to manhood suf- 
 frage the mass of the Italian vote would be directed 
 straight from the Vatican, and cast against the party 
 of union and freedom. 
 
 The great disturbing element, however, — the ugliest 
 trouble of all, — is the political claim of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. Its relation to Italy is not at all a 
 religious one, as in our country, but a definitely political 
 one. It is not even the vexed question of Church and 
 State — it is State or Church. The Roman Catholic 
 sovereignty here claims the temporal dominion of the 
 old States of the Church as its riojht, and is fio-htino; 
 for it to-day by every means in its power. It excom- 
 municated Victor Emmanuel, and would excommunicate 
 King Humbert and the two Chambers of Parliament, 
 and all the personnel of government in an hour if it 
 would do any good. It is a political imperium, in im- 
 perio, and a power of such strength and ramification 
 that it cannot be struck down without endangering the 
 very structure of society. At this very day the king- 
 dom of Italy is paying to the Pope, an active worker 
 for its overthrow, an annual tribute of over six hundred 
 
UNITED ITALY. 397 
 
 thousand dollars. Imagine some vast, restless power 
 in our land which controlled, nominally, at least, the 
 religious belief of the entire population ; which owned 
 every church-building in it, with one or two exceptions, 
 and directed all the worship in them ; which had a vast 
 machinery of paid, organized forces, men and women, 
 always at work, and which, entering into every family, 
 north, south, east, and west, and influencing all their 
 members in their most sacred relations, reaching them 
 in the cradle, at school, on the marriage-day, and at the 
 hour of death, was restlessly and avowedly plotting for 
 the overthrow of the government ; demanding it as a 
 right, and adjuring all to aid in it as a religious duty ; 
 imagine, further, that our people were so superstitiously 
 devoted to this power that the government dare not 
 strike at it, but must pay it a large pension — absolutely 
 furnish it with means to carry on its claims — imagine 
 all this, and you have some idea of the civil situation 
 here, and begin to understand the appalling odds that 
 confronted, and still confront, the leaders for union. 
 They do not even hold their own camp. 
 
 Bnt leaving the consideration of all these organic 
 difficulties, inherent in the life of the people, when the 
 hour of success at last came, and the act of union was 
 consummated, the practical adjustment of the vested 
 interests which Avere to be merged in the new nation 
 was a matter of infinite tact, patience, and cost in money. 
 It was, in fact, the settlement of an estate of seven king- 
 doms. 
 
 New Italy has been formed out of seven distinct 
 kingdoms or powers, each one of which had a ruling 
 family whose rights and interests society, the social 
 order of Europe, recognized. The house of Savoy got 
 the crown of Italy, but all the rest had to be pensioned 
 or provided for in some way. 
 
 Each of these kingdoms had its court, its army, its 
 judiciary, its debt — all the machinery and burdens of 
 sovereignty. The adjustment of these conflicting and 
 
398 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 unequal iuterests involved endless trouble and infinite 
 concession and compromise. The debts of some of the 
 little countries were relatively heavier than those of 
 others ; had, perhaps, been extravagantly incurred, or 
 for ends distasteful and displeasing to some. The armies 
 of each little power, too, were different. Some were in 
 good order, others in poor. Some were relatively larger 
 than others. In some the rank of the officers was rel- 
 atively higher than in others, in some the pay, in some 
 the proportion of officers to men. 
 
 The same difficulties presented themselves in the civil 
 list, and had to be adjusted — many of them by money. 
 Pensioning was the easiest way, retiring the older men 
 to make way for the younger, or the inefficient to make 
 room for better. This, although expedient and neces- 
 sary, was expensive, and hence Italy enters the family 
 of nations with a respectable national debt. 
 
 Our own political troubles and perplexities look 
 small and petty when compared with these — but more, 
 the leaders in the march to Italian unity have had to 
 struggle against a moral opposition, — a traditional cur- 
 rent of thought, — a stifling mental atmosphere, of which 
 we know nothing. I heard a deputy on the floor of 
 the chamber argue against the further extension of rail- 
 ways in the kingdom, because the facility of commu- 
 nication afforded the common people — the " working- 
 men" was the word used — was dangerous to the good 
 and peace of the country. '^ It produces," said he, 
 ^' discontent, socialism, nihilism. These have come with 
 the railways into Europe." 
 
 The longer and the deeper one studies Italy the 
 greater becomes the conception of the union of Italy — 
 the grander the proportions of the noble monument 
 which Cavour has reared to bear forever his name into 
 history. 
 
 The other day, through the kindness of a senator, 
 who showed me over the parliament building and in- 
 
 [ 
 
UNITED ITALY. 399 
 
 troduced me into the chamber of the representatives 
 during the progress of an important debate, I had an 
 opportunity of seeing the " plant" of the government 
 and catching a glimpse of the legislative machinery in 
 motion. The hall was arranged as an amphitheatre, 
 the members' seats rising at a very steep ascent. The 
 speaker and clerks sat in the arena, as did the cabinet 
 of the king, who, as in England, have the privilege of 
 tlie floor to defend or advocate their measures, and also 
 that the representatives of the people may interrogate 
 them at any time as to their conduct of affairs. They 
 do not vote. The ministry shifts also with the par- 
 liamentary majority, as is the English usage. In this, 
 in the presence of the ministers on the floor, and in 
 paying them salaries and not paying the members, 
 Italy has patterned closely after England, refusing our 
 younger precedent. 
 
 The assembly seemed to be composed of men very 
 much of the age and same relative station of life as 
 the membership of our lower house at Washington. 
 The house was quieter and more decorous than ours 
 in the ordinary flow of business, but at one moment, 
 when a little excitement did occur, it fluttered and 
 quivered like a living thing in a way entirely impos- 
 sible, perhaps, to a deliberative body of the Anglct- 
 Saxon race. The little trouble flamed up instanta- 
 neously all around the circled walls of the chamber like 
 powder in a pan, and while the feeling was intense and 
 the whole floor — speaking at once — seemed to throb 
 and pulse with excitement, you felt convinced all the 
 time that it was not deep or dangerous, and would die 
 out safely, as it did in a minute or two, without leaving 
 a trace. 
 
 In this assembly the speaker calls the house to order 
 by the ringing of a bell. It very effectually silences 
 interruption and the discordant voices, but had to me 
 something of a railway-depot effect, that being the sig- 
 nal here for the trains to draw out. As in the churches. 
 
400 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 however, they announce the presence of the Host by the 
 ringing of a bell, it may have more dignified associations 
 for Italian ears. 
 
 The senate is appointed by the king, the lower house 
 chosen by the people, the electors, however,- being but 
 a limited portion of the population, suffrage resting ou 
 a property qualification. Congressmen — deputies they 
 call them — receive no pay, but have high social and 
 political rank by virtue of their office, a deputy taking 
 precedence of a prince. This is a wise provision in a 
 country where social rank is so great a force. 
 
 The congress of the new kingdom of United Italy 
 does not sit in the old Capitol of historic tradition and 
 legend, nor even on its site. That spot, so rich in asso- 
 ciation and suggestion, belongs to the city of Rome, 
 and civic pride will not surrender it for the uses of the 
 nation. It is a municipal treasure, and will not be 
 given up. The chambers, therefore, sit in a massive 
 old palace, which has been remodelled for their use. The 
 palazzo Monte Citorio is plain, but very substantial, 
 and seats commodiously the five hundred members. It 
 contains library, reading-room, committee-rooms, and 
 all the usual incidental accommodations. As the new 
 kingdom is poor, all the fitting up has been done econ- 
 (fmically, and wdth a very praiseworthy avoidance of 
 extravagance, or anything which could bear that in- 
 terpretation. Economy, indeed, is the rule of the new 
 kingdom, and is seen in everything that starts with the 
 Union. The new cabinet ministers, for instance, receive 
 salaries of but $4000. There are many expensive 
 legacies of the past, however. This parliament-house 
 is the only public building, civil or religious, I have 
 seen in Rome which is not weighed down with statuary. 
 There is not a single piece in it, nor did I see any paint- 
 ings save one — a full-length portrait of Victor Em- 
 manuel. All the embellishments of the halls, library, 
 and reading-rooms were very modest engravings. Our 
 country was recognized by^an old but g od likeness of 
 
UNITED ITALY. 401 
 
 Washington, frame and all about one and a half by two 
 feet in size. It would be a graceful act, and do good, 
 if the Congress of the United States would send its card 
 to young Italy in the shape of a large and full-size 
 painting of the Father of that country whose Union has 
 been the chart and sampler for the statesmen who con- 
 ceived and are achieving the freedom of the Roman 
 people. 
 
 The library is small, but started on a judicious plan, 
 and will grow into a valuable collection. The leading 
 papers of each country in the world, received daily and 
 preserved bound, is one of its features. In the reading- 
 room you sit and read the powerful journal of each 
 nation. Everything here, as in the building at large, 
 was severely plain and sensible, the best materiel of all 
 kinds, but no show. The committee-rooms were en- 
 tirely devoid of ornament, frescos, or sumptuous fur- 
 niture, in sharp contrast with our gorgeous civic salons 
 for this kind of use. 
 
 In the general service of the building there was 
 something more of form than with us, but not as much 
 as is common in a private palace here. AVhen one of 
 the speakers arose during my visit to make his argu- 
 ment, a servant iu full livery bore to him some wine 
 on a silver salver. All the employes of the house, 
 — doorkeepers, pages, messengers — were liveried, and 
 in addition wore a band or narrow sash of the national 
 tricolor bound around the left arm, its breadth and 
 varying degree of ampleness denoting their relative 
 rank. Further, these servants of the legislative 
 chambers differ very greatly from those at the Capitol 
 in Washington, in not being under the impression that 
 they are the most influential personages in the building. 
 Rome. 
 
 aa 34* 
 
402 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 CHAPTER XLiy. 
 
 GAEIBALDI. 
 
 The Eed-Shirted Leader at Work oisr a Sick-Bed — Pic- 
 ture OF A Middle-Class Italian Home — A Military 
 Headquarters with no Ked Tape — A Revolutionary 
 Court — Crying the Daily Papers in the Colosseum — 
 The Garibaldian Creed — European Eepublicanism — 
 The Emergence of the Common People. 
 
 Italy — Garibaldi. The two names reflect and 
 suggest each other to the American mind whenever it 
 thinks of the Roman people, or of Italian nationality. 
 And it is almost the same here. There are three pic- 
 tures one meets everywhere in Italy, — in the streets 
 and shops, side by side, equal in the honor and affec- 
 tion of the people, — King Humbert, Queen Marguerite, 
 and Garibaldi. The soldier-king and the beautiful 
 young queen are the fortunate man and woman who 
 happen to represent in their persons at this hour the 
 power of all the organized forces of society, govern- 
 ment, learning, culture, aristocracy, property, for two 
 thousand years. Twenty centuries are behind them, 
 and combine to make them. Garibaldi is the orator 
 of the common people. A man of themselves, — poor, 
 simple in manner and speech, — they have raised him 
 by acclamation to a seat beside princes in a land which, 
 from time immemorial, has been the heritage of princes. 
 His strength, too, represents a permanent force, and 
 not an emotion or transitory excitement, for his power 
 with the people is a sustained one, and has endured 
 through an eventful life, checkered by poverty, mis- 
 fortune, and defeat. 
 
 Certainly, there is no man of Europe more worthy 
 of study than this one, who represents the people in an 
 
GARIBALDI. 403 
 
 age when their advent to political power threatens the 
 whole structure of society as It has traditionally existed. 
 
 I had the good fortune of visiting Garibaldi the 
 other day, in company with the proprietor of one of 
 the leading New York dailies, and my brother. Rev. 
 Dr. Nevin, of Rome, whose influence with a distin- 
 guished officer here, the chief of staff of the Italian 
 army, had procured us a responsible introduction and 
 an audience — the old revolutionary general being on a 
 sick-bed, and too ill to see visitors except for good 
 cause. 
 
 The surroundings of the old hero, although severely 
 simple, were ratlier dramatic, and thoroughly in accord 
 with the popular conception of his person and habits. 
 We found him in an obscure street, at the house of his 
 son, — the house a very ])laln one, — and, for this town, 
 small. The family occupied the second floor, what in 
 the United States would be known as the third story. 
 The narrow hall and steps all the way up were stone, 
 hard and cold, and the hall-windows looking into the 
 street had no glass in them, were simply apertures 
 in a thick stone wall ; save In the sick man's bedroom, 
 there were no carpets on any of the floors, but there 
 were some brilliant and quite good frescos on the high 
 ceilings. The first room along which we passed, and 
 which was necessarily in full view of every visitor, was 
 the kitchen, odorous and picturesquely dirty, as is the 
 custom of the country. A young woman was at her 
 work in it, careless of the fact that a historic character 
 would eat of her food, and that a revolution might be 
 brewing in the next room. The setting of the picture 
 was, in fact, quite revolutionary. Two doors off, in 
 the solid brick gateway of a large, cold building, stood, 
 or rather lounged, three rough men, with the air of 
 irregulars, — the very picture of a vigilance committee, 
 — who eyed us closely and curiously as we entered the 
 door. At the entrance of the Garibaldi apartments 
 we were received by an old soldier, wounded, clad in 
 
404 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 coarse, civilian clothes, but wearing the red shirt. He 
 viewed us rather suspiciously, as had several Garibaldi- 
 ans whom we passed, half-posted, half-lounging, in the 
 porter's gate and entry, evidently looking on my 
 brother's ecclesiastical dress with no friendly eyes, and 
 as entirely out of place in that locality. The name of 
 the Italian general, however, acted as a talisman. Dis- 
 trust gave way to respect, and when we informed the 
 old veteran that we were soldiers and Americans, come 
 to see his chief, we had at once a warm friend at court. 
 He had fought in America for freedom, he proudly 
 told us, and welcomed his co-patriots with enthusiasm. 
 
 Here I should say, that in order to secure a more 
 satisfactory and uninterrupted interview, we had left 
 our letter of introduction and cards the day before 
 with a secretary, and arranged with him for a fixed 
 hour to call. In true Italian fashion, this had been 
 the end of that forethought. Garibaldi had never 
 seen the letter, or heard of it, and we had to introduce 
 ourselves with no word of announcement save, I sup- 
 pose, the kindly commendation of our red-shirted 
 comrade. 
 
 Garibaldi lay on a narrow, iron-frame bed, of what 
 we would call a hospital pattern, but which is of ordi- 
 nary use here, his frame wasted, his face thin and worn, 
 but his eye bright and sparkling, firing with enthusi- 
 asm, or softening into warm and genial sympathy as he 
 spoke. He called in quick and nervous tones for the 
 letter when he found it had not been delivered. A little 
 granddaughter scudded around the bedroom, hunting 
 on tables and chairs for the paper. The old soldier 
 ran to a large heap of letters and documents piled on a 
 side- table, without order or arrangement, and tumbled 
 them over and over, but without effect. Some of them 
 bore the official envelope of the Quirinal. Some women 
 from an adjoining bedroom took part in the hunt, but 
 without results, and at last, as the sound of many voices 
 all talking at once cleared, and the clatter of hands and 
 
GARIBALDI. 405 
 
 feet stopped, the cry went up, '' Menotti has it !" 
 Menotti was the son, and out of the house. 
 
 The old general spoke with some little effort, but to 
 the last with enthusiasm. He remembered America 
 with friendly kindness, and seemed unaffectedly pleased 
 when I told him that his name was a household word 
 with our people. His eye kindled as he spoke of the 
 united Italy, and seemed to thank the stranger that 
 took the friendly interest to ask about it and express 
 sympathy with it. In fact, the raison d'Ure of Gari- 
 baldi is the union of Italy. It is his instinctive sym- 
 pathies with every impulse in this direction which give 
 him such a hold on the hearts, and make him the ex- 
 ponent of the will and aspirations, of the Italian people. 
 Union means the ultimate coming forward of the 
 masses. Coming out of the bedroom of the prostrate 
 soldier, I was curious to observe the manner of life of 
 the man and his following. It was intensely democratic. 
 
 In an ante-room there waited twenty-six people, six 
 of whom were women. Some of the waiting crowd 
 were foreigners, but the great bulk were Italians, and 
 apparently quite poor. Of all the native attendance 
 there was but one man whom we would call in our 
 countrv well dressed. There was a committee of seven 
 young men with an address, — a delegation from some 
 Italia irridenta club, — a rather combustible-looking 
 body. There was a poor woman, evidently come for 
 help; the correspondent of the London Times; a 
 bright, half-faded, dark-eyed woman of the adventuress 
 type; some more veterans, come likely to snuff up the 
 prospects for future work. It was emphatically a court 
 of the people, and in it you seemed to breathe the air 
 of uprisings and revolution. There was no formality 
 of any kind, but work went on of itself — with earnest- 
 ness if not with regulation. A secretary was writing 
 busily at a small table in the centre of the room, all his 
 papers and work exposed to the crowd. No cards were 
 sent in, but the red-shirted soldier acted as master of 
 
406 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 ceremonies, communicating with Garibaldi from time 
 to time, and announcing results effectively by opening 
 the door and letting in such as were called for. There 
 was little furniture, and most of the visitors stood up 
 while awaiting their audience. On a wardrobe-top, 
 used for table purposes, lay some stray letters, news- 
 papers, and a volume in the French language. I 
 picked it up. Its title was La Papessa Jeanne. 
 
 Garibaldi suffers great personal disadvantage in the 
 likeness of him which has gone over all lands, and 
 which is, perhaps, all that the photograph can do. He 
 needs a painter to give him to the world, and a painter 
 as great as himself. The accepted picture, which is 
 known the world over, may be a correct map of the 
 lines of his physical features, but it misses entirely the 
 real man. It is heavy and rather stolid. He is bright, 
 of fine intellectual cast, and with an exceptionally sym- 
 pathetic smile that wins all hearts. It is this real, 
 earnest, world-wide sympathy which has made him the 
 leader of the common people of Europe. He is neither 
 a soldier nor a statesman, he is an impulse and an 
 enthusiasm. He has made military mistakes, and his 
 political moves are often erratic to a degree. They are, 
 in fact, not politic movements at all — simply straight- 
 forward demonstrations, in season and out, for the end. 
 His is the heart, not the head, power, and as the masses 
 of his forces have, at present, no higher sense of action 
 than the blind, personal following of some leadership, 
 his is the force that is needed. Being without govern- 
 mental power, he has no responsibilities, and so far 
 does not need the strength of judgment and careful 
 policy. He represents the asj^irations of a people that 
 long for the morning after the dreary night of the 
 Dark Ages. 
 
 And nothing but loving sympathy can do the work 
 for them. Nothing but that could sustain the leader 
 or hold the trust of this people, steeped in the dense 
 ignorance of centuries of slavery of mind and soul. 
 
GARIBALDI. 407 
 
 Ignorance is alwi^ys its own hopeless foe by an inex- 
 orable law. The io;norant man is suspicious by reason 
 of his ignorance. The suspicious man is a ready dupe 
 to cunning and low suggestion by reason of his sus- 
 ])ic;ions. When the battle of universal suffrage is fought 
 by Garibaldi for the Roman people and won for them, 
 they will turn against him and vote for the reactionary 
 party, just as surely as did the negroes of the South 
 w^ith us. He has faith, however, and is willing to 
 make the sacrifice, trusting in God for the ultimate 
 result. 
 
 The struggle for the social advancement of the com- 
 mon })e()ple on this spot is a very discouraging one. 
 Even the centuries work against it. The other day, in 
 the shadows of the Colosseum, I heard a faint, thin 
 cry. A newsboy, a youth of some nineteen years, had 
 come in with half a dozen papers on his arm, which is 
 a fair load here. He looked around, advanced reflect- 
 ively, called out two or three times: ^' II Popolo JRo- 
 mano^' on a decrescendo scale, and then he too subsided 
 into rest and meditation. The presence of the crowd- 
 ing years was too much, and this is largely the history 
 of all action here. The great national force is inertia. 
 
 Garibaldi throws his great political influence w^ith 
 the king, who in this stage of affairs represents United 
 Italy. When he came to Rome, some ten days since, 
 weak and sick, carried almost like a dead man from 
 the depot to his son's house, amid the cheers and wail- 
 ing of the populace, the king paid him the first visit. 
 Some days later Garibaldi repaid it, going in a carriage, 
 which he was not able to leave. He was driven into 
 the lovely gardens of tlie Quirinal, when the king came 
 down, and, entering the carriage, sat with him during 
 the interview. His relations with the established gov- 
 ernment are cordial and complete; in fact, he is drawing 
 a large pension from the State. 
 
 While accepting the crown as the representative to- 
 day of established government and Italian union, and 
 
408 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 throwing his influence with it in the interest of order, 
 Garibaldi is in no way satisfied with the administration, 
 and his political position is on the extreme left of the 
 Lefts. It is doubtful, however, if he would be satis- 
 fied with any government. He is a poet, although a 
 writer of bad verses, and lacks the practical grasp of 
 statesmanship. It is his mission to arouse and destroy, 
 not to protect and administer. 
 
 It would be a mistake to think of Garibaldi as an 
 American Republican. He is a born revolutionist, with 
 all those dangerous beliefs which European conservatism 
 have made the creed of European Republicanism. So- 
 cialism, communism, nihilism, have his undoubted 
 sympathies, and I think he would gladly break up the 
 present order of society at any immediate cost. With 
 the assassination of kings he has expressed more than 
 sympathy. His deliberately written words are those 
 of encouragement. It sharply defines the contrast 
 between European and American Republicanism, be- 
 tween the fortunate condition of the people of America 
 and the desperate state of the masses of Europe, to 
 remember that assassination, which with us is never 
 regarded save as an immixed crime and a cowardly one, 
 is, in Europe, dispassionately, and often intelligently 
 considered as a political weapon, and that not as a 
 remedy for evil, but merely to call attention to it. It 
 is in many cases a deliberate act of self-immolation. 
 Garibaldi has all his life been heading forlorn hopes 
 against the entrenchments of privilege and vested 
 power, and his feelings very naturally are very differ- 
 ent from those of men who have never had to fight 
 this battle. 
 
 For a whole lifetime Garibaldi has been the mover 
 of the oppressed peoples of Europe, leading them in 
 one desperate effort after another that has always ended 
 in his defeat and disaster. To-day, as he nears death, 
 his body worn away by the force of the still living and 
 powerful soul within it, it is dramatic to think that he 
 
GARIBALDI. 409 
 
 stands, like the leader of old on Pisgah's top, almost 
 in reach of the promised land of his hopes and proph- 
 ecies. In Germany an appalling military despotism, 
 like a blind fate, is forcing the question of human rights 
 to a violent issue on a grand scale. In England, to-day, 
 the social and political power of the common people is 
 steadily growing healthily and peacefully. In France 
 they stand a guard in possession of the government. 
 In Italy they wait in hope, nnder, perhaps, the freest 
 constitutional government of the continent. In Russia 
 they are blindly rising in crime and blood — illogically, 
 illegally, but in a way that is striking terror into organ- 
 ized society all over Europe, and forcing the consider- 
 ation of the situation on the fears and conscience of 
 those now fortunate classes who, for a thousand years, 
 have enjoyed the trust of government without ever 
 being called on for an account of their stewardship, or, 
 perhaps, ever thinking much of their responsibility. 
 
 KOME. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 Keeping the National Holiday of the Union — The People 
 OP New Italy — Transition Contrasts — The American 
 and Italian Physique — The Heirs op Imperial Kome — 
 Common Life in Italy — Modern Italy — Public Build- 
 ings — The Eoman Sunday — The Newspapers. 
 
 To-day, being the first Sunday in June, is the 
 national holiday, — the Fourth of July of New Italy, 
 — and it has been kept with a good deal of enthu- 
 siasm ; the more so, perhaps, as it falls this year on 
 Whit-Sunday, and both parties, the " blacks" (papal) 
 and the " whites" (national), can join in gentle vivas 
 
 and wearing flowers. 
 
 s 35 
 
410 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 The streets were crowded all day long with well- 
 dressed and intelligent-looking people. It has seemed 
 to me that the throngs on the streets and piazzas were 
 of a better class of persons — more prosperous, and 
 brighter looking in face and manner — than those who 
 turn out on the Church fete days. They are the people 
 of New Italy. Among them were groups of peasants, 
 men and women, — the men in their sheepskin clothing, 
 and the women with their red shawls, outside corsets, 
 and Ionic head-dress, giving local color to the scene, and 
 relieving the otherwise dead level of the respectability 
 of the multitude, which looked much like an American 
 crowd. 
 
 The main feature of the day was a review of the 
 troops and their parade before the king and the queen 
 and their court. Some five thousand infantry were in 
 line. The soldiery were in very good condition for 
 field service, but they had not that finish of drill and 
 accuracy of movement which our army had attained 
 generally before its disbandment in 1865. Wherever 
 I have seen the Italian troops this creditable feature 
 comes out. They seem to be drilled and handled with 
 constant reference to effective field use, and compara- 
 tively little attention paid to the parade side of the 
 training. They always march with a long, swinging 
 quickstep, and have achieved a wonderful celerity of 
 movement. 
 
 After the review, the troops were formed in double 
 lines, faced inward, along the broad and handsome Via 
 Nazionale, leading to the Quirinal, and through these 
 lines rode the queen in an open landau, with ladies and 
 officers of state. Following her, about five minutes 
 later, the king rode down the lines on horseback, ac- 
 companied by Prince Amadeo of Spain, a large and 
 brilliant staff, and his body-guard, which is not a show 
 troop of costumed dragoons, but an effective body of 
 cavalry. I had the opportunity some weeks ago of 
 inspecting this troop at their barracks, and was sur- 
 
MODERN ITALY. 411 
 
 prised to find how thoroughly they were equipped for 
 field service, and how tiioroughly the officers accepted 
 this as their work, never for a moment seeming to think 
 of themselves as being set apart for mere escort or 
 ornamental duty. 
 
 As tne queen passed down the street there was a 
 graciously hearty acclamation from the dense crowds 
 which surged on both sides against the living walls of 
 soldiery, — and it was repeated when the king appeared. 
 The demonstration, however, while real and kindly, 
 was not as vigorous as is our American fashion. I have 
 seen a governor received in Philadelphia with far louder 
 cheers and much more violent enthusiasm. The vivas 
 and hand-clapping rather reminded me of the fashion- 
 able repressed and kid-glove encoring of our Academy 
 of Music. Perhaps this may be explained by saying 
 that the lower classes of the Italians have as gentle 
 manners as the higher classes of Americans. I noticed 
 this particularly in the behavior of the troops towards 
 the people. They held their lines always intact and 
 kept the street clear, but without a rough word or 
 action, — officers and men had the manners and demeanor 
 of gentlemen in a ball-room throughout all the move- 
 ments. 
 
 The display of bunting was very moderate, and not 
 at all equal to the ordinary American demonstration 
 on the Fourth of July. The flags were few and small 
 compared with our show on such an occasion. Indeed, 
 the very largest in size was an American one, which 
 floated from the campanile of the American Church, and 
 directly under which the royal party passed. 
 
 In the evening there was an illumination of the city 
 in honor of the event. Roman fireworks are noted the 
 w^orld over for their excellence and cheapness, and the 
 display was creditably brilliant. The old Castle San 
 Angelo, the centre of the illumination, stood out 
 grandly, like a fortress of fire, and, as the successive 
 explosions of the fireworks boomed through the city, 
 
412 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 one could almost imagine that some of the old warrior 
 popes were at their work again. The Vatican was dark 
 and silent. The national /^^e of to-day is a State anni- 
 versary, held in honor of the adoption of the modern 
 constitution. As the pope is virtually a dethroned ruler 
 here, and still keeps up his claims to the temporal sover- 
 eignty of his old kingdom, he Avould hardly be expected 
 to join in the celebration of the adoption of the liberal 
 constitution under which King Humbert administers 
 the government. 
 
 The transition from the absolute autocracy of the 
 Papal government to the very limited monarchy of the 
 United Kingdom has not been a quiet or easy one, and 
 the ecclesiastical and civil parties stand w^idely apart. 
 Under the old regime the Church had gotten to be the 
 main land-owner of the country. Two-iifths of all the 
 real estate was said to be in its possession. The new 
 government found it necessary to confiscate a large por- 
 tion of this and return it to healthy uses. Laws were 
 passed appropriating large properties for the immediate 
 use of the government, and providing for the gradual 
 extinction of the monastic establishments, which had 
 grown plethoric with estate and meagre in membership. 
 To-day nearly all the great department buildings are 
 confiscated convents, and many others have been sold 
 or rented for private purposes. These buildings often 
 still retain their old legends and titles, and the effect is 
 singularly confusing, and at times odd. 
 
 Over a restaurant, for instance, on this street you see 
 ave gratia plena. The headquarters of the police de- 
 partment, which, however, is itself a somnolent institu- 
 tion compared with Scotland Yard or an American 
 " Central Station," is full of ancient inscriptions from 
 the catacombs in erudite abbreviated Latin. Along the 
 front of a pension, not far off, I read every day that fine 
 old sentence from one of the fathers : " Per varias heic 
 (Etates et tempora vitce omnes atque wternam tendimus 
 patriam/' and " Dis Manibus/^ from half a dozen tombs, 
 
MODERN ITALY. 413 
 
 meets me every time I ascend the stairways to my own 
 rooms. 
 
 In fact, the intrusion of classic association and tra- 
 dition into the commonplace life of every day is inces- 
 sant. Every morning our butter comes on the table 
 stamped with an image of the she-wolf suckling Rom- 
 ulus and Remus, a favorite print here ; and it is a sad 
 come down to read S. P. Q. R. — those imperial initials, 
 so fraught with transcendent power and meaning to our 
 school-boy mind — on the municipal street-carts and the 
 caps of the city lamp-lighters. 
 
 It seems like calling up the spirits from another and 
 far-off world ; and yet that world, [:)erliaps, was much 
 like our own. Any one going through the galleries 
 of the Vatican and Capitol, where there are thousands 
 and thousands of statues and busts, would be struck, I 
 think, with the likeness of the old Roman politicians 
 of the Republican period to the politicians of our own 
 country, particularly those of the South and Southwest 
 of the generation just previous to the war. There is 
 the same gaunt, meagre, self-reliant face and figure, and 
 often that half-careless and shabby swing or slouch of 
 the body. 
 
 I have before mentioned that the Italian of to-day 
 resembles strongly the best American type of this mo- 
 ment, — the man with fine-cut, intellectual face, sym- 
 metrical form of body, and light, elastic step, — that 
 type which seems to prefigure the coming American 
 man when the race shall have fully sloughed off the 
 grossness and dross of its heterogeneous mixture and 
 evolved its own distinctive form. 
 
 There is even now a strong parallel between the 
 physical appearance of the two people which you can 
 trace down into detail and to classes. The soldiery of 
 New Italy strongly resemble the best regiments of our 
 volunteers. They are both the armies of freedom. The 
 upper middle classes of Italy, the hope of the new king- 
 dom, have much the appearance of the middle classes 
 
 3.3* 
 
414 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 of our own country, — the rank and file of the Repub- 
 lican party. Both classes are doing the same work for 
 their respective countries, — leading them up and onward. 
 
 I may as well say here, for fear of misleading, that 
 the Romans themselves acknowledge no kinship in any 
 way with any Northern nation. From the high plane 
 of their descent and traditions they look down on us 
 all, English, Americans, Germans, and Russians, as 
 barbarians. They are too polite to say this, and irre- 
 proachably courteous in their demeanor, — noblesse oblige, 
 — but, nevertheless, they think it. They are polite and 
 kind, not because it is our due, but because they owe it 
 to their name and heritage. This feeling of infinite 
 superiority extends to the lowest classes, who all look on 
 themselves as old families compared wdth the outside 
 world. Notwithstanding, they look on all foreigners as 
 a fair subject of plunder, — poor wrecks sent by a kind 
 Providence to be stripped and overcharged. I think 
 the stranger in Italy pays just about double for every- 
 thing. I have seen oranges sold out of the same basket 
 at one price to the Roman and at more than double to 
 forestieri. A curious illustration of this is found in 
 physicians' bills. The regularly accepted tariff of the 
 average physician is, for a visit to an Italian, ten lira 
 (about two dollars) ; for a visit to a stranger, twenty 
 lira. The populace thus, by a motion of their own, 
 levy a high export duty on all goods sold out of their 
 country, or to be taken out, and even on services ren- 
 dered to an outsider. 
 
 Living is very cheap in Italy for many reasons. 
 Labor is to be had in abundance at a few cents a day ; 
 lodging or house-rent comes to little, because the solid 
 stone dwellings, built for a once greatly larger popula- 
 tion, are still there, and are a free gift to the present 
 generation ; the cormorant middleman has not come 
 yet, and the fish of the sea and generous fruits of the 
 earth, olives, figs, grapes, cost almost nothing. But for 
 the stranger on the trodden highways of travel, all 
 
MODERN ITALY. 415 
 
 these things might as well not be. Among themselves, 
 the commoner classes of Italy, and indeed of all Europe, 
 live with an economy that is painful, and excites one's 
 involuntary pity, but the traveller cannot share in the 
 advantages of the cheap prices which this brings about. 
 Accounts in France are kept in francs, and here in lira, 
 pieces of about twenty cents, which tends to economy, 
 the mind making that the unit of expense, instead of 
 the dollar, as with us. The poorer people buy and sell 
 and keep their accounts in centesimi, the one-fifth part 
 of our cent. There is a small copper coin in circulation 
 here in value two centesimi, — two-fifths of a cent, — and 
 in Austria they have a coin of just half that value, or 
 two mills of our system. It is almost impossible for 
 us to feel that such a coin represents a distinct value, 
 or can purchase anything, or be worth having or saving, 
 but to the people of Europe it is a sharp fact. It is 
 these centesimi coins, I fear, that make communism. 
 
 The new central post-office on the piazza San Sil- 
 vestro is a fair illustration of the way in which the new 
 government is changing the face of old Rome. The 
 building is a spacious pile of confiscated convent prop- 
 erty. A convent in Rome, I should say, means what 
 we commonly call a monastery. You enter it on either 
 side by a handsome hallway, possibly fifty feet high, 
 certainly forty, whose sides are adorned by immense 
 panels of oil-paintings, — emblematic pictures of the 
 genius of the railwa}' and the telegraph. Once over 
 the tessellated pavements of these fine arches you enter 
 a grand interior court. So munificent is the provision 
 of room that this court or piazza is a beautiful square, 
 one hundred and fifty feet in length and breadth, lovely 
 with fountains, flowers, statuary, green plots of grass, 
 and with a covered corridor frescoed on ceiling and 
 wall and paved with bright marbles stretching all the 
 leno;th of its exterior. Around this court the build in o; 
 proper rises in three grand stories. 
 
416 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 There are rooms and offices for every conceivable 
 purpose, and those for the accommodation of the public 
 nearly always in duplicate, — one for men and one for 
 women. All these rooms are frescoed or painted, and 
 equipped with furniture of massive style and artistic 
 design. So lavish is the embellishment that the corri- 
 dor affords a walk of six hundred feet of continuous 
 pictorial design, much of it fantastic and quaint, and 
 all on the theme either of the railroad or telegraph-wire, 
 steam or fire. The building has just been opened to the 
 public, and is daily thronged with groups of aesthetic 
 Italians — which means the lower classes as well as what 
 we call the educated — discussing with interest and ani- 
 mation the taste and execution of the work. 
 
 To present fairly the liberality and enlightened pro- 
 vision of the Roman government, it must be remem- 
 bered that Kome is a city not one-third as large as 
 Philadelphia, and that its people do not have the 
 habit of writing and communication. There is, for 
 instance, no newspaper mail at all as compared with 
 ours. There are no large business establishments 
 flooding a whole continent or the world with circulars. 
 In fact, the circular is not known here in our sense. 
 Finally, of the quarter of a million people here, there 
 are vast numbers who never either send or receive a 
 letter. I doubt if the amount of business of this office 
 is one-tenth that of ours. As an illustration of the 
 different habits of the people, among the wealth of 
 rooms in the building (and there are so many that 
 they seem at loss sometimes, I think, to know how to 
 label them) there is one set apart for the public and 
 common use of any one who wants to write his letters 
 or address them, or do anything of the kind at the 
 office. This room, all brilliant with painting, had in 
 it four small tables, neatly fitted out with stationery, 
 ink, pens, blotters, etc., two seats to each table, and 
 was, in fact, a charming little retreat. Just one seat 
 was occupied. In Philadelphia, or New York, or 
 
MODERN ITALY. 417 
 
 Boston, one hundred chairs would be kept pretty well 
 filled. 
 
 Even in so purely democratic a matter as post-office 
 accommodation, both for the people at large and the 
 men who serve them, we have something to learn from 
 a monarchy. 
 
 Sunday is the central day of the week in Rome in 
 social and civil as well as in religious life. Parliament, 
 or congress, sits on this day as on any other. Most of 
 the shops are open, although the attendance at church 
 is good. It is, in fact, a mystery to me where the 
 people in the churches come from, as the streets are 
 full and the town busy. Political meetings are gen- 
 erally fixed for Sunday, although there are not many 
 of them. The fresh cartoons appear on the walls and 
 in the shops on Sunday. It is the visiting day, and 
 the day for putting on cleanly- washed clothes among 
 the poor people. It is a brilliant day on the Corso, 
 that lively little avenue being crowded with equipages, 
 and blue and scarlet with uniforms. In the evening 
 there is always the opera of the week, and in the pri- 
 vate houses balls and receptions. This social use of 
 the day is not confined to the Italians or Roman 
 Catholics, but holds among Protestants, and English 
 and Americans as well, who readily fall in with the 
 social usages of the country, and give their dinner- 
 parties and receptions according to its customs. It is a 
 national or Continental, not a religious, characteristic. 
 
 It is to be said for the Italians, if we would present 
 
 the question fairly, that, while it is perfectly natural 
 
 and a matter of course among them to use Sunday for 
 
 their pleasures and recreation, it is also perfectly natural 
 
 and a matter of course with them, as it is not with us, 
 
 to go to church and worship devoutly on week-days. 
 
 Service is going on all the time in the numerous 
 
 churches here, and fairly well attended. You can hear 
 
 a sermon everv day in the week if you want to. Some 
 bb 
 
418 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 people here perhaps do. A good numlier hear mass 
 every day, and a vast number enter their churches 
 daily for personal and private prayers. If the Italians 
 carry their pleasures into Sunday, as we do not, they 
 also carry their religion into the six week-days, as we 
 do not. 
 
 The whole Sunday question is at bottom like so 
 many others, one of climate and habit of life. The 
 diiferences grow out of different modes of life induced 
 by different clime and land. These people, having 
 warm sun and soft skies the year round, live out-of- 
 doors all the time, and have no family-life, in our 
 sense, where the family lives from morning to night 
 within walls to itself. They could not adopt our soli- 
 tary observance of Sunday, simply because they have 
 no close houses to shut themselves up in. Our ordi- 
 nary habits of life to them would be imprisonment. 
 They live on the street, under the trees, out by the 
 fountains, in open gardens, in their cool marble 
 churches, grand and lofty, and in the stone-flagged 
 plazas. If they stop working on Sunday they must 
 see each other. 
 
 Once upon a time, hundreds of years ago, there lived 
 here a tailor called Pasquino so witty that his sayings 
 were the talk of the town, and brought him custom from 
 all, both high and low, who loved to come to his little 
 shop and hear in clever phrase all the pungent scandal 
 of the day. This tailor-shop was a kind of liberal club 
 of those days. Right opposite it, on the angle of a wall 
 of a palace, stood a large statue of some person — as 
 is so often the case here — unknown. The friends of 
 Pasquino after his death, unwilling to give up their 
 diversion of witty criticism and satire, still kept on 
 forging their sharp comments on public men and 
 passing events, hanging them in written form on the 
 l)ase of this statue for the amusement of the public. 
 The statue very easily took the name of Pasquino. To 
 
MODERN ITALY. 419 
 
 help the thing along, the statue pretended to talk with 
 a neighboring river-god in marble across the way, the 
 comments taking the form of dialoo:ue, or sometimes 
 point-blank question and answer. From this incident 
 we have our woi'd pasquinado. The sayings were 
 written and put up in the night, the authorities taking 
 them down in the daytime, but they could not stop 
 people circulating from mouth to mouth the clever 
 sayings which had been found there in the morning, 
 and which were the news of the day. 
 
 This thing kept up for generations and became a 
 cherished usage. So exasperated were the popes, who 
 w^ere severely lampooned, that they removed therefrom 
 the river-god to the museum of the Capitol, and one 
 of them, Adrian V., wanted to remove Pasquino also, 
 and throw him into the Tiber. His owner, a duke, 
 objected to this and defended him, and here he is yet, 
 badly mutilated, little more than a trunk, but talking 
 still. His last great pasquinado was during the recent 
 sitting of the Vatican Council, when there hung from 
 the stumps of feet one morning the inscription, " Free 
 as the Council," a bitter epigram to those who under- 
 stand the inside working of that caucus-ridden instru- 
 ment of the Vatican "" machine." 
 
 For centuries this Pasquino image was the only organ 
 of public opinion in Pome, and so strong is the force 
 of habit that public opinion to-day finds expression in 
 this ^' placard" form in preference to any other. The 
 newspaper has come, — a great modern institution, — but 
 the Italian mind hardly receives it. It prefers the 
 placard, and uses it in every way. Political attacks 
 are made on cheap colored cartoons sold in the shops 
 and on the stands as we sell newspapers. Peligious 
 disputes are carried on in printed placards posted on 
 the churches, and so many of them are they that they 
 very thoroughly cover the town. Rome has been quite 
 excited for some weeks over a dis(;ussion as to the 
 adoration of the Virgin, and it is entirely carried on 
 
420 ^ MODERN ITALY. 
 
 by printed posters. One morning you find a card of 
 one side posted all over the place, and groups gathered 
 reading it. In a day or two, or perhaps the third or 
 fourth, — things move slowly, — appears a reply similarly 
 posted. The people read it, and at their homes talk 
 over it. Printing, of course, is cheap, and also posting. 
 This usage extends even to advertisements, which will 
 not go into the papers, although advertising is cheap 
 enough, six to eight cents a line for one insertion. 
 Does an Italian want to let an apartment he never 
 thinks of advertising in a paper, but has a package of 
 hand-bills struck oif, and placards the town. The 
 little advertising there is in the papers is done by 
 English and Americans. 
 
 Under these circumstances the Italian papers, although 
 there are plenty of them, are naturally thin and weak. 
 They are all poor and able to spend but little money. 
 The Italian does not ask for news with his morning 
 maccaroni, and they, in consequence, do not give it to 
 him. He knows nothing of the world outside of his 
 city, and there is no correspondence. Only in one 
 department do they compare with us, and in that they 
 often surpass us. Their editorials are often strong, 
 polished, timely, and scholarly. Here the paper, re- 
 jected by the mass of the people for their common uses, 
 has a special function. It is the channel adopted by 
 the leaders of New Italy to reach the thought and influ- 
 ence of the Nation. There is generally but one article, 
 such as we call "editorial,'^ a real leader, occupying the 
 first column of the first page. It grasps the leading 
 issue of the day and handles it with vigor and depth. 
 There is a scope and breadth about many of these arti- 
 cles which reveal in their writers a large knowledge of 
 the world, and that trained habit of thought which 
 comes from the discipline of education. In this spirit 
 and style the great questions of Church and State, of 
 the right to the ballot, of the use of an army, of inter- 
 vention or non-intervention in European politics, of 
 
MODERN ITALY. 421 
 
 home political construction, and the hourly arising 
 problems and complications of the new Union are daily 
 discussed, and this high plane of discussion is one of 
 the most encouraging and hopeful signs for the Italy 
 that is to come. This is not, of course, the character 
 of all the editorials, nor of those of all papers, but it is 
 of many of them, — 'enough to give tone and a character 
 to the general press, or at least a liberal portion of it. 
 
 The reason for the strength and high character of 
 this class of articles is clear, — they are not written for 
 the mass of the people, who would perhaps be best 
 moved by a very passionate and an ad captandum style 
 of writing, but for the men who control and lead. 
 They are the work of leaders reaching out to other 
 leaders and men of influence and power. At present 
 only these use the newspapers. The average Italian 
 lets it alone. Hence the strong " Vatican" articles ; 
 the strong ^' Parliamentary" articles ; the strong " Rad- 
 ical" articles, which one sees every week here in the 
 several leading journals. The newspaper is a real 
 channel here for the statesman. 
 
 The usual price for a daily paper in Rome is two 
 cents. The circulation is small, but very many persons 
 read the same sheet, — perhaps an average of ten. In 
 time the newspaper will be a great popular institution 
 in Italy, for the Italians are a people given to reading, 
 and fond of talking about what they read, but at pres- 
 ent it is foreign and strange to the ingrained habits of 
 centuries and must work its way slowly. 
 
 36 
 
422 MODERN ITALY 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 THE ITALIAN LIFE. 
 
 Kinship of the Modern Italian and the American — The 
 Visible Blood-tie of Thousands of Years ago — The 
 Common Education of Italy and that of the United 
 States — The Two Civilizations — Bright Side of Lower 
 Class Life in Italy — Kule of the Koman Mind — Polit- 
 ical AND Social End of Travel. 
 
 When one goes to Italy expecting to find there in 
 the people of to-day the full-blooded descendants of the 
 Koman senators and imperial pro-consuls who stalked 
 like demigods through our well-remembered school- 
 books, he suffers, of course, a foolish disappointment. 
 In race and blood the modern Italian is largely the 
 same manner of man as we are. His national fibre, in 
 good part, is like our own, Teutonic. Our race an- 
 cestry in one great branch — say in the male line — is 
 the same, and our common ancestor is not very far back. 
 Some few thousand years ago our Teuton forefathers 
 came swarming together out of those wondrous cavern- 
 ous shades in Asia which neither Revelation nor history 
 have yet illuminated ; and only about twelve to fifteen 
 hundred years ago they separated, the Gothic branch 
 pouring over Southern Europe, Italy, lower France, 
 Spain, the Scandinavian branch streaming over North- 
 ern Europe. Certain Gothic tribes flooded over the 
 Alps into Italy, washed out the civilized people and 
 government of the soil and camped there in history. 
 Certain other tribes, their Scandinavian kin, pushed 
 for the northward and westward to barbarous Britain, 
 swept away the rude people and institutions, and made 
 
THE ITALIAN LIFE. 423 
 
 their home there. Substitute the vanquished, savage 
 Celt in place of the vanquished, polished Latin, and the 
 modern Italian and Englishman, or American, are the 
 same. When the Gothic Teutons that came into Italy 
 submerged the people they found there and drove them 
 out of history, they took from them a classic literature 
 and art, and a social culture, that were the product of 
 the two highest civilizations the world had yet seen. 
 When the Scandinavian Teutons that came into Britain 
 had disposed of its barbarian population, they found 
 little there that was much better than themselves, and, 
 consequently, took little by their conquest save the bare 
 soil. 
 
 In all this our modern Italian relatives have this 
 great advantage of us : their fathers married into a 
 better old family than did ours. But even in these old 
 families there was a distant, although forgotten, rela- 
 tionship, for the Celt and Latin were both of Aryan 
 stock. The modern nationalities of Italy and the 
 United States are not, therefore, quite brothers, but we 
 are certainly cousins in the family of the world. 
 
 It is this far-off but strong blood-tie which accounts 
 for the elusive traces of similarity, sometimes in phys- 
 ique, sometimes in mind, between the Italian and 
 American which constantly challenges one's attention 
 in Italy. The two people are so different and yet 
 often so alike. The Italian is the American with his 
 aesthetic and higher side fully and roundly developed, 
 but to the neglect of his practical energies and lower 
 activities. The American is the Italian with his lower 
 or money-getting faculties acutely developed to the 
 neglect of his aesthetic and higher culture. This is a 
 rather blunt and not very complimentary way to our- 
 selves of putting it, but it at least defines sharply the 
 complementary relation which w^e seem to hold to each 
 other as peoples. We are the same people differentiated 
 by the special development for fifteen hundred years 
 of different sides of our nature. 
 
424 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 It is the advantage of comparative social studies that 
 they enable us to see ourselves somewhat as other peo- 
 ples see us, and as we cannot see ourselves. We Ameri- 
 cans value certain things and prize them highly, and 
 rank ourselves above all the world because we possess 
 them, and despise those nations who do not possess 
 them. The Italian values certain other things, achieves 
 them, is proud of himself because he has achieved them, 
 and contemns those who cannot understand his way of 
 thinking and living. We despise the Italian as igno- 
 rant and lazy; he looks down on us as rude and uncul- 
 tivated. He is just as honest and sincere in his con- 
 tempt of us as we in ours of him. The decision must 
 come from some higher and broader court than either 
 nation. 
 
 The average Italian has leisure and cultivation, and 
 he despises the American who has neither. The aver- 
 age American has food and clothing and work, and he 
 despises the Italian who often has none of them. 
 
 Let us try to look at this question a moment with 
 Italian eyes and not our own. In inviting a competi- 
 tive international comparison the American would 
 probably put forward as his first and strongest claim 
 to superiority, " We are the better-educated people.'^ 
 ''No,'^ the Italian would surely say; "you are not. 
 More, you are grossly uneducated. To be sure, you can 
 all read and write and have an illusory proficiency in 
 the lower branches of education, but in all higher edu- 
 cation your national mind is a blank. Your average 
 citizen can read type, but he cannot read a Titian or a 
 Fra Angelico, as our humblest ])eople can. He under- 
 stands arithmetic, or book-keeping, or contracting, but 
 he cannot understand a work of Michael Angelo or 
 Phidias. He would not know a Praxiteles if he found 
 it on the roadside, and could not enjoy it if it were 
 given to him. Even your wealthy classes are too 
 uneducated to purchase intelligently in our art mar- 
 
THE ITALIAN LIFE. 425 
 
 ket. We send over to you our refuse — slop-shop paint- 
 ings and ready-made statuary — because you prefer it, 
 and will not buy our best work. Engravings of the 
 masters will not sell in your great cities against mod- 
 ern, sentimental crudities that would not be exposed for 
 sale in an interior Italian town. Your millionaires are 
 incompetent to select the ' simplest picture for their 
 swollen houses filled with all gross luxuries. The 
 walls of their halls and drawing-rooms would often 
 offend the eye and shock the taste of many an Italian 
 peasant. You have a wonderful faculty for the prac- 
 tical application of the exact sciences to common uses, 
 which fits you pre-eminently to be laborers and traders 
 for all the world, — to supply their bodily wants, — but 
 you have not the higher flower of civilization, that 
 culture and perfection of those nobler faculties which 
 makes the whole man a desirable and gracious being. 
 You are fit to be manufacturers and mechanics for all 
 men, but not to sit with them. You have not that 
 mental and social grace which make companionship 
 with you desirable. You are excellent toilers and labor- 
 ers, but you do not get higher, — you never reach the 
 intellectual and artistic side of work. Even your 
 professional mechanic is not the artisan of Europe." 
 
 Now this reply does raise the question. What is 
 education ? And if there are varying educations, which 
 is the higher and better ? Which makes the higher 
 and fuller and happier man? Which is the higher 
 accomplishment, the power to understand at once and 
 thoroughly enjoy a patent rat-trap or a piece of sculp- 
 ture? Is it a greater national glory to produce a sew- 
 ing-machine or a steam-tug, or a school of art? Is it 
 a higher intellectual capacity to be able to read news- 
 papers and science primers, or Correggios and Guidos 
 and cathedrals ? 
 
 Leaving this question open, the advocate of the 
 American life would probably select his ultimate posi- 
 tion in the general comfort and well-being of the body 
 
 36* 
 
426 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 of the nation, and from this intrenchraent argue, ^^We 
 are a prosperous people ; every man among us is well 
 fed, well clad, well housed/^ And so we are in com- 
 parison with Italy or any other European people. 
 ^' But,^^ says the Italian, '^ granting all that, is the body 
 the man ? Is its care and comfort the pursuit of hap- 
 piness ? The corpulent hog is well fed and warm and 
 well housed, but what is he ? You have attained phys- 
 ical well-being and material prosperity at the neglect 
 of the culture of the higher man. Your prosperous, 
 well-to-do, perhaps wealthy man — the man you call 
 successful — is often of coarse instincts, of ignorant man- 
 ners, of unpleasant and vulgar address. He is devoid 
 of that personal cultivation — the culture of his mind 
 and affections — which makes association with him 
 agreeable, and which, if he possessed, would constitute 
 for himself a far higher and truer source of enjoyment 
 than anything that food and clothing and gross luxuries 
 of any kind, or to any amount, can bring him. He 
 has sacrificed everything that is high in him to the 
 getting of material comfort, and the best one can say 
 for him is, that he can never understand iiis utter men- 
 tal and moral poverty, his meagreness and un loveliness 
 as a man. The poor Italian, with leisure, gracious 
 manners, fine perceptions, refined instincts, and, withal, 
 content; with a capacity to enjoy the highest develop- 
 ment of human thought and genius, is an infinitely 
 higher type of man. What is even your power of 
 money? You can make money, which is the lowest 
 relation of man to wealth. You cannot spend it, which 
 is the highest relation of man to wealth. Our poor, culti- 
 vated peasant is the superior of your vulgar rich man. 
 Man does not live by bread alone ; our civilization is a 
 moral, not a material one, and must not be tried by 
 material tests.^' 
 
 Here is another issue Avhich must be left to the decis- 
 ion of some tribunal which is neither American nor 
 Italian. 
 
THE ITALIAN LIFE. 427 
 
 Whatever may have been oiir popular and conven- 
 tional opinion of the Italian in times past, certain it is 
 that the educated tliought and thinking travel, both of 
 England and America, are every day pronouncing a 
 higher verdict on the modern Italian. And it is likely 
 that this judgment will strengthen as we come to know 
 more of him from personal knowledge, and as we grad- 
 ually lift ourselves more and more above a provincial 
 plane of mind. 
 
 The modern Italian has virtues which are not ours, 
 an education which is not ours, a national wealth which 
 is not ours, a national ambition which is not ours. He 
 is badly handicapped by the centuries, but he has al- 
 ready achieved wonderful things both in political and 
 social advancement. He has broken the fetters of a 
 superstitious bondage, of whose appalling and merciless 
 power we have no conception. He has set out towards 
 self-government, with the achievement of a federal 
 Union of states in the fiice of obstacles which make 
 our work in 1776 to 1789 seem crude and infantile. 
 He has established an order of society by classes, super- 
 imposed one above the other, but not so greatly at the 
 cost of the lower orders as in England. One never 
 meets in Italy the painful servility of the lower class 
 Englishman. The Italian peasant has the self-respect 
 of a prince. In this respect the social structure of 
 Italy is a higher piece of work than that of England. 
 The modern Italian bears a most burdensome national 
 debt with a self-control and honesty which far sur- 
 passes that of the average American State or city. The 
 repudiator has not yet appeared in Italian politics. 
 
 There is a positive wealth, too, throughout Italy of 
 which we have no conception, for it is not our idea of 
 wGalth, and cannot be measured by statistics, like iron 
 and pork and cotton. In eveiy country town in Italy 
 there are vast treasures of art of which the average 
 American does not know enough even to go and see 
 when he is over there. There are no circulating 
 
428 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 libraries in the Italian provincial towns, and perhaps 
 no reading-circles or book-clubs, those excellent insti- 
 tutions of our country life, but there are museums 
 stored with a wealth of art and sesthetic treasure such 
 as no American city can have at all, however metro- 
 politan its ambition, descended palaces filled with 
 frescos and paintings and sculpture by the masters, and 
 cathedrals whose architecture and statues are a liberal 
 education in themselves. And cathedrals and palaces 
 are alike open to the people. So overflowing is this 
 wealth that it cannot be enumerated, and does not get 
 even into the guide-books. The statuary in the lovely 
 cathedral of Orvieto, for instance, almost unseen by 
 the tourist, Cardinal Wiseman pronounces to be "the 
 largest and most beautiful collection of the time of 
 Michael Angelo." Orvieto is a town that over here 
 might rank in our life with Carlisle in Pennsylvania, 
 or the county towns of Massachusetts. 
 
 Still more, the commonest Italian is able to under- 
 stand and enjoy all this wealth of art and education, 
 and does have his enjoyment of it. All through Italy 
 the galleries and private palaces, with all their statuary 
 and paintings and tapestries and furniture and carvings 
 and marbles and precious stones, are open to the public. 
 On Sunday, at least, they are absolutely free to all 
 without cost of any kind. The princely families living 
 in them on that day retire to interior suites of apart- 
 ments, and all day long their halls and elegant salons 
 and magnificent corridors and stairways are swept by 
 the populace. Imagine for a moment the palaces of 
 the Fifth Avenue, New York, or the costlier dwellings 
 of Boston and Philadelphia being opened in this way. 
 Yet this very week the costliest art treasures of all the 
 world in the grand palaces of Florence and Pome ^re 
 being exposed ill just this way. 
 
 It is the most pleasing sight in all Italy, as it is one 
 of the most suggestive, to wander into one of these 
 lordly palaces on a Sunday. Sauntering quietly and 
 
THE ITALIAN LIFE. 429 
 
 composedly through hall and chamber and gallery and 
 state-room, you see little groups of the humblest Italians, 
 private soldiers, laborers, peasants, with their wives 
 and sweethearts. They stroll at will over the palace, 
 at perfect ease, discussing pleasantly and intelligently 
 among themselves the works of art. You always find 
 them clustered before the best statues and the rarest 
 paintings, arguing on their merits or pointing out to 
 each other their hidden perfections. And this they do 
 without the aid of guide-books or catalogues, which, if 
 they had, they most probably would not read. They 
 are far l)eyond the northern barbarian's stage of culture. 
 Again and again this mortifying conclusion is forced 
 on one in such scenes. Of the people in this drawing- 
 room or gallery the Italians are of the lower classes of 
 their country. AVhat do they show ? They have a 
 perfect ease of manner, grace of movement and conver- 
 sation, an intelligent appreciation of the master-work 
 around them. The English and American people 
 present are of the better classes of their countries or 
 they would not be able to be here. And what do they 
 show ? One-half of them at least only ignorance and 
 vulgarity. Heavy-faced millionaires, looking bored 
 and hopelessly lost among the finest treasures of the 
 world ; overdressed daughters, giggling and awkward, 
 uncertain how to move in a palace; wives with dull, 
 expressionless faces, who you know are going to mis- 
 pronounce English if they open their mouths. 
 
 In personal refinement and cultivation and sesthetic] 
 education the lower classes of Italy have reached a 
 point of civilization beyond that of our poorer classes, 
 and our classes of uneducated wealth, and it is needless 
 to add, far beyond the similar classes of England. 
 Here, indeed, is the presentable side of the Italian 
 nation, for the higher classes do not seem to improve 
 on the lower in proportion to their advantages. Their 
 education is not advanced proportionably, and they 
 
430 MODERN ITALY. 
 
 seem to lack in virility and nerve. The fire of con- 
 quest, the lust of achievement, seem to have died out 
 both from the Gothic and Roman lines of blood. 
 
 Perhaps even here, however, the Italian would take 
 issue and come in with a new claim. '^ We conquer 
 not any longer by physical conquest, as did our fore- 
 fathers in ruder days, and as you Northern nations essay 
 to do now. We rule the world in these latter ages, not by 
 force of arms, but by force of mind. The Roman Law 
 to-day administers the justice of the world. You see it 
 in the flesh in your own code of Louisiana, and on the 
 statute books of Colorado and Utah, and it is the soul of 
 the Equity Courts of England and the United States." 
 
 " And the Papacy, — the Second Roman Empire, — is 
 it not a magnificent demonstration of the genius of the 
 Roman mind for rule? Is not this grand ecclesiastical 
 empire the lineal successor of the First Roman Empire? 
 Rome under the Caesars ruled the world for half a dozen 
 centuries by force of arms, — under the Popes she has 
 ruled it, or the greater part of it, for twice six centuries 
 by force of intellect. She changed the form of empire, 
 not the fact. And is it not a greater achievement to 
 hold the mind of the world in subjection than its terri- 
 tory ? This is just what Rome did when the Papal 
 Pontiffs took the chair of the Imperial Pontiffs." 
 
 Certain it is there is a subtlety in the Italian mind 
 which is beyond our power to follow, and with which 
 we cannot successfully compete. We may condemn it 
 in morals, but there it stands in fact, an intellectual 
 development beyond our own, a refinement or intensity 
 of mental action which has not been given us. On this 
 plane we cannot grapple with the Italian on even terms. 
 On this field, which is one of mental force, he leads us. 
 
 There is no greater good of foreign travel than this, 
 that it gives us the opportunity for comparative con- 
 trast and study of our own country, our government, 
 our social institutions, our whole civilization, with those 
 
THE ITALIAN LIFE. 431 
 
 of other countries. It is only against the background 
 of other countries and civilizations that we can see our 
 own, and detect their failings or defects, or dangerous 
 tendencies. And these are the points we should look 
 for and study. Where we are better than other nations 
 — and that is, happily, in very many things — there is no 
 danger ahead, and nothing to be won, and, consequently, 
 nothing to be learned. Where we are behind other 
 peoples there may be national danger in store for us, and 
 there is certainly something to be achieved and secured. 
 It is on this principle that in this volume I have con- 
 sidered chiefly those features of foreign life wliich are 
 superior to ours. 
 
 The conditions of life for all in this country are 
 much higher and more fortunate than they are now, or 
 ever have been before, for any other peo])le. If there 
 is power in the people to govern themselves, as we all 
 believe, and on which belief we have staked our na- 
 tional existence, there is no good reason why all the 
 people of this country should not in time reach the 
 privileges and culture and advancement which, in times 
 past and in other countries, have only been reached and 
 enjoyed by the very few at the cost of the many. This 
 is our goal, and for this reason the liberal study of the 
 institutions and civilizations of older countries is a ])rac- 
 tical political and social duty of the American citizen. 
 It is part of the education which he owes to himself 
 and to his country, that he may discharge fitly and 
 safely the high functions of his citizenship. 
 
 To be of avail under onr structure of society and gov- 
 ernment this education must come directly to the whole 
 body of the people, and not to or through one higher 
 class; and this, perhaps, under Providence, is the mean- 
 ing of the surges of American travel which yearly flood 
 the face of Europe, the countless hosts of a new race 
 moving over an old world, with gentler manners and 
 aims, but im])elled just as blindly and unconsciously 
 as the fateful hordes of their Gothic forerunners. 
 
 KOME. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 T CC 
 
 37 433 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 HINTS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 Customs of Travel Abroad and at Home — The Eed Books 
 — Some Unwritten Laws of European Life — Hand-book 
 Equipment — The ' ' Impedimenta" — Koutes — Kailway 
 Usages — Hotels — Luggage — Guides — Special Centres 
 of Shopping — Food — Languages. 
 
 In closing this series of papers let me hastily throw together 
 some notes, the sum of repeated experiences, which may save, 
 perhaps, to future travellers some time, labor, and the annoying 
 quest of unwritten information. The usages of strange countries 
 are more foreign than their languages, and it is these which the 
 unfamiliar traveller needs to have translated. 
 
 Routes. — Distances are so short in Europe that in travelling 
 in any one country, or even between countries, it is hardly worth 
 while to try to take everything in in one consecutive line or trip. 
 It is better, if you wish to see any prominent person, or to be 
 at any certain place at any fixed time, or to accept an invitation 
 to visit, to do so, and double on your route for the rest of your 
 journey. In other words, there is no economy in controlling 
 your movements by distances, as there generally is in our vast 
 territory. It is better to pay no attention to this, as railway 
 fares will not be found to be the proportionately larger item of 
 travelling expenses they are with us. It is the hotels that eat 
 up one's funds. 
 
 From the great centres of London and Paris, Rome and Ber- 
 lin, you can work out everywhere with more economy than by 
 trying to take in all you want to see on a consecutive schedule 
 of time and route. Again, as a rule, there is no economy in 
 Europe in buying through tickets, as there always is with us. 
 One thousand miles of travel in England and on the Continent, 
 made over the same route, cost exactly the same whether ^ow 
 purchase one ticket for the entire route or divide it into fiftv, 
 
 435 
 
436 APPENDIX. 
 
 — except in the case of a few " circular" tickets purchased through 
 agencies and sadly limited as to time of use. Further, when you 
 are going to stop off frequently, a long ticket may become a posi- 
 tive nuisance, so hampering and embarrassing are the conditions 
 and limitations of its use. As a rule, it must be visM or endorsed 
 by somebody wherever you intend to use it after having once 
 stopped, and this form takes quite as much time and trouble 
 as buying a new ticket. By a ridiculous inversion of thought 
 and business tact, the railway regulations abroad are all made 
 for the convenience of the railway and police officials instead of 
 for that of the passenger. 
 
 Luggage. — Contrary to the common impression at home, the 
 arrangements for handling baggage abroad are better and cheaper 
 than ours. The registering is just as safe as our checking sys- 
 tem. The only difference is between a paper check and a metal 
 one, while the train and station employees are infinitely more 
 careful in moving and storing baggage than with us. Only the 
 traveller must not attempt to take care of himself after the 
 American fashion. Let him trust himself at once to a porter, 
 who for a few pennies will arrange everything, gather his lug- 
 gage together, remove it from the station, call a good cab, and 
 give the proper directions to the driver. The traveller's only 
 care should be to secure the most experienced and reliable-look- 
 ing porter on the ground. He will place you in your carriage 
 in a very few moments, and you will get from the station to 
 your hotel much quicker, cheaper, and more pleasantly than you 
 can make the same trip in any American city I know of. In 
 Italy a cab for two persons, with a trunk and hand-baggage, 
 will cost only from a franc to a franc and a half; in great Lon- 
 don, for the usual course, not over fifty cents. 
 
 Hotels. — Always select a small hotel al)road in preference to 
 a large one of the same grade. You have better service and are 
 more comfortable. Europe is beginning to build huge hotels 
 after the American fashion, but they are not a success, and gen- 
 erally combine the vices and defects of both systems. On the 
 Continent hotels are advertised as first- and second-class. The 
 first is the more elaborate and expensive house, and generally 
 very comfortable ; the second is cheaper, everything is plainer 
 and more limited, but of its kind it is solid and good. The sec- 
 ond-class European hotel is not a shabby or nasty imitation of 
 a first-class one. The proprietor is not ashamed of the grade 
 of his house, but advertises it openly, and is as proud of keeping 
 an excellent second-rate hotel as of doing anything else Avell and 
 honestly, in which he differs largely from his American brother, 
 who is always assuming to offer first-class accommodations for 
 a second-class price. In England, the railway hotels, as a rule, 
 are excellent, and travellers need not avoid them on principle, 
 
HINTS OF TRAVEL. 437 
 
 as one does here. They are owned and managed by the railway 
 companies, and as the road is so they are. 
 
 Food. — Our country is, of all the world, the land of good food, 
 cheap, plenty, and in rich variety. There is no European coun- 
 try that can begin to compare with us in this blessing, and the 
 American stranger abroad must expect for a time to really suffer 
 for the want of his accustomed luxuriance of table. The poverty 
 of an English hotel breakfast-table is something inexplicable, — 
 sole bacon and chops is the same dreary fare all the kingdom 
 over and every day in the year. Although true to her tradi- 
 tional reputation for grand roasts of beef and generous legs of 
 mutton, England does not have at all the sirloin steak, the high- 
 est American conception of beef. Nor has she game in our sense 
 and use of it. Coffee is never good at a British public table ; 
 the tea, however, is generally excellent and superior to ours. 
 Coffee in France is always good and tea poor. In Italy, at a 
 provincial inn, both are looked on as curiosities, and served as 
 such if one is erratic enough to call for them. 
 
 The severe meagreness of an English or Continental table is, 
 however, in its fruit and vegetables. They simply do not have 
 them at all as we know them. At the private tables of those 
 classes whose tastes are cultivated and somewhat cosmopolitan 
 there is some provision of vegetables ; the fruit, however, will 
 be only a miniature dessert course. At an English public table 
 one gets a rigid and unvarying allowance of just two vegetables, 
 — always the same, — potatoes and Brussels sprouts. These are 
 invariably set before one at every inn without the least change, 
 even when the green- grocers' stand in the same street may have 
 onions, beans, cabbage, and others of our coarser and plainer 
 vegetables in reasonable plenty for sale. I have had them some- 
 times, but it was only on a special order and after serious con- 
 sultation with the inn authorities. Fruit is rarely in the house, 
 and if a peach, or bunch of grapes, or cherries are at last pro- 
 duced, it is at the price of a peck or bushel of them here. 
 
 It is this lack of fruits and vegetables, and the consequent 
 want of their acidulous contribution to the blood, which, I think, 
 makes Europe a wine-drinking land. The body demands this 
 acid for the proper working of the system, and gets it in the 
 wine. We get it in the fruit and vegetables we consume so 
 largely and continuously. This same reasoning goes to show 
 that we will never be a wine-drinking country, — at least while 
 our present affluence in this kind of food exists. Our luxuriance 
 of tropical fruit — bananas, oranges, citrons — is absolutely un- 
 known to the common table of England. 
 
 Hotel Expenses. — As a whole, the hotel expenses in England 
 and in the larger cities of the Continent are much heavier than 
 with us. The attendance is better, and more personal and indi- 
 
 37* 
 
438 APPENDIX. 
 
 vidual to each guest, but the provision and accommodations are 
 more limited in their range. Even at plain country inns in 
 such places as Reading, Chester, York, Carlisle, one must spend 
 sixteen to twenty shillings per day, and then take rather plain 
 meals. The best hotels in the same kind of tovrns in this 
 country w^ould not cost over $2.50 to $3. The whole hotel 
 life and management is so diflFerent here and abroad that it is 
 difficult to institute any direct comparison of expenses, but it is 
 safe to say that there is not in any large city of all Europe any 
 hotel where one can get the accommodations of the St. George, 
 in Philadelphia, the Windsor, in New York, or the Grand Pa- 
 cific, in Chicago, for their moderate prices, or for anything like 
 them. In the provincial towns of France and Italy, however, 
 the hotels are good and very moderate, — two or three dollars 
 covering all expenses, including a wine something better than 
 the ordinaire. 
 
 Guides^ valets de place, etc. — If you have any knowledge at 
 all of the language of the country you are in, or a slight amount 
 of self-reliance, avoid guides altogether, and especially those 
 ghastly, flaccid, half-alive creatures who start out from behind 
 columns and dark recesses in old churches or dog your steps in 
 gateways and porches. It is better to miss some things than to 
 have everything spoiled by the disagreeable presence and inces- 
 sant, unintelligent, parrot-like recitation of a mendicant guide. 
 If you are rushing through any town in a few hours, it may be 
 necessary to employ a guide to find your way and economize 
 your minutes ; but if you have reasonable time, any intelligent 
 man can readily see everything for himself with the aid of his 
 hand-book. Wherever you take a professional guide you lose 
 absolutely the impression and associations of the place. 
 
 'The red books. — There is no greater saving in travelling — 
 saving of time, money, fatigue, temper, and opportunity — than 
 that which is made in the procuring of good guide- or hand- 
 books. It is economy to be extravagant in the way of buying 
 them. 
 
 In the English and French provincial towns which one may 
 want to see thoroughly one always finds two or three local guides, 
 — shilling or two-franc pamphlets. It is best to buy them all. 
 Each will be likely to have some feature worth its cost. 
 
 The very best of foreign-edited guide-books as a series are 
 Baedeker^s. They are wonderfully minute and explicit, giving 
 a street-plan of nearly all towns of any size or interest, and 
 going into the detail of expenses of cabs, tramways, hotels, 
 rooms, lights, fires, restaurants, etc., in each town, and also of 
 railway fares. The series now covers pretty much the travelled 
 world, excepting our own country. They are very honest and 
 upright in their editorship. I have always found their informa- 
 
HINTS OF TRAVEL. 439 
 
 tion reliable, and never detected any evidences of blackmailing 
 or advertising in the text, which is more than can be said of a 
 good many hand-books. They are also portable, — a very essen- 
 tial requisite, — and reasona))le in price. 
 
 Baedeker''s series have also the advantage of being pul)lished 
 in French and German as well as English, and by getting the 
 edition in one of these tongues one can perfect himself in a 
 foreign language in using them. 
 
 Black's guides are good in their excellent pictures of places, 
 rivers, and scenery, fine wood-engravings of good design and 
 finish. I have never used their text. 
 
 Murray''s series are elaborate and crowded with matter, but 
 rather undigested and heavy. They seem to suit the English 
 traveller better than the American or Continental. 
 
 The Satchel Guide, issued from Boston, is an admirable little 
 work for Americans who want to make a hurried two or three 
 months' run over Europe. It is schohirly and practical, and 
 also thoroughly honorable and trustworthy in its information. 
 
 Whitaker'' s Almanac, large edition, is an almost indispensa- 
 ble companion for any one travelling in England who wishes 
 to make an intelligent study of the country as he goes along, 
 and to acquaint himself with its higher interests, machinery of 
 government, form of society, diplomatic relations, etc. It can 
 be had anywhere in London. 
 
 The Sportsmayi s Guide, an established British publication, 
 is invaluable as a directory of private estates, and of hunting 
 and fishing leases over England and Scotland. 
 
 John Bellows' English-French and French-English pocket- 
 dictionary is, in some mechanical respects, the most wonderful 
 book ever published, and the very best thing to be had in the 
 way of a travelling dictionary of the languages. The genders 
 in French, for instance, are all distinguished by types, a femi- 
 nine word, wherever used, being printed in Italic. Many other 
 things are thus presented at once to the eye by the use of typo- 
 graphical signs. The condensation of incidental information is 
 also something admirable. It is a volume of only a few — two 
 or three — inches in size, bound in fine flexible morocco for 
 pocket use, rich in excellent miniature maps and carefully 
 worked-out tables ; costs fifteen shillings, but is amply worth it. 
 
 In visiting in Italy there are numerous French and German 
 works of travel M'hich it is desirable to get and read. One not 
 only reads up the country thus, but enjoys the advantage at the 
 same time of seeing it through French or German spectacles as 
 well as his own, and of studying the French or German mind 
 in the same act with the Italian character. You make thus a 
 comparative study of three or four nationalities instead of one. 
 This process can be reversed, of course, according to what 
 
440 APPENDIX. 
 
 country one is in, as all the European countries with literatures 
 have written of one another. The newspapers of each land and 
 city are also very useful in the way of letting one rapidly into 
 the current life of the country. 
 
 Learning Languages. — It is a common impression that foreign 
 languages can be " picked up" en route as an incident of travel. 
 Adult travellers, I think, will find this a mistake, and their ina- 
 bility to do this will be in proportion to their intelligence and 
 mental vigor. The education of travel is a higher one than that 
 of the grammar book, and the mind has too much on hand to 
 grasp with interest the small detail of words and idiomatic rules : 
 and unless it does grasp them with vigor there is no retention 
 of them. One can study history, politics, social science, on a 
 flying tour, but hardly languages. 
 
 Travelling-parties. — All over Europe the cab, hansom, or 
 voiture is hired by the course or the hour, as you please, but 
 you pay for the use of the whole cab, and not for the number 
 of persons carried, as often with us. The ordinary vehicles 
 have seats for either two or four. It costs, therefore, as much 
 for one person as for two, for three as for four. The fee, also, 
 at a gallery, palace, or museum on the Continent for one will 
 do for two, and a party of four would pay the same as three. 
 In dining, also, a whole bottle of wine costs a trifle less than 
 two half-bottles, and is better 5 and in the restaurants, as in 
 our clubs at home, two can make a better and cheaper dinner 
 by ordering a number of courses of one portion than either 
 could by ordering separately. 
 
 A single gentleman en route pays also about as much to the 
 servants at the hotels — garcjons, chambermaids, concierge, etc. 
 • — as he would if accompanied by a wife. 
 
 Two or four is, therefore, an economical party of travel. 
 
 Shopping. — As to shopping, which holds such a prominent 
 place in the minds of intending travellers, all idea of it had 
 laetter be abandoned at once. With the exception of certain 
 local specialties, some of which are noted farther on, the Ameri- 
 can will get everything cheaper and better in his own country 
 than abroad. I do not mean to say that there is nothing in 
 Europe which we do not have in our home stores at the same 
 rates. In London and Paris there are unquestionably many 
 articles sold cheaper than our best stores can afford to offer 
 them, but the stranger will not get them. There is one price 
 for home customers and another for "foreigners" all over 
 Europe. 
 
 As a rule, the American can do better by purchasing at home, 
 where he is known and where it is the merchant's interest to 
 retain his custom, than by venturing among the sharpers of 
 strange towns. 
 
HINTS OF TRAVEL. 441 
 
 There are certain special centres worth mentioninc;, however, 
 which are the homes of certain manufactures, where really 
 good articles may be had very cheap, and where the articles 
 themselves have some additional value as mementos. For 
 instance, Oxford is the best place in the world to buy Bibles, — 
 the King James's version ; Dieppe for ivory-carvinp;, crosses, 
 bracelets, card-cases, hair-brushes, etc, etc., in wonderful 
 variety of designs and wonderfully cheap, as the carving is 
 a small home industry, whole families working all the year 
 round in their own dwellings at this labor and selling their work 
 in their little village homes ; Genoa for silver filigree-work and 
 velvets ; Venice for its wonderful colored glassware and beauti- 
 ful toys ; the Swiss towns for wood-carving, but the wood is apt 
 to warp in our dry climate ; Naples for raw-silk clothing ; Pisa 
 for small marbles and casts 5 Inverness for Scotch tweeds : Dub- 
 lin for itlsters and Irish linens; Berlin for amber ornaments-, 
 Italy for coral ; Scotland for pebble and cairngorm jewelry ; 
 Brussels for laces; silks and velvets from the "Lyons looms;" 
 London for India shawls and goods, if you cannot get to India ; 
 Paris and Naples for kid gloves. 
 
 Gratuities, fees, vails. — A petty but endless trouble of the 
 traveller in Europe for the first time is the matter of gratuities. 
 You give a trifle all the time to every one who does you the 
 least service. Even for an apparently friendly word of infor- 
 mation on the street you are expected to pay in this way. In 
 England it is " a tip ;" in France, the pour-boire ; in Italy, hnono 
 manu, — " the good hand;" in Germany it is trinkgeld, — "'drink 
 money ;" in the East backshish. It is not much money in any 
 one instance, but foots up pretty well after an active day's 
 work. The practical trouble, however, is to know ivhat to give. 
 The inhabitants and the servants themselves know exactly 
 what they are entitled to, for it is a matter of right just as much 
 as any other charge, although the amount is never fixed or 
 published in any written form for the information of strangers. 
 They must learn it by experience. 
 
 We, as a rule, to whom the European measures are new, give 
 too much. Englishmen of rank and wealth complain that 
 Americans raise the costs of travel wherever they go. 
 
 For the gratuity to cab-drivers, waiters at restaurants, etc., 
 
 |M the recognized European usage is in England one penny for every 
 
 ^shilling spent in fare or at the table, and in France and Italy 
 
 two sous for every franc spent. This rule disposes of a large 
 
 portion of the cases. 
 
 For porters, twopence in England and two sous on the Conti- 
 nent for every piece of luggage handled, if it is only to carry it 
 across a pavement. An umbrella or a shawl is a piece as well 
 as a trunk. The driver of an omnibus cab, or fiacre, as a point 
 
442 APPENDIX. 
 
 of etiquette and out of professional consideration for the porters, 
 will refuse to touch a piece of luggage himself, — even to lift it 
 from three feet away into his vehicle. 
 
 Visiting at private houses of the upper classes in England the 
 servants expect their tips in gold coin if your stay is over a day 
 or two. The smallest English gold coin is a ten-shilling piece, 
 — ^2.50. You fee the footman who attends your bedroom ; the 
 maid, if you have ladies, who serves their chambers ; the butler 
 who has charge of the dining-room and force of waiters ; the 
 keeper, if you hunt: the groom you use if you ride, or J,he head 
 of the stables if there are several ; and generally any servant 
 that you specially use. One soon learns by intuition how to 
 grade these fees according to the rank of the servant and the 
 length of his visit. The guard on a gentleman's stage-coach 
 running on a line of travel expects a half-crown ; the guard on 
 a public coach something less, — about a shilling. 
 
 On first-class ocean-steamers the gratuities are much analo- 
 gous to those in a gentleman's house. The steward who waits 
 on you at the table and the one who attends your state-room 
 will each expect a fee in gold — ten shillings, $2.50, at least — 
 from a single passenger, a pound if you have baths brought into 
 your room every morning, are particular about having your 
 wines warmed or iced, or, in short, use the servants up to their 
 full capacity. AVhen the passage is $60 to $75 or less, these fees 
 are less, — about one-half of the figures above. The "Boots" 
 also looks to be remembered, — about one-half the amount given 
 the steward. 
 
 There is an aristocratic afiectation in the use of coin in Eng- 
 land. The fashionable world always gives its charities and 
 subscriptions in guineas and not pounds, and in return its pet 
 tradesmen and swell shops always charge in guineas for their 
 wares or work. The difi'erence is just one shilling on the pound, 
 the pound being twenty shillings, the guinea twenty-one. There 
 is no guinea coin. In its smaller tips, too, fashion uses the half- 
 crown, and not the two-shilling florin. I confess that to myself, 
 a stranger, the florin was always a particularly objectionable 
 and low-bred looking coin, although I could never understand 
 the reason of the prejudice. 
 
 The expense of this gratuity business in ordinary travel is, 
 in general, rather exaggerated. The sums given are very small, 
 and you get a great deal for them, a willing, perfect, and kindly 
 service which you do not get in our country at all. To the trav- 
 eller the custom is an annoyance rather than a burden. It must 
 be borne in mind that for the most part in foreign lands these 
 fees are not largess or bounty, but a right, — the regular wages 
 for specific labor performed. The porter or gar^on or driver 
 has a right to them and from you. And in the matter of impo- 
 
HINTS OF TRAVEL. 443 
 
 sition these persons are fully as much sinned against as sinning. 
 No one who has travelled much but has noticed again and again 
 outwardly respectable enough looking people attempting to steal 
 away from servants or evade the proper tariff of drivers and 
 porters. 
 
 The worst feature of the whole business is the demoralization 
 and want of self-respect which it engenders on the part of the 
 classes who receive their compensation in this way as a gratuity, 
 and not as wages. Persons in the habit of accepting gratuities 
 and doing their service for these are certainly not in fit training 
 for the independent responsibilities of citizenship, and in this 
 view the custom, which, without its European foundation of 
 right, is creeping into this country, has a special social interest 
 for us. 
 
 The habit of accepting bounties degrades, demoralizes, and 
 unmans the recipient, and that fairly-earned compensation should 
 be systematically paid in this way — that whole classes should 
 be forced to receive their return for their labor in this humili- 
 ating form — is but another proof of that fatal despising of hu- 
 manity and the common manhood of all men which so thoroughly 
 pervades the European life. It is sad to think that a very great 
 portion of the people of Great Britain and Europe do now receive 
 their wages in this way, look for it, and feel no humiliation in 
 the transaction. You can hardly insult anybody across the 
 water by an offer of anything, no matter what appears to be 
 his or their official position. I have given a shilling in London 
 to uniformed policemen and a franc in Paris to magnificent- 
 looking hotel managers. A Philadelphia acquaintance in Lon- 
 don had several hundred dollars brought to him from his banking- 
 house — one of the largest there — by a clerk of the establishment, 
 and the nattily-dressed young gentleman asked for a shilling 
 for his services. Imagine the consequences of offering ten cents 
 to a conductor on the Pennsylvania Railway who had shown 
 you to your seat in the car and given you information as to 
 when to get out; yet this is done all over England every day, 
 and the middle-aged uniformed and respectable-looking guard 
 hangs around stickily till he gets his sixpence. 
 
 There is nothing, on the whole, for which one may feel prouder 
 of our country, in contrast with others, than the moral stamina 
 and self-respect of the American employee, who would resent 
 as an indignity the gratuity for which the European begs. That 
 legendary fellow-countryman of ours spoke out of a full heart 
 and with a just national pride, who, homeward bound, from the 
 bridge of his Liverpool steamer, addressed the crowded wharf: 
 " If there is any man, woman, or child on this island to whom 
 I have not yet given a shilling, now is the time to speak." 
 
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