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 V 
 
 
 
lUitcriSfilie Edition 
 
 THE 
 
 COMPLETE WORKS OF NATHANIEL 
 HAWTHORNE, WITH INTRODUCTORY 
 NOTES BY GEORGE PARSONS 
 LATHROP 
 
 AND ILLUSTRATED WITH 
 
 Etchings by Blum, Church, Dielman, Gifford, Shirlaw, 
 and Turner 
 
 IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES 
 VOLUME VII, 
 
 / 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates 
 
 https://archive.org/details/ouroldhomeandeng01 hawt 
 
Uc:.inM 
 
A London SvibvU^b 
 
OUR OLD HOME, AND ENGLISH 
 
 NOTE-BOOKS 
 
 BY 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 Ct)e Cambritfge 
 
 1894 
 
Copyright, 1863, 
 
 Bt NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEo 
 
 Copyright, 1870, 
 
 Br SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Copyright, 1883, 
 
 By HOUGHTON, MIFELIN & CO. 
 Copyright, 1891, 
 
 By rose HAWTHORNE LATHROP. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A, 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 
 
OOKTENTS, 
 
 OUR OLD HOME. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Introductory Note 9 
 
 Dedication 
 
 To A Friend . . . 15 
 
 Consular Experiences , .19 
 
 Leamington Spa . . . , . « o . . 58 
 
 About Warwick 
 
 Recollections of a Gifted Woman . , . . us 
 
 Lichfield and Uttoxeter . . . . ^ . 148 
 
 Pilgrimage to Old Boston 169 
 
 Near Oxford . 201 
 
 Some of the Haunts of Burns , . . . , 231 
 
 A London Suburb 254 
 
 Up the Thames 288 
 
 Outside Glimpses of English Poverty .... 326 
 
 Civic Banquets 30o 
 
 PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS OF 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 

 
 'H. , ; 
 
 
 
 
 k> . , ^ 
 
 i 
 
 4 ^’j 
 
 **9 
 
 , ' . '/ ' ■'{* 
 
 •i 'M 
 
OUR OLD HOME: 
 
 A SERIES OF ENGLISH SKETCHES. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 OUR OLD HOME. 
 
 The years which Hawthorne passed in England were 
 outwardly the most successful, in worldly prosperity 
 the most abundant, and in other respects among the 
 happiest of his life ; forming in the autumn of his ca- 
 reer a sort of counterpoise to the idyllic period spent 
 at the Old Manse. Of these years, — from the spring 
 of 1853 to June of 1860, excepting a part of 1858 
 and 1859, which interval was chiefly spent in Italy, — 
 Our Old Home ” was the literary outcome. Much 
 of the material composing the sketches in this volume 
 occurs in embryonic form in the ‘‘ English Note- 
 Books,” which were then still veiled from publicity ; 
 but various elements and touches of fancy were sup- 
 plied by the author’s mood or memory at the instant of 
 writing. His impressions of England, outlined in the 
 Note-Books ” and scattered at random through many 
 pages, here assume a connected and artistic shape. 
 
 The articles embraced in Our Old Home ” were 
 begun at The Wayside, Concord, in 1862, and were 
 first published in the Atlantic Monthly,” which was 
 then edited by Mr. James T. Fields. Mr. Fields has 
 placed on record, in his Yesterdays with Authors,” 
 the fullest memoranda now to be had relative to the 
 production of these sketches. Hawthorne, in speaking 
 
10 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 of them, said to him: ‘‘We must remember that 
 there is a good deal of intellectual ice mingled with 
 this wine of memory.” Indeed, he took a discouraged 
 tone regarding the work, and wrote, on forwarding 
 one of the manuscripts : “ I hope you will like it, 
 
 for the subject seemed interesting to me when I was 
 on the spot, but I always feel a singular despondency 
 and heaviness of heart in reopening these old journals 
 now.” At another time : “ Heaven sees fit to visit 
 me with an unshakable conviction that all this series 
 of articles is good for nothing ; but that is none of my 
 business, provided the public and you are of a differ- 
 ent opinion.” It is probable that this down-hearted 
 mood was a part of the general depression which 
 weighed heavily upon Hawthorne from the beginning 
 of the civil war until his death, and was caused by the 
 unhappy state of the country. He looked back, also, 
 to his English sojourn as a pleasant experience never 
 likely to be repeated, and often longed to return to 
 the mother-country, which had entertained him so hos- 
 pitably and where he had made warm friends. 
 
 Some of these friends were startled, and perhaps a 
 little hurt, by the frankness of the characterizations 
 and criticisms which the book bestowed on the Eng- 
 lish. Hawthorne, however, remarks in a letter to Mr. 
 Fields : “ I really think Americans have more cause 
 than they to complain of me. Looking over the vol- 
 ume, I am rather surprised to find that whenever I 
 draw a comparison between the two peoples, I almost 
 invariably cast the balance against ourselves.” And 
 it was from Americans, in fact, that Hawthorne re- 
 ceived the severest censure on the publication of “ Our 
 Old Home,” though for quite another cause than his 
 remarks on their national character. He had dedi- 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 
 
 11 
 
 cated the book to his old college-friend, Ex-President 
 Franklin Pierce, against whom popular opinion at the 
 North was then very bitter, on account of the attitude 
 of compromise taken by him towards the South while 
 he was Chief Magistrate of the Union, and his opposb 
 tion to the war and to emancipation. When remon- 
 strated with on his purpose of linking the volume 
 with Pierce’s name, Hawthorne replied to Mr. Fields; 
 
 I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me 
 to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory 
 letter. My long and intimate relations with Pierce 
 render the dedication altogether proper, especially as 
 regards this book, which would have had no existence 
 without his kindness ; and if he is so exceedingly un- 
 popular that his name is enough to sink the volume, 
 there is so much the more need that an old friend 
 should stand by him. I cannot, merely on account of 
 pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go back from 
 what I have deliberately thought and felt it right to 
 do ; and if I were to tear out the dedication, I should 
 never look at the volume again without remorse and 
 shame.” The collection was accordingly published, 
 in the autumn of 1863, with the dedicatory note as it 
 now stands. As a literary performance “Our Old 
 Home ” was received cordially, but the political and 
 personal indignation roused by the dedication was 
 deep. “ My friends have dropped off from me like 
 autumn leaves,” Hawthorne wrote to his old comrade, 
 Bridge, who, although in the ranks of the political 
 party opposed to Hawthorne’s views, remained loyal 
 to him. 
 
 Of the story told about an erring doctor of divinity, 
 in the “ Consular Experiences,” the author wrote to 
 Mr. Fields : “ It is every bit true (like the other an- 
 
12 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 ecdotes)^ only not told so darkly as it might have 
 been for the reverend gentleman.” Among some cor- 
 respondence the editor, a few years since, came upon 
 a letter addressed to Hawthorne respecting this very 
 point. The writer, who was a stranger, explained 
 that he had had a controversy with some friends, who 
 insisted that the circumstances narrated must have 
 been invented by the author for effect. On the en- 
 velope Hawthorne made a memorandum to the effect 
 that the letter had been answered by an assurance that 
 the incident was an actual one. That this answer was 
 received and the question settled the editor recently 
 learned from the correspondent himself, who, curiously 
 enough, had removed from Illinois, where his letter 
 was written, and was occupying a house next to the 
 Wayside, where the “ Consular Experiences ” was 
 pennedo 
 
 G. P. L. 
 
FRANKLIN PIERCE^ 
 
 AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED 
 THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY 
 IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS, 
 
 Folume 
 
 IS INSCRIBED BY 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
TO A FRIEND. 
 
 I HAVE not asked your consent, my dear General, 
 to the foregoing inscription, because it would have 
 been no inconsiderable disappointment to me had you 
 withheld it ; for I have long desired to connect your 
 name with some book of mine, in commemoration of 
 an early friendship that has grown old between two 
 individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and fortunes. 
 I only wish that the offering were a worthier one than 
 this volume of sketches, which certainly are not of a 
 kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in re- 
 tirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters 
 of policy or government, and have very little to say 
 about the deeper traits of national character. In their 
 humble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic litera- 
 ture, and can achieve no higher success than to repre- 
 sent to the American reader a few of the external as- 
 pects of English scenery and life, especially those that 
 are touched with the antique charm to which our coun- 
 trymen are more susceptible than are the people among 
 whom it is of native growth. 
 
 I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would 
 not be all that I might write. These and other 
 sketches, with which in a somewhat rougher form than 
 I have given them here, my journal was copiously 
 filled, were intended for the side -scenes and back- 
 grounds and exterior adornment of a work of fiction 
 
16 
 
 TO A FRIEND. 
 
 of which the plan had imperfectly developed itself in 
 my mind, and into which I ambitiously proposed to 
 convey more of various modes of truth than I could 
 have grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I should 
 not mention this abortive project, only that it has 
 been utterly thrown aside and will never now be ac- 
 complished. The Present, the Immediate, the Actual, 
 has proved too potent for me. It takes away not only 
 my scanty faculty, but even my desire for imaginative 
 composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter a 
 thousand peaceful fantasies upon the hurricane thaf is 
 sweeping us all along with it, possibly, into a Limbo 
 where our nation and its polity may be as literally the 
 fragments of a shattered dream as my unwritten Ro- 
 mance. But I have far better hopes for our dear 
 country ; and for my individual share of the catas- 
 trophe, I afflict myself little, or not at all, and shall 
 easily find room for the abortive work on a certain 
 ideal shelf, where are reposited many other shadowy 
 volumes of mine, more in number, and very much su- 
 perior in quality, to those which I have succeeded in 
 rendering actual. 
 
 To return to these poor Sketches : some of my 
 friends have told me that they evince an asperity of 
 sentiment towards the English people which I ought 
 not to feel, and which it is highly inexpedient to ex- 
 press. The charge surprises me, because, if it be 
 true, I have written from a shallower mood than I 
 supposed. I seldom came into personal relations with 
 an Englishman without beginning to like him, and 
 feeling my favorable impression wax stronger with 
 the progress of the acquaintance. I never stood in an 
 English crowd without being conscious of hereditary 
 sympathies. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that an 
 
TO A FRIEND. 
 
 17 
 
 American is continually thrown upon his national an- 
 tagonism by some acrid quality in the moral atmos- 
 phere of England. These people think so loftily of 
 themselves, and so contemptuously of everybody else, 
 that it requires more generosity than I possess to keep 
 always in perfectly good-humor with them. Jotting 
 down the little acrimonies of the moment in my jour- 
 nal, and transferring them thence (when they hap- 
 pened to be tolerably well expressed) to these pages, 
 it is very possible that I may have said things which a 
 profound observer of national character would hesitate 
 to sanction, though never any, I verily believe, that 
 had not more or less of truth. If they be true, there 
 is no reason in the world why they should not be said. 
 Not an Englishman of them all ever spared America 
 for courtesy’s sake or kindness ; nor, in my opinion, 
 would it contribute in the least to our mutual advan- 
 tage and comfort if we were to besmear one another 
 all over with butter and honey. At any rate, we 
 must not judge of an Englishman’s susceptibilities by 
 our own, which likewise, I trust, are of a far less sen- 
 sitive texture than formerly. 
 
 And now farewell, my dear friend ; and excuse (if 
 you think it needs any excuse) the freedom with which 
 I thus publicly assert a personal friendship between a 
 private individual and a statesman who has filled what 
 was then the most august position in the world. But 
 1 dedicate my book to the Friend, and shall defer a 
 colloquy with the Statesman till some calmer and sun- 
 nier hour. Only this let me say, that, with the record 
 of your life in my memory, and with a sense of your 
 character in my deeper consciousness as among the 
 few things that time has left as it found them, I need 
 no assurance that you continue faithful forever to that 
 
 VOL. VII. 2 
 
18 
 
 TO A FRIEND, 
 
 grand idea of an irrevocable Union, which, as you 
 once told me, was the earliest that your brave father 
 taught you. For other men there may be a choice of 
 paths, — for you, but one ; and it rests among my cer- 
 tainties that no man’s loyalty is more steadfast, no 
 man’s hopes or apprehensions on behalf of our na- 
 tional existence more deeply heartfelt, or more closely 
 intertwined with his possibilities of personal happi- 
 ness, than those of Franklin Pierce. 
 
 The Wayside, July 2, 1863. 
 
OUR OLD HOME. 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 The Consulate of the United States, in my day, was 
 located in W ashington Buildings (a shabby and smoke- 
 stained edifice of four stories high, thus illustriously 
 named in honor of our national establishment), at the 
 lower corner of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the 
 Goree Arcade, and in the neighborhood of some of the 
 oldest docks. This was by no means a polite or ele- 
 gant portion of England’s great commercial city, nor 
 were the apartments of the American official so splen- 
 did as to indicate the assumption of much consular 
 pomp on his part. A narrow and ill-lighted staircase 
 gave access to an equally narrow and ill-lighted pas- 
 sageway on the first floor, at the extremity of which, 
 surmounting a door-frame, appeared an exceedingly 
 stiff pictorial representation of the Goose and Grid- 
 iron, according to the English idea of those ever-to-be- 
 honored symbols. The staircase and passageway were 
 often thronged, of a morning, with a set of beggarly 
 and piratical-looking scoundrels (I do no wrong to our 
 own countrymen in styling them so, for not one in 
 twenty was a genuine American), purporting to be- 
 long to our mercantile marine, and chiefly composed 
 of Liverpool Black-ballers and the scum of every mari- 
 time nation on earth ; such being the seamen by whose 
 
20 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 assistance we then disputed the navigation of the world 
 with England. These specimens of a most unfortu- 
 nate class of people were shipwrecked crews in quest 
 of bed, board, and clothing ; invalids asking permits 
 for the hospital ; bruised and bloody wretches com- 
 plaining of ill-treatment; by their officers ; drunkards, 
 desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly in- 
 termingled with an uncertain proportion of reasona- 
 bly honest men. All of them (save here and there a 
 poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going 
 rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had swel- 
 tered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all re- 
 quired consular assistance in one form or another. 
 
 Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his 
 mind to elbow a passage among these sea-monsters. 
 Was admitted into an outer office, where he found more 
 of the same species, explaining their respective wants 
 or grievances to the Vice-Consul and clerks, while 
 their shipmates awaited their turn outside the door. 
 Passing through this exterior court, the stranger was 
 ushered into an inner privacy, where sat the Consul 
 himself, ready to give personal attention to such pecul- 
 iarly difficult and more important cases as might de- 
 mand the exercise of (what we will courteously sup- 
 pose to be) his own higher judicial or administrative 
 sagacity. 
 
 It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted 
 in imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two win- 
 dows looking across a by-street at the rough brick- 
 side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and 
 uglier structure than ever was built in America. On 
 the walls of the room hung a large map of the United 
 States (as they were, twenty years ago, but seem little 
 likely to be, twenty years hence), and a similar one of 
 
CONSULAB. EXPERIENCES, 
 
 21 
 
 Great Britain, with its territory so provokingly com- 
 pact, that we may expect it to sink sooner than sunder. 
 Farther adornments were some rude engravings of our 
 naval victories in the War of 1812, together with the 
 Tennessee State House, and a Hudson Eiver steamer, 
 and a colored, life-size lithograph of General Taylor, 
 with an honest hideousness of aspect, occupying the 
 place of honor above the mantel-piece. On the top of 
 a bookcase stood a fierce and terrible bust of General 
 Jackson, pilloried in a military collar which rose above 
 his ears, and frowning forth immitigably at any Eng- 
 lishman who might happen to cross the threshold. I 
 am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old 
 General’s expression was utterly thrown away on this 
 stolid and obdurate race of men ; for, when they occa- 
 sionally inquired whom this work of art represented, I 
 was mortified to find that the younger ones had never 
 heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their 
 elders had either forgotten it altogether, or contrived 
 to misremember, and twist it wrong end foremost into 
 something like an English victory. They have caught 
 from the old Romans (whom they resemble in so many 
 other characteristics) this excellent method of keeping 
 the national glory intact by sweeping all defeats and 
 humiliations clean out of their memory. Nevertheless, 
 my patriotism forbade me to take down either the bust 
 or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than 
 right that an American Consulate (being a little patch 
 of our nationality imbedded into the soil and institu- 
 tions of England) should fairly represent the Ameri- 
 can taste in the fine arts, and because these decora- 
 tions reminded me so delightfully of an old-fashioned 
 American barber’s shop. 
 
 One truly English object was a barometer hanging 
 
22 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 on the wall, generally indicating one or another degree 
 of disagreeable weather, and so seldom pointing to 
 Fair, that I began to consider that portion of its circle 
 as made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its 
 grate of bituminous coal, was English too, as was also 
 the chill temperature that sometimes called for a fire 
 at midsummer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere 
 which often, between November and March, compelled 
 me to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware 
 of omitting anything important in the above descrip- 
 tive inventory, unless it be some book-shelves filled 
 with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, and a 
 good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communi- 
 cations from former Secretaries of State, and other 
 official documents of similar value, constituting part 
 of the archives of the Consulate, which I might have 
 done my successor a favor by flinging into the coal- 
 grate. Yes ; there was one other article demanding 
 prominent notice : the consular copy of the New Tes- 
 tament, bound in black morocco, and greasy, I fear, 
 with a daily succession of perjured kisses ; at least, I 
 can hardly hope that all the ten thousand oaths, ad- 
 ministered by me between two breaths, to all sorts of 
 people and on all manner of worldly business, were 
 reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his soul’s peril. 
 
 Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber 
 in which I spent wearily a considerable portion of 
 more than four good years of my existence. At first, 
 to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it 
 as not altogether fit to be tenanted by the commercial 
 representative of so great and prosperous a country as 
 the United States then were ; and I should speedily 
 have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier 
 apartments, except for the prudent consideration that 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 23 
 
 my government would have left me thus to support its 
 dignity at my own personal expense. Besides, a long 
 line of distinguished predecessors, of whom the latest 
 is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had 
 found the locality good enough for them ; it might 
 certainly be tolerated, therefore, by an individual so 
 little ambitious of external magnificence as myself. So 
 I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots into 
 such soil as I could find, adapting myself to circum- 
 stances, and with so much success, that, though from 
 first to last 1 hated the very sight of the little room, I 
 should yet have felt a singular kind of reluctance in 
 changing it for a better. 
 
 Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a 
 great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but in- 
 cluding almost every other nationality on earth, espe- 
 cially the distressed and downfallen ones, like those of 
 Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits (for so they 
 looked), proscribed conspirators from Old Spain, Span- 
 ish- Americans, Cubans who professed to have stood by 
 Lopez, and narrowly escaped his fate, scarred French 
 soldiers of the Second Republic, — in a word, all suf- 
 ferers, or pretended ones, in the cause of Liberty, all 
 people homeless in the widest sense, those who never 
 had a country, or had lost it, those whom their native 
 land had impatiently flung off for planning a better 
 system of things than they were born to, — a multitude 
 of these, and, doubtless, an equal number of jail-birds, 
 outwardly of the same feather, sought the American 
 Consulate, in hopes of at least a bit of bread, and, per- 
 haps, to beg a passage to the blessed shores of Free- 
 dom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any 
 case distressingly little, to be done for them ; neither 
 was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make 
 
24 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents 
 of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a 
 forcible appeal to the sympathies of an American, that 
 these unfortunates claimed the privileges of citizenship 
 in our Republic on the strength of the very same no- 
 ble misdemeanors that had rendered them outlaws to 
 their native despotisms. So I gave them what small 
 help I could. Methinks the true patriots and martyr- 
 spirits of the whole world should have been conscious 
 of a pang near the heart, when a deadly blow was 
 aimed at the vitality of a country which they have felt 
 to be their own in the last resort. 
 
 As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted 
 with many of our national characteristics during those 
 four years than in all my preceding life. Whether 
 brought more strikingly out by the contrast with Eng- 
 lish manners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an 
 extra peculiarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so 
 it was that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even 
 their figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chis- 
 elled in sharper angles than ever I had imagined them 
 to be at home. It impressed me with an odd idea of 
 having somehow lost the property of my own person, 
 when I occasionally heard one of them speaking of me 
 as ^‘my Consul” ! They often came to the Consulate 
 in parties of half a dozen or more, on no business 
 whatever, but merely to subject their public servant to 
 a rigid examination, and see how he was getting on 
 with his duties. These interviews were rather formid- 
 able, being characterized by a certain stiffness which I 
 felt to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though 
 it looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my 
 firm belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing a na- 
 tive tendency to organization, generally halted outside 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 25 
 
 of the door, to elect a speaker, chairman, or moderator, 
 and thus approached me with all the formalities of a 
 deputation from the American people. After saluta- 
 tions on both sides, — abrupt, awful, and severe on 
 their part, and deprecatory on mine, — and the national 
 ceremony of shaking hands being duly gone through 
 with, the interview proceeded by a series of calm and 
 well-considered questions or remarks from the spokes- 
 man (no other of the guests vouchsafing to utter a 
 word), and diplomatic responses from the Consul, who 
 sometimes found the investigation a little more search- 
 ing than he liked. I flatter myself, however, that, by 
 much practice, I attained considerable skill in this kind 
 of intercourse, the art of which lies in passing off com- 
 monplaces for new and valuable truths, and talking 
 trash and emptiness in such a way that a pretty acute 
 auditor might mistake it for something solid. If there 
 be any better method of dealing with such junctures, 
 — when talk is to be created out of nothing, and within 
 the scope of several minds at once, so that you cannot 
 apply yourself to your interlocutor’s individuality, — I 
 have not learned it. 
 
 Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the Old 
 World and the New, where the steamers and packets 
 landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen, 
 and received them again when their wanderings were 
 done, I saw that no people on earth have such vaga- 
 bond habits as ourselves. The Continental races never 
 travel at all if they can help it ; nor does an English- 
 man ever think of stirring abroad, unless he has the 
 money to spare, or proposes to himself some definite 
 advantage from the journey ; but it seemed to me that 
 nothing was more common than for a young American 
 deliberately to spend all his resources in an aesthetic 
 
26 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 peregrination about Europe, returning with pockets 
 nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. It hap- 
 pened, indeed, much oftener than was at all agreeable 
 to myself, that their funds held out just long enough to 
 bring them to the door of my Consulate, where they en- 
 tered as if with an undeniable right to its shelter and 
 protection, and required at my hands to be sent home 
 again. In my first simplicity, — finding them gentle 
 manly in manners, passably educated, and only tempted 
 a little beyond their means by a laudable desire of im- 
 proving and refining themselves, or perhaps for the 
 sake of getting better artistic instruction in music, 
 painting, or sculpture than our country could supply, 
 — I sometimes took charge of them on my private re- 
 sponsibility, since our government gives itself no trou- 
 ble about its stray children, except the sea-faring class. 
 But, after a few such experiments, discovering that 
 none of these estimable and ingenuous young men, 
 however trustworthy they might appear, ever dreamed 
 of reimbursing the Consul, I deemed it expedient to 
 take another course with them. Applying myself to 
 some friendly shipmaster, I engaged homeward pas- 
 sages on their behalf, with the understanding that they 
 were to make themselves serviceable on shipboard ; and 
 I remember several very pathetic appeals from paint- 
 ers and musicians, touching the damage which their 
 artistic fingers were likely to incur from handling the 
 ropes. But my observation of so many heavier trou- 
 bles left me very little tenderness for their finger-ends. 
 In time I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though 
 it never was quite possible to leave a countryman with 
 no shelter save an English poorhouse, when, as he in- 
 variably averred, he had only to set foot on his native 
 soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my vdti- 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. ‘ 
 
 27 
 
 mate conclusion, however, that American ingenuity 
 may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way 
 or another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to turn up 
 at his own threshold, if he has any, without help of a 
 Consul, and perhaps be taught a lesson of foresight 
 that may profit him hereafter. 
 
 Among these stray Americans, I met with no other 
 case so remarkable as that of an old man, who was in 
 the habit of visiting me once in a few months, and 
 soberly affirmed that he had been wandering about 
 England more than a quarter of a century (precisely 
 twenty-seven years, I think), and all the while doing 
 his utmost to get home again. Herman Melville, in 
 his excellent novel or biography of Israel Potter,’^ 
 .has an idea somewhat similar to this. The individual 
 now in question was a mild and patient, but very 
 ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond descrip- 
 tion, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large and 
 somewhat red nose. He made no complaint of his 
 ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, with a 
 pathos of which he was himself evidently unconscious, 
 “ I want to get home to Ninety-Second Street, Phila- 
 delphia.” He described himself as a printer by trade, 
 and said that he had come over when he was a younger 
 man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for the sake 
 of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been 
 rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His man- 
 ner and accent did not quite convince me that he 
 was an American, and I told him so ; but he stead- 
 fastly affirmed, “ Sir, I was born and have lived in 
 Ninety-Second Street, Philadelphia,” and then went 
 on to describe some public edifices and other local ob- 
 jects with which he used to be familiar, adding, with 
 a simplicity that touched me very closely, Sir, I had 
 
28 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 rather be there than here ! ” Though I still mani- 
 fested a lingering doubt, he took no offence, replying 
 with the same mild depression as at first, and insist- 
 ing again and again on Ninety-Second Street. Up to 
 the time when I saw him, he still got a little occa= 
 sional job-work at his trade, but subsisted mainly on 
 such charity as he met with in his wanderings, shift- 
 ing from place to place continually, and asking assist- 
 ance to convey him to his native land. Possibly he 
 was an impostor, one of the multitudinous shapes of 
 English vagabondism, and told his falsehood with such 
 powerful simplicity, because, by many repetitions, he 
 had convinced himself of its truth. But if, as I be- 
 lieve, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad was 
 this old man’s fate! Homeless on a foreign shore, 
 looking always towards his country, coming again and 
 again to the point whence so many were setting sail for 
 it, — so many who would soon tread in Ninety-Second 
 Street, — losing, in this long series of years, some of 
 the distinctive characteristics of an American, and at 
 last dying and surrendering his clay to be a portion 
 of the soil whence he could not escape in his lifetime. 
 
 He appeared to see that he had moved me, but did 
 not attempt to press his advantage with any new ar- 
 gument, or any varied form of entreaty. He had but 
 scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray head, and 
 in the intervals of those, like the refrain of an old 
 ballad, came in the monotonous burden of his appeal, 
 ‘‘ If I could only find myself in Ninety-Second Street, 
 Philadelphia 1 ” But even his desire of getting home 
 had ceased to be an ardent one (if, indeed, it had not 
 always partaken of the dreamy sluggishness of his 
 character), although it remained his only locomotive 
 impulse, and perhaps the sole principle of life that 
 kept his blood from actual torpor. 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 29 
 
 The poor old fellow’s story seemed to me almost as 
 worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that of 
 Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep 
 consideration, but dared not incur the moral responsi- 
 bility of sending him across the sea, at his age, after 
 so many years of exile, when the very tradition of him 
 had passed away, to find his friends dead, or forgetful, 
 or irretrievably vanished, and the whole country be- 
 come more truly a foreign land to him than England 
 was now, — and even Ninety- Second Street, in the 
 weedlike decay and growth of our localities, made 
 over anew and grown unrecognizable by his old eyes. 
 That street, so patiently longed for, had transferred 
 itself to the New Jerusalem, and he must seek it 
 there, contenting his slow heart, meanwhile, with the 
 smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of English towns, or 
 the green country lanes and by-paths with which his 
 wanderings had made him familiar ; for doubtless he 
 had a beaten track, and was the “ long-remembered 
 beggar ” now, with food and a roughly hospitable 
 greeting ready for him at many a farm-house door, 
 and his choice of lodging under a score of haystacks. 
 In America, nothing awaited him but that worst form 
 of disappointment which comes under the guise of a 
 long- cherished and late - accomplished purpose, and 
 then a year or two of dry and barren sojourn in an 
 almshouse, and death among strangers at last, where 
 he had imagined a circle of familiar faces. So I con- 
 tented myself with giving him alms, which he thank- 
 fully accepted, and went away with bent shoulders 
 and an aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning upon 
 his orbit, however, after a few months, to tell the same 
 sad and quiet story of his abode in England for more 
 than twenty- seven years, in all which time he had 
 
30 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 been endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as 
 ever, to find bis way home to Ninety-Second Street, 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order, 
 but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, 
 which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at 
 the moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, 
 fat - faced individual came into my private room, 
 dressed in a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trou- 
 sers, both garments worn and shabby, and rather too 
 small for his overgrown bulk. After a little prelimi- 
 nary talk, he turned out to be a country shopkeeper 
 (from Connecticut, I think), who had left a flourish- 
 ing business, and come over to England purposely and 
 solely to have an interview with the Queen. Some 
 years before he had named his two children, one for 
 her Majesty and the other for Prince Albert, and had 
 transmitted photographs of the little people, as well as 
 of his wife and himself, to the illustrious godmother. 
 The Queen had gratefully acknowledged the favor in 
 a letter under the hand of her private secretary. Now, 
 the shopkeeper, like a great many other Americans, 
 had long cherished a fantastic notion that he was one 
 of the rightful heirs of a rich English estate ; and on 
 the strength of her Majesty’s letter and the hopes of 
 royal patronage which it inspired, he had shut up his 
 little country-store and come over to claim his inheri- 
 tance. On the voyage, a German fellow-passenger had 
 relieved him of his money on pretence of getting it 
 favorably exchanged, and had disappeared immedi- 
 ately on the ship’s arrival ; so that the poor fellow was 
 compelled to pawn all his clothes, except the remark- 
 ably shabby ones in which I beheld him, and in which 
 (as he himself hinted, with a melancholy, yet good- 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 31 
 
 natured smile) he did not look altogether fit to see the 
 Queen. I agreed with him that the bobtailed coat 
 and mixed trousers constituted a very odd - looking 
 court-dress, and suggested that it was doubtless his 
 present purpose to get back to Connecticut as fast as 
 possible. But no ! The resolve to see the Queen was 
 as strong in him as ever ; and it was marvellous the 
 pertinacity with which he clung to it amid raggedness 
 and starvation, and the earnestness of his supplication 
 that I would supply him with funds for a suitable ap- 
 pearance at Windsor Castle. 
 
 I never had so satisfactory a perception of a com- 
 plete booby before in my life ; and it caused me to feel 
 kindly towards him, and yet impatient and exasper- 
 ated on behalf of common-sense, which could not pos- 
 sibly tolerate that such an unimaginable donkey should 
 exist. I laid his absurdity before him in the very 
 plainest terms, but without either exciting his anger 
 or shaking his resolution. “ Oh my dear man,” quoth 
 he, with good-natured, placid, simple, and tearful stub- 
 bornness, “ if you could but enter into my feelings and 
 see the matter from beginning to end as I see it ! ” To 
 confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard- 
 hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was 
 more weight in his remonstrance than I chose to be 
 sensible of, at the time ; for, like many men who have 
 been in the habit of making playthings or tools of 
 their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly 
 tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs of real 
 life. And even absurdity has its rights, when, as in 
 this case, it has absorbed a human being’s entire na- 
 ture and purposes. I ought to have transmitted him 
 to Mr. Buchanan, in London, who, being a good-na- 
 tured old gentleman, and anxious, just then, to gratify 
 
32 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 the universal Yankee nation, might, for the joke’s sake, 
 have got him admittance to the Queen, who had fairly 
 laid herself open to his visit, and has received hun- 
 dreds of our countrymen on infinitely slighter grounds. 
 But I was inexorable, being turned to flint by the im 
 sufferable proximity of a fool, and refused to interfere 
 with his business in any way except to procure him a 
 passage home. I can see his face of mild, ridiculous 
 despair at this moment, and appreciate, better than I 
 could then, how awfully cruel he must have felt my 
 obduracy to be. For years and years, the idea of an 
 interview with Queen Victoria had haunted his poor 
 foolish mind ; and now, when he really stood on Eng- 
 lish ground, and the palace-door was hanging ajar for 
 him, he was expected to turn back, a penniless and 
 bamboozled simpleton, merely because an iron-hearted 
 Consul refused to lend him thirty shillings (so low had 
 his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a second-class 
 ticket on the rail for London ! 
 
 He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, 
 subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the hope 
 of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assail- 
 ing me with the old petition at every opportunity, look- 
 ing shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good- 
 tempered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his 
 tears, not without a perception of the ludicrousness of 
 his own position. Finally, he disappeared altogether, 
 and whither he had wandered, and whether he ever 
 saw the Queen, or wasted quite away in the endeavor, 
 I never knew ; but I remember unfolding the ‘‘ Times,” 
 about that period, with a daily dread of reading an ac- 
 count of a ragged Yankee’s attempt to steal into Buck- 
 ingham Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his 
 captors, and besought them to introduce him to her 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 33 
 
 Majesty. I submit to Mr. Secretary Seward that he 
 ought to make diplomatic remonstrances to the Brit- 
 ish Ministry, and require them to take such order that 
 the Queen shall not any longer bewilder the wits of 
 our poor compatriots by responding to their epistles 
 and thanking them for their photographs. 
 
 One circumstance in the foregoing incident — I 
 mean the unhappy storekeeper’s notion of establish- 
 ing his claim to an English estate — was common to 
 a great many other applications, personal or by letter, 
 with which I was favored by my countrymen. The 
 cause of this peculiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo- 
 American heart. After all these bloody wars and 
 vindictive animosities, we have still an unspeakable 
 yearning towards England. When our forefathers 
 left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, 
 but trailed along with them others, which were never 
 snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening dis- 
 tance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by 
 the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by 
 the edge of the sword. Even so late as these days, 
 they remain entangled with our heart-strings, and 
 might often have influenced our national cause like 
 the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of Eng- 
 land had been capable of managing so sensitive a kind 
 of machinery. It has required nothing less than the 
 boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the con- 
 temptuous jealousy, the half-sagacity, invariably blind 
 of one eye and often distorted of the other, that char- 
 acterize this strange people, to compel us to be a great 
 nation in our own right, instead of continuing vir- 
 tually, if not in name, a province of their small island. 
 What pains did they take to shake us off, and have 
 ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them I 
 
 VOL. VII. 3 
 
34 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 It might seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, 
 rather, the Providence of God, who has doubtless a 
 work for us to do, in which the massive materiality of 
 the English character would have been too ponderous 
 a dead -weight upon our progress. And, besides, if 
 England had been wise enough to twine our new vigor 
 round about her ancient strength, her power would 
 have been too firmly established ever to yield, in its 
 due season, to the otherwise immutable law of im- 
 perial vicissitude. The earth might then have beheld 
 the intolerable spectacle of a sovereignty and institu- 
 tions, imperfect, but indestructible. 
 
 Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so 
 inauspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalga- 
 mation. But as an individual, the American is often 
 conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong 
 more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind pathetic 
 tendency to wander back again, which makes itself 
 evident in such wild dreams as I have alluded to 
 above, about English inheritances. A mere coinci- 
 dence of names (the Yankee one, perhaps, having 
 been assumed by legislative permission), a suppositi- 
 tious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently en- 
 graved coat of arms has been half scrubbed out, a seal 
 with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter or docu- 
 ment in faded ink, the more scantily legible the bet- 
 ter, — rubbish of this kind, found in a neglected 
 drawer, has been potent enough to turn the brain of 
 many an honest Republican, especially if assisted by 
 an advertisement for lost heirs, cut out of a British 
 newspaper. There is no estimating or believing, till 
 we come into a position to know it, what foolery lurks 
 latent in the breasts of very sensible people. Re- 
 membering such sober extravagances, I should not be 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 85 
 
 at all surprised to find that I am myself guilty of some 
 unsuspected absurdity, that may appear to me the 
 most substantial trait in my character. 
 
 1 might fill many pages with instances of this dis- 
 eased American appetite for English soil. A respect- 
 able -looking woman, well advanced in life, of sour 
 aspect, exceedingly homely, but decidedly New-Eng- 
 landish in figure and manners, came to my office with 
 a great bundle of documents, at the very first glimpse 
 of which I apprehended something terrible. Nor was 
 I mistaken. The bundle contained evidences of her 
 indubitable claim to the site on which Castle Street, 
 the Town Hall, the Exchange, and all the principal 
 business part of Liverpool have long been situated ; 
 and, with considerable peremptoriness, the good lady 
 signified her expectation that 1 should take charge of 
 her suit, and prosecute it to judgment ; not, however, 
 on the equitable condition of receiving half the value 
 of the property recovered (which, in case of complete 
 success, would have made both of us ten or twenty 
 fold millionnaires), but without recompense or reim- 
 bursement of legal expenses, solely as an incident of 
 my official duty. Another time came two ladies, bear- 
 ing a letter of emphatic introduction from his Excel- 
 lency the Governor of their native State, who testified 
 in most satisfactory terms to their social respectability. 
 They were claimants of a great estate in Cheshire, and 
 announced themselves as blood-relatives of Queen Vic“ 
 toria, — a point, however, which they deemed it expe- 
 dient to keep in the background until their territorial 
 rights should be established, apprehending that the 
 Lord High Chancellor might otherwise be less likely 
 to come to a fair decision in respect to them, from a 
 probable disinclination to admit new members into the 
 
36 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 royal kin. Upon my honor, I imagine that they had 
 an eye to the possibility of the eventual succession of 
 one or both of them to the crown of Great Britain 
 through superiority of title over the Brunswick line ; 
 although, being maiden ladies, like their predecessor 
 Elizabeth, they could hardly have hoped to establish a 
 lasting dynasty upon the throne. It proves, I trust, 
 a certain disinterestedness on my part, that, encounter- 
 ing them thus in the dawn of their fortunes, I forbore 
 to put in a plea for a future dukedom. 
 
 Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman 
 of refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably 
 intellectual aspect. Like many men of an adventur- 
 ous cast, he had so quiet a deportment, and such an 
 apparent disinclination to general sociability, that you 
 would have fancied him moving always along some 
 peaceful and secluded walk of life. Yet, literally from 
 his first hour, he had been tossed upon the surges of 
 a most varied and tumultuous existence, having been 
 born at sea, of American parentage, but on board of a 
 Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subsequent 
 years in voyages, travels, and outlandish incidents and 
 vicissitudes, which, methought, had hardly been par- 
 alleled since the days of Gulliver or De Foe. When 
 his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the faculty 
 of narrating these adventures with wonderful elo- 
 quence, working up his descriptive sketches with such 
 intuitive perception of the picturesque points that the 
 whole was thrown forward with a positively illusive 
 effect, like matters of your own visual experience. In 
 fact, they were so admirably done that I could never 
 more than half believe them, because the genuine af- 
 fairs of life are not apt to transact themselves so artis- 
 tically. Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 37 
 
 among those seldom-visited archipelagoes of the In- 
 dian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fragrance 
 breathing through his talk, and an odor of the Spice 
 Islands still lingering in his garments. He had much 
 to say of the delightful qualities of the Malay pirates, 
 who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare against the 
 ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian 
 throat among their prisoners ; but (except for deeds 
 of that character, which are the rule and habit of their 
 life, and matter of religion and conscience with them) 
 they are a gentle-natured people, of primitive inno- 
 cence and integrity. 
 
 But his best story was about a race of men (if men 
 they were) who seemed so fully to realize Swift’s 
 wicked fable of the Yahoos, that my friend was much 
 exercised with psychological speculations whether or 
 no they had any souls. They dwelt in the wilds of 
 Ceylon, like other savage beasts, hairy, and spotted 
 with tufts of fur, filthy, shameless, weaponless (though 
 warlike in their individual bent), tool-less, houseless, 
 language-less, except for a few guttural sounds, hid- 
 eously dissonant, whereby they held some rudest kind 
 of communication among themselves. They lacked 
 both memory and foresight, and were wholly destitute 
 of government, social institutions, or law or rulership 
 of any description, except the immediate tyranny of 
 the strongest ; radically untamable, moreover, save 
 that the people of the country managed to subject a 
 few of the less ferocious and stupid ones to outdoor 
 servitude among their other cattle. They were beastly 
 in almost all their attributes, and that to such a de- 
 gree that the observer, losing sight of any link be- 
 twixt them and manhood, could generally witness 
 their brutalities without greater horror than at those 
 
88 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 of some disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And 
 yet, at times, comparing what were the lowest general 
 traits in his own race with what was highest in these 
 abominable monsters, he found a ghastly similitude 
 that half compelled him to recognize them as human 
 brethren. 
 
 After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable ac- 
 quaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch gov- 
 ernment, and had suffered (this, at least, being matter 
 of fact) nearly two years’ imprisonment, with confisca- 
 tion of a large amount of property, for which Mr. Bel- 
 mont, our minister at the Hague, had just made a 
 peremptory demand of reimbursement and damages. 
 Meanwhile, since arriving in England on his way to 
 the United States, he had been providentially led to 
 inquire into the circumstances of his birth on ship- 
 board, and had discovered that not himself alone, but 
 another baby, had come into the world during the 
 same voyage of the prolific vessel, and that there were 
 almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these 
 two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. 
 Many reminiscences of his early days confirmed him 
 in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the 
 exchange. The family to which he felt authorized to 
 attribute his lineage was that of a nobleman, in the 
 picture-gallery of whose country-seat (whence, if I 
 mistake not, our adventurous friend had just re- 
 turned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a strik- 
 ing resemblance to himself. As soon as he should 
 have reported the outrageous action of the Dutch gov- 
 ernment to President Pierce and the Secretary of 
 State, and recovered the confiscated property, he pur- 
 posed to return to England and establish his claim to 
 the nobleman’s title and estate. 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 39 
 
 I had accepted his Oriental fantasies (which, in« 
 deed, to do him justice, have been recorded by scien- 
 tific societies among the genuine phenomena of nat- 
 ural history), not as matters of indubitable credence, 
 but as allowable specimens of an imaginative travel- 
 ler’s vivid coloring and rich embroidery on the coarse 
 texture and dull neutral tints of truth. The English 
 romance was among the latest communications that he 
 intrusted to my private ear ; and as soon as I heard 
 the first chapter, — so wonderfully akin to what I 
 might have wrought out of my own head, not unprac- 
 tised in such figments, — I began to repent having 
 made myself responsible for the future nobleman’s 
 passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Never- 
 theless, should his English rent-roll fall a little be- 
 hindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand 
 dollars was certainly in the hands of our government, 
 and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty 
 pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. 
 But I have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned 
 out to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and his English 
 country-seat a mere castle in the air, — which I ex- 
 ceedingly regret, for he was a delightful companion 
 and a very gentlemanly man. 
 
 A Consul, in his position of universal responsibility^ 
 the general adviser and helper, sometimes finds him- 
 self compelled to assume the guardianship of person- 
 ages who, in their own sphere, are supposed capable 
 of superintending the highest interests of whole com- 
 munities. An elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, 
 once put the desire and expectation of all our penni- 
 less vagabonds into a very suitable phrase, by pathet- 
 ically entreating me to be a “ father to him ” ; and, 
 simple as I sit scribbling here, I have acted a father’s 
 
40 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children 
 as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. 
 It may be well for persons who are conscious of any 
 radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, 
 any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed impulse, 
 which (while surrounded with the manifold restraints 
 that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong 
 enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where 
 he is at home) they may have succeeded in keeping 
 under the lock and key of strictest propriety, — it 
 may be well for them, before seeking the perilous free- 
 dom of a distant land, released from the watchful eyes 
 of neighborhoods and coteries, lightened of that weari- 
 some burden, an immaculate name, and blissfully ob- 
 scure after years of local prominence, — it may be 
 well for such individuals to know that when they set 
 foot on a foreign shore, the long - imprisoned Evil, 
 scenting a wild license in the unaccustomed atmos^ 
 phere, is apt to grow riotous in its iron cage. It rat- 
 tles the rusty barriers with gigantic turbulence, and if 
 there be an infirm joint anywhere in the framework, it 
 breaks madly forth, compressing the mischief of a life- 
 time into a little space. 
 
 A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the 
 Consulate for two or three weeks, directed to a certain 
 Doctor of Divinity, who had left America by a sail- 
 ing-packet and was still upon the sea. In due time, 
 the vessel arrived, and the reverend Doctor paid me a 
 visit. He was a fine-looking middle-aged gentleman, 
 a perfect model of clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet 
 with the air of a man of the world rather than a stu- 
 dent, though overspread with the graceful sanctity of 
 a popular metropolitan divine, a part of whose duty it 
 might be to exemplify the natural accordance between 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 41 
 
 Christianity and good-breeding. He seemed a little 
 excited, as an American is apt to be on first arriving 
 in England, but conversed with intelligence as well as 
 animation, making himself so agreeable that his visit 
 stood out in considerable relief from the monotony of 
 my daily commonplace. As I learned from authentic 
 sources, he was somewhat distinguished in his own 
 region for fervor and eloquence in the pulpit, but was 
 now compelled to relinquish it temporarily for the 
 purpose of renovating his impaired health by an ex- 
 tensive tour in Europe. Promising to dine with me, 
 he took up his bundle of letters and went away. 
 
 The Doctor, however, failed to make his appearance 
 at dinner-time, or to apologize the next day for his ab- 
 sence ; and in the course of a day or two more, I for- 
 got all about him, concluding that he must have set 
 forth on his Continental travels, the plan of which he 
 had sketched out at our interview. But, by and by, I 
 received a call from the master of the vessel in which 
 he had arrived. He was in some alarm about his pas- 
 senger, whose luggage remained on shipboard, but of 
 whom nothing had been heard or seen since the mo- 
 ment of his departure from the Consulate. We con- 
 ferred together, the captain and I, about the expe- 
 diency of setting the police on the traces (if any were 
 to be found) of our vanished friend ; but it struck me 
 that the good captain was singularly reticent, and that 
 there was something a little mysterious in a few points 
 that he hinted at rather than expressed ; so that, scru- 
 tinizing the affair carefully, I surmised that the inti- 
 macy of life on shipboard might have taught him more 
 about the reverend gentleman than, for some reason 
 or other, he deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, 
 in our native country, I would have looked to the Doc- 
 
42 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 tor’s personal safety and left his reputation to take 
 care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a thou- 
 sand saintly clergymen would amply dazzle out any 
 lamentable spot on a single brother’s character. But 
 in scornful and invidious England, on the idea that 
 the credit of the sacred office was measurably intrusted 
 to my discretion, I could not endure, for the sake of 
 American Doctors of Divinity generally, that this par- 
 ticular Doctor should cut an ignoble figure in the po- 
 lice reports of the English newspapers, except at the 
 last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter myself, will 
 acknowledge that I acted on their own principle. Be- 
 sides, it was now too late ; the mischief and violence, 
 if any had been impending, were not of a kind which 
 it requires the better part of a week to perpetrate ; 
 and to sum up the entire matter, I felt certain, from a 
 good deal of somewhat similar experience, that, if the 
 missing Doctor still breathed this vital air, he would 
 turn up at the Consulate as soon as his money should 
 be stolen or spent. 
 
 Precisely a week after this reverend person’s disap- 
 pearance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged 
 gentleman in a blue military surtout, braided at the 
 seams, but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the 
 wearer had been bivouacking in it throughout a Cri- 
 mean campaign. It was buttoned up to the very chin, 
 except where three or four of the buttons were lost ; 
 nor was there any glimpse of a white shirt-collar il- 
 luminating the rusty black cravat. A grisly mustache 
 A7as just beginning to roughen the stranger’s upper 
 lip. He looked disreputable to the last degree, but 
 still had a ruined air of good society glimmering about 
 him, like a few specks of polish on a sword-blade that 
 has lain corroding in a mud-puddle. I took him to be 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 43 
 
 some American marine officer, of dissipated habits, or 
 perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling into the 
 wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilderment 
 of the last night’s debauch. He greeted me, however, 
 with polite familiarity, as though we had been previa 
 ously acquainted ; whereupon I drew coldly back (as? 
 sensible people naturally do, whether from strangers 
 or former friends, when too evidently at odds with 
 fortune) and requested to know who my visitor might 
 be, and what was his business at the Consulate. Am 
 I then so changed ? ” he exclaimed with a vast depth 
 of tragic intonation ; and after a little blind and be- 
 wildered talk, behold ! the truth fiashed upon me. It 
 was the Doctor of Divinity? If I had meditated a 
 scene or a coup de theatre.^ I could not have contrived 
 a more effectual one than by this simple and genuine 
 difficulty of recognition. The poor Divine must have 
 felt that he had lost his personal identity through the 
 misadventures of one little week. And, to say the 
 truth, he did look as if, like Job, on account of his 
 especial sanctity, he had been delivered over to the 
 direst temptations of Satan, and proving weaker than 
 the man of Uz, the Arch Enemy had been empow- 
 ered to drag him through Tophet, transforming him, 
 in the process, from the most decorous clergyman 
 into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I 
 never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, 
 but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had 
 induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this 
 habit of a sinner ; nor can I tell precisely into what 
 pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had 
 precipitated himself, — being more than satisfied to 
 know that the outcasts of society can sink no lower 
 than this poor, desecrated wretch had sunk. 
 
44 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen 
 to a layman, of administering moral and religious re- 
 proof to a Doctor of Divinity ; but finding the occa- 
 sion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan wax- 
 ing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of com 
 science not to let it pass entirely unimproved. The 
 truth is, I was unspeakably shocked and disgustedo 
 Not, however, that I was then to learn that clergymen 
 are made of the same flesh and blood as other people, 
 and perhaps lack one small safeguard which the rest 
 of us possess, because they are aware of their own pec- 
 cability, and therefore cannot look up to the clerical 
 class for the proof of the possibility of a pure life on 
 earth, with such reverential confidence as we are prone 
 to do. But I remembered the innocent faith of my 
 boyhood, and the good old silver - headed clergyman, 
 who seemed to me as much a saint then on earth as he 
 is now in heaven, and partly for whose sake, through 
 all these darkening years, I retain a devout, though 
 not intact nor unwavering respect for the entire fra- 
 ternity. What a hideous wrong, therefore, had the 
 backslider inflicted on his brethren, and still more on 
 me, who much needed whatever fragments of broken 
 reverence (broken, not as concerned religion, but its 
 earthly institutions and professors) it might yet be 
 possible to patch into a sacred image ! Should all 
 pulpits and communion-tables have thenceforth a stain 
 upon them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it ? 
 So I spoke to the unhappy man as I never thought 
 myself warranted in speaking to any other mortal, 
 hitting him hard, doing my utmost to find out his vul- 
 nerable part, and prick him into the depths of it. 
 And not without more effect than I had dreamed of, 
 or desired ! 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 45 
 
 No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor’s reversed posi- 
 tion, thus standing up to receive such a fulmination 
 as the clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclusive 
 right of inflicting, might give additional weight and 
 sting to the words which I found utterance for. But 
 there was another reason (which, had I in the least 
 suspected it, would have closed my lips at once) for 
 his feeling morbidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke that I 
 administered. The unfortunate man had come to me, 
 laboring under one of the consequences of his riotous 
 outbreak, in the shape of delirium tremens ; he bore a 
 hell within the compass of his own breast, all the tor- 
 ments of which blazed up with tenfold inveteracy when 
 I thus took upon myself the Devil’s office of stirring- 
 up the red-hot embers. His emotions, as well as the 
 external movement and expression of them by voice, 
 countenance, and gesture, were terribly exaggerated 
 by the tremendous vibration of nerves resulting from 
 the disease. It was the deepest tragedy I ever wit- 
 nessed. I know sufficiently, from that one experience, 
 how a condemned soul would manifest its agonies ; 
 and for the future, if I have anything to do with sin- 
 ners, I mean to operate upon them through sympathy 
 and not rebuke. What had 1 to do with rebuking 
 him ? The disease, long latent in his heart, had shown 
 itself in a frightful eruption on the surface of his life. 
 That was all ! Is it a thing to scold the sufferer for ? 
 
 To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor of 
 Divinity, having been robbed of all his money in this 
 little airing beyond the limits of propriety, was easily 
 persuaded to give up the intended tour and return to 
 his bereaved flock, who, very probably, were thereafter 
 conscious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring 
 eloquence, without suspecting the awful depths into 
 
46 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 which their pastor had dived in quest of it. His voice 
 is now silent. I leave it to members of his own pro- 
 fession to decide whether it was better for him thus to 
 sin outright, and so to be let into the miserable secret 
 what manner of m^^n he was, or to have gone through 
 life outwardly unspotted, making the first discovery of 
 his latent evil at the judgment-seat. It has occurred 
 to me that his dire calamity, as both he and I regarded 
 it, might have been the only method by which pre- 
 cisely such a man as himself, and so situated, could be 
 redeemed. He has learned, ere now, how that matter 
 stood. 
 
 For a man, with a natural tendency to meddle with 
 other people’s business, there could not possibly be a 
 more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. 
 For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling 
 that I could sufficiently comprehend any particular 
 conjunction of circumstances with human character, 
 to justify me in thrusting in my awkward agency 
 among the intricate and unintelligible machinery of 
 Providence. I have always hated to give advice, es- 
 pecially when there is a prospect of its being taken. 
 It is only one-eyed people who love to advise, or have 
 any spontaneous promptitude of action When a man 
 opens both his eyes, he generally sees about as many 
 reasons for acting in any one way as in any other, and 
 quite as many for acting in neither ; and is therefore 
 likely to leave his friends to regulate their own con« 
 duct, and also to remain quiet as regards his especial 
 affairs till necessity shall prick him onward. Never- 
 theless, the world and individuals flourish upon a con- 
 stant succession of blunders. The secret of English 
 practical success lies in their characteristic faculty of 
 shutting one eye, whereby they get so distinct and de- 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 47 
 
 cided a view of what immediately concerns them that 
 they go stumbling towards it over a hundred insure 
 mountable obstacles, and achieve a magnificent tri- 
 umph without ever being aware of half its difficultieSo 
 If General McClellan could but have shut his left eye, 
 the right one would long ago have guided us into 
 Eichmond. Meanwhile, I have strayed far away from 
 the Consulate, where, as I was about to say, I was 
 compelled, in spite of my disinclination, to impart both 
 advice and assistance in multifarious affairs that did 
 not personally concern me, and presume that I effected 
 about as little mischief as other men in similar con- 
 tingencies. The duties of the office carried me to 
 prisons, police-courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coro- 
 ner’s inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought me 
 in contact with insane people, criminals, ruined specu- 
 lators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, 
 and all manner of simpletons and unfortunates, in 
 greater number and variety than I had ever dreamed 
 of as pertaining to America ; in addition to whom 
 there was an equivalent multitude of English rogues, 
 dexterously counterfeiting the genuine Yankee articleo 
 It required great discrimination not to be taken in by 
 these last-mentioned scoundrels ; for they knew how to 
 imitate our national traits, had been at great pains to 
 instruct themselves as regarded American localities, 
 and were not readily to be caught by a cross-examina- 
 tion as to the topographical features, public institu- 
 tions, or prominent inhabitants of the places where 
 they pretended to belong. The best shibboleth I ever 
 hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word been 
 which the English invariably make to rhyme with 
 green,” and we Northerners, at least (in accordance, 
 I think, with the custom of Shakespeare’s time), uni- 
 versally pronounce “ bin.” 
 
48 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 All the matters that I have been treating of, how- 
 ever, were merely incidental, and quite distinct from 
 the real business of the office. A great part of the 
 wear and tear of mind and temper resulted from the 
 bad relations between the seamen and officers of Amer- 
 ican ships. Scarcely a morning passed, but that some 
 sailor came to show the marks of his ill-usage on ship- 
 board. Often, it was a whole crew of them, each with 
 his broken head or livid bruise, and all testifying with 
 one voice to a constant series of savage outrages dur- 
 ing the voyage ; or, it might be, they laid an accusa^ 
 tion of actual murder, perpetrated by the first or sec- 
 ond officers, with many blows of steel - knuckles, a 
 rope’s end, or a marline-spike, or by the captain, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, with a shot of his pistol. 
 Taking the seamen’s view of the case, you would sup- 
 pose that the gibbet was hungry for the murderers. 
 Listening to the captain’s defence, you would seem to 
 discover that he and his officers were the humanest of 
 mortals, but were driven to a wholesome severity by 
 the mutinous conduct of the crew, who, moreover, had 
 themselves slain their comrade in the drunken riot 
 and confusion of the first day or two after they were 
 shipped. Looked at judicially, there appeared to be 
 no right side to the matter, nor any right side possi- 
 ble in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the 
 American mercantile marine. The Consul could do 
 little, except to take depositions, hold forth the greasy 
 Testament to be profaned anew with perjured kisses, 
 and, in a few instances of murder or manslaughter, 
 carry the case before an English magistrate, who gen- 
 erally decided that the evidence was too contradictory 
 to authorize the transmission of the accused for trial 
 in America. The newspapers all over England con- 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 49 
 
 tained paragraphs, inveighing against the cruelties of 
 American shipmasters. The British Parliament took 
 up the matter (for nobody is so humane as John Bull, 
 when his benevolent propensities are to be gratified 
 by finding fault with his neighbor), and caused Lord 
 John Russell to remonstrate with our government on 
 the outrages for which it was responsible before the 
 world, and which it failed to prevent or punish. The 
 American Secretary of State, old General Cass, re- 
 sponded, with perfectly astounding ignorance of the 
 subject, to the effect that the statements of outrages 
 had probably been exaggerated, that the present laws 
 of the United States were quite adequate to deal with 
 them, and that the interference of the British Minis- 
 ter was uncalled for. 
 
 The truth is, that the state of affairs was really very 
 horrible, and could be met by no laws at that time (or 
 I presume now) in existence. I once thought of writ- 
 ing a pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the Consu- 
 late before finding time to effect my purpose ; and all 
 that phase of my life immediately assumed so dream- 
 like a consistency that I despaired of making it seem 
 solid or tangible to the public. And now it looks dis- 
 tant and dim, like troubles of a century ago. The ori- 
 gin of the evil lay in the character of the seamen, 
 scarcely any of whom were American, but the off- 
 scourings and refuse of all the seaports of the world, 
 such stuff as piracy is made of, together with a con- 
 siderable intermixture of returning emigrants, and 
 a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citi- 
 zens. Even with such material the ships were very 
 inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself 
 upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of property 
 and human life upon his hands, and no means of sal- 
 
 VOL. VII. 4 
 
50 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 vation except by compelling his inefficient and demor- 
 alized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably 
 be required of the same number of able seamen. By 
 law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judi- 
 cious punishment ; he therefore habitually left the 
 whole matter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, 
 men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew. 
 Hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages, unjusti- 
 fiable assaults, shameful indignities, and nameless cru- 
 elty, demoralizing alike to the perpetrators and the 
 sufferers ; these enormities fell into the ocean between 
 the two countries, and could be punished in neither. 
 Many miserable stories come back upon my memory 
 as I write ; wrongs that were immense, but for which 
 nobody could be held responsible, and which, indeed, 
 the closer you looked into them, the more they lost the 
 aspect of wilful misdoing, and assumed that of an in- 
 evitable calamity. It was the fault of a system, the 
 misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may, how- 
 ever, there will be no possibility of dealing effectually 
 with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent 
 with our national dignity or interests to allow the 
 English courts, under such restrictions as may seem 
 fit, a jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board 
 our vessels in mid-ocean. 
 
 In such a life as this, the American shipmaster de- 
 velops himself into a man of iron energies, dauntless 
 courage, and inexhaustible resource, at the expense, it 
 must be acknowledged, of some of the higher and 
 gentler traits which might do him excellent service in 
 maintaining his authority. The class has deteriorated 
 of late years on account of the narrower field of selec- 
 tion, owing chiefly to the diminution of that excellent 
 body of respectably educated New England seamen, 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 51 
 
 from the flower of whom the officers used to be re- 
 cruited. Yet I found them, in many cases, very 
 agreeable and intelligent companions, with less non- 
 sense about them than landsmen usually have, eschew- 
 ers of fine-spun theories, delighting in square and 
 tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with prejm 
 dices that stuck to their brains like barnacles to a 
 ship’s bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was 
 a general favorite with them. One or two, perhaps, 
 even now, would scarcely meet me on amicable terms. 
 Endowed universally with a great pertinacity of will, 
 they especially disliked the interference of a consul 
 with their management on shipboard ; notwithstand- 
 ing which I thrust in my very limited authority at 
 every available opening, and did the utmost that lay 
 in my power, though with lamentably small effect, 
 towards enforcing a better kind of discipline. They 
 thought, no doubt (and on plausible grounds enoughs 
 but scarcely appreciating just that one little grain of 
 hard New England sense, oddly thrown in among the 
 flimsier composition of the Consul’s character), that 
 he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as people said of 
 him, a fanciful recluse, could not possibly understand 
 anything of the difficulties or the necessities of a ship- 
 master’s position. But their cold regards were rather 
 acceptable than otherwise, for it is exceedingly awk- 
 ward to assume a judicial austerity in the morning 
 towards a man with whom you have been hobnobbing 
 over night. 
 
 With the technical details of the business of that 
 great Consulate (for great it then was, though now, 
 I fear, wofully fallen off,* and perhaps never to be re- 
 vived in anything like its former extent), I did not 
 much interfere. They could safely be left to the 
 
62 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 treatment of two as faithful, upright, and competent 
 subordinates, both Englishmen, as ever a man was 
 fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life alto- 
 gether new and strange to him. I had come over 
 with instructions to supply both their places with 
 Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of know- 
 ing my own interest and the public’s, I quietly kept 
 hold of them, being little inclined to open the consu- 
 lar doors to a spy of the State Department or an in- 
 triguer for my own office. The venerable Vice-Con- 
 sul, Mr. Pearce, had witnessed the successive arrivals 
 of a score of newly-appointed Consuls, shadowy and 
 short-lived dignitaries, and carried his reminiscences 
 back to the epoch of Consul Maury, who was ap- 
 pointed by Washington, and has acquired almost the 
 grandeur of a mythical personage in the annals of the 
 Consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. Wilding, who 
 has since succeeded to the Vice-Consulship, was a man 
 of English integrity, — not that the English are more 
 honest than ourselves, but only there is a certain 
 sturdy reliableness common among them, which we do 
 not quite so invariably manifest in just these subordi- 
 nate positions, — of English integrity, combined with 
 American acuteness of intellect, quick-wittedness, and 
 diversity of talent. It seemed an immense pity that 
 he should wear out his life at a desk, without a step in 
 advance from year’s end to year’s end, when, had it 
 been his luck to be born on our side of the water, his 
 bright faculties and clear probity would have insured 
 him eminent success in whatever path he might adopt. 
 Meanwhile, it would have been a sore mischance to 
 me, had any better fortune on his part deprived me of 
 Mr. Wilding’s services. 
 
 A fair amount of common-sense, some acquaintance 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 53 
 
 with the United States Statutes, an insight into char- 
 acter, a tact of management, a general knowledge of 
 the world, and a reasonable but not too inveterately 
 decided preference for his own will and judgment over 
 those of interested people, — these natural attributes 
 and moderate acquirements will enable a consul to 
 perform many of his duties respectably, but not to 
 dispense with a great variety of other qualifications, 
 only attainable by long experience. Yet, I think, few 
 consuls are so well accomplished. An appointment of 
 whatever grade, in the diplomatic or consular service 
 of America, is too often what the English call a 
 “ job ” ; that is to say, it is made on private and per- 
 sonal grounds, without a paramount eye to the public 
 good or the gentleman’s especial fitness for the posi- 
 tion. It is not too much to say (of course allowing 
 for a brilliant exception here and there), that an 
 American never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign 
 post, nor has time to make himself so, before the rev- 
 olution of the political wheel discards him from his 
 office. Our country wrongs itself by permitting such 
 a system of unsuitable appointments, and, still more, 
 of removals for no cause, just when the incumbent 
 might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. Mere 
 ignorance of official detail is of comparatively small 
 moment ; though it is considered indispensable, I pre- 
 sume, that a man in any private capacity shall be 
 thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and opera- 
 tion of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his 
 position on having attained such knowledge. But 
 there are so many more important things to be thought 
 of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his 
 technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth men- 
 tioning. 
 
54 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 One great part of a consul’s duty, for example, 
 should consist in building up for himself a recognized 
 position in the society where he resides, so that his 
 local influence might be felt in behalf of his own coum 
 try, and, so far as they are compatible (as they gener- 
 ally are to the utmost extent), for the interests of both 
 nations. The foreign city should know that it has a 
 permanent inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher in him. 
 There are many conjunctures (and one of them is now 
 upon us) where a long-established, honored, and trusted 
 American citizen, holding a public position under our 
 government in such a town as Liverpool, might go far 
 towards swaying and directing the sympathies of the 
 inhabitants. He might throw his own weight into the 
 balance against mischief - makers ; he might have set 
 his foot on the first little spark of malignant purpose, 
 which the next wind may blow into a national war. 
 But we wilfully give up all advantages of this kind. 
 The position is totally beyond the attainment of an 
 American ; there to - day, bristling all over with the 
 porcupine quills of our Republic, and gone to-morrow, 
 just as he is becoming sensible of the broader and 
 more generous patriotism which might almost amal- 
 gamate with that of England, without losing an atom 
 of its native force and flavor. In the changes that 
 appear to await us, and some of which, at least, can 
 hardly fail to be for good, let us hope for a reform in 
 this matter. 
 
 For myself, as the gentle reader would spare me the 
 trouble of saying, I was not at all the kind of man to 
 grow into such an ideal Consul as I have here sug« 
 gested. I never in my life desired to be burdened 
 with public influence. I disliked my office from the 
 first, and never came into any good accordance with 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 55 
 
 it. Its dignity, so far as it had any, was an encum- 
 brance ; the attentions it drew upon me (such as in- 
 vitations to Mayors’ banquets and public celebrations 
 of all kinds, where, to my horror, I found myself ex- 
 pected to stand up and speak) were — as I may say 
 without incivility or ingratitude, because there is noth- 
 ing personal in that sort of hospitality — a bore. The 
 official business was irksome, and often painful. There 
 was nothing pleasant about the whole affair, except 
 the emoluments ; and even those, never too bounti- 
 fully reaped, were diminished by more than half in the 
 second or third year of my incumbency. All this be- 
 ing true, I was quite prepared, in advance of the in- 
 auguration of Mr. Buchanan, to send in my resigna- 
 tion. When my successor arrived, I drew the long, 
 delightful breath which first made me thoroughly sen- 
 sible what an unnatural life I had been leading, and 
 compelled me to admire myself for having battled with 
 it so sturdily. The new - comer proved to be a very 
 genial and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and, as 
 he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern Fire-Eater, — 
 an announcement to which I responded, with similar 
 good -humor and self-complacency, by parading my 
 descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puri- 
 tans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my fire-eat- 
 ing friend has had ample opportunities to banquet on 
 his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate ser- 
 vice. For myself, as soon as I was out of office, the 
 retrospect began to look unreal. I could scarcely be- 
 lieve that it was I, — that figure whom they called a 
 Consul, — but a sort of Double Ganger, who had been 
 permitted to assume my aspect, under which he went 
 through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show of 
 efficiency, while my real self had lain, as regarded my 
 
56 
 
 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES, 
 
 proper mode of being and acting, in a state of sns- 
 pended animation. 
 
 The same sense of illusion still pursues me. There 
 is some mistake in this matter. I have been writing 
 about another man’s consular experiences, with which, 
 through some mysterious medium of transmitted ideas, 
 I find myself intimately acquainted, but in which I 
 cannot possibly have had a personal interest. Is it 
 not a dream altogether ? The figure of that poor 
 Doctor of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike ; so do 
 those of the Oriental adventurer with the visionary 
 coronet above his brow, and the moonstruck visitor of 
 the Queen, and the poor old wanderer, seeking his 
 native country through English highways and byways 
 for almost thirty years ; and so would a hundred 
 others that I might summon up with similar distinct- 
 ness. But were they more than shadows ? Surely, I 
 think not. Nor are these present pages a bit of in- 
 trusive autobiography. Let not the reader wrong me 
 by supposing it. I never should have written with 
 half such unreserve, had it been a portion of this life 
 congenial with my nature, which I am living now, in- 
 stead of a series of incidents and characters entirely 
 apart from my own concerns, and on which the qual- 
 ities personally proper to me could have had no bear- 
 ing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them 
 now, were the visits of a young English friend, a 
 scholar and a literary amateur, between whom and 
 myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, 
 not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or 
 stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and elo- 
 quently with me about literature and life, his own 
 national characteristics and mine, with such kindly en« 
 durance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith 
 
CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 
 
 57 
 
 I assailed him, and such frank and amiable assertion 
 of all sorts of English prejudices and mistakes, that I 
 understood his countrymen infinitely the better for 
 him, and was almost prepared to love the intensest 
 Englishman of them all, for his sake. It would 
 gratify my cherished remembrance of this dear friend, 
 if I could manage, without offending him, or letting 
 the public know it, to introduce his name upon my 
 page. Bright was the illumination of my dusky little 
 apartment, as often as he made his appearance there ! 
 
 The English sketches which I have been offering to 
 the public comprise a few of the more external, and 
 therefore more readily manageable, things that I took 
 note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my 
 consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very de- 
 lightful as a place of residence, is a most convenient 
 and admirable point to get away from. London is 
 only five hours off by the fast train. Chester, the most 
 curious town in England, with its encompassing wall, 
 its ancient rows, and its venerable cathedral, is close 
 at hand. North Wales, with all its hills and ponds, 
 its noble sea-scenery, its multitude of gray castles and 
 strange old villages, may be glanced at in a summer 
 day or two. The lakes and mountains of Cumberland 
 and Westmoreland may be reached before dinner-time. 
 The haunted and legendary Isle of Man, a little king- 
 dom by itself, lies within the scope of an afternoon’s 
 voyage. Edinburgh or Glasgow are attainable over 
 night, and Loch Lomond betimes in the morning. Vis- 
 iting these famous localities, and a great many others, 
 I hope that I do not compromise my American patriot- 
 ism by acknowledging that I was often conscious of a 
 fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our 
 forefathers, and felt it to be our own Old Home. 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 In the course of several visits and stays of consid- 
 erable length we acquired a homelike feeling towards 
 Leamington, and came back thither again and again, 
 chiefly because we had been there before. W andering 
 and wayside people, such as we had long since become, 
 retain a few of the instincts that belong to a more set- 
 tled way of life, and often prefer familiar and com- 
 monplace objects (for the very reason that they are 
 so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be 
 thought much better worth the seeing. There is a 
 small nest of a place in Leamington — at No. 10 
 Lansdowne Circus — upon which, to this day, my remi- 
 niscences are apt to settle as one of the cosiest nooks 
 in England or in the world ; not that it had any spe- 
 cial charm of its own, but only that we stayed long 
 enough to know it well, and even to grow a little tired 
 of it. In my opinion, the very tediousness of home 
 and friends makes a part of what we love them for ; if 
 it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other elements 
 of life, there may be mad enjoyment, but no happiness. 
 
 The modest abode to which I have alluded forms 
 one of a circular range of pretty, moderate-sized, two- 
 story houses, all built on nearly the same plan, and each 
 provided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts 
 of box trimmed into globes and other fantastic shapes, 
 and its verdant hedges shutting the house in from the 
 common drive, and dividing it from its equally cosey 
 neighbors. Coming out of the door, and taking a turn 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 59 
 
 round tlie circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult to 
 find your way back by any distinguishing individual- 
 ity of your own habitation. In the centre of the Cir- 
 cus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small play- 
 place and sylvan retreat for the children of the pre- 
 cinct, permeated by brief paths through the fresh Eng- 
 lish grass, and shadowed by various shrubbery ; amid 
 which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in a deep 
 seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot from 
 the windows of all the surrounding houses. But, in 
 truth, with regard to the rest of the town and the 
 world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion ; 
 for the ordinary stream of life does not run through 
 this little, quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabi- 
 tants seem to be troubled with any business or outside 
 activities. I used to set them down as half-pay offi- 
 cers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, 
 and other people of respectability, but small account, 
 such as hang on the world’s skirts, rather than actually 
 belong to it. The quiet of the place was seldom dis- 
 turbed, except by the grocer and butcher, who came to 
 receive orders ; or by the cabs, hackney-coaches, and 
 Bath-chairs, in which the ladies took an infrequent air- 
 ing ; or the livery-steed which the retired captain some- 
 times bestrode for a morning ride ; or by the red-coated 
 postman who went his rounds twice a day to deliver 
 letters, and again in the evening, ringing a hand-bell, 
 to take letters for the mail. In merely mentioning 
 these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, I 
 seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of 
 quiet that brooded over the spot ; whereas its impress 
 sion upon me was, that the world had never found the 
 way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate 
 inhabitants were the only ones who possessed the spell- 
 
60 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 word of admittance. Nothing could have suited me 
 better, at the time ; for I had been holding a position 
 of public servitude, which imposed upon me (among 
 a great many lighter duties) the ponderous necessity 
 of being universally civil and sociable. 
 
 Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of 
 society, he might find it more readily in Leamington 
 than in most other English towns. It is a permanent 
 watering-place, a sort of institution to which I do not 
 know any close parallel in American life : for such 
 places as Saratoga bloom only for the summer-season, 
 and offer a thousand dissimilitudes even then ; while 
 Leamington seems to be always in fiower, and serves 
 as a home to the homeless all the year round. Its 
 original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town’s 
 coming into prosperous existence, lies in the fiction of 
 a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality 
 that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, 
 groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and 
 spread themselves along the banks of the little river 
 Learn. This miracle accomplished, the beneficent 
 fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and ap- 
 pears to have given up all pretensions to the remedial 
 virtues formerly attributed to it. I know not whether 
 its waters are ever tasted nowadays ; but not the less 
 does Leamington — in pleasant W arwickshire, at the 
 very midmost point of England, in a good hunting 
 neighborhood, and surrounded by country-seats and 
 castles — continue to be a resort of transient visitors, 
 and the more permanent abode of a class of genteel, 
 unoccupied, well - to - do, but not very wealthy people, 
 such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons 
 who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are 
 inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, I sup- 
 pose, a sort of town and country life in one. 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 61 
 
 In its present aspect the town is of no great age. 
 In contrast with the antiquity of many places in its 
 neighborhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems al- 
 most to smile even amid the sombreness of an English 
 autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds 
 of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time 
 during which it existed as a small village of thatched 
 houses, clustered round a priory ; and it would still 
 have been precisely such a rural village, but for a cer- 
 tain Dr. Jephson, who lived within the memory of 
 man, and who found out the magic well, and foresaw 
 what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it. A 
 public garden has been laid out along the margin of 
 the Learn, and called the Jephson Garden, in honor of 
 him who created the prosperity of his native spot. A 
 little way within the garden-gate there is a circular 
 temple of Grecian architecture, beneath the dome of 
 which stands a marble statue of the good Doctor, very 
 well executed, and representing him with a face of 
 fussy activity and benevolence : just the kind of man, 
 if luck favored him, to build up the fortunes of those 
 about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole 
 neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. 
 
 The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most 
 other English pleasure-grounds ; for, aided by their 
 moist climate and not too fervid sun, the landscape- 
 gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces 
 into attractive scenery, chiefly through the skilful ar- 
 rangement of trees and shrubbery. An Englishman 
 aims at this effect even in the little patches under the 
 windows of a suburban villa* and achieves it on a 
 larger scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden is 
 shadowed with trees of a fine growth, standing alone, 
 or in dusky groves and dense entanglements, pervaded 
 
62 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 by woodland paths ; and emerging from these pleas- 
 ant glooms, we come upon a breadth of sunshine, 
 where the greensward — so vividly green that it has 
 a kind of lustre in it — is spotted with beds of gem- 
 like flowers. Rustic chairs and benches are scattered 
 about, some of them ponderously fashioned outf of the 
 stumps of obtruncated trees, and others more artfully 
 made with intertwining branches, or perhaps an imi- 
 tation of such frail handiwork in iron. In a central 
 part of the Garden is an archery-ground, where laugh- 
 ing maidens practise at the butts, generally missing 
 their ostensible mark, but, by the mere grace of their 
 action, sending an unseen shaft into some young man’s 
 heart. There is space, moreover, within these pre- 
 cincts, for an artificial lake, with a little green island 
 in the midst of it; both lake and island being the 
 haunt of swans, whose aspect and movement in the 
 water are most beautiful and stately, — most infirm, 
 disjointed, and decrepit, when, unadvisedly, they see 
 fit to emerge, and try to walk upon dry land. In the 
 latter case, they look like a breed of uncommonly ill- 
 contrived geese ; and I record the matter here for the 
 sake of the moral, — that we should never pass judg- 
 ment on the merits of any person or thing, unless we 
 behold them in the sphere and circumstances to which 
 they are specially adapted. In still another part of 
 the Garden there is a labyrinthine maze formed of an 
 intricacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself 
 in which, a man might wander for hours inextricably 
 within a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me 
 a sad emblem of the mental and moral perplexities 
 in which we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet 
 large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder us 
 with a weary movement, but no genuine progress. 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 63 
 
 The Learn, — the ‘‘ high oomplexioned Learn,” as 
 Drayton calls it, — after drowsing across the principal 
 street of the town, beneath a handsome bridge, skirts 
 along the margin of the Garden without any percepti- 
 ble flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the 
 laziest river in the world, but now assign that amiable 
 distinction to the little English stream. Its water is 
 by no means transparent, but has a greenish, goose- 
 puddly hue, which, however, accords well with the 
 other coloring and characteristics of the scene, and is 
 disagreeable neither to sight nor smell. Certainly, 
 this river is a perfect feature of that gentle pictur- 
 esqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping, as it 
 does, beneath a margin of willows that droop into its 
 bosom, and other trees, of deeper verdure than our 
 own country can boast, inclining lovingly over it. On 
 the Garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy, secluded 
 grove, with winding paths among its boskiness, afford- 
 ing many a peep at the river’s imperceptible lapse and 
 tranquil gleam ; and on the opposite shore stands the 
 priory-church, with its churchyard full of shrubbery 
 and tombstones. 
 
 The business portion of the town clusters about the 
 banks of the Learn, and is naturally densest around 
 the well to which the modern settlement owes its exist- 
 ence. Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, 
 the furniture - dealers, the iron - mongers, and all the 
 heavy and homely establishments that connect them- 
 selves even with the airiest modes of human life; 
 while upward from the river, by a long and gentle as- 
 cent, rises the principal street, which is very bright 
 and cheerful in its physiognomy, and adorned with 
 shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of London, 
 though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise 
 
G4 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA, 
 
 side-streets and cross-streets, many of which are bor- 
 dered with the beautiful Warwickshire elm, a most 
 unusual kind of adornment for an English town ; and 
 spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for 
 stately groves, with foot-paths running beneath the 
 lofty shade, and rooks cawing and chattering so high 
 in the tree-tops that their voices get musical before 
 reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in 
 blocks and ranges, in which every separate tenement 
 is a repetition of its fellow, though the architecture of 
 the different ranges is sufficiently various. Some of 
 them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness 
 of arrangement. Then, on the outskirts of the town, 
 there are detached villas, enclosed within that sepa- 
 rate domain of high stone fence and embowered shrub- 
 bery which an Englishman so loves to build and plant 
 around his abode, presenting to the public only an 
 iron gate, with a gravelled carriage - drive winding 
 away towards the half-hidden mansion. Whether in 
 street or suburb, Leamington may fairly be called 
 beautiful, and, at some points, magnificent ; but by 
 and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a some- 
 what unreal finery : it is pretentious, though not glar- 
 ingly so ; it has been built with malice aforethought, 
 as a place of gentility and enjoyment. Moreover, 
 splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as they 
 often are, there is a nameless something about them, 
 betokening that they have not grown out of human 
 hearts, but are the creations of a skilfully applied hu- 
 man intellect: no man has reared any one of them, 
 whether stately or humble, to be his life-long resi- 
 dence, wherein to bring up his children, who are to 
 inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived 
 lodging-houses, one and all, — the best as well as the 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 65 
 
 shabbiest o£ them, — and therefore inevitably lack 
 some nameless property that a home should have. 
 This was the case with our own little snuggery in 
 Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest ; it had not 
 grown out of anybody’s individual need, but was built 
 to let or sell, and was therefore like a ready-made gar- 
 ment, — a tolerable fit, but only tolerable. 
 
 All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are 
 adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names 
 that I have found anywhere in England, except per- 
 haps, in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that 
 second-class gentility with which watering - places are 
 chiefly populated. Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne 
 Circus, Lansdowne Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick 
 Street, Clarendon Street, the Upper and Lower Par- 
 ade ; such are a few of the designations. Parade, in- 
 deed, is a well-chosen name for the principal street, 
 along which the population of the idle town draws 
 itself out for daily review and display. I only wish 
 that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw 
 off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, individ- 
 ualizing each character with a touch ; the great peo- 
 ple alighting from their carriages at the principal 
 shop-doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian offi- 
 cers drawn along in Bath-chairs ; the comely, rather 
 than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy 
 bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter 
 for a milkmaid than for a lady ; the mustached gentle- 
 men with frogged surtouts and a military air ; the 
 nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than 
 our own, and scampering on slenderer legs ; the sturdy 
 figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but 
 ever with the stamp of authenticity somewhere about 
 him. 
 
 VOL. VII. 
 
 5 
 
66 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over 
 my paper, purposing to write a descriptive paragraph 
 or two about the throng on the principal Parade of 
 Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch of 
 the British out-of-door aspect on a morning walk of 
 gentility ; but I find no personages quite sufficiently 
 distinct and individual in my memory to supply the 
 materials of such a panorama. Oddly enough, the only 
 figure that comes fairly forth to my mind’s eye is that 
 of a dowager, one of hundreds whom I used to marvel 
 at, all over England, but who have scarcely a represen- 
 tative among our own ladies of autumnal life, so thin, 
 careworn, and frail, as age usually makes the latter. 
 
 I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which 
 English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late 
 period of life ; but (not to suggest that an American 
 eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite ap- 
 preciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it 
 strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to be- 
 come a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her 
 physique goes, than anything that we Western people 
 class under the name of woman. She has an awful 
 ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser devel- 
 opment of our few fat women, but massive with solid 
 beef and streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling 
 manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her 
 as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks, 
 her advance is elephantine. When she sits down, it 
 is on a great round space of her Maker’s footstool, 
 where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. 
 She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her 
 personality, to such a degree that you probably credit 
 her with far greater moral and intellectual force than 
 she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 67 
 
 stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terri- 
 ble, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, 
 but because it seems to express so much well-founded 
 self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its 
 toils, troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity 
 for trampling down a foe. Without anything posh 
 tively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly 
 formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a 
 seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace ; for, while you 
 assure yourself that there is no real danger, you can- 
 not help thinking how tremendous would be her onset 
 if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to 
 inflict any counter - in jury. She certainly looks ten- 
 fold — nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take care 
 of herself than our slender-framed and haggard wa 
 mankind ; but I have not found reason to suppose 
 that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater 
 courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our 
 women of similar age, or even a tougher physical en- 
 durance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, 
 only in society, and in the common routine of social 
 affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in 
 any exceptional strait that might call for energy out- 
 side of the conventionalities amid which she has grown 
 up. 
 
 You can meet this figure in the street, and live, 
 and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of 
 her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that 
 she invariably displays there, and all the other cor- 
 responding development, such as is beautiful in the 
 maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an 
 over-blown cabbage-rose as this. 
 
 Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must 
 be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, 
 
68 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly over- 
 grown ; for an English maiden in her teens, though 
 very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, 
 to say the truth, a certain charm of half - blossom, 
 and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood 
 shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow 
 or other, our American girls often fail to adorn them- 
 selves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity 
 that the English violet should grow into such an out- 
 rageously developed peony as I have attempted to de- 
 scribe. I wonder whether a middle - aged husband 
 ought to be considered as legally married to all the 
 accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his 
 bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make 
 her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it 
 not a sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial 
 bond cannot be held to include the three fourths of 
 the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was 
 performed ? And as a matter of conscience and good 
 morals, ought not an English married pair to insist 
 upon the celebration of a silver- wedding at the end of 
 twenty -five years, in order to legalize and mutually 
 appropriate that corporeal growth of which both par- 
 ties have individually come into possession since they 
 were pronounced one flesh ? 
 
 The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Leam- 
 ington lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and 
 in jaunts to places of note and interest, which are par- 
 ticularly abundant in that region. The high-roads are 
 made pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees, 
 and often afford him the hospitality of a wayside 
 Dench beneath a comfortable shade. But a fresher 
 delight is to be found in the foot-paths, which go wan- 
 dering away from stile to stile, along hedges, and 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 69 
 
 across broad fields, and . through wooded parks, lead- 
 ing you to little hamlets of thatched cottages, ancient, 
 solitary farm - houses, picturesque old mills, stream- 
 lets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unexpected, yet 
 strangely familiar features of English scenery that 
 Tennyson shows us in his idyls and eclogues. These 
 by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of 
 rural life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of 
 intrusiveness. He has a right to go whithersoever 
 they lead him ; for, with all their shaded privacy, they 
 are as much the property of the public as the dusty 
 high-road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their 
 antiquity probably exceeds that of the Roman ways ; 
 the footsteps of the aboriginal Britons first wore away 
 the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse between 
 village and village has kept the track bare ever since. 
 An American farmer would plough across any such 
 path, and obliterate it with his hills of potatoes and 
 Indian corn ; but here it is protected by law, and still 
 more by the sacredness that inevitably springs up, in 
 this soil, along the well-defined footprints of centuries. 
 Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in Eng- 
 lish nostrils , we pull them up as weeds. 
 
 I remember such a path, the access to which is from 
 Lovers’ Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elms on 
 a high hill-top, whence there is a view of Warwick 
 Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, 
 though bedimmed with English mist. This particular 
 foot-path, however, is not a remarkably good specimen 
 of its kind, since it leads into no hollows and seclu- 
 sions, and soon terminates in a high-road. It con- 
 nects Leamington by a short cut with the small neigh- 
 boring village of Lillington, a place which impresses 
 an American observer with its many points of contrast 
 
70 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 to the rural aspects of his own country. The village 
 consists chiefly of one row of contiguous dwellings, 
 separated only by party-walls, but ill-matched among 
 themselves, being of different heights, and apparently 
 of various ages, though all are of an antiquity which 
 we should call venerable. Some of the windows are 
 leaden - framed lattices opening on hinges. These 
 houses are mostly built of gray stone ; but others, in 
 the same range, are of brick, and one or two are in a 
 very old fashion, — Elizabethan, or still older, — hav- 
 ing a ponderous frame-work of oak, painted black, and 
 filled in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by 
 the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more 
 durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are 
 covered with earthen tiles ; others (more decayed and 
 poverty-stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts a 
 luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and yellow 
 flowers. What especially strikes an American is the 
 lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, 
 grass - plots, orchards, broad - spreading shade - trees, 
 which occur between our own village-houses. These 
 English dwellings have no such separate surroimdings ; 
 they all grow together, like the cells of a honeycomb. 
 
 Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it 
 by a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, 
 as we should call it) of small old cottages, stuck one 
 against another, with their thatched roofs forming a 
 single contiguity. These, I presume, were the habita^ 
 tions of the poorest order of rustic laborers ; and the 
 narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the close 
 neighborhood of the whole, gave the impression of a 
 stifled, unhealthy atmosphere among the occupants. 
 It seemed impossible that there should be a cleanly 
 reserve, a proper self-respect among individuals, or a 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 71 
 
 wholesome unfamiliarity between families where hu- 
 man life was crowded and massed into such intimate 
 communities as these. Nevertheless, not to look be- 
 yond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural scene 
 than was presented by this range of contiguous huts. 
 For in front of the whole row was a luxuriant and well- 
 trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each cot- 
 tage was a little square of garden-ground, separated 
 from its neighbors by a line of the same verdant fence. 
 The gardens were chockfull, not of esculent vegeta- 
 bles, but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-col- 
 ored, and shrubs of box, some of which were trimmed 
 into artistic shapes ; and I remember, before one door, 
 a representation of Warwick Castle, made of oyster- 
 shells. The cottagers evidently loved the little nests 
 in which they dwelt, and did their best to make them 
 beautiful, and succeeded more than tolerably well, — 
 so kindly did nature help their humble efforts with its 
 verdure, flowers, moss, lichens, and the green things 
 that grew out of the thatch. Through some of the 
 open doorways we saw plump children rolling about 
 on the stone floors, and their mothers, by no means 
 very pretty, but as happy-looking as mothers generally 
 are ; and while we gazed at these domestic matters an 
 old woman rushed wildly out of one of the gates, up- 
 holding a shovel, on which she clanged and clattered 
 with a key. At first we fancied that she intended an 
 onslaught against ourselves, but soon discovered that 
 a more dangerous enemy was abroad ; for the old 
 lady’s bees had swarmed, and the air was full of them, 
 whizzing by our heads like bullets. 
 
 Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, 
 a green lane, overshadowed with trees, turned aside 
 from the main road, and tended towards a square. 
 
72 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 gray tower, the battlements of which were just high 
 enough to be visible above the foliage. Wending our 
 way thitherward, we found the very picture and ideal 
 of a country church and churchyard. The tower 
 seemed to be of Norman architecture, low, massive, 
 and crowned with battlements. The body of the 
 church was of very modest dimensions, and the eaves 
 so low that I could touch them with my walking-stick. 
 We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and 
 quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the 
 consecration of many centuries, and keeping its sanc- 
 tity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral. 
 The nave was divided from the side aisles of the 
 church by pointed arches resting on very sturdy pil- 
 lars : it was good to see how solemnly they held them- 
 selves to their age-long task of supporting that lowly 
 roof. There was a small organ, suited in size to the 
 vaulted hollow, which it weekly filled with religious 
 sound. On the opposite wall of the church, between 
 two windows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with 
 an inscription in black letters, — the only such me- 
 morial that I could discern, although many dead peo- 
 ple doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it 
 with their ancient tombstones, as is customary in old 
 English churches. There were no modern painted win- 
 dows, flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adorn- 
 ments, such as the present taste for mediaeval restora- 
 tion often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the 
 gray village-church. It is probably the worshipping- 
 place of no more distinguished a congregation than the 
 farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and cot- 
 tages which I have just described. Had the lord of 
 the manor been one of the parishioners, there would 
 have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA, 
 
 73 
 
 high about, curtained, and softly cushioned, warmed 
 by a fireplace of its own, and distinguished by hered- 
 itary tablets and escutcheons on the enclosed stone 
 pillar. 
 
 A well-trodden path led across the churchyard, and 
 the gate being on the latch, we entered, and walked 
 round among the graves and monuments. The latter 
 were chiefiy head-stones, none of which were very old, 
 so far as was discoverable by the dates ; some, indeed, 
 in so ancient a cemetery, were disagreeably new, with 
 inscriptions glittering like sunshine in gold letters. 
 The ground must have been dug over and over again, 
 innumerable times, until the soil is made up of what 
 was once human clay, out of which have sprung suc- 
 cessive crops of gravestones, that flourish their allotted 
 time, and disappear, like the weeds and flowers in their 
 briefer period. The English climate is very unfavor- 
 able to the endurance of memorials in the open air. 
 Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of 
 aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred 
 years of our own drier atmosphere, — so soon do the 
 drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the sur- 
 face of marble or freestone. Sculptured edges lose 
 their sharpness in a year or two ; yellow lichens over- 
 spread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is 
 yet fresh upon some survivor’s heart. Time gnaws an 
 English gravestone with wonderful appetite ; and when 
 the inscription is quite illegible, the sexton takes the 
 useless slab away, and perhaps makes a hearthstone of 
 it, and digs up the unripe bones which it ineffectually 
 tried to memorialize, and gives the bed to another 
 sleeper. In the Charter Street burial - ground at 
 Salem, and in the old graveyard on the hill at Ips- 
 wich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, with legi- 
 
74 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 ble inscriptions on them, than in any English church- 
 yard. 
 
 And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it 
 generally is to the long remembrance of departed peo- 
 ple, has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the 
 records on certain monuments that lie horizontally in 
 the open air. The rain falls into the deep incisions of 
 the letters, and has scarcely time to be dried away be- 
 fore another shower sprinkles the flat stone again, and 
 replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen, myste- 
 rious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered 
 furrows, and are made to germinate by the continual 
 moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky ; and 
 by and by, in a year, or two years, or many years, be- 
 hold the complete inscription — 
 
 ILgetf) tfje jBolig, 
 
 and all the rest of the tender falsehood — beautifully 
 embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief 
 of velvet moss on the marble slab ! It becomes more 
 legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has 
 forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from 
 the stone-cutter’s hands. It outlives the grief of 
 friends. I first saw an example of this in Bebbington 
 churchyard, in Cheshire, and thought, that Nature 
 must needs have had a special tenderness for the per- 
 son (no noted man, however, in the world’s history) 
 so long ago laid beneath that stone, since she took 
 such wonderful pains to keep his memory green.” 
 Perhaps the proverbial phrase just quoted may have 
 had its origin in the natural phenomenon here de- 
 scribed. 
 
 While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monu- 
 ment, which was elevated just high enough to be a 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 75 
 
 convenient seat, I observed that one of the grave- 
 stones lay very close to the church, — so close that 
 the droppings of the eaves would fall upon it. It 
 seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to 
 creep under the church-wall. On closer inspection, we 
 found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and 
 with difficulty made out this forlorn verse : — 
 
 ** Poorly lived, 
 
 And poorly died, 
 
 Poorly buried. 
 
 And no one cried.’' 
 
 It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and 
 luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or 
 more impressive ones ; at least, we found them im- 
 pressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the in- 
 scription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly 
 traced letters. The grave was on the shady and damp 
 side of the church, endwise towards it, the head-stone 
 being within about three feet of the foundation-wall ; 
 so that, unless the poor man was a dwarf, he must 
 have been doubled up to fit him into his final resting- 
 place. No wonder that his epitaph murmured against 
 so poor a burial as this ! His name, as well as I could 
 make it out, was Treeo, — John Treeo, I think, — and 
 he died in 1810, at the age of seventy-four. The 
 gravestone is so overgrown with grass and weeds, so 
 covered with unsightly lichens, and so crumbly with 
 time and foul weather, that it is questionable whether 
 anybody will ever be at the trouble of deciphering it 
 again. But there is a quaint and sad kind of enjoy- 
 ment in defeating (to such slight degree as my pen 
 may do it) the probabilities of oblivion for poor John 
 Treeo, and asking a little sympathy for him, half a 
 century after his death, and making him better and 
 
76 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA, 
 
 more widely known, at least, than any other slum- 
 berer in Lillington churchyard : he having been, as 
 appearances go, the outcast of them all. 
 
 You find similar old churches and villages in all the 
 neighboring country, at the distance of every two or 
 three miles ; and I describe them, not as being rare, 
 but because they are so common and characteristic. 
 The village of Whitnash, within twenty minutes’ walk 
 of Leamington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as lit- 
 tle disturbed by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. Jeph- 
 son had never developed all those Parades and Cres- 
 cents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether 
 the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or, at 
 their slow rate of progress, had even reached the epoch 
 of stage-coaches. As you approach the village, while 
 it is yet unseen, you observe a tall, overshadowing 
 canopy of elm-tree tops, beneath which you almost 
 hesitate to follow the public road, on account of the 
 remoteness that seems to exist between the precincts 
 of this old-world community and the thronged modern 
 street out of which you have so recently emerged. 
 Venturing onward, however, you soon find yourself 
 in the heart of Whitnash, and see an irregular ring of 
 ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the village-green, 
 on one side of which stands the church, with its square 
 Norman tower and battlements, while close adjoining 
 is the vicarage, made picturesque by peaks and gableso 
 At first glimpse, none of the houses appear to be less 
 than two or three centuries old, and they are of the 
 ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, 
 which give them the air of birds’ nests, thereby assim- 
 ilating them closely to the simplicity of nature. 
 
 The church-tower is mossy and much gnawed by 
 time ; it has narrow loopholes up and down its front 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 77 
 
 and sides, and an arched window over the low portal, 
 set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregu- 
 lar, through which a by-gone age is peeping out into the 
 day-light. Some of those old, grotesque faces,"called 
 gargoyles, are seen on the projections of the architect^ 
 ure. The churchyard is very small, and is encom- 
 passed by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as 
 the church itself. In front of the tower, on the village^ 
 green, is a yew-tree of incalculable age, with a vast cir- 
 cumference of trunk, but a very scanty head of foli- 
 age ; though its boughs still keep some of the vitality 
 which, perhaps, was in its early prime when the Saxon 
 invaders founded Whitnash. A thousand years is no 
 extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a yew. W e 
 were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an 
 exuberance of more youthful life than we had thought 
 possible in so old a tree ; for the faces of two children 
 laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk, which 
 had become hollow with long decay. On one side of 
 the yew stood a framework of worm-eaten timber, the 
 use and meaning of which puzzled me exceedingly, till 
 I made it out to be the village-stocks ; a public institu- 
 tion that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a 
 pair of shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent 
 churchyard. It is not to be supposed, however, that 
 this old-fashioned mode of punishment is still in vogue 
 among the good people of Whitnash. The vicar of 
 the parish has antiquarian propensities, and had prob- 
 ably dragged the stocks out of some dusty hiding- 
 place and set them up on the former site as a curi- 
 osity. 
 
 I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon 
 some characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, 
 that shall convey to the reader the influence of hoar 
 
78 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 antiquity lingering into the present daylight, as I so 
 . often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only 
 an American who can feel it ; and even he begins to 
 find himself growing insensible to its effect, after a 
 long residence in England. But while you are still 
 new in the old country, it thrills you with strange 
 emotion to think that this little church of Whitnash, 
 humble as it seems, stood for ages under the Catholic 
 faith, and has not materially changed since Wick- 
 liffe’s days, and that it looked as gray as now in 
 Bloody Mary’s time, and that Cromwell’s troopers 
 broke off the stone noses of those same gargoyles that 
 are now grinning in your face. So, too, with the im- 
 memorial yew-tree ; you see its great roots grasping 
 hold of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so stur- 
 dily that no effort of time can wrench them away ; and 
 there being life in the old tree, you feel all the more 
 as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the 
 things that have been. It has lived among men, and 
 been a familiar object to them, and seen them brought 
 to be christened and married and buried in the neigh- 
 boring church and churchyard, through so many cen- 
 turies, that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty 
 generations of the Whitnash people can supply such 
 knowledge. 
 
 And, after all, what a weary life it must have been 
 for the old tree ! Tedious beyond imagination ! Such, 
 I think, is the final impression on the mind of an 
 American visitor, when his delight at finding some- 
 thing permanent begins to yield to his Western love 
 of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air 
 of a spot where the forefathers and foremothers have 
 grown up together, intermarried, and died, through a 
 long succession of lives, without any intermixture of 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 79 
 
 new elements, till family features and character are all 
 run in the same inevitable mould. Life is there fos- 
 silized in its greenest leaf. The man who died yester- 
 day or ever so long ago walks the village-street to-day, 
 and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred 
 years since, and must be buried again to-morrow under 
 the same kindred dust that has already covered him 
 half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cot- 
 tage is worn away with his hobnailed footsteps, shuf- 
 fling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to 
 that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our 
 restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them 
 tend always towards fresh woods and pastures new.” 
 Rather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering 
 on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listen- 
 ing to the parson’s drone lengthened through centuries 
 in the gray Norman church, let us welcome whatever 
 change may come, — change of place, social customs, 
 political institutions, modes of worship, — trusting 
 that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but 
 make room for better systems, and for a higher type 
 of man to clothe his life in them, and to fling them 
 off in turn. 
 
 Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts 
 growth and change as the law of his own national and 
 private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the 
 stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The 
 reason may be (though I should prefer a more gener- 
 ous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of 
 these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter 
 her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement, 
 
 I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away 
 from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, 
 even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent 
 
80 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA, 
 
 visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle of 
 dwellings that surround the yew-tree and confront the 
 church, I perceived that some of the houses must have 
 been built within no long time, although the thatch, 
 the quaint gables, and the old oaken framework of the 
 others diffused an air of antiquity over the whole as- 
 semblage. The church itself was undergoing repair 
 and restoration, which is but another name for change. 
 Masons were making patch- work on the front of the 
 tower, and were sawing a slab of stone and piling up 
 bricks to strengthen the side-wall, or possibly to en- 
 large the ancient edifice by an additional aisle. More- 
 over, they had dug an immense pit in the churchyard, 
 long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two thirds of 
 which profundity were discolored by human decay, 
 and mixed up with crumbly bones. What this exca- 
 vation was intended for I could nowise imagine, unless 
 it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the 
 
 Dead Past bury its dead,” and Whitnash, of all 
 places in the world, were going to avail itself of our 
 poet’s suggestion. If so, it must needs be confessed 
 that many picturesque and delightful things would be 
 thrown into the hole, and covered out of sight forever. 
 
 The article which I am writing has taken its own 
 course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country 
 churches; whereas I had purposed to attempt a de- 
 scription of some of the many old towns — W arwick, 
 Coventry, Kenilworth, Stratford - on - Avon — which 
 lie within an easy scope of Leamington. And still an- 
 other church presents itself to my remembrance. It 
 is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course 
 of a forenoon’s ramble, and paused a little while to 
 look at it for the sake of old Dr. Parr, who was once 
 its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA, 
 
 81 
 
 public-house, no shop, no contiguity of roofs (as in 
 most English villages, however small), but is merely 
 an ancient neighborhood of farm-houses, spacious, and 
 standing wide apart, each within its own precincts, and 
 offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards, harvest- 
 fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. 
 It seemed to be a community of old settlers, among 
 whom everything had been going on prosperously since 
 an epoch beyond the memory of man ; and they kept 
 a certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a 
 cross-road, at the entrance of which was a barred gate, 
 hospitably open, but still impressing me with a sense 
 of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all, in some 
 shady nook of those gentfe W arwickshire slopes, there 
 may have been a denser and more populous settlement 
 styled Hatton, which I never reached. 
 
 Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one 
 that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick, I 
 espied the church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which 
 I have described, it had a low stone tower, square, 
 and battlemented at its summit : for all these little 
 churches seem to have been built on the same model, 
 and nearly at the same measurement, and have even a 
 greater family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I ap- 
 proached, the bell of the tower (a remarkably deep- 
 toned bell, considering how small it was) flung its 
 voice abroad, and told me that it was noon. The 
 church stands among its graves, a little removed from 
 the wayside, quite apart from any collection of houses, 
 and with no signs of a vicarage ; it is a good deal 
 shadowed by trees, and not wholly destitute of ivy. 
 The body of the edifice, unfortunately (and it is an 
 outrage which the English churchwardens are fond of 
 perpetrating), has been newly covered with a yellowish 
 
 VOL. VII. 6 
 
82 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA, 
 
 plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy the aspect of 
 antiquity, except upon the tower, which wears the dark 
 gray hue of many centuries. The chancel-window is 
 painted with a representation of Christ upon the Cross, 
 and all the other windows are full of painted or stained 
 glass, but none of it ancient, nor (if it be fair to judge 
 from without of what ought to be seen within) pos- 
 sessing any of the tender glory that should be the in- 
 heritance of this branch of Art, revived from mediaeval 
 times. I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at 
 two or three of the windows, and saw the snug interior 
 of the church glimmering through the many-colored 
 panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the 
 fantastic influence of a dream : for the floor was cov- 
 ered with modern pews, very like what we may see in 
 a New England meeting-house, though, I think, a lit- 
 tle more favorable than those would be to the quiet 
 slumbers of the Hatton farmers and their families. 
 Those who slept under Dr. Parr’s preaching now pro- 
 long their nap, I suppose, in the churchyard round 
 about, and can scarcely have drawn much spiritual 
 benefit from any truths that he contrived to tell them 
 in their lifetime. It struck me as a rare example 
 (even where examples are numerous) of a man utterly 
 misplaced, that this enormous scholar, great in the 
 classic tongues, and inevitably converting his own 
 simplest vernacular into a learned language, should 
 have been set up in this homely pulpit, and ordained 
 to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to whom it is 
 difficult to imagine how he could ever have spoken one 
 available word. 
 
 Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have 
 been attempting to describe, I had a singular sense of 
 having been there before. The ivy-grown English 
 
LEAMINGTON SPA. 
 
 83 
 
 churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I 
 beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from 
 home, as the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, 
 which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the frozen pur- 
 gatory of my childhood. This was a bewildering, yet 
 very delightful emotion fluttering about me like a 
 faint summer wind, and filling my imagination with a 
 thousand half-remembrances, which looked as vivid as 
 sunshine at a side-glance, but faded quite away when- 
 ever I attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, 
 the explanation of the mystery was, that history, poe- 
 try, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tour- 
 ists, had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of 
 the common objects of English scenery, and these, be- 
 ing long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insen- 
 sibly taken their places among the images of things 
 actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, 
 that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances 
 might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a rec- 
 ollection in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with 
 fainter and fainter impress through several descents, 
 to my own. I felt, indeed, like the stalwart progeni- 
 tor in person, returning to the hereditary haunts after 
 more than two hundred years, and finding the church, 
 the hall, the farm-house, the cottage, hardly changed 
 during his long absence, — the same shady by-paths 
 and hedge-lanes, the same veiled sky, and green lustre 
 of the lawns and fields, — while his own affinities for 
 these things, a little obscured by disuse, were reviving 
 at every step. 
 
 An American is not very apt to love the English 
 people, as a whole, on whatever length of acquain- 
 tance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and 
 even reciprocate it in their ungracious way, if we could 
 
84 
 
 LEAMINGTON SPA, 
 
 give it to them in spite of all rebuffs ; but they are 
 beset by a curious and inevitable infelicity, which 
 compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem 
 to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between 
 themselves and all other nationalities, especially that 
 of America. They will never confess it ; nevertheless, 
 it is as essential a tonic to them as their bitter ale. 
 Therefore, — and possibly, too, from a similar narrow- 
 ness in his own character, — an American seldom 
 feels quite as if he were at home among the English 
 people. If he do so, he has ceased to be an American. 
 But it requires no long residence to make him love 
 their island, and appreciate it as thoroughly as they 
 themselves do. For my part, I used to wish that we 
 could annex it, transferring their thirty millions of in- 
 habitants to some convenient wilderness in the great 
 West, and putting half or a quarter as many of our- 
 selves into their places. The change would be bene- 
 ficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, 
 are getting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenu- 
 ated, unsubstantial, theoretic, and need to be made 
 grosser. John Bull, on the other hand, has grown 
 bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, ma- 
 terial, and, in a word, too intensely English. In a few 
 more centuries he will be the earthliest creature that 
 ever the earth saw. Heretofore Providence has ob- 
 viated such a result by timely intermixtures of alien 
 races with the old English stock ; so that each succes- 
 sive conquest of England has proved a victory by the 
 revivification and improvement of its native manhood. 
 Cannot America and England hit upon some scheme 
 to secure even greater advantages to both nations ? 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 Between bright, new Leamington, the growth of 
 the present century, and rusty Warwick, founded by 
 King Cymbeline in the twilight ages, a thousand years 
 before the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads, 
 either of which may be measured by a sober-paced pe- 
 destrian in less than half an hour. 
 
 One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the 
 smart parades and crescents of the former town, — 
 along by hedges and beneath the shadow of great elms, 
 past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and wayside alehouses, 
 and through a hamlet of modern aspect, — and runs 
 straight into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. 
 The battlemented turrets of the castle, embowered 
 half-way up in foliage, and the tall, slender tower of 
 St. Mary’s Church, rising from among clustered roofs, 
 have been visible almost from the commencement of 
 the walk. Near the entrance of the town stands St. 
 John’s School-House, a picturesque old edifice of stone, 
 with four peaked gables in a row, alternately plain 
 and ornamented, and wide, projecting windows, and a 
 spacious and venerable porch, all overgrown with moss 
 and ivy, and shut in from the world by a high stone 
 fence, not less mossy than the gabled front. There is 
 an iron gate, through the rusty open-work of which 
 you see a grassy lawn, and almost expect to meet the 
 shy, curious eyes of the little boys of past generations, 
 peeping forth from their infantile antiquity into the 
 strangeness of our present life. I find a peculiar 
 
86 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 charm in these long-established English schools, where 
 the school-boy of to-day sits side by side, as it were, 
 with his great-grandsire, on the same old benches, and 
 often, I believe, thumbs a later, but unimproved edi- 
 tion of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The 
 new-fangled notions of a Yankee school - committee 
 would madden many a pedagogue, and shake down 
 the roof of many a time-honored seat of learning, in 
 the mother-country. 
 
 At this point, however, we will turn back, in order 
 to follow up the other road from Leamington, which 
 was the one that I loved best to take. It pursues a 
 straight and level course, bordered by wide gravel- 
 walks and overhung by the frequent elm, with here a 
 cottage and there a villa ; on one side a wooden plan- 
 tation, and on the other a rich field of grass or grain ; 
 until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an 
 arched bridge over the Avon. Its parapet is a balus- 
 trade carved out of freestone, into the soft substance 
 of which a multitude of persons have engraved their 
 names or initials, many of them now illegible, while 
 others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh 
 green moss. These tokens indicate a famous spot ; 
 and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and 
 shadow of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows 
 that droop on either side into the water, we behold the 
 gray magnificence of W arwick Castle, uplifting itself 
 among stately trees, and rearing its turrets high above 
 their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the 
 scene real, so completely do those machicolated towers, 
 the long line of battlements, the massive buttresses, 
 the high-windowed walls, shape out our indistinct ideas 
 of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the 
 sleepy river (being Shakespeare’s Avon, and often, no 
 
ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 87 
 
 doubt, the mirror of his gorgeous visions) were dream- 
 ing now of a lordly residence that stood here many 
 centuries ago ; and this fantasy is strengthened, when 
 you observe that the image in the tranquil water has 
 all the distinctness of the actual structure. Either 
 might be the reflection of the other. Wherever Time 
 has gnawed one of the stones, you see the mark of his 
 tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflection. Each 
 is so perfect, that the upper vision seems a castle in 
 the air, and the lower one an old stronghold of feu- 
 dalism, miraculously kept from decay in an enchanted 
 river. 
 
 A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from 
 the bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has 
 the effect of making the scene appear more entirely 
 apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in 
 the middle of the stream, — so that, if a cavalcade of 
 the knights and ladies of romance should issue from 
 the old walls, they could never tread on earthly ground 
 any more than we, approaching from the side of mod- 
 ern realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain 
 and theirs. Yet, if we seek to disenchant ourselves, 
 it may readily be done. Crossing the bridge on which 
 we stand, and passing a little farther on, we come to 
 the entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, 
 and hospitably open at certain hours to all curious pil- 
 grims who choose to disburse half a crown or so to- 
 ward the support of the earl’s domestics. The sight 
 of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splen- 
 dors and rarities as a great English family necessarily 
 gathers about itself in its hereditary abode, and in the 
 lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten times as 
 much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be 
 reckoned in money’s-worth. But after the attendant 
 
88 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeat- 
 ing a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each succes- 
 sive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the 
 mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make 
 the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased 
 to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on 
 the bridge, gazing at Caesar’s Tower and Guy’s Tower, 
 in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid 
 Avon below, and still keep them as thoughts in your 
 own mind, than climb to their summits, or touch even 
 a stone of their actual substance. They will have all 
 the more reality for you, as stalwart relics of imme- 
 morial time, if you are reverent enough to leave them 
 in the intangible sanctity of a poetic vision. 
 
 From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in 
 front of the castle-gate, and soon enters the principal 
 street of W arwick, a little beyond St. J ohn’s School- 
 House, already described. Chester itself, most antique 
 of English towns, can hardly show quainter architec- 
 tural shapes than many of the buildings that border 
 this street. They are mostly of the timber-and-plaster 
 kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole 
 chronology of various patchwork in their walls ; their 
 low-browed doorways open upon a sunken floor ; their 
 projecting stories peep, as it were, over one another’s 
 shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of peaked ga- 
 bles ; they have curious windows, breaking out irreg- 
 ularly all over the house, some even in the roof, set in 
 their own little peaks, opening lattice-wise, and fur- 
 nished with twenty small panes of lozenge-shaped glass. 
 The architecture of these edifices (a visible oaken 
 framework, showing the whole skeleton of the house, 
 — as if a man’s bones should be arranged on his out- 
 side, and his flesh seen through the interstices) is 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 89 
 
 often imitated by modern builders, and with suffi- 
 ciently picturesque effect. The objection is, that such 
 houses, like all imitations of by-gone styles, have an air 
 of affectation ; they do not seem to be built in earnest ; 
 they are no better than playthings, or overgrown baby 
 houses, in which nobody should be expected to encoun- 
 ter the serious realities of either birth or death. Be- 
 sides, .originating nothing, we leave no fashions for 
 another age to copy, when we ourselves shall have 
 grown antique. 
 
 Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has 
 over- brimmed, as it were, from the original settlement, 
 being outside of the ancient wall. The street soon 
 runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some 
 other venerable structure above it, and admits us into 
 the heart of the town. At one of my first visits, I 
 witnessed a military display. A regiment of War- 
 wickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, 
 was going through its drill in the market-place ; and 
 on the collar of one of the officers was embroidered 
 the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cogni- 
 zance of the W arwick earldom from time immemoriah 
 The soldiers were sturdy young men, with the simple, 
 stolid, yet kindly, faces of English rustics, looking ex- 
 ceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman- 
 like carriage and appearance the moment they were 
 dismissed from drill. Squads of them were distrib- 
 uted everywhere about the streets, and sentinels were 
 posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant, with 
 a great key in his hand (big enough to have been the 
 key of the castle’s main entrance when the gate was 
 thickest and heaviest) apparently setting a guard. 
 Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find 
 warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and 
 
90 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of 
 the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his 
 retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this 
 modern regiment. 
 
 The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned 
 aspect than the suburbs through which we approach 
 it ; and the High Street has shops with modern plate- 
 glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting 
 as few projections to hang a thought or sentiment 
 upon as if an architect of to-day had planned them. 
 And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are 
 perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an Ameri- 
 can street ; but behind these renovated faces, with 
 their monotonous lack of expression, there is probably 
 the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic 
 exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem 
 of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a 
 skilful and fortunate adaptation of what such a peo- 
 ple as ourselves would destroy. The new things are 
 based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive 
 a massive strength from their deep and immemorial 
 foundations, though with such limitations and impedi- 
 ments as only an Englishman could endure. But he 
 likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back ; 
 and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him 
 has taken root in his being, and has grown to be 
 rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting' 
 rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. 
 In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently com- 
 fortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better 
 stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a 
 spectacle which is by no means without its charm for 
 a disinterested and unencumbered observer. 
 
 When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 91 
 
 institution, appears in its pristine form, without any 
 attempt at intermarrying it with modern fashions, an 
 American cannot but admire the picturesque effect 
 produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently 
 dead-and-burie*d state of society into the actual pres- 
 ent, of which he is himself a part. We need not go 
 far in Warwick without encountering an instance o£ 
 the kind. Proceeding westward through the town, we 
 find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of natural 
 rock, hewn into something like architectural shape, 
 and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well 
 have been one of King Cymbeline’s original gate- 
 ways ; and on the top of the rock, over the archway, 
 sits a small old church, communicating with an an- 
 cient edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look down 
 from a similar elevation on the side of the street. A 
 range of trees half hides the latter establishment from 
 the sun. It presents a curious and venerable speci- 
 men of the timber-and-plaster style of building, in 
 which some of the finest old houses in England are 
 constructed : the front projects into porticos and ves- 
 tibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, 
 and others crowning semi-detached portions of the 
 structure ; the windows mostly open on hinges, but 
 show a delightful irregularity of shape and position ; a 
 multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at 
 their own will, or, at least, without any settled pur- 
 pose of the architect. The whole affair looks very 
 old, — so old indeed that the front bulges forth, as if 
 the timber frame-work were a little weary, at last, of 
 standing erect so long ; but the state of repair is so 
 perfect, and there is such an indescribable aspect of 
 continuous vitality within the system of this aged 
 house, that you feel confident that there may be safe 
 
92 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come, under 
 its time-honored roof. And on a bench, sluggishly 
 enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of 
 W arwick as from a life apart, a few old men are gen- 
 erally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on which 
 you may detect the glistening of a silver badge repre- 
 senting the Bear and Ragged Staff. These decorated 
 worthies are some of the twelve brethren of Leicester’s 
 Hospital, — a community which subsists to-day under 
 the identical modes that were established for it in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many 
 features of a social life that has vanished almost every- 
 where else. 
 
 The edifice itself dates from a much older period 
 than the charitable institution of which it is now the 
 home. It was the seat of a religious fraternity far 
 back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry 
 VIII. turned all the priesthood of England out of 
 doors, and put the most unscrupulous of his favorites 
 into their vacant abodes. In many instances, the old 
 monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well, 
 and built them on such a broad system of beauty and 
 convenience, that their lay-occupants found it easy to 
 convert them into stately and comfortable homes ; and 
 as such they still exist, with something of the antique 
 reverence lingering about them. The structure now 
 before us seems to have been first granted to Sir 
 Nicholas Lestrange, who perhaps intended, like other 
 men, to establish his household gods in the niches 
 whence he had thrown down the images of saints, and 
 to lay his hearth where an altar had stood. But there 
 was probably a natural reluctance in those days (when 
 Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have re- 
 tained an influence over all but the most obdurate 
 
ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 93 
 
 characters) to bring one’s hopes of domestic prosper- 
 ity and a fortunate lineage into direct hostility with 
 the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all events, 
 there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and 
 a belief, that the possession of former Church-property 
 has drawn a curse along with it, not only among the 
 posterity of those to whom it was originally granted, 
 but wherever it has subsequently been transferred, 
 even if honestly bought and paid for. There are fam- 
 ilies, now inhabiting some of the beautiful old abbeys, 
 who appear to indulge a species of pride in recording 
 the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that 
 have occurred among their predecessors, and may be 
 supposed likely to dog their own pathway down the 
 ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in 
 the beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was 
 a nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this 
 kind, I cannot tell ; but it is certain that he speed- 
 ily rid himself of the spoils of the Church, and that, 
 within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became 
 the property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 
 brother of the Earl of Warwick. He devoted the 
 ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, endow- 
 ing it with an ample revenue, and making it the per- 
 petual home of twelve poor, honest, and war-broken 
 soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either 
 of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, 
 or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their 
 monkish dormitories, and haunt the time - darkened 
 corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life 
 of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned 
 cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges 
 which the Earl of Leicester gave to the original twelve. 
 He is said to have been a bad man in his day ; but he 
 
94 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what 
 was to him a distant future. 
 
 On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, 
 there is the date, 1571, and several coats - of - arms, 
 either the Earl’s or those of his kindred, and imme* 
 diately above the doorway a stone sculpture of the 
 Bear and Ragged Staff. 
 
 Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a 
 quadrangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed 
 the central part of a great family residence in Queen 
 Elizabeth’s time, and earlier. There can hardly be a 
 more perfect specimen of such an establishment than 
 Leicester’s Hospital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky- 
 roofed hall, to which there is convenient access from 
 all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, with 
 their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into it 
 from antique windows, and through open corridors 
 and galleries along the sides ; and there seems to be a 
 richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, 
 quainter carvings in oak, and more fantastic shapes 
 of the timber framework, than on the side toward the 
 street. On the wall opposite the arched entrance are 
 the following inscriptions, comprising such moral 
 rules, I presume, as were deemed most essential for 
 the daily observance of the community : f^anar all 
 JHen iFear (SotJ ” — “ J^onor tl)e Iting — ‘‘ Habe tlje 
 BrotfjerliaotJ ” ; and again, as if this latter injunction 
 needed emphasis and repetition among a household of 
 aged people soured with the hard fortune of their pre- 
 vious lives, — Be femtilg affectioneti cine to anatj^er.” One 
 sentence, over a door communicating with the Mas- 
 ter’s side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary, — • 
 "'?^e tfjat riileti^ ohzx men must be just.” All these are 
 charactered in old English letters, and form part ol 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 95 
 
 the elaborate ornamentation of the house. Every* 
 where — on the walls, over windows and doors, and 
 at all points where there is room to place them — ap- 
 pear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, em- 
 blazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the 
 ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these 
 devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic 
 wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But es- 
 pecially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff 
 repeated over and over, and over again and again, in 
 a great variety of attitudes, — at full-length and half- 
 length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief 
 and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was 
 certainly disposed to reckon his own beneficence as 
 among the hereditary glories of his race ; and had he 
 lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have 
 kept up an old Catholic custom, by enjoining the 
 twelve bedesmen to pray for the welfare of his soul. 
 
 At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated 
 on the bench outside of the edifice, looking down into 
 the street ; but they did not vouchsafe me a word, 
 and seemed so estranged from modern life, so envel- 
 oped in antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, 
 that to converse with them would have been like shout- 
 ing across the gulf between our age and Queen Eliz- 
 abeth’s. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found 
 it quite solitary, except that a plain and neat old 
 woman happened to be crossing it, with an aspect of 
 business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman of 
 this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Ask- 
 ing her if I could come in, she answered very readily 
 and civilly that I might, and said that I was free to 
 look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I would 
 not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as some 
 
96 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 visitors were in the habit of doing. Under her guid 
 anee, 1 went into what was formerly the great hall of 
 the establishment, where King James 1. had once been 
 feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated 
 by an inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy walk 
 It is a very spacious and barn-like apartment, with a 
 brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters of which 
 are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visi- 
 ble in the duskiness that broods aloft. The hall may 
 have made a splendid appearance, when it was deco- 
 rated with rich tapestry, and illuminated with chande- 
 liers, cressets, and torches glistening upon silver dishes, 
 where King James sat at supper among his brilliantly 
 dressed nobles ; but it has come to base uses in these 
 latter days, — being improved, in Yankee phrase, as a 
 brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar for the breth- 
 ren’s separate allotments of coal. 
 
 The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned 
 into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very hand- 
 some, in its own obsolete style, and must be an ex- 
 ceedingly comfortable place for the old people to 
 lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpe- 
 dient to walk abroad. There are shrubs against the 
 wall, on one side ; and on another is a cloistered walk, 
 adorned with stags’ heads and antlers, and running 
 beneath a covered gallery, up to which ascends a bal- 
 ustraded staircase. In the portion of the edifice oppo- 
 site the entrance-arch are the apartments of the Mas* 
 ter ; and looking into the window (as the old woman, 
 at no request of mine, had specially informed me that 
 I might), I saw a low, but vastly comfortable parlor, 
 very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxuri- 
 ous place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, 
 the antique breadth of which extended almost from 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 97 
 
 wall to wall o£ the room, though now fitted up in such 
 a way, that the modern coal-grate looked very dimin- 
 utive in the midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, 
 it seemed to me, that, among these venerable sur- 
 roundings, availing himself of whatever was good in 
 former things, and eking out their imperfection with 
 the results of modern ingenuity, the Master might 
 lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered side of 
 the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the 
 enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window 
 reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the 
 bubbling and squeaking of something — doubtless 
 very nice and succulent — that was being cooked at 
 the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two 
 of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils ; at all 
 events, the impression grew upon me that Leicester’s 
 Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles in England. 
 
 I was about to depart, when another old woman, 
 very plainly dressed, but fat, comfortable, and with a 
 cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in through the arch, 
 and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition 
 of the gentle sex (though by no means under its love- 
 liest guise) had still an agreeable effect in modifying 
 my ideas of an institution which I had supposed to 
 be of a stern and monastic character. She asked 
 whether I wished to see the hospital, and said that 
 the porter, whose office it was to attend to visitors, 
 was dead, and would be buried that very day, so that 
 the whole establishment could not conveniently be 
 shown me. She kindly invited me, however, to visit 
 the apartment occupied by her husband and herself ; 
 so I followed her up the antique staircase, along the 
 gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where 
 sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and 
 
 VOL. VII. 7 
 
98 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 saluted me with much courtesy. He seemed a very 
 quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and adven- 
 ture, and gray experience, such as I could have fancied 
 in a palmer of ancient times, who might likewise have 
 worn a similar costume. The little room was car* 
 peted and neatly furnished ; a portrait of its occu* 
 pant was hanging on the wall ; and on a table were 
 two swords crossed, — one, probably, his own battle- 
 weapon, and the other, which I drew half out of the 
 scabbard, had an inscription on the blade, purporting 
 that it had been taken from the field of Waterloo. 
 My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all the par- 
 ticulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bed- 
 room, which was in the nicest order, with a snow-white 
 quilt upon the bed ; and in a little intervening room 
 was a washing and bathing apparatus ; a convenience 
 (judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of 
 such parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler 
 ranks of British life. 
 
 The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of 
 somebody to talk with ; but the good woman availed 
 herself of the privilege far more copiously than the 
 veteran himself, insomuch that he felt it expedient to 
 give her an occasional nudge with his elbow in her 
 well-padded ribs. Don’t you be so talkative ! ” quoth 
 he ; and, indeed, he could hardly find space for a word, 
 and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her 
 nimble tongue ran over the whole system of life in the 
 hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend^ 
 (the amount of which she did not mention), and such 
 decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, 
 free ; and, instead of being pestered with a great many 
 rules, and made to dine together at a great table, they 
 could manage their little household matters as they 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 99 
 
 liked, buying their own dinners, and having them 
 cooked in the general kitchen, and eating them snugly 
 in their own parlors. And,” added she, rightly 
 deeming this the crowning privilege, with the Mas- 
 ter’s permission, they can have their wives to take care 
 of them ; and no harm comes of it ; and what more 
 can an old man desire ? ” It was evident enough that 
 the good dame found herself in what she considered 
 very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small 
 occupations to keep her from getting rusty and dull ; 
 but the veteran impressed me as deriving far less en- 
 joyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of 
 change or hope of improvement, that had followed 
 upon thirty years of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, 
 too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a stranger’s 
 visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle 
 for the stranger’s curiosity ; for, if he chose to be mor- 
 bid about the matter, the establishment was but an 
 almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, 
 and his fine blue cloak only a pauper’s garment with 
 a silver badge on it that perhaps galled his shoulder. 
 In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb, though 
 quite in accordance with the manners of the Earl of 
 Leicester’s age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, 
 and might fitly and humanely be abolished. 
 
 A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to the 
 hospital, and found a new porter established in office, 
 and already capable of talking like a guide-book about 
 the history, antiquities, and present condition of the 
 charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren 
 are selected from among old soldiers of good char- 
 acter, whose other resources must not exceed an in- 
 come of five pounds ; thus excluding all commissioned 
 officers, whose half -pay would of course be more than 
 
100 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 that amount. They receive from the hospital an an- 
 nuity of eighty pounds each, besides their apartments, 
 a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of 
 ale, and a privilege at the kitchen-fire ; so that, con- 
 sidering the class from which they are taken, they may 
 well reckon themselves among the fortunate of the 
 earth. Furthermore, they are invested with political 
 rights, acquiring a vote for member of Parliament in 
 virtue either of their income or brotherhood. On the 
 other hand, as regards their personal freedom or con- 
 duct, they are subject to a supervision which the Mas- 
 ter of the hospital might render extremely annoying, 
 were he so inclined ; but the military restraint under 
 which they have spent the active portion of their lives 
 makes it easier for them to endure the domestic disci- 
 pline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore 
 his testimony (whatever were its value) to their being 
 as contented and happy as such a set of old people 
 could possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much 
 time in burnishing their silver badges, and were as 
 proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These 
 badges, by the by, except one that was stolen and re- 
 placed in Queen Anne’s time, are the very same that 
 decorated the original twelve brethren. 
 
 I have seldom met with a better guide than my 
 friend the porter. He appeared to take a genuine 
 interest in the peculiarities of the establishment, and 
 yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could 
 the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To 
 be sure, his knowledge and observation were confined 
 to external things, but, so far, had a sufficiently exten- 
 sive scope. He led me up the staircase and exhibited 
 portions of the timber framework of the edifice that 
 are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 101 
 
 and are still neither worm-eaten nor decayed ; and 
 traced out what had been a great hall in the days of 
 the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled 
 up with the apartments of the twelve brethren ; and 
 pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an 
 ancient religious style of art, but hardly visible amid 
 the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to 
 the chapel — the Gothic church which 1 noted several 
 pages back — surmounting the gateway that stretches 
 half across the street. Here the brethren attend daily 
 prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest pa- 
 per, with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The 
 interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of 
 no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of 
 painted glass in the great eastern window, represent- 
 ing, — no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such 
 cases, — but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. 
 Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his hu- 
 man sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl 
 could have been such a hardened reprobate, after all. 
 
 We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked 
 down between its battlements into the street, a hun- 
 dred feet below us ; while clambering half-way up 
 were foxglove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts 
 of grass, that had rooted themselves into the rough- 
 nesses of the stone foundation. Far around us lay 
 a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a 
 church-spire and noble country-seat, and several ob- 
 jects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, where the 
 Puritans defeated Charles I., is in sight on the edge 
 of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house 
 where Cromwell lodged on the night before the battle. 
 Right under our eyes, and half enveloping the town 
 with its high-shouldering wall, so that all the closely 
 
102 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the estate, 
 was the Earl of Warwick’s delightful park, a wide ex- 
 tent of sunny lawns, interspersed with broad contigui- 
 ties of forest-shade. Some of the cedars of Lebanon 
 were there, — a growth of trees in which the W arwick 
 family take an hereditary pride. The two highest 
 towers of the castle heave themselves up out of a mass 
 of foliage, and look down in a lordly manner upon the 
 plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are slate- 
 covered (these are the modern houses), and a part are 
 coated with old red tiles, denoting the more ancient 
 edifices. A hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, 
 a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of the 
 town, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a 
 remote antiquity ; at least, there was a possibility of 
 very old houses in the long past of Warwick, which 
 King Cymbeline is said to have founded in the year 
 ONE of the Christian era ! 
 
 And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it 
 may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality 
 than anything else that has occurred within the pres- 
 ent field of our vision ; though this includes the scene 
 of Guy of Warwick’s legendary exploits, and some of 
 those of the Round Table, to say nothing of the Battle 
 of Edge Hill. For perhaps it was in the landscape 
 now under our eyes that Posthumus wandered with the 
 King’s daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and cour- 
 ageous Imogen, the tenderest and womanliest woman 
 that Shakespeare ever made immortal in the world. 
 The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by 
 the gray castle, may have held their images in its 
 bosom. 
 
 The day, though it began brightly, had long been 
 overcast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 103 
 
 drops upon us, besides that the east-wind was very 
 chill ; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and 
 went next into the garden, one side of which is shut 
 in by almost the only remaining portion of the old 
 city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is devoted to 
 grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, 
 in the centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase 
 of Egyptian sculpture, that formerly stood on the top 
 of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar for measuring the 
 rise and fall of the river Nile. On the pedestal is a 
 Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of 
 Hatton being so close at hand) was probably often 
 the Master’s guest, and smoked his interminable pipe 
 along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden, 
 which lies adjacent, the lion’s share is appropriated 
 to the Master, and twelve small, separate patches to 
 the individual brethren, who cultivate them at their 
 own judgment and by their own labor ; and their 
 beans and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt 
 not, than if they had received them directly from 
 the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest 
 of their food. In the farther part of the garden is 
 an arbor for the old men’s pleasure and convenience, 
 and I should like well to sit down among them there, 
 and And out what is really the bitter and the sweet of 
 such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen them- 
 selves, they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Cus- 
 tom House, and the venerable personages whom I found 
 so quietly at anchor there. 
 
 The Master’s residence, forming one entire side of 
 the quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears an 
 aspect at once stately and homely. It can hardly 
 have undergone any perceptible change within three 
 centuries ; but the garden, into which its old windows 
 
104 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 look has probably put off a great many eccentricities 
 and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped 
 shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth’s 
 reign threw down his rusty shears and took his de- 
 parture. The present Master’s name is Harris ; he is 
 a descendant of the founder’s family, a gentleman of 
 independent fortune, and a clergyman of the Estab- 
 lished Church, as the regulations of the hospital re- 
 quire him to be. I know not what are his official 
 emoluments ; but, according to all English precedent, 
 an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held di- 
 rectly for the behoof of those who administer it, and 
 perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nom- 
 inal beneficiaries ; and, in the case before us, the 
 twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, 
 the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all 
 the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a dis- 
 tant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of 
 whom I really know nothing, except that the people 
 under his charge bear all possible tokens of being 
 tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them 
 sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter 
 bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge 
 and his titbits. It is delightful to think of the good 
 life which a suitable man, in the Master’s position, has 
 an opportunity to lead, — linked to time-honored cus- 
 toms, welded in with an ancient system, never dream- 
 ing of radical change, and bringing all the mellowness 
 and richness of the past down into these railway-days, 
 which do not compel him or his community to move a 
 whit quicker than of yore. Everybody can appreci- 
 ate the advantages of going ahead ; it might be well, 
 sometimes, to think whether there is not a word or 
 two to be said in favor of standing still or going to 
 sleep. 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 105 
 
 From the garden we went into the kitchen, where 
 the fire was burning hospitably, and diffused a genial 
 warmth far and wide, together with the fragrance of 
 some old English roast-beef, which, I think, must at 
 that moment have been done nearly to a turn. The 
 kitchen is a lofty, spacious, and noble room, par- 
 titioned off round the fireplace, by a sort of semicir- 
 cular oaken screen, or rather, an arrangement of heavy 
 and high-backed settles, with an ever-open entrance, 
 between them, on either side of which is the omni- 
 present image of the Bear and Ragged Staff, three 
 feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now black 
 with time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The pon- 
 derous mantel-piece, likewise of carved oak, towers 
 high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty 
 breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of 
 the fireplace being positively so immense that I could 
 compare it to nothing but the city gateway. Above 
 its cavernous opening were crossed two ancient hal- 
 berds, the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had 
 fought under Leicester in the Low Countries ; and 
 elsewhere on the walls were displayed several muskets, 
 which some of the present inmates of the hospital may 
 ha\e levelled against the French. Another ornament 
 of the mantel-piece was a square of silken needlework 
 or embroidery, faded nearly white, but dimly repre- 
 senting that wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which 
 we should hardly look twice at, only that it was 
 wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, 
 and beautifully framed in oak from Kenilworth Cas- 
 tle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of 
 our own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capable 
 of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen- 
 firelight glistens on a splendid display of copper flag- 
 
106 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 ons, all of generous capacity, and one of them about 
 as big as a half-barrel ; the smaller vessels contain 
 the customary allowance of ale, and the larger one is 
 filled with that foaming liquor on four festive occa- 
 sions of the year, and emptied amain by the jolly 
 brotherhood. I should be glad to see them do it ; but 
 it would be an exploit fitter for Queen Elizabeth’s age 
 than these degenerate times. 
 
 The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. 
 In the daytime, they bring their little messes to be 
 cooked here, and eat them in their own parlors ; but 
 after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared and 
 swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each 
 with his tankard and his pipe, and hold high converse 
 through the evening. If the Master be a fit man for 
 his office, methinks he will sometimes sit down socia- 
 bly among them ; for there is an elbow-chair by the 
 fireside which it would not demean his dignity to fill, 
 since it was occupied by King J ames at the great fes- 
 tival of nearly three centuries ago. A sip of the ale 
 and a whiff of the tobacco-pipe would put him in 
 friendly relations with his venerable household ; and 
 then we can fancy him instructing them by pithy 
 apothegms and religious texts, which were first uttered 
 here by some Catholic priest and have impregnated 
 the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes round, it 
 shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller’s, as old 
 as Lord Bacon’s collection, or as the jest-book that 
 Master Slender asked for when he lacked small-talk 
 for sweet Anne Page. No news shall be spoken of, 
 later than the drifting ashore, on the northern coast, 
 of some stern-post or figure-head, a barnacled frag- 
 ment of one of the great galleons of the Spanish Ar- 
 mada. What a tremor would pass through the an 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 107 
 
 tique group, if a damp newspaper should suddenly be 
 spread to dry before the fire ! They would feel as if 
 either that printed sheet or they themselves must be 
 an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if the shriek 
 of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick sta- 
 tion, should ever so faintly invade their ears I Move- 
 ment of any kind seems inconsistent with the stability 
 of such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust that the 
 ages will carry it along with them ; because it is such 
 a pleasant kind of dream for an American to find his 
 way thither, and behold a piece of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury set into our prosaic times, and then to depart, 
 and think of its arched doorway as a spell-guarded en- 
 trance which will never be accessible or visible to him 
 any more. 
 
 Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands 
 the great church of St. Mary’s : a vast edifice, indeed, 
 and almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who pre- 
 tend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor 
 style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, ex- 
 tensively restored) by Sir Christopher W ren ; but I 
 thought it very striking, with its wide, liigh, and elab- 
 orate windows, its tall towers, its immense length, and 
 (for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, 
 the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its 
 age) the tinge of gray antiquity over the whole. Once, 
 while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck 
 twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately 
 some chimes began to play, and kept up their resound- 
 ing music for five minutes, as measured by the hand 
 upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, as 
 airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecom- 
 ing freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, 
 and solemn church ; although I have seen an old-fash- 
 
108 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 ioned parlor-clock that did precisely the same thing, 
 in its small way. 
 
 The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp 
 (or, as the English, who delight in vulgarizing their 
 fine old Norman names, call it, the Beechum) Chapel, 
 where the Earls of Warwick and their kindred have 
 been buried, from four hundred years back till within 
 a recent period. It is a stately and very elaborate 
 chapel, with a large window of ancient painted glass, 
 as perfectly preserved as any that I remember seeing 
 in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here 
 are several monuments with marble figures recumbent 
 upon them, representing the Earls in their knightly 
 armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court-finery 
 of their day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they 
 must needs have been in their starched linen and em- 
 broidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen 
 Elizabeth’s time, the benefactor of the hospital, re- 
 clines at full length on the tablet of one of these 
 tombs, side by side with his Countess, — not Amy 
 Eobsart, but a lady who (unless I have confused the 
 story with some other mouldy scandal) is said to have 
 avenged poor Amy’s murder by poisoning the Earl 
 himself. Be that as it may, both figures, and espe- 
 cially the Earl, look like the very types of ancient 
 Honor and Conjugal Faith. In consideration of his 
 long-enduring kindness to the twelve brethren, I can- 
 not consent to believe him as wicked as he is usually 
 depicted ; and it seems a marvel, now that so many 
 well-established historical verdicts have been reversed, 
 why some enterprising writer does not make out Leices- 
 ter to have been the pattern nobleman of his age. 
 
 In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent me- 
 morial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of 
 
ABOUT WARWICK, 
 
 109 
 
 W arwick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly or- 
 namented altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze 
 figure of a knight in gilded armor, most admirably ex- 
 ecuted : for the sculptors of those days had wonderful 
 skill in their own style, and could make so life-like 
 an image of a warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a 
 trumpet were sounded over his tomb, you would ex- 
 pect him to start up and handle his sword. The Earl 
 whom we now speak of, however, has slept soundly in 
 spite of a more serious disturbance than any blast of a 
 trumpet, unless it were the final one. Some centuries 
 after his death, the floor of the chapel fell down and 
 broke open the stone colfin in which he was buried ; 
 and among the fragments appeared the anciently en- 
 tombed Earl of W arwick, with the color scarcely faded 
 out of his cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other 
 respects looking as natural as if he had died yester- 
 day. But exposure to the atmosphere appeared to be- 
 gin and finish the long-delayed process of decay in a 
 moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble ; so that, 
 almost before there had been time to wonder at him, 
 there was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save his 
 hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize 
 of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their 
 own adornment ; and thus, with a chapel and a pon- 
 derous tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, 
 this great nobleman could not help being brought un- 
 timely to the light of day, nor even keep his lovelocks 
 on his skull after he had so long done with love. 
 There seems to be a fatality that disturbs people in 
 their sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to 
 render them magnificent and impregnable, • — as wit- 
 ness the builders of the Pyramids, and Hadrian, Au- 
 gustus, and the Scipios, and most other personages 
 
110 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 whose mausoleums have been conspicuous enough t(i 
 attract the violator; and as for dead men’s hair, I 
 have seen a lock of King Edward the Fourth’s, of a 
 reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted 
 round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. 
 
 The direct lineage of the renowned characters that 
 lie buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. 
 The earldom is now held by the Grevilles, descendants 
 of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamen- 
 tary War; and they have recently (that is to say, 
 within a century) built a burial-vault on the other side 
 of the church, calculated (as the sexton assured me, 
 with a nod as if he were pleased) to afford suitable 
 and respectful accommodation to as many as fourscore 
 coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call 
 them ‘‘ CASKETS ” ! — a vile modern phrase, which com- 
 pels a person of sense and good taste to shrink more 
 disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being 
 buried at all. But as regards those eighty coffins, 
 only sixteen have as yet been contributed ; and it may 
 be a question with some minds, not merely whether 
 the Grevilles will hold the earldom of Warwick until 
 the full number shall be made up, but whether earl- 
 doms and all manner of lordships will not have faded 
 out of England long before those many generations 
 shall have passed from the castle to the vault. 1 hope 
 not. A titled and landed aristocracy, if anywise an 
 evil and an encumbrance, is so only to the nation 
 which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders ; and an 
 American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its 
 picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last 
 man to quarrel with what affords him so much gratu- 
 itous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative as Eng- 
 land is, and though I scarce ever found an English 
 
ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 Ill 
 
 man who seemed really to desire change, there was 
 continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old foun- 
 dations of things were crumbling away. Some time 
 or other, — by no irreverent effort of violence, but, 
 rather, in spite of all pious efforts to uphold a heter- 
 ogeneous pile of institutions that will have outlasted 
 their vitality, — at some unexpected moment, there 
 must come a terrible crash. The sole reason why I 
 should desire it to happen in my day is, that I might 
 be there to see ! But the ruin of my own country is, 
 perhaps, all that I am destined to witness ; and that 
 immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith 
 that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in 
 us yet) would serve any man well enough as his final 
 spectacle on earth. 
 
 If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little 
 memorial of Warwick, he had better go to an Old Cu- 
 riosity Shop in the High Street, where there is a vast 
 quantity of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and 
 many of them so pretty and ingenious that you won- 
 der how they came to be thrown aside and forgotten. 
 As regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but 
 does net improve ; it appears to me, indeed, that there 
 have been epochs of far more exquisite fancy than the 
 present one, in matters of personal ornament, and such 
 delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room table, a 
 mantel-piece, or a what-not. The shop in question is 
 near the East Gate, but is hardly to be found without 
 careful search, being denoted only by the name of 
 “Redfekn,” painted not very conspicuously in the top- 
 light of the door. Immediately on entering, we find 
 ourselves among a confusion of old rubbish and valua- 
 bles, ancient armor, historic portraits, ebony cabinets 
 inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks, hideous old china, 
 
112 
 
 ABOUT WARWICK. 
 
 dim looking-glasses in frames of tarnished magnifi- 
 cence, — a thousand objects of strange aspect, and oth- 
 ers that almost frighten you by their likeness in unlike- 
 ness to things now in use. It is impossible to give an 
 idea of the variety of articles, so thickly strewn about 
 that we can scarcely move without overthrowing some 
 great curiosity with a crash, or sweeping away some 
 small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of the 
 entire house are crowded in like manner. The collec- 
 tion even as we see it exposed to view, must have been 
 got together at great cost ; but the real treasures of the 
 establishment lie in secret repositories, whence they 
 are not likely to be drawn forth at an ordinary sum- 
 mons ; though, if a gentleman with a competently long 
 purse should call for them, I doubt not that the signet- 
 ring of Joseph’s friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva’s 
 leading staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of 
 Buckingham (all of which I have seen), or any other 
 almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. 
 Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, Ve- 
 netian wine-glasses (which burst when poison is poured 
 into them, and therefore must not be used for modern 
 wine-drinking), jasper-handled knives, painted Sevres 
 teacu|)s, — in short, there are all sorts of things that 
 a virtuoso ransacks the world to discover. 
 
 It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in 
 Mr. Redfern’s shop than to keep the money in one’s 
 pocket ; but, for my part, I contented myself with 
 buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantasti- 
 cally shaped, and got it at all the more reasonable rate 
 because there happened to be no legend attached to it. 
 I could supply any deficiency of that kind at much 
 less expense than regilding the spoon ! 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 
 
 Fkom Leamington to Stratford-on-Avon the dis- 
 tance is eight or nine miles, over a road that seemed 
 to me most beautiful. Not that I can recall any 
 memorable peculiarities ; for the country, most of the 
 way, is a succession of the gentlest swells and sub- 
 sidences, affording wide and far glimpses of cham 
 paign scenery here and there, and sinking almost to a 
 dead level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape 
 in New England, even the tamest, has a more striking 
 outline, and, besides, would have its blue eyes open in 
 those lakelets that we encounter almost from mile to 
 mile at home, but of which the Old Country is utterly 
 destitute ; or it would smile in our faces through the 
 medium of the wayside brooks that vanish under a 
 low stone arch on one side of the road, and sparkle 
 out again on the other. Neither of these pretty fea- 
 tures is often to be found in an English scene. The 
 charm of the latter consists in the rich verdure of the 
 fields, in the stately wayside trees and carefully kept 
 plantations of wood, and in the old and high cultiv^a- 
 tion that has humanized the very sods by mingling 
 so much of man’s toil and care among them. To a.n 
 American there is a kind of sanctity even in an Eng- 
 lish turnip-field, when he thinks how long that small 
 square of ground has been known and recognized as 
 a possession, transmitted from father to son, trodden 
 often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from 
 savagery by old acquaintanceship with civilized eyes. 
 
 VOL. VII. 8 
 
114 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 The wildest things in England are more than half 
 tame. The trees, for instance, whether in hedge-row, 
 park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about 
 them. They are never ragged; there is a certain 
 decorous restraint in the freest outspread of their 
 branches, though they spread wider than any self- 
 nurturing tree ; they are tall, vigorous, bulky, with a 
 look of age-long life, and a promise of more years to 
 come, all of which will bring them into closer kindred 
 with the race of man. Somebody or other has known 
 them from the sapling upward ; and if they endure 
 long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed 
 and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old 
 families, till, like Tennyson’s Talking Oak, they bab- 
 ble with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can un- 
 derstand them. 
 
 An American tree, however, if it could grow in fair 
 competition with an English one of similar species, 
 would probably be the more picturesque object of the 
 two. The Warwickshire elm has not so beautiful a 
 shape as those that overhang our village street ; and 
 as for the redoubtable English oak, there is a certain 
 John Bullism in its figure, a compact rotundity of foli- 
 age, a lack of irregular and various outline, that make 
 it look wonderfully like a gigantic caulifiower. Its 
 leaf, too, is much smaller than that of most varieties 
 of American oak ; nor do I mean to doubt that the 
 latter, with free leave to grow, reverent care and cul- 
 tivation, and immunity from the axe, would live out 
 its centuries as sturdily as its English brother, and 
 prove far the nobler and more majestic specimen of a 
 tree at the end of them. Still, however one’s Yankee 
 patriotism may struggle against the admission, it must' 
 be owned that the trees and other objects of an Eng- 
 
RECOLLECTIOI^S OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 116 
 
 lish landscape take hold of the observer by numberless 
 minute tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as 
 we choose, we never find in an American scene. The 
 parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the 
 tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth 
 observing than the boughs and foliage ; a verdant 
 mossiness coats it all over ; so that it looks almost as 
 green as the leaves; and often, moreover, the stately 
 stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping 
 and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistle- 
 toe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture 
 and never too fervid sunshine, and supporting them- 
 selves by the old tree’s abundant strength. We call 
 it a parasitical vegetation ; but, if the phrase imply 
 any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this beauti- 
 ful affection and relationship which exist in England 
 between one order of plants and another : the strong 
 tree being always ready to give support to the trailing 
 shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own 
 heart, if it crave such food ; and the shrub, on its part, 
 repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of 
 beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree’s lofty 
 strength. No bitter winter nips these tender little 
 sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them; 
 and therefore they outlast the longevity of the oak, 
 and, if the woodman permitted, would bury it in a 
 green grave, when all is over. 
 
 Should there be nothing else along the road to look 
 at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the 
 eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, 
 the heart of an American. We often set out hedges 
 in our own soil, but might as well set out figs or pine- 
 apples and expect to gather fruit of them. Something 
 grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ; 
 
116 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN 
 
 but it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation 
 that is accumulated into the English original, in which 
 a botanist would find a thousand shrubs and gracious 
 herbs that the hedgemaker never thought of planting 
 there. Among them, growing wild, are many of the 
 kindred blossoms of the very flowers which our pil- 
 grim fathers brought from England, for the sake of 
 their simple beauty and homelike associations, and 
 which we have ever since been cultivating in gardens. 
 There is not a softer trait to be found in the character 
 of those stern men than that they should have been 
 sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres 
 of their rugged hearts, and have felt the necessity of 
 bringing them over sea and making them hereditary 
 in the new land, instead of trusting to what rarer 
 beauty the wilderness might have in store for them. 
 
 Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone 
 fence (such as, in America, would keep itself bare and 
 unsympathizing till the end of time} is sure to be 
 covered with the small handiwork of Nature ; that 
 careful mother lets nothing go naked there, and if she 
 cannot provide clothing, gives at least embroidery. No 
 sooner is the fence built than she adopts and adorns it 
 as a part of her original plan, treating the hard, un- 
 comely construction as if it had all along been a fa- 
 vorite idea of her own. A little sprig of ivy may be 
 seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging 
 fast with its many feet to the rough surface ; a tuft of 
 grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a 
 pinch or two of wayside dust has been moistened into 
 nutritious soil for it ; a small bunch of fern grows in 
 another crevice ; a deep, soft, verdant moss spreads 
 itself along the top, and over all the available inequal- 
 ities of the fence ; and where nothing else wull grow, 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN 117 
 
 lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones, and varie- 
 gate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. 
 Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the 
 base of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of 
 its outline ; and in due time, as the upshot of these 
 apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize 
 that the beneficent Creator of all things, working 
 through his hand-maiden whom we call Nature, has 
 designed to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness 
 even with so earthly an institution as a boundary 
 fence. The clown who wrought at it little dreamed 
 what fellow-laborer he had. 
 
 The English should send us photographs of portions 
 of the trunks of trees, the tangled and various prod- 
 ucts of a hedge, and a square foot of an old wall. 
 They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. 
 Their artists, especially of the later school, sometimes 
 toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiffen the 
 lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed bet- 
 ter, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce 
 ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of 
 touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate art- 
 fully impels them : for, as regards grandeur, there are 
 loftier scenes in many countries than the best that 
 England can show; but, for the picturesqueness of 
 the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom 
 and sunshine, there is no scenery like it anywhere. 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs I have strayed away to 
 a long distance from the road to Stratford-on-Avon ; 
 for I remember no such stone fences as I have been 
 speaking of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in Eng- 
 land, except among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, and 
 the rough and hilly countries to the north of it. 
 Hedges there were along my road, however, and broad, 
 
118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 level fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of ancient 
 date, — from the roof of one of which the occupant 
 was tearing away the thatch, and showing what an 
 accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldiness, roots of weeds, 
 families of mice, swallows’-nests, and hordes of insects 
 had been deposited there since that old straw was new. 
 Estimating its antiquity from these tokens, Shake- 
 speare himself^ in one of his morning rambles out of 
 his native town, might have seen the thatch laid on ; 
 at all events, the cottage - walls were old enough to 
 have known him as a guest. A few modern villas 
 were also do be seen, and perhaps there were mansions 
 of old gentility at no great distance, but hidden among 
 trees; for it is a point of English pride that such 
 houses seldom allow themselves to be visible from the 
 high-road. In short, I recollect nothing specially re- 
 markable along the way, nor in the immediate ap- 
 proach to Stratford ; and yet the picture of that June 
 morning has a glory in my memory, owing chiefly, I 
 believe, to the charm of the English summer-weather, 
 the really good days of which are the most delightful 
 that mortal man can ever hope to be favored with. 
 Such a genial warmth ! A little too warm, it might 
 be, yet only to such a degree as to assure an American 
 (a certainty to which he seldom attains till attem- 
 pered to the customary austerity of an English sum- 
 mer-day) that he was quite warm enough. And after 
 all, there was an unconquerable freshness in the at- 
 mosphere, which every little movement of a breeze 
 shook over me like a dash of the ocean-spray. Such 
 days need bring us no other happiness than their own 
 light and temperature. No doubt, I could not have 
 enjoyed it so exquisitely, except that there must be 
 still latent in us. Western wanderers (even after an ab- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 119 
 
 sence of two centuries and more), an adaptation to the 
 English climate which makes us sensible of a motherly 
 kindness in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us 
 with delight at its more lavish smiles. 
 
 The spire of Shakespeare’s church — the Church of 
 the Holy Trinity — begins to show itself among the 
 trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see 
 the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-look- 
 ing houses of modern date ; and the streets being quite 
 level, you are struck and surprised by nothing so much 
 as the tameness of the general scene, as if Shake- 
 speare’s genius were vivid enough to have wrought pic- 
 torial splendors in the town where he was born. Here 
 and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, en- 
 dowed with the individuality that belongs only to the 
 domestic architecture of times gone by ; the house 
 seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its 
 inhabitant, as a sea-shell is moulded from within by 
 the character of its inmate ; and having been built in 
 a strange fashion, generations ago, it has ever since 
 been growing stranger and quainter, as old humorists 
 are apt to do. Here, too (as so often impressed me 
 in decayed English towns), there appeared to be a 
 greater abundance of aged people wearing small- 
 clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble 
 on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and 
 proclaiming a reward for the most venerable. I tried 
 to account for this phenomenon by several theories : as, 
 for example, that our new towns are unwholesome for 
 age and kill it off unseasonably ; or that our old men 
 have a subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own 
 accord rather than live in an unseemly contrast with 
 youth and novelty : but the secret may be, after all, 
 that hair-dyes, false teeth, modern arts of dress, and 
 
120 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN 
 
 contrivances of a skin-deep youtlifulness, have not 
 crept into these antiquated English towns, and so peo- 
 ple grow old without the weary necessity of seeming 
 younger than they are. 
 
 After wandering through two or three streets, I 
 found my way to Shakespeare’s birthplace, which is 
 almost a smaller and humbler house than any descrip- 
 tion can prepare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably 
 does an august inhabitant make his abode palatial to 
 our imaginations, receiving his guests, indeed, in a 
 castle in the air, until we unwisely insist on meeting 
 him among the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth. 
 The portion of the edifice with which Shakespeare 
 had anything to do is hardly large enough, in the 
 basement, to contain the butcher’s stall that one of 
 his descendants kept, and that still remains there, 
 windowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its hacked coun- 
 ter, which projects into the street under a little pent- 
 house-roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. 
 
 The upper half of the door was open, and, on my 
 rapping at it, a young person in black made her ap- 
 pearance and admitted me ; she was not a menial, but 
 remarkably genteel (an American characteristic) for 
 an English girl, and was probably the daughter of the 
 old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This 
 lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of stone, 
 which may have been rudely squared when the house 
 was new, but are now all cracked, broken, and disar- 
 ranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not 
 see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length of 
 time, should have so smashed these heavy stones ; it 
 is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, 
 which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down 
 again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 121 
 
 wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such as 
 the most poetical imagination would find it difficult to 
 idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, 
 a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect ; it has a 
 great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family 
 under the blackened opening of the chimney, and an 
 immense passageway for the smoke, through which 
 Shakespeare may have seen the blue sky by day and 
 the stars glimmering down at him by night. It is now 
 a dreary spot where the long-extinguished embers used 
 to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a quar- 
 ter part of the hearth, might still do much towards 
 making the old kitchen cheerful. But we get a de- 
 pressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre kind of life 
 that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where 
 this room seems to have been the gathering-place of 
 the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retire- 
 ment, but old and young huddling together cheek by 
 jowl. What a hardy plant was Shakespeare’s gen- 
 ius, how fatal its development, since it could not be 
 blighted in such an atmosphere ! It only brought hu- 
 man nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous 
 earth about his roots. 
 
 Thence I was ushered up stairs to the room in which 
 Shakespeare is supposed to have been born : though, 
 if you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find 
 the shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most 
 other points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber 
 over the butcher’s shop, and is lighted by one broad 
 window containing a great many small, irregular panes 
 of glass. The floor is made of planks, very rudely 
 hewn, and fitting together with little neatness ; the 
 naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and 
 overhead, bear the original marks of the builder’s 
 
122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth 
 off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to 
 the smallness of the space enclosed by these illustri- 
 ous walls, — a circumstance more difficult to accept, 
 as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, 
 and dreamed much about, than any other disenchant- 
 ing particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces — ■ 
 perhaps seven or eight — take us from end to end of 
 it. So low it is, that I could easily touch the ceiling, 
 and might have done so without a tiptoe-stretch, had 
 it been a good deal higher ; and this humility of the 
 chamber has tempted a vast multitude of people to 
 write their names overhead in pencil. Every inch of 
 the side-walls, even into the obscurest nooks and cor- 
 ners, is covered with a similar record ; all the window- 
 panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond signa- 
 tures, among which is said to be that of W alter Scott ; 
 but so many persons have sought to immortalize them- 
 selves in close vicinity to his name, that I really could 
 not trace him out. Methinks it is strange that people 
 do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities, 
 in such situations, instead of thrusting them forward 
 into the dazzle of a great renown, where, if noticed, 
 they cannot but be deemed impertinent. 
 
 This room, and the entire house, so far as I saw it, 
 are whitewashed and exceedingly clean ; nor is there 
 the aged, musty smell with which old Chester first 
 made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an 
 American of his excessive predilection for antique 
 residences. An old lady, who took charge of me up 
 stairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, 
 and talked with somewhat formidable knowledge and 
 appreciative intelligence about Shakespeare. Ar- 
 ranged on a table and in chairs were various prints, 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 123 
 
 views of houses and scenes connected with Shake- 
 speare’s memory, together with editions of his works 
 and local publications about his home and haunts, 
 from the sale of which this respectable lady perhaps 
 realizes a handsome profit. At any rate, I bought a 
 good many of them, conceiving that it might be the 
 civillest way of requiting her for her instructive con- 
 versation and the trouble she took in showing me the 
 house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a 
 gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady^ 
 like girl who had admitted me ; but I swallowed my 
 •delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she 
 digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no diffi- 
 culty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out 
 half a crown to any person with whom he has occa- 
 sion to speak a w6rd in England. 
 
 I should consider it unfair to quit Shakespeare’s 
 house without the frank acknowledgment that I was 
 conscious of not the slightest emotion while viewing 
 it, nor any quickening of the imagination. This has 
 often happened to me in my visits to memorable 
 places. Whatever pretty and apposite reflections I 
 may have made upon the subject had either occurred 
 to me before I ever saw Stratford, or have been elabo- 
 rated since. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to think that 
 I have seen the place ; and I believe that I can form 
 a more sensible and vivid idea of Shakespeare as a 
 flesh-and-blood individual now that I have stood on 
 the kitchen-hearth and in the birth-chamber ; but I 
 am not quite certain that this power of realization is 
 altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. The 
 Shakespeare whom I met there took various guises, 
 but had not his laurel on. He was successively the 
 roguish boy, - — the youthful deer-stealer, — the com- 
 
124 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 
 
 rade of players, — the too familiar friend of Dave- 
 nant’s mother, — the careful, thrifty, thriven man of 
 property who came back from London to lend money 
 on bond, and occupy the best house in Stratford, — 
 the mellow, red-nosed, autumnal boon-companion of 
 John a’ Combe, — and finally (or else the Stratford 
 gossips belied him), the victim of convivial habits, 
 who met his death by tumbling into a ditch on his 
 way home from a drinking-bout, and left his second- 
 best bed to his poor wife. 
 
 I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what horrible 
 impiety it is to remember these things, be they true* 
 or false. In either case, they ought to vanish out of 
 sight on the distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a 
 pure, white memory, even as a sail, though perhaps 
 darkened with many stains, looks showy white on the 
 far horizon. But 1 draw a moral from these unwor- 
 thy reminiscences and this embodiment of the poet, as 
 suggested by some of the grimy actualities of his life. 
 It is for the high interests of the world not to insist 
 upon finding out that its greatest men are, in a certain 
 lower sense, very much the same kind of men as the 
 rest of us, and often a little worse ; because a common 
 mind cannot properly digest such a discovery, nor ever 
 know the true proportion of the great man’s good and 
 evil, nor how small a part of him it was that touched 
 our muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral be- 
 wilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to 
 what is best of him. When Shakespeare invoked a 
 curse on the man who should stir his bones, he per^ 
 haps meant the larger share of it for him or them who 
 should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects 
 or even the merits of the character that he wore in 
 Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 125 
 
 upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep 
 me from incurring any part of the anathema in re- 
 quital for the irreverent sentences above written ! 
 
 From Shakespeare’s house, the next step, of course, 
 is to visit his burial-place. The appearance of the 
 church is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid 
 a great green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises 
 the spire, while the Gothic battlements and buttresses 
 and vast arched windows are obscurely seen through 
 the boughs. The Avon loiters past the churchyard, 
 an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem to 
 have been considering which way it should flow ever 
 since Shakespeare left off paddling in it and gather- 
 ing the large forget-me-nots that grow among its flags 
 and water-weeds. 
 
 An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the 
 gate ; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he pre- 
 ceded me to the church-porch, and rapped. I could 
 have done it quite as effectually for myself ; but it 
 seems the old people of the neighborhood haunt about 
 the churchyard, in spite of the frowns and remon- 
 strances of the sexton, who grudges them the half-elee- 
 mosynary sixpence which they sometimes get from 
 visitors. I was admitted into the church by a respect- 
 able-looking and intelligent man in black, the parish- 
 clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer incum- 
 bency than his vicar, if all the fees which he handles 
 remain in his own pocket. He was already exhibiting 
 the Shakespeare monuments to two or three visitors, 
 and several other parties came in while I was there. 
 
 The poet and his family are in possession of what 
 may be considered the very best burial-places that the 
 church affords. They lie in a row, right across the 
 breadth of the chancel, the foot of each gravestone 
 
126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 being close to the elevated floor on which the altar 
 stands. Nearest to the side - wall, beneath Shake- 
 speare’s bust, is a slab bearing a Latin inscription ad- 
 dressed to his wife, and covering her remains ; then 
 his own slab, with the old anathematizing stanza 
 upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who married his 
 granddaughter ; then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of 
 his daughter Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah’s own. 
 Shakespeare’s is the commonest- looking slab of all, 
 being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem 
 used to be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, 
 unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a 
 crack across it, as if it had already undergone some 
 such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike 
 the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, 
 nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on 
 which it is absolutely determined to be Shakespeare’s ; 
 although, being in a range with those of his wife and 
 children, it might naturally be attributed to him. But, 
 then, why does his wife, who died afterwards, take 
 precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust? 
 And where are the graves of another daughter and a 
 son, who have a better right in the family row than 
 Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law ? Might not one 
 or both of them have been laid under the nameless 
 stone? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakespeare’s 
 dust ; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave 
 (though the prohibition makes it tempting), and shall 
 let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must 
 needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to 
 imply that Shakespeare’s grave was directly under- 
 neath it. 
 
 The poet’s bust is affixed to the northern wall of 
 the church, the base of it being about a man’s height, 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 127 
 
 or rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The 
 features of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike 
 any portrait of Shakespeare that I have ever seen, 
 and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty- 
 browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto 
 hung in my mental portrait-gallery. The bust cannot 
 be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently 
 noble head ; but it clutches firmly hold of one’s sense 
 of reality and insists upon your accepting it, if not as 
 Shakespeare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of 
 Stratford, the friend of John a’ Combe, who lies yon- 
 der in the corner. I know not what the phrenologists 
 say to the bust. The forehead is but moderately de- 
 veloped, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the 
 skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are prominent al- 
 most beyond the penthouse of the brow ; the upper lip 
 is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, 
 unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, 
 in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be fore- 
 shortened by being looked at from below. On the 
 whole, Shakespeare must have had a singular rather 
 than a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, 
 with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted 
 in maintaining an erroneous notion of his appearance, 
 allowing painters and sculptors to foist their idealized 
 nonsense on us all, instead of the genuine man. For 
 my part, the Shakespeare of my mind’s eye is hence- 
 forth to be a personage of a ruddy English complex- 
 ion, with a reasonably capacious brow, intelligent and 
 quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly out- 
 ward, a long, queer upper lip, with the mouth a little 
 unclosed beneath it, and cheeks considerably developed 
 in the lower part and beneath the chin. But when 
 Shakespeare was himself (for nine tenths of the time, 
 
128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 
 
 according to all appearances, he was but the burgher 
 of Stratford),, he doubtless shone through this dull 
 mask and transfigured it into the face of an angel. 
 
 Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of Shake- 
 speare gravestones is the great east -window of the 
 church, now brilliant with stained glass of recent 
 manufacture. On one side of this window, under a 
 sculptured arch of marble, lies a full-length marble 
 figure of John a’ Combe, clad in what I take to be a 
 robe of municipal dignity, and holding its hands de- 
 voutly clasped. It is a sturdy English figure, with 
 coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we 
 smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque mate- 
 rial of poets and heroes ; but the prayerful attitude 
 encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, 
 after all, have had that grim reception in the other 
 world which Shakespeare’s squib foreboded for him. 
 By the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with W ar- 
 wickshire pronunciation, I never understood that the 
 point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. ‘ Oho ! ’ 
 quoth the Devil, ^ ’t is my John a’ Combe ! ’ ” — that 
 is, “My John has come ! ” 
 
 Close to the poet’s bust is a nameless, oblong, cubic 
 tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of 
 the fourteenth century. The church has other mural 
 monuments and altar-tombs, one or two of the latter 
 upholding the recumbent figures of knights in armor 
 and their dames, very eminent and worshipful person- 
 ages in their day, no doubt, but doomed to appear for- 
 ever intrusive and impertinent within the precincts 
 which Shakespeare has made his own. His renown 
 is tyrannous, and suffers nothing else to be recognized 
 within the scope of its material presence, unless illu- 
 minated by some side-ray from himself. The clerk 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 129 
 
 informed me that interments no longer take place in 
 any part of the church. And it is better so ; for 
 methinks a person of delicate individuality, curious 
 about his burial-place, and desirous of six feet of earth 
 for himself alone, could never endure to lie buried 
 near Shakespeare, but would rise up at midnight and 
 grope his way out of the church-door, rather than sleep 
 in the shadow of so stupendous a memory. 
 
 I should hardly have dared to add another to the 
 innumerable descriptions of Stratford-on-Avon, if it 
 had not seemed to me that this would form a fitting 
 framework to some reminiscences of a very remarkable 
 woman. Her labor, while she lived, was of a nature 
 and purpose outwardly irreverent to the name of Shake- 
 speare, yet, by its actual tendency, entitling her to 
 the distinction of being that one of all his worshippers 
 who sought, though she knew it not, to place the rich- 
 est and stateliest diadem upon his brow. We Amer- 
 icans, at least, in the scanty annals of our literature, 
 cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious ex- 
 ercise of noble faculties, which, indeed, if you look at 
 the matter in one way, evolved only a miserable error, 
 but, more fairly considered, produced a result worth 
 almost what it cost her. Her faith in her own ideas 
 was so genuine, that, erroneous as they were, it trans- 
 muted them to gold, or, at all events, interfused a 
 large proportion of that precious and indestructible 
 substance among the waste material from which it 
 can readily be sifted. 
 
 The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in Lon- 
 don, where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex 
 Gardens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle- 
 aged, civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, 
 appeared to feel a personal kindness towards their 
 
 VOL. vii. 9 
 
130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 lodger. I was ushered up two (and I rather believe 
 three) pair of stairs into a parlor somewhat humbly 
 furnished, and told that Miss Bacon would come soon. 
 There were a number of books on the table, and, look- 
 ing into them, I found that every one had some ref- 
 erence, more or less immediate, to her Shakespearian 
 theory, — a volume of Raleigh’s “ History of the 
 World,” a volume of Montaigne, a volume of Lord 
 Bacon’s Letters, a volume of Shakespeare’s Plays ; and 
 on another table lay a large roll of manuscript, which 
 I presume to have been a portion of her work. To be 
 sure, there was a pocket-Bible among the books, but 
 everything else referred to the one despotic idea that 
 had got possession of her mind ; and as it had en- 
 grossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I have 
 no doubt that she had established subtile connections 
 between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt to be 
 the case with solitary students. Miss Bacon probably 
 read late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne (it 
 was Hazlitt’s translation) and had been reading his 
 journey to Italy a good while before she appeared. 
 
 I had expected (the more shame for me, having no 
 other ground of such expectation than that she was a 
 literary woman) to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly 
 personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by 
 her aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and 
 had a striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark 
 eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she 
 began to speak, and by and by a color came into her 
 cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that 
 she really was so ; she must have been beyond middle 
 age : and there was no unkindness in coming to that 
 conclusion, because, making allowance for years and 
 ill-health, I could suppose her to have been handsome 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 131 
 
 and exceedingly attractive once. Though wholly es- 
 tranged from society, there was little or no restraint 
 or embarrassment in her manner : lonely people are 
 generally glad to give utterance to their pent-up ideas, 
 and often bubble over with them as freely as children 
 with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell how it 
 came about, but we immediately found ourselves tak- 
 ing a friendly and familiar tone together, and began 
 to talk as if we had known one another a very long 
 while. A little preliminary correspondence had indeed 
 smoothed the way, and we had a definite topic in the 
 contemplated publication of her book. 
 
 She was very communicative about her theory, and 
 would have been much more so had I desired it ; but, 
 being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I 
 deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw 
 her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a 
 monomaniac ; these overmastering ideas about the au- 
 thorship of Shakespeare’s Plays, and the deep political 
 philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had 
 completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the 
 same time they had wonderfully developed her intel- 
 lect, and made her what she could not otherwise have 
 become. It was a very singular phenomenon : a sys- 
 tem of philosophy growing up in this woman’s mind 
 without her volition, — contrary, in fact, to the deter- 
 mined resistance of her volition, — and substituting 
 itself in the place of everything that originally grew 
 there. To have based such a system on fancy, and 
 unconsciously elaborated it for herself, was almost as 
 wonderful as really to have found it in the plays. 
 But, in a certain sense, she did actually find it there, 
 Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to an im- 
 measurable depth, adapted to the plummet -line of 
 
132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 
 
 every reader ; his works present many phases of truth, 
 each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative 
 mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely dis- 
 cover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhaust- 
 ing the various interpretation of his symbols ; and a 
 thousand years hence a world of new readers will pos- 
 sess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, 
 in these volumes old already. I had half a mind to 
 suggest to Miss Bacon this explanation of her theory, 
 but forbore, because (as I could readily perceive) she 
 had as princely a spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, 
 and would at once have motioned me from the room. 
 
 I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the 
 material evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, 
 together with the key of the new philosophy, would be 
 found buried in Shakespeare’s grave. Recently, as I 
 understood her, this notion had been somewhat modi- 
 fied, and was now accurately defined and fully devel- 
 oped in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. 
 In Lord Bacon’s Letters, on which she laid her finger 
 as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clew to 
 the whole mystery. There were definite and minute 
 instructions how to find a will and other documents 
 relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, 
 which were concealed (when and by whom she did not 
 inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface of 
 Shakespeare’s gravestone. Thus the terrible prohibi- 
 tion to remove the stone was accounted for. The di- 
 rections, she intimated, went completely and precisely 
 to the point, obviating all difficulties in the way of 
 coming at the treasure, and even, if I remember right, 
 were so contrived as to ward off any troublesome con- 
 sequences likely to ensue from the interference of the 
 parish-officers. All that Miss Bacon now remained in 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 133 
 
 England for — indeed, the object for which she had 
 come hither, and which had kept her here for three 
 years past — was to obtain possession of these mate- 
 rial and unquestionable proofs of the authenticity of 
 her theory. 
 
 She communicated all this strange matter in a low, 
 quiet tone ; while, on my part, I listened as quietly, 
 and without any expression of dissent. Controversy 
 against a faith so settled would have shut her up at 
 once, and that, too, without in the least weakening her 
 belief in the existence of those treasures of the tomb : 
 and had it been possible to convince her of their in- 
 tangible nature, I apprehend that there would have 
 been nothing left for the poor enthusiast save to col- 
 lapse and die. She frankly confessed that she could 
 no longer bear the society of those who did not at least 
 lend a certain sympathy to her views, if not fully 
 share in them ; and meeting little sympathy or none, 
 she had now entirely secluded herself from the world. 
 In all these years, she had seen Mrs. Farrar a few 
 times, but had long ago given her up ; Carlyle once 
 or twice, but not of late, although he had received her 
 kindly; Mr. Buchanan, while Minister in England, 
 had once called on her ; and General Campbell, our 
 Consul in London, had met her two or three times on 
 business. With these exceptions, which she marked 
 so scrupulously that it was perceptible what epochs 
 they were in the monotonous passage of her days, she 
 had lived in the profoundest solitude. She never 
 walked out ; she suffered much from ill-health ; and 
 yet, she assured me, she was perfectly happy. 
 
 I could well conceive it ; for Miss Bacon imagined 
 herself to have received (what is certainly the greatest 
 boon ever assigned to mortals) a high mission in the 
 
134 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 
 
 world, with adequate powers for its accomplishment ; 
 and lest even these should prove insufficient, she had 
 faith that special interpositions of Providence were 
 forwarding her human efforts. This idea was contin- 
 ually coming to the surface, during our interview. 
 She believed, for example, that she had been provi- 
 dentially led to her lodging-house, and put in relations 
 with the good-natured grocer and his family ; and, to 
 say the truth, considering what a savage and stealthy 
 tribe the London lodging-house keepers usually are, 
 the honest kindness of this man and his household ap- 
 peared to have been little less than miraculous. Evi- 
 dently, too, she thought that Providence had brought 
 me forward — a man somewhat connected with litera- 
 ture — at the critical juncture when she needed a ne- 
 gotiator with the booksellers ; and, on my part, though 
 little accustomed to regard myself as a divine minis- 
 ter, and though I might even have preferred that 
 Providence should select some other instrument, I had 
 no scruple in undertaking to do what I could for her. 
 Her book, as I could see by turning it over, was a 
 very remarkable one, and worthy of being offered to 
 the public, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, 
 would be thankful for what was good in it and merci- 
 ful to its faults. It was founded on a prodigious error, 
 but was built up from that foundation with a good 
 many prodigious truths. And, at all events, whether 
 I could aid her literary views or no, it would have 
 been both rash and impertinent in me to attempt 
 drawing poor Miss Bacon out of her delusions, which 
 were the condition on which she lived in comfort and 
 joy, and in the exercise of great intellectual power. 
 So I left her to dream as she pleased about the treas. 
 ures of Shakespeare’s tombstone, and to form what- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 135 
 
 ever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining 
 possession of them. I was sensible of a lady-like feel- 
 ^ ing of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New England 
 orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her be- 
 wilderment, a sturdy common-sense, which I trusted 
 would begin to operate at the right time, and keep 
 her from any actual extravagance. And as regarded 
 this matter of the tombstone, so it proved. 
 
 The interview lasted above an hour, during which 
 she flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable 
 of any degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had 
 met with in a very long while. Her conversation was 
 remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one’s own ideas 
 and fantasies from the shy places where they usually 
 haunt. She was indeed an admirable talker, consider- 
 ing how long she had held her tongue for lack of a 
 listener, — pleasant, sunny, and shadowy, often piq- 
 uant, and giving glimpses of all a woman’s various 
 and readily changeable moods and humors ; and be- 
 neath them all there ran a deep and powerful under- 
 current of earnestness, which did not fail to produce 
 in the listener’s mind something like a temporary faith 
 in what she herself believed so fervently. But the 
 streets of London are not favorable to enthusiasms of 
 this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish any- 
 where in the English atmosphere; so that, long be- 
 fore reaching Paternoster Row, I felt that it would be 
 a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publi- 
 cation of Miss Bacon’s book. Nevertheless, it did 
 finally get published. 
 
 Months before that happened, however. Miss Ba- 
 con had taken up her residence at Stratford-on-Avon, 
 drawn thither by the magnetism of those rich secrets 
 which she supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh, 
 
136 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shakespeare’s 
 grave, and protected there by a curse, as pirates used 
 to bury their gold in the guardianship of a fiend. 
 She took a humble lodging and began to haunt the 
 church like a ghost. But she did not condescend to 
 any stratagem or underhand attempt to violate the 
 grave, which, had she been capable of admitting such 
 an idea, might possibly have been accomplished by the 
 aid of a resurrection-man. As her first step, she made 
 acquaintance with the clerk, and began to sound him 
 as to the feasibility of her enterprise and his own will- 
 ingness to engage in it. The clerk apparently listened 
 with not unfavorable ears ; but as his situation (which 
 the fees of pilgrims, more numerous than at any Cath- 
 olic shrine, render lucrative) would have been for- 
 feited by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated for 
 liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon requested 
 to tell her own story to the reverend gentleman, and 
 seems to have been received by him with the utmost 
 kindness, and even to have succeeded in making a cer- 
 tain impression on his mind as to the desirability of 
 the search. As their interview had been under the 
 seal of secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, 
 who, as Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was 
 a practitioner of the law. What the legal friend ad- 
 vised she did not learn ; but the negotiation contin- 
 ued, and certainly was never broken off by an abso- 
 lute refusal on the vicar’s part. He, perhaps, was 
 kindly temporizing with our poor countrywoman, whom 
 an Englishman of ordinary mould would have sent to 
 a lunatic asylum at once. I cannot help fancying, 
 however, that her familiarity with the events of Shake- 
 speare’s life, and of his death and burial (of which 
 she would speak as if she had been present at the 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 137 
 
 edge of the grave), and all the history, literature, and 
 personalities of the Elizabethan age, together with the 
 prevailing power of her own belief, and the eloquence 
 with which she knew how to enforce it, had really 
 gone some little way toward making a convert of the 
 good clergyman. If so, I honor him above all the 
 hierarchy of England. 
 
 The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However 
 erroneously. Miss Bacon had understood from the 
 vicar that no obstacles would be interposed to the in- 
 vestigation, and that he himself would sanction it with 
 his presence. It was to take place after nightfall; 
 and all preliminary arrangements being made, the 
 vicar and clerk professed to wait only her word in or- 
 der to set about lifting the awful stone from the sepul- 
 chre. So, at least. Miss Bacon believed ; and as her 
 bewilderment was entirely in her own thoughts, and 
 never disturbed her perception or accurate remem- 
 brance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, 
 except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But, 
 in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own 
 convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her 
 mind whether she might not have mistaken the depos- 
 itory and mode of concealment of those historic treas- 
 ures; and, after once admitting the doubt, she was 
 afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and 
 finding nothing. She examined the surface of the 
 gravestone, and endeavored, without stirring it, to esti- 
 mate whether it were of such thickness as to be capa- 
 ble of containing the archives of the Elizabethan clubo 
 She went over anew the proofs, the clews, the enigmas, 
 the pregnant sentences, which she had discovered in 
 Bacon’s Letters and elsev/here, and now was frightened 
 to perceive that they did not point so definitely to 
 
138 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 Shakespeare’s tomb as she had heretofore supposed. 
 There was an unmistakably distinct reference to a 
 tomb, but it might be Bacon’s, or Raleigh’s, or Spen- 
 ser’s ; and instead of the ‘‘ Old Player,” as she pro- 
 fanely called him, it might be either of those three 
 illustrious dead, poet, warrior, or statesman, whose 
 ashes, in Westminster Abbey, or the Tower buriab 
 ground, or wherever they sleep, it was her mission to 
 disturb. It is very possible, moreover, that her acute 
 mind may always have had a lurking and deeply 
 latent distrust of its own fantasies, and that this now 
 became strong enough to restrain her from a decisive 
 step. 
 
 But she continued to hover around the church, and 
 seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the day- 
 time, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a 
 late hour of the night. She went thither with a dark- 
 lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm 
 through the volume of obscurity that filled the great 
 dusky edifice. Groping her way up the aisle and to- 
 wards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part 
 of the pavement above Shakespeare’s grave. If the 
 divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and 
 cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its dep- 
 recatory earnestness would imply, it was time for those 
 crumbling relics to bestir themselves under her sacri- 
 legious feet. But they were safe. She made no at- 
 tempt to disturb them'; though, I believe, she looked 
 narrowly into the crevices between Shakespeare’s and 
 the two adjacent stones, and in some way satisfied 
 herself that her single strength would suffice to lift 
 the former, in case of need. She threw the feeble ray 
 of her lantern up towards the bust, but could not 
 make it visible beneath the darkness of the vaulted 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 139 
 
 roof. Had she been subject to superstitious terrors, 
 it is impossible to conceive of a situation that could 
 better entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakespeare’s 
 ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have 
 shown itself then ; but it is my sincere belief, that, if 
 his figure had appeared within the scope of her dark 
 lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his 
 eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just 
 as we see him in the bust, she would have met him 
 fearlessly, and controverted his claims to the author- 
 ship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught 
 herself to contemn “ Lord Leicester’s groom ” (it was 
 one of her disdainful epithets for the world’s incom- 
 parable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied 
 spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at Miss 
 Bacon’s hands. 
 
 Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite 
 object, continued far into the night. Several times 
 she heard a low movement in the aisles : a stealthy, 
 dubious footfall prowling about in the darkness, now 
 here, now there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, 
 as if some restless inhabitant of the latter had crept 
 forth to peep at the intruder. By and by the clerk 
 made his appearance, and confessed that he had been 
 watching her ever since she entered the church. 
 
 About this time it was that a strange sort of weari- 
 ness seems to have fallen upon her : her toil was all 
 but done, her great purpose, as she believed, on the 
 very point of accomplishment, when she began to re- 
 gret that so stupendous a mission had been imposed 
 on the fragility of a woman. Her faith in the new 
 philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was her con- 
 fidence in her own adequate development of it, now 
 about to be given to the world ; yet she wished, or fan- 
 
140 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 cied so, that it might never have been her duty to 
 achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger feebly 
 forward under her immense burden of responsibility 
 and renown. So far as her personal concern in the 
 matter went, she would gladly have forfeited the re- 
 ward of her patient study and labor for so many years, 
 her exile from her country and estrangement from her 
 family and friends, her sacrifice of health and all other 
 interests to this one pursuit, if she could only find her- 
 self free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten. She 
 liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only 
 praise that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakespeare, 
 the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in 
 a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose 
 a suitable retirement for a person of shy, but genial 
 temperament. And at this point, I cease to possess 
 the means of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any 
 further. In consequence of some advice which I fan- 
 cied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant 
 whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Ba- 
 con’s most severe and passionate displeasure, and was 
 cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a 
 misfortune to which her friends were always particu- 
 larly liable ; but I think that none of them ever loved, 
 or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but 
 likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character, the 
 less for it. 
 
 At that time her book was passing through the 
 press. Without prejudice to her literary ability, it 
 must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to 
 prepare her own work for publication, because, among 
 many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest 
 to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was 
 sacred, for all had been written under so deep a con- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 141 
 
 viction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of 
 inspiration. A practised book-maker, with entire con- 
 trol of her materials, would have shaped out a duodec- 
 imo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation, 
 ' — criticisms which quite take the color and pungency 
 out of other people’s critical remarks on Shakespeare, 
 — philosophic truths which she imagined herself to 
 have found at the roots of his conceptions, and which 
 certainly come from no inconsiderable depth some- 
 where. There was a great amount of rubbish, which 
 any competent editor would have shovelled out of the 
 way. But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of in- 
 spiration and nonsense into the press in a lump, and 
 there tumbled out a ponderous octavo volume, which 
 fell with a dead thump at the feet of the public, and 
 has never been picked up. A few persons turned over 
 one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed 
 to kick the volume deeper into the mud ; for they were 
 the hack critics of the minor periodical press in Lon- 
 don, than whom, I suppose, though excellent fellows 
 in their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less 
 sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to rec- 
 ognize an author’s heart in it, or more utterly \ 3 areless 
 about bruising, if they do recognize it. It is their 
 trade. They could not do otherwise. 1 never thought 
 of blaming them. It was not for such an Englishman 
 as one of these to get beyond the idea that an assault 
 was meditated on England’s greatest poet. From the 
 scholars and critics of her own country, indeed. Miss 
 Bacon might have looked for a worthier appreciation, 
 because many of the best of them have higher cultiva- 
 tion, and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all 
 but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. 
 But they are not a courageous body of men ; they dare 
 
142 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest 
 they should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If 
 any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss 
 Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at 
 once republished some of the most brutal vituperations 
 of the English press, thus pelting their poor country- 
 woman with stolen mud, without even waiting to know 
 whether the ignominy was deserved. And they never 
 have known it, to this day, nor ever will. 
 
 The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was 
 by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He 
 was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and 
 professional character, telling me that an American 
 lady, who had recently published what the mayor 
 called a “ Shakespeare book,” was afflicted with insan- 
 ity. In a lucid interval she had referred to me, as 
 a person who had some knowledge of her family and 
 affairs. What she may have suffered before her in- 
 tellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. 
 No author had ever hoped so confidently as she ; none 
 ever failed more utterly. A superstitious fancy might 
 suggest that the anathema on Shakespeare’s tombstone 
 had fallen heavily on her head, in requital of even the 
 unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust be- 
 neath, and that the Old Player ” had kept so quietly 
 in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he fore- 
 saw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But 
 if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of 
 such things now, he has surely requited the injustice 
 that she sought to do him — the high justice that she 
 really did — by a tenderness of love and pity of which 
 only he could he capable. What matters it though 
 she called him by some other name ? He had wrought 
 a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 143 
 
 This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in 
 the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and 
 learned societies, devoted to the elucidation of his un- 
 rivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist there. 
 She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these ages 
 of renown have been able to accumulate upon his 
 memory. And when, not many months after the out- 
 ward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the 
 better world, I know not why we should hesitate to be- 
 lieve that the immortal poet may have met her on the 
 threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly 
 and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a 
 smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of 
 certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted 
 him to mankind so well. 
 
 I believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable 
 book never to have had more than a single reader. I 
 myself am acquainted with it only in insulated chap- 
 ters and scattered pages and paragraphs. But, since 
 my return to America, a young man of genius and 
 enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read 
 the book from beginning to end, and is completely a 
 convert to its doctrines. It belongs to him, therefore, 
 and not to me, — whom, in almost the last letter that 
 I received from her, she declared unworthy to meddle 
 with her work, — it belongs surely to this one indi- 
 vidual, who has done her so much justice as to know 
 what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due posi- 
 tion before the public and posterity. 
 
 This has been too sad a story. To lighten the rec- 
 ollection of it, I will think of my stroll homeward past 
 Charlecote Park, where I beheld the most stately elms, 
 singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered all about 
 in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion ; so that I 
 
144 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 
 
 could not but believe in lengthened, loitering, drowsy 
 enjoyment which these trees must have in their ex- 
 istence. Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need 
 not be keen nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like 
 the momentary delights of short-lived human beings. 
 They were civilized trees, known to man, and be- 
 friended by him for ages past. There is an indescrib^ 
 able difference — as 1 believe I have heretofore en- 
 deavored to express — between the tamed, but by no 
 means effete (on the contrary, the richer and more 
 luxuriant), nature of England, and the rude, shaggy, 
 barbarous nature which offers us its racier companion- 
 ship in America. No less a change has been wrought 
 among the wildest creatures that inhabit what the 
 English call their forests. By and by, among those 
 refined and venerable trees, I saw a large herd of deer, 
 mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque 
 groups, while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, 
 as if they had been taught to make themselves tribu- 
 tary to the scenic effect. Some were running fleetly 
 about, vanishing from light into shadow and glancing 
 forth again, with here and there a little fawn career- 
 ing at its mother’s heels. These deer are almost in 
 the same relation to the wild, natural state of their 
 kind that the trees of an English park hold to the 
 rugged growth of an American forest. They have 
 held a certain intercourse, with man for immemorial 
 years ; and, most probably, the stag that Shakespeare 
 killed was one of the progenitors of this very herd, 
 and may himself have been a partly civilized and hu- 
 manized deer, though in a less degree than these re- 
 mote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, 
 but they do not snuff the air at the approach of hu- 
 man beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 145 
 
 close proximity ; although if you continue to advance, 
 they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind 
 of mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skit- 
 tishness, with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it 
 were, of their having come of a wild stock. They 
 have so long been fed and protected by man, that 
 they must have lost many of their native instincts, 
 and, I suppose, could not live comfortably through 
 even an English winter without human help. One is 
 sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such depen- 
 dency, but feels none the less kindly disposed towards 
 the half-domesticated race ; and it may have been his 
 . observation of these tamer characteristics in the Char- 
 lecote herd that suggested to Shakespeare the tender 
 and pitiful description of a wounded stag, in As You 
 Like It.” 
 
 At a distance of some hundreds of yards from 
 Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees be- 
 tween it and the roadside, is an old brick archway 
 and porter’s lodge. In connection with this entrance 
 there appears to have been a wall and an ancient 
 moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, 
 grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the 
 lawn. About fifty yards within the gateway stands 
 the house, forming three sides of a square, with three 
 gables in a row on the front, and on each of the two 
 wings ; and there are several towers and turrets at the 
 angles, together with projecting windows, antique bal- 
 conies, and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half- 
 Gothic taste in which the edifice was built. Over the 
 gateway is the Lucy coat of arms, emblazoned in its 
 proper colors. The mansion dates from the early 
 days of Elizabeth, and probably looked very much 
 the same as now when Shakespeare was brought be- 
 
 VOL. VII. 10 
 
146 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 
 
 fore Sir Thomas Lucy for outrages among his deer. 
 The impression is not that of gray antiquity, but of 
 stable and time-honored gentility, still as vital as ever. 
 
 It is a most delightful place. All about the house 
 and domain there is a perfection of comfort and do- 
 mestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could 
 have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity 
 and labor of many successive generations, intent upon 
 adding all possible improvement to the home where 
 years gone by and years to come give a sort of per- 
 manence to the intangible present. An American is 
 sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long 
 process can real homes be produced. One man’s life* 
 time is not enough for the accomplishment of such a 
 work of art and nature, almost the greatest merely 
 temporary one that is confided to him ; too little, at 
 any rate, — yet perhaps too long when he is discour- 
 aged by the idea that he must make his house warm 
 and delightful for a miscellaneous race of successors, 
 of whom the one thing certain is, that his own grand- 
 children will not be among them. Such repinings as 
 are here suggested, however, come only from the fact, 
 that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us 
 are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the 
 necessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a 
 wigwam or under a tent has really as many advan- 
 tages, when we come to know them, as a home beneath 
 the roof-tree of Cliarlecote Hall. But, alas ! our phi- 
 losophers have not yet taught us what is best, nor have 
 our poets sung us what is beautifullest, in the kind of 
 life that we must lead; and therefore we still read 
 the old English wisdom, and harp upon the ancient 
 strings. And thence it happens, that, when we look 
 at a time-honored hall, it seems more possible for men 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 147 
 
 who inherit such a home, than for ourselves, to lead 
 noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good and lovely 
 things as their daily work, and achieving deeds of 
 simple greatness when circumstances require them. I 
 sometimes apprehend that our institutions may perish 
 before we shall have discovered the most precious of 
 the possibilities which they involve. 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 After my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went by 
 an indirect route to Lichfield, and put up at the Black 
 Swan. Had I known where to find it, I would, much 
 rather have established myself at the inn formerly 
 kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his 
 ale in Farquhar’s time. The Black Swan is an old- 
 fashioned hotel, its street-front being penetrated by an 
 arched passage, in either side of which is an entrance- 
 door to the different parts of the house, and through 
 which, and over the large stones of its pavement, all 
 vehicles and horsemen rumble and clatter into an en- 
 closed court-yard, with a thunderous uproar among the 
 contiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be 
 the only guest of the spacious establishment, but may 
 have had a few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate 
 parlors, and utterly eschewing that community of in- 
 terests which is the characteristic feature of life in an 
 American hotel. At any rate, I had the great, dull, 
 dingy, and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old ma- 
 hogany chairs and tables, all to myself, and not a 
 soul to exchange a word with, except the waiter, who, 
 like most of his class in England, had evidently left 
 his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former 
 practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor 
 well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and 
 amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissi- 
 pate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room 
 under such circumstances as these, with no book at 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 149 
 
 hand save the county-directory, nor any newspaper 
 but a torn local journal of five days ago. So I buried 
 myself, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient feathers 
 (there is no other kind of bed in these old inns), let 
 my head sink into an unsubstantial pillow, and slept 
 a stifled sleep, infested with such a fragmentary con- 
 fusion of dreams that I took them to be a medley, 
 compounded of the night-troubles of all my prede- 
 cessors in that same unrestful couch. And when I 
 awoke, the musty odor of a by-gone century was in my 
 nostrils, — a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had 
 any conception before crossing the Atlantic. 
 
 In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of 
 chiccory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and 
 bewildered myself a little while among the crooked 
 streets, in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly 
 attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient 
 date, and its name in the old Saxon tongue has a dis- 
 mal import that would apply well, in these days and 
 forever henceforward, to many an unhappy locality in 
 our native land. Lichfield signifies The Field of the 
 Dead Bodies,’' — an epithet, however, which the town 
 did not assume in remembrance of a battle, but which 
 probably sprung up by a natural process, like a sprig 
 of rue or other funereal weed, out of the graves of two 
 princely brothers, sons of a pagan king of Mercia, 
 who were converted by St. Chad, and afterwards mar- 
 tyred for their Christian faith. Nevertheless, I was 
 but little interested in the legends of the remote an- 
 tiquity of Lichfield, being drawn thither partly to see 
 its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe, be- 
 cause it was the birthplace of Dr. J ohnson, with whose 
 sturdy English character I became acquainted, at a 
 very early period of my life, through the good offices 
 
150 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as familiar to my 
 recollection, and almost as vivid in his personal as- 
 pect to my mind’s eye, as the kindly figure of my own 
 grandfather. It is only a solitary child, — left much 
 to such wild modes of culture as he chooses for him- 
 self while yet ignorant what culture means, standing 
 on tiptoe to pull down books from no very lofty shelf, 
 and then shutting himself up, as it were, between the 
 leaves, going astray through the volume at his own 
 pleasure, and comprehending it rather by his sensibil- 
 ities and affections than his intellect, — that child is 
 the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy 
 which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. 
 I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about 
 any of the stalwart Doctor’s grandiloquent productions, 
 except his two stern and masculine poems, ^‘London,” 
 and The Vanity of Human Wishes ; ” it was as a 
 man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved 
 him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more 
 thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to 
 put my instinctive perception of his character into 
 language. 
 
 Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser 
 friend than he. The atmosphere in which alone he 
 breathed was dense ; his awful dread of death showed 
 how much muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out 
 of him, before he could be capable of spiritual exist- 
 ence; he meddled only with the surface of life, and 
 never cared to penetrate further than to ploughshare 
 depth ; his very sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed 
 clear-sightedness. I laughed at him, sometimes, stand- 
 ing beside his knee. And yet, considering that my na- 
 tive propensities were towards Fairy Land, and also 
 how much yeast is generally mixed up with the mental 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER, 
 
 151 
 
 sustenance of a New-Englander, it may not have been 
 altogether amiss, in those childish and boyish days, to 
 keep pace with this heavy-footed traveller, and feed on 
 the gross diet that he carried in his knapsack. It is 
 wholesome food even now. And, then, how English ! 
 Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to en- 
 joy the Old Country so well, and that so readily amal- 
 gamated themselves with the American ideas that 
 seemed most adverse to them, may have been derived 
 from, or fostered and kept alive by, the great English 
 moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet more nicely 
 appropriate than that! Dr. Johnson’s morality was 
 as English an article as a beefsteak. 
 
 The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are 
 called cities in England) stands on an ascending site. 
 It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, 
 for example, but still enough to gratify an American 
 appetite for the antiquities of domestic architecture. 
 The people, too, have an old-fashioned way with them, 
 and stare at the passing visitor, as if the railway 
 had not yet quite accustomed them to the novelty of 
 strange faces moving along their ancient sidewalks. 
 The old women whom I met, in several instances, 
 dropt me a courtesy ; and as they were of decent and 
 comfortable exterior, and kept quietly on their way 
 without pause or further greeting, it certainly was not 
 allowable to interpret their little act of respect as a 
 modest method of asking for sixpence ; so that I had 
 the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the rev- 
 erential and hospitable manners of elder times, when 
 the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth 
 a general acknowledgment. Positively, coming from 
 such humble sources, I took it all the more as a wel- 
 come on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have 
 
152 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 exchanged it for an invitation from the mayor and 
 magistrates to a public dinner. Yet I wish, merely 
 for the experiment’s sake, that I could have embold- 
 ened myself to hold out the aforesaid sixpence to at 
 least one of the old ladies. 
 
 In my wanderings about town, I came to an artifi- 
 cial piece of water, called the Minster Pool. It fills 
 the immense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the 
 building-materials of the cathedral were quarried out 
 a great many centuries ago. I should never have 
 guessed the little lake to be of man’s creation, so very 
 pretty and quietly picturesque an object has it grown 
 to be, with its green banks, and the old trees hanging 
 over its glassy surface, in which you may see refiected 
 some of the battlements of the majestic structure that 
 once lay here in unshaped stone. Some little children 
 stood on the edge of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks ; 
 and the scene reminded me (though really, to be quite 
 fair with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now 
 escaped me) of that mysterious lake in the Arabian 
 Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and 
 where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabi- 
 tants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no 
 need of fanciful associations to make the spot interest- 
 ing. It was in the porch of one of the houses, in the 
 street that runs beside the Minster Pool, that Lord 
 Brooke was slain, in the time of the Parliamentary 
 war, by a shot from the battlements of the cathedral, 
 which was then held by the Royalists as a fortress. 
 The incident is commemorated by an inscription on a 
 stone, inlaid into the wall of the house. 
 
 I know not what rank the Cathedral of Lichfield 
 holds among its sister edifices in England, as a piece 
 of magnificent architecture. Except that of Chester 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 153 
 
 (the grim and simple nave of which stands yet unri- 
 valled in my memory), and one or two small ones in 
 North Wales, hardly worthy of the name of cathe- 
 drals, it was the first that I had seen. To my unin- 
 structed vision, it seemed the object best worth gaz- 
 ing at in the whole world ; and now, after beholding 
 a great many more, I remember it with less prodigal 
 admiration only because others are as magnificent as 
 itself. The traces remaining in my memory represent 
 it as airy rather than massive. A multitude of beau- 
 tiful shapes appeared to be comprehended within its 
 single outline ; it was a kind of kaleidoscopic mys- 
 tery so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from 
 each altered point of view, through the presentation 
 of a different face, and the rearrangement of its peaks 
 and pinnacles and the three battlemented towers, with 
 the spires that shot heavenward from all three, but 
 one loftier than its fellows. Thus it impressed you, 
 at every change, as a newly created structure of the 
 passing moment, in which yet you lovingly recognized 
 the half-vanished structure of the instant before, and 
 felt, moreover, a joyful faith in the indestructible ex- 
 istence of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A Gothic ca- 
 thedral is surely the most wonderful work which mor- 
 tal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so 
 profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful re- 
 cesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend 
 within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ulti- 
 mately draws the beholder and his universe into its 
 harmony. It is the only thing in the world that is 
 vast enough and rich enough. 
 
 Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled 
 enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not ele- 
 vate myseff to its spiritual height, any more than 1 
 
154 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 could have climbed from the ground to the summit of 
 one of its pinnacles. Ascending but a little way, I 
 continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair, 
 conscious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty was 
 pouring down upon me, of which I could appropriate 
 only the minutest portion. After a hundred years, 
 incalculably as my higher sympathies might be invig- 
 orated by so divine an employment, I should still be a 
 gazer from below and at an awful distance, as yet re- 
 motely excluded from the interior mystery. But it 
 was something gained, even to have that painful sense 
 of my own limitations, and that half-smothered yearn- 
 ing to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed me 
 how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of im- 
 mortality. After all, this was probably the best les- 
 son that it could bestow, and, taking it as thoroughly 
 as possible home to my heart, I was fain to be con- 
 tent. If the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthu- 
 siasm soon flagged, and I began to lose the vision of 
 a spiritual or ideal edifice behind the time-worn and 
 weather-stained front of the actual structure. When- 
 ever that is the case, it is most reverential to look 
 another way ; but the mood disposes one to minute 
 investigation, and I took advantage of it to examine 
 the intricate and multitudinous adornment that was 
 lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. 
 Everywhere, there were empty niches where statues 
 bad been thrown down, and here and there a statue 
 still lingered in its niche ; and over the chief entrance, 
 and extending across the whole breadth of the build- 
 ing, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, 
 and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being much 
 corroded by the moist English atmosphere, during 
 four or five hundred winters that they had stood there, 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER, 
 
 155 
 
 these benign and majestic figures perversely put me 
 in mind of the appearance of a sugar image, after a 
 child has been holding it in his mouth. The vener- 
 able infant Time has evidently found them sweet 
 morsels. 
 
 Inside of the Minster there is a long and lofty nave, 
 transepts of the same height, and side-aisles and chap- 
 els, dim nooks of holiness, where in Catholic times the 
 lamps were continually burning before the richly dec- 
 orated shrines of saints. In the audacity of my igno- 
 rance, as I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I 
 criticised this great interior as too much broken into 
 compartments, and shorn of half its rightful impres- 
 siveness by the interposition of a screen betwixt the 
 nave and chancel. It did not spread itself in breadth, 
 but ascended to the roof in lofty narrowness. One 
 large body of worshippers might have knelt down in 
 the nave, others in each of the transepts, and smaller 
 ones in the side-aisles, besides an indefinite number of 
 esoteric enthusiasts in the mysterious sanctities beyond 
 the screen. Thus it seemed to typify the exclusiveness 
 of sects, rather than the world-wide hospitality of gen- 
 uine religion. I had imagined a cathedral with a scope 
 more vast. These Gothic aisles, with their groined 
 arches overhead, supported by clustered pillars in long 
 vistas up and down, were venerable and magnificent, 
 but included too much of the twilight of that monkish 
 gloom out of which they grew. It is no matter whether 
 I ever came to a more satisfactory appreciation of this 
 kind of architecture ; the only value of my strictures 
 being to show the folly of looking at noble objects in 
 the wrong mood, and the absurdity of a new visitant 
 pretending to hold any opinion whatever on such sub- 
 jects, instead of surrendering himself to the old build' 
 er’s infiuence with childlike simplicity. 
 
156 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 A great deal of white marble decorates the old stone- 
 work of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sar- 
 cophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are com- 
 memorative of people locally distinguished, especially 
 the deans and canons of the Cathedral, with their rel- 
 atives and families ; and I found but two monuments 
 of personages whom I had ever heard of, — one being 
 Gilbert Walmesley and the other Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It 
 was really pleasant to meet her there; for after a friend 
 has lain in the grave far into the second century, she 
 would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emo- 
 tions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds 
 a rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-honored cus- 
 tom of burial in churches, after a few years, at least, 
 when the mortal remains have turned to dust beneath 
 the pavement, and the quaint devices and inscriptions 
 still speak to you above. The statues, that stood or 
 reclined in several recesses of the Cathedral, had a 
 kind of life, and I regarded them with an odd sort of 
 deference, as if they were privileged denizens of the 
 precinct. It was singular, too, how the memorial of 
 the latest buried person, the man whose features were 
 familiar in the streets of Lichfield only yesterday, 
 seemed precisely as much at home here as his mediae- 
 val predecessors. Henceforward he belonged to the 
 Cathedral like one of its original pillars. Methought 
 this impression in my fancy might be the shadow of a 
 spiritual fact. The dying melt into the great multh 
 tude of the Departed as quietly as a drop of water 
 into the ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of no urn 
 familiarity with their new circumstances, but immedb 
 ately become aware of an insufferable strangeness in 
 the world which they have quitted. Death has not 
 taken them away, but brought them home. 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 157 
 
 The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary af- 
 fairs, however, have not ceased to attend upon these 
 marble inhabitants ; for I saw the upper fragment of 
 a sculptured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the 
 lower half of whom had doubtless been demolished by 
 Cromwell’s soldiers when they took the Minster by 
 storm. And there lies the remnant of this devout lady 
 on her slab, ever since the outrage, as for centuries 
 before, with a countenance of divine serenity, and her 
 hands clasped in prayer, symbolizing a depth of relig- 
 ious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could 
 disturb. Another piece of sculpture (apparently a fa- 
 vorite subject in the Middle Ages, for I have seen sev- 
 eral like it in other cathedrals) was a reclining skele- 
 ton, as faithfully representing an open-work of bones 
 as could well be expected in a solid block of marble, 
 and at a period, moreover, when the mysteries of the 
 human frame were rather to be guessed at than re- 
 vealed. Whatever the anatomical defects of his pro- 
 duction, the old sculptor had succeeded in making it 
 ghastly beyond measure. How much mischief has 
 been wrought upon us by this invariable gloom of the 
 Gothic imagination ; flinging itself like a death-scented 
 pall over our conceptions of the future state, smother- 
 ing our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dismal ef- 
 forts to raise the harvest of immortality out of what is 
 most opposite to it, — the grave ! 
 
 The cathedral service is performed twice every day s 
 at ten o’clock and at four. When I first entered, the 
 choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys, 
 with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as fresh 
 as bird-notes) were just winding up their harmonious 
 labors, and soon came thronging through a side-door 
 from the chancel into the nave. They were all dressed 
 
158 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETEIl. 
 
 in long white robes, and looked like a peculiar order of 
 beings, created on purpose to hover between the roof 
 and pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice, and il- 
 luminate it with divine melodies, reposing themselves, 
 meanwhile, on the heavy grandeur of the organ-tones 
 like cherubs on a golden cloud. All at once, however, 
 one of the cherubic multitude pulled off his white 
 gown, thus transforming himself before my very eyes 
 into a commonplace youth of the day, in modern frock- 
 coat and trousers of a decidedly provincial cut. This 
 absurd little incident, I verily believe, had a sinister 
 effect in putting me at odds with the proper influences 
 of the Cathedral, nor could I quite recover a suitable 
 frame of mind during my stay there. But, emerging 
 into the open air, I began to be sensible that I had 
 left a magnificent interior behind me, and I have never 
 quite lost the perception and enjoyment of it in these 
 intervening years. 
 
 A large space in the immediate neighborhood of the 
 Cathedral is called the Close, and comprises beauti- 
 fully kept lawns and a shadowy walk bordered by the 
 dwellings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the dio- 
 cese. All this row of episcopal, canonical, and cler- 
 ical residences has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, 
 and well-protected though not inaccessible seclusion. 
 They seemed capable of including everything that a 
 saint could desire, and a great many more things than 
 most of us sinners generally succeed in acquiring. 
 Their most marked feature is a dignified comfort, 
 looking as if no disturbance or vulgar intrusiveness 
 could ever cross their thresholds, encroach upon their 
 ornamented lawns, or straggle into the beautiful gar- 
 dens that surround them with flower-beds and rich 
 clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal palace is a stately 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 159 
 
 mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian style, 
 and bearing on its front the figures 1687, as the date 
 of its erection. A large edifice of brick, which, if I 
 remember, stood next to the palace, 1 took to be the 
 residence of the second dignitary of the Cathedral ; 
 and, imthat case, it must have been the youthful 
 home of Addison, whose father was Dean of Lich- 
 field. I tried to fancy his figure on the delightful 
 walk that extends in front of those priestly abodes, 
 from which and the interior lawns it is separated by 
 an open-work iron fence, lined with rich old shrub- 
 bery, and overarched by a minster-aisle of venerable 
 trees. This path is haunted by the shades of famous 
 personages who have formerly trodden it. Johnson 
 must have been familiar with it, both as a boy, and 
 in his subsequent visits to Lichfield, an illustrious old 
 man. Miss Seward, connected with so many literary 
 reminiscences, lived in one of the adjacent houses. 
 Tradition says that it was a favorite spot of Major 
 Andre, who used to pace to and fro under these trees, 
 waiting, perhaps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of Ho- 
 noria Sneyd, before he crossed the ocean to encoun- 
 ter his dismal doom from an American court-martial. 
 David Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the path 
 in his boyish days, and, if he was an early student of 
 the drama, must often have thought of those two airy 
 characters of the “ Beaux’ Stratagem,” Archer and 
 Aimwell, who, on this very ground, after attending 
 service at the Cathedral, contrive to make acquaint- 
 ance with the ladies of the comedy. These creatures 
 of mere fiction have as positive a substance now as 
 the sturdy old figure of Johnson himself. They live, 
 while realities have died. The shadowy walk still 
 glistens with their gold-embroidered memories. 
 
160 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 Seeking for Johnson’s birthplace, I found it in St. 
 Mary’s Square, which is not so much a square as the 
 mere widening of a street. The house is tall and thin, 
 of three stories, with a square front and a roof rising 
 steep and high. On a side-view, the building looks as 
 if it had been cut in two in the midst, there being no 
 slope of the roof on that side. A ladder slanted 
 against the wall, and a painter was giving a livelier 
 hue to the plaster. In a corner-room of the basement, 
 where old Michael Johnson may be supposed to have 
 sold books, is now what we should call a dry-goods 
 store, or, according to the English phrase, a mercer’s 
 and haberdasher’s shop. The house has a private en- 
 trance on a cross-street, the door being accessible by 
 several much-worn stone steps, which are bordered by 
 an iron balustrade. I set my foot on the steps and laid 
 my hand on the balustrade, where J ohnson’s hand and 
 foot must many a time have been, and ascending to the 
 door, I knocked once, and again, and again, and got 
 no admittance. Going round to the shop- entrance, I 
 tried to open it, but found it as fast bolted as the gate 
 of Paradise. It is mortifying to be so balked in one’s 
 little enthusiasms ; but looking round in quest of some- 
 body to make inquiries of, I was a good deal consoled 
 by the sight of Dr. Johnson himself, who happened, 
 just at that moment, to be sitting at his ease nearly in 
 the middle of St. Mary’s Square, with his face turned 
 towards his father’s house. 
 
 Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the 
 Doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together 
 with the ponderous melancholy that had so long 
 weighed him down, the intelligent reader will at once 
 comprehend that he was marble in his substance, and 
 seated in a marble chair, on an elevated stone pedes- 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER, 
 
 161 
 
 tal. In short, it was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, 
 and placed here in 1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, 
 the reverend chancellor of the diocese. 
 
 The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much 
 more so than the mountainous Doctor himself) and 
 looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten 
 or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity 
 of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds’s portrait of Johnson, but calmer and sweeter 
 in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath 
 his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in 
 his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his 
 learned abstraction, owl-like, yet benevolent at heart. 
 The statue is immensely massive, a vast ponderosity 
 of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully 
 humanized, but rather resembling a great stone-bowh 
 der than a man. You must look with the eyes of 
 faith and sympathy, or, possibly, you might lose the 
 human being altogether, and find only a big stone 
 within your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three 
 bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented as 
 hardly more than a baby, bestriding an old man’s 
 shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head, which he 
 embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly 
 to the High-Church eloquence of Dr. Sacheverell. In 
 the second tablet, he is seen riding to school on the 
 shoulders of two of his comrades, while another boy 
 supports him in the rear. 
 
 The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a great 
 deal of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is 
 probably the more alive, because I have always been 
 profoundly impressed by the incident here commemo- 
 rated, and long ago tried to tell it for the behoof of 
 childish readers. It shows Johnson in the market- 
 11 
 
 YOL. VII. 
 
162 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER, 
 
 place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for an act of diso 
 bedience to his father, committed fifty years before. 
 He stands bareheaded, a venerable figure, and a coun- 
 tenance extremely sad and woe-begone, with the wind 
 and rain driving hard against him, and thus helping 
 to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his inward 
 state. Some market-people and children gaze awe- 
 stricken into his face, and an aged man and woman, 
 with clasped and uplifted hand, seem to be praying 
 for him. These latter personages (whose introduc- 
 tion by the artist is none the less effective, because, 
 in queer proximity, there are some commodities of 
 market-day in the shape of living ducks and dead 
 poultry) I interpreted to represent the spirits of John- 
 son’s father and mother, lending what aid they could 
 to lighten his half-century’s burden of remorse. 
 
 I had never heard of the above-described piece of 
 scidpture before ; it appears to have no reputation as 
 a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves 
 any. For me, however, it did as much as sculpture 
 could, under the circumstances, even if the artist of 
 the Libyan Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my in- 
 terest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly 
 by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty 
 and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the penance. 
 So, the next day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one 
 of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever 
 undertook, to see the very spot where Johnson had 
 stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its 
 name is pronounced Yuteoxeter) as being about nine 
 miles off from Lichfield, but the county-map would 
 indicate a greater distance ; and by rail, passing from 
 one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles. 
 I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 163 
 
 sending his literary merchandise by carrier’s wagon, 
 journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on market-day morning, 
 selling books through the busy hours, and returning to 
 Lichfield at night. This could not possibly have been 
 the case. 
 
 Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects 
 that I saw, with a green field or two between them 
 and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, 
 rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. 
 A very short walk takes you from the station up into 
 the town. It had been my previous impression that 
 the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately round- 
 about the church ; and, if I remember the narrative 
 aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes 
 his father’s book-stall as standing in the market-place, 
 close beside the sacred edifice. It is impossible for 
 me to say what changes may have occurred in the to- 
 pography of the town, during almost a century and a 
 half since Michael Johnson retired from business, and 
 ninety years, at least, since his son’s penance was per- 
 formed. But the church has now merely a street of 
 ordinary width passing around it, while the market- 
 place, though near at hand, neither forms a part of 
 it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and 
 bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and surge 
 against the churchyard and the old gray tower. Never- 
 theless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person 
 from the centre of the market-place to the church- 
 door ; and Michael J ohnson might very conveniently 
 have located his stall and laid out his literary ware in 
 the corner at the tower’s base ; better there, indeed, 
 than in the busy centre of an agricultural market. But 
 the picturesque arrangement and full impressiveness 
 of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not 
 
164 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 have done his penance in a corner, ever so little re- 
 tired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the 
 crowd, — the midmost man of the market-place, — a 
 central image of Memory and Remorse, contrasting 
 with and overpowering the petty materialism around 
 him. He himself, having the force to throw vitality 
 and truth into what persons differently constituted 
 might reckon a mere external ceremony, and an ab- 
 surd one, could not have failed to see this necessity. 
 I am resolved, therefore, that the true site of Dr. 
 Johnson's penance was in the middle of the market- 
 place. 
 
 That important portion of the town is a rather 
 spacious and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded 
 by houses and shops, some of them old, with red-tiled 
 roofs, others wearing a pretence of newness, but prob- 
 ably as old in their inner substance as the rest. The 
 people of Uttoxeter seemed very idle in the warm 
 summer-day, and were scattered in little groups along 
 the sidewalks, leisurely chatting with one another, and 
 often turning about to take a deliberate stare at my 
 humble self ; insomuch that 1 felt as if my genuine 
 sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many 
 reflections about him, must have imbued me with some 
 of his own singularity of mien. If their great-grand- 
 fathers were such redoubtable starers in the Doctor’s 
 day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity in- 
 dicates a paucity of visitors to the little town, except 
 for market purposes, and I question if Uttoxeter ever 
 saw an American before. The only other thing that 
 greatly impressed me was the abundance of public- 
 houses, one at every step or two : Red Lions, White 
 Harts, Bulls’ Heads, Mitres, Cross Keys, and I know 
 not what besides. These are probably for the accom 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 165 
 
 modation of the farmers and peasantry of the neigh- 
 borhood on market-day, and content themselves with a 
 very meagre business on other days of the week. At 
 any rate, I was the only guest in Uttoxeter at the 
 period of my visit, and had but an infinitesimal por- 
 tion of patronage to distribute among such a multitude 
 of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be scan- 
 dalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the 
 only important affair that I attended to, after coming 
 so far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and 
 standing now on the very spot where my pious errand 
 should have been consummated. I stepped into one of 
 the rustic hostleries and got my dinner, — bacon and 
 greens, some mutton-chops, juicier and more delec- 
 table than all America could serve up at the President’s 
 table, and a gooseberry pudding ; a sufficient meal for 
 six yeomen, and good enough for a prince, besides a 
 pitcher of foaming ale, the whole at the pitiful small 
 charge of eighteen-pence ! 
 
 Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me,- for nobody 
 had a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. 
 And as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my 
 dinner, — it was the wisest thing I had done that day. 
 A sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed 
 into these attempts to realize the things which he has 
 dreamed about, and which, when they cease to be 
 purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the truest of 
 their truth, the loftiest and profoundest part of their 
 power over his sympathies. Facts, as we really find 
 them, whatever poetry they may involve, are covered 
 with a stony excrescence of prose, resembling the crust 
 on a beautiful sea-shell, and they never show their 
 most delicate and divinest colors until we shall have 
 dissolved away their grosser actualities by steeping 
 
166 
 
 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 them long in a powerful menstruum of thought. And 
 seeking to actualize them again, we do but renew the 
 crust. If this were otherwise, — if the moral sublimity 
 of a great fact depended in any degree on its garb of 
 external circumstances, things which change and de- 
 cay, — it could not itself be immortal and ubiquitous, 
 and only a brief point of time and a little neighbor- 
 hood would be spiritually nourished by its grandeur 
 and beauty. 
 
 Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled 
 with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old quaffer 
 of that excellent liquor stir up his cup with a sprig of 
 some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile I found 
 myself still haunted by a desire to get a definite result 
 out of my visit to Uttoxeter. The hospitable inn was 
 called the Nag’s Head, and, standing beside the mar- 
 ket-place, was as likely as any other to have enter- 
 tained old Michael J ohnson in the days when he used 
 to come hither to sell books. He, perhaps, had dined 
 on bacon and greens, and drunk his ale, and smoked 
 his pipe, in the very room where I now sat, which was 
 a low, ancient room, certainly much older than Queen 
 Anne’s time, with a red-brick floor, and a white-washed 
 ceiling, traversed by bare, rough beams, the whole in 
 the rudest fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did 
 it lack ornament, the walls being hung with colored en- 
 gravings of prize oxen and other pretty prints, and the 
 mantel-piece adorned with earthen-ware figures of shep- 
 herdesses in the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael 
 Johnson’s eyes might have rested on that self-same 
 earthen image, to examine which more closely I had 
 just crossed the brick pavement of the room. And, 
 sitting down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced 
 through the open window into the sunny market-place, 
 
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 
 
 167 
 
 and wished that I could honestly fix on one spot rather 
 than another, as likely to have been the holy site where 
 J ohnson stood to do his penance. 
 
 How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not 
 have marked and kept in mind the very place ! How 
 shameful (nothing less than that) that there should 
 be no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and 
 touching a passage as can be cited out of any human 
 life ! No inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse 
 of Scripture on the wall of the church ! No statue of 
 the venerable and illustrious penitent in the market- 
 place to throw a wholesome awe over its earthliness, 
 its frauds and petty wrongs, of which the benumbed 
 fingers of conscience can make no record, its selfish 
 competition of each man with his brother or his neigh- 
 bor, its traffic of soul - substance for a little worldly 
 gain ! Such a statue, if the piety of the people did 
 not raise it, might almost have been expected to grow 
 up out of the pavement of its own accord on the spot 
 that had been watered by the rain that dripped from 
 Johnson’s garments, mingled with his remorseful tears. 
 
 Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that 
 there were individuals in the town who could have 
 shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson 
 performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that 
 sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have in- 
 duced certain local discussions as to the expediency of 
 erecting a memorial. With all deference to my polite 
 informant, I surmise that there is a mistake, and de- 
 cline, without further and precise evidence, giving 
 credit to either of the above statements. The inhab- 
 itants know nothing, as a matter of general interest, 
 about the penance, and care nothing for the scene of 
 it. If the clergyman of the parish, for example, had 
 
168 LICHFIELD AND tJTTOXETER. 
 
 ever heard of it, would he not have used the theme 
 time and again, wherewith to work tenderly and pro- 
 foundly on the souls committed to his charge? If 
 parents were familiar with it, would they not teach it 
 to their young ones at the fireside, both to insure rev- 
 erence to their own gray hairs, and to protect the chil- 
 dren from such unavailing regrets as Johnson bore 
 upon his heart for fifty years ? If the site were ascer* 
 tained, would not the pavement thereabouts be worn 
 with reverential footsteps? Would not every town- 
 born child be able to direct the pilgrim thither ? While 
 waiting at the station, before my departure, I asked a 
 boy who stood near me, — an intelligent and gentle- 
 manly lad twelve or thirteeen years old, whom I should 
 take to be a clergyman’s son, — I asked him if he had 
 ever heard the story of Dr. Johnson, how he stood an 
 hour doing penance near that church, the spire of 
 which rose before us. The boy stared and answered, — 
 ^^No!” 
 
 ‘‘ Were you born in Uttoxeter ? ” 
 
 Yes.” 
 
 I inquired if no circumstance such as I had men- 
 tioned was known or talked about among the inhab- 
 itants. 
 
 ‘‘ No,” said the boy ; not that I ever heard of.” 
 
 Just think of the absurd little town, knowing noth- 
 ing of the only memorable incident which ever hap- 
 pened within its boundaries since the old Britons built 
 it, this sad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot 
 (for I found it holy to my Contemplation, again, as 
 soon as it lay behind me) in the heart of a stranger 
 from three thousand miles over the sea ! It but con- 
 firms what I have been saying, that sublime and beau- 
 tiful facts are best understood when etherealized by 
 distance. 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 W E set out at a little past eleven, and made our 
 first stage to Manchester. We were by this time suf- 
 ficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright 
 and sunny one ; although the May sunshine was min- 
 gled with water, as it were, and distempered with a 
 very bitter east-wind. 
 
 Lancashire is a dreary county (all, at least, except 
 its hilly portions), and I have never passed through it 
 without wishing myself anywhere but in that particu- 
 lar spot where I then happened to be. A few places 
 along our route were historically interesting ; as, for 
 example, Bolton, which was the scene of many remark- 
 able events in the Parliamentary War, and in the 
 market - square of which one of the Earls of Derby 
 was beheaded. W e saw, along the wayside, the never- 
 failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous fea- 
 tures of an ordinary English landscape. There were 
 little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their 
 tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their 
 ugliness of brick-work, and their heaps of refuse mat- 
 ter from the furnace, which seems to be the only kind 
 of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and 
 resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it 
 aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral al- 
 ways disfigure the neighborhood of iron - mongering 
 towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are 
 hardly made decent with a little grass. 
 
 At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef- 
 
170 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 field and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather 
 better than that through which we had hitherto passed, 
 though still by no means very striking ; for (except 
 in the show - districts, such as the Lake country, or 
 Derbyshire) English scenery is not particularly well 
 worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a pic- 
 ture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, nc 
 doubt ; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish 
 added by human art, are perhaps as attractive to an 
 American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our 
 journey, however, between Manchester and Sheffield 
 was not through a rich tract of country, but along 
 a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending 
 straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands 
 with here and there a plantation of trees. Sometimes 
 there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, 
 and desolate, conveying the very impression which the 
 reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronte’s nov- 
 els, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old 
 stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an 
 old church-tower, were visible ; but these are almost 
 too common objects to be noticed in an English land- 
 scape. 
 
 On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the 
 country is seen quite amiss, because it was never in- 
 tended to be looked at from any point of view in that 
 straight line ; so that it is like looking at the wrong 
 side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and 
 foot-paths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and 
 adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the 
 physiognomy of the country ; and, furthermore, every 
 object within view of them had some subtile reference 
 to their curves and undulations ; but the line of a rail- 
 way is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 171 
 
 (tilings at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause 
 what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing 
 within the scope of a railway traveller’s eye ; and if 
 there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a 
 flying shot at the picturesque. 
 
 At one of the stations (it was near a village of an- 
 cient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide York- 
 shire moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed 
 to have just alighted from the train. She caught my 
 attention by a singular movement of the head, not 
 once only, but continually repeated, and at regular in- 
 tervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn pro- 
 test against some action that developed itself before 
 her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it 
 should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing- 
 more than a paralytic or nervous affection ; yet one 
 might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable 
 wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gen- 
 tlewoman’s presence, either against herself or some- 
 body whom she loved still better. Her features had 
 a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused 
 by her habitual effort to compose and keep them 
 quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to para- 
 lytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable 
 character of the motion — her look of force and self- 
 control, which had the appearance of rendering it vol- 
 untary, while yet it was so fateful — have stamped 
 this poor lady’s face and gesture into my memory ; so 
 that, some dark day or other, 1 am afraid she will re- 
 produce herself in a dismal romance. 
 
 The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the 
 tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield 
 station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous 
 town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of 
 
172 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 its own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely 
 vague and misty, — or rather, smoky : for Sheffield 
 seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or 
 Birmingham, — smokier than all England besides, urn 
 less Newcastle be the exception. It might have been 
 Pluto’s own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor ; 
 and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley 
 of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles 
 in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a 
 mountainous hill. 
 
 After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, 
 gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw 
 what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of 
 Sherwood Forest, — not consisting, however, of thou- 
 sand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood’s days, but 
 of young and thriving plantations, which will require 
 a century or two of slow English growth to give them 
 much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam’s property 
 lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was 
 hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. 
 Farther onward the country grew quite level around 
 us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lin- 
 colnshire ; and shortly after six o’clock we caught the 
 first glimpse of the cathedral towers, though they 
 loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived 
 idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edi- 
 fice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it 
 to be larger than our receptivity could take in. 
 
 At the railway-station we found no cab (it being an 
 unknown vehicle in Lincoln), but only an omnibus 
 belonging to the Saracen’s Head, which the driver rec- 
 ommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us 
 thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and 
 looked comfortable enough ; though, like the hotels of 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 173 
 
 most old English towns, it had a musty fragrance of 
 antiquity, such as 1 have smelt in a seldom-opened 
 London church where the broad-aisle is paved with 
 tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, the 
 entrance into its interior court-yard being through an 
 arch, in the side of which is the door of the hotel. 
 There are long corridors, an intricate arrangement of 
 passages, an up - and - down meandering of staircases, 
 amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some 
 forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years 
 ago, and was still seeking for his bedroom while the 
 rest of his generation were in their graves. There is 
 no exaggerating the confusion of mind that seizes 
 upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a 
 great old-fashioned English inn. 
 
 This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, 
 and within a very short distance of one of the ’ancient 
 city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with 
 a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side ; the 
 whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy struc- 
 ture, through the dark vista of which you look into the 
 Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many 
 antique peculiarities ; though, unquestionably, English 
 domestic architecture has lost its most impressive fea- 
 tures, in the course of the last century. In this re- 
 spect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln : Chester, 
 for instance, and Shrewsbury, — which last is unusu- 
 ally rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the 
 gentry of the shire used to make their winter abodes, 
 in a provincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowa- 
 days, there is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed 
 fronts, hiding houses that are older than ever, but ob- 
 literating the picturesque antiquity of the street. 
 
 Between seven and eight o’clock (it being still 
 
174 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 broad daylight in these long English days) we set out 
 to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathe- 
 dral. Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city- 
 gate close by is called, we ascended a street which 
 grew steeper and narrower as we advanced, till at last 
 it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed, — so 
 steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle 
 downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn 
 up. Being almost the only hill in Lincolnshire, the 
 inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it. The 
 houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect, 
 except one with a stone portal and carved ornaments, 
 which is now a dwelling-place for poverty-stricken 
 people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in 
 the days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of 
 architecture dates back. This is called the Jewess’s 
 House,’ having been inhabited by a woman of that 
 faith who was hanged six hundred years ago. 
 
 And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer- 
 tainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to 
 be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost 
 angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesias- 
 tical duty to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, 
 and was probably performed as such, and groaned 
 over accordingly, in monkish times. Formerly, on 
 the day of his installation, the Bishop used to ascend 
 the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invig- 
 orated by looking upward to the grandeur that was 
 to console him for the humility of his approach. We, 
 likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the ca- 
 thedral towers ; and, finally, attaining an open square 
 on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the 
 left hand, and another to the right. The latter had 
 apparently been a part of the exterior defences of 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 175 
 
 the Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified. 
 The west front rose behind. We passed through one 
 of the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found our- 
 selves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, 
 where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, look- 
 ing down on the ancient structures that surround it, 
 all of which, in former days, were the habitations of 
 its dignitaries and ofiicers. Some of them are still oc- 
 cupied as such, though others are in too neglected and 
 dilapidated a state to seem worthy of so splendid an 
 establishment. Unless it be Salisbury Close, however 
 (which is incomparably rich as regards the old resi- 
 dences that belong to it), I remember no more com- 
 fortably picturesque precincts round any other cathe- 
 dral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral close, in 
 turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, cosiest, safest, 
 least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most enjoyable 
 shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal 
 man contrived for himself. How delightful, to com- 
 bine all this with the service of the temple ! 
 
 Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown- 
 stone, which appears either to have been largely re- 
 stored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly 
 surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of 
 the ancient churches and castles in England. In many 
 parts, the recent restorations are quite evident ; but 
 other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have 
 been touched for centuries : for there are still the gar- 
 goyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may 
 be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque 
 extravagance which no modern imitation can effecto 
 There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height 
 of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all 
 over the walls : most of them empty, but a few con- 
 
176 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 taining the lamentable remnants of headless saints and 
 angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives 
 in the human heart against carved images, insomuch 
 that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan 
 deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe op« 
 portunity to knock off their heads ! In spite of all 
 dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of 
 the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered 
 from massive base to airy summit with the minutest 
 details of sculpture and carving: at least, it was so 
 once ; and even now the spiritual impression of its 
 beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice 
 to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have 
 seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so mi- 
 nutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of 
 labor; and this cathedral - front seems to have been 
 elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. 
 Not that the result is in the least petty, but miracu- 
 lously grand, and all the more so for the faithful 
 beauty of the smallest details. 
 
 An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west 
 front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and 
 called to inquire if we wished to go into the Cathe- 
 dral ; but as there would have been a dusky twilight 
 beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered 
 itself within, we declined for the present. So we 
 merely walked round the exterior, and thought it 
 more beautiful than that of York ; though, on recol- 
 lection, I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as 
 that. It is vain to attempt a description, or seek even 
 to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It 
 does not impress the beholder as an inanimate object, 
 but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring 
 life of its own, — a creation which man did not build, 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 177 
 
 though in some way or other it is connected with 
 him, and kindred to human nature. In short, I faU 
 straightway to talking nonsense, when I try to ex- 
 press my inner sense of this and other cathedrals. 
 
 While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of 
 the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters ; and then 
 Great Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it 
 was eight o’clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest 
 accents that I ever heard from any bell, — slow, and 
 solemn, and allowing the profound reverberations of 
 each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It 
 was still broad daylight in that upper region of the 
 town, and would be so for some time longer ; but the 
 evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We 
 therefore descended the steep street, — our younger 
 companion running before us, and gathering such 
 headway that I fully expected him to break his head 
 against some projecting wall. 
 
 In the morning we took a fly (an English term for 
 an exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the 
 Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than 
 the one we had previously climbed. We alighted be- 
 fore the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest 
 of the verger ; but, as he was not immediately to be 
 found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found 
 it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, 
 methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, es- 
 pecially beneath the great central tower of the latter. 
 Unless a writer intends a professedly architectural 
 description, there is but one set of phrases in which 
 to talk of all the cathedrals in England and elsewhere. 
 They are alike in their great features : an acre or two 
 of stone flags for a pavement ; rows of vast columns 
 supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height ; great 
 
 VOL. VII. 12 
 
178 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient 
 or modern stained glass ; and an elaborately carved 
 screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the 
 vista that might else be of such glorious length, and 
 which is further choked up by a massive organ, — in 
 spite of which obstructions you catch the broad, va- 
 riegated glimmer of the painted east window, where 
 a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. 
 Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the 
 Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop’s throne, the 
 pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out 
 the Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range of 
 chapels (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which 
 have now lost their individual consecration), nor the 
 old monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, in 
 the side-aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to 
 the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-House, 
 which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is supported 
 by one central pillar rising from the floor, and putting 
 forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adja- 
 cent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extending 
 round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tomb- 
 stones, the more antique of which have had their in- 
 scriptions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking 
 their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, five 
 hundred years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, 
 although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, 
 have been made to serve as memorials to dead people 
 of very recent date. 
 
 In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bish- 
 ops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone pur- 
 porting to be the monument of Catherine Swynford, 
 wife of J ohn of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine of the 
 little Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 179 
 
 to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The 
 Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments ; for 
 it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at 
 the Reformation and in Cromwell’s time. This latter 
 iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons 
 and vergers of most of the old churches which I have 
 visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave 
 of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the 
 monkish sculptures, and the ancestral memorials of 
 great families, quite at their wicked and plebeian 
 pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most exqui- 
 site and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, and 
 grapevines, and miracles of stone-work twined about 
 arches, as if the material had been as soft as wax in 
 the cunning sculptor’s hands, — the leaves being rep- 
 resented with all their veins, so that you would al- 
 most think it petrified Nature, for which he sought to 
 steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those gro- 
 tesque faces which always grin at you from the pro- 
 jections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had 
 gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded 
 such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in some- 
 thing ineffably absurd. 
 
 Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great 
 edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to 
 the utmost degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable to 
 think that the artists would have taken these further 
 pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor 
 in working out their conceptions to the extremest 
 point. But, at present, the whole interior of the Ca- 
 thedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the 
 very meanest hue imaginable, and for which some- 
 body’s soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo. 
 
 In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which 
 
180 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON, 
 
 the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean brick build- 
 ing, with a locked door. Our guide, — 1 forgot to say 
 that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and 
 with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, — 
 our guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of 
 steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have 
 taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil- 
 carpeting, which might originally have been painted 
 of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tesseh 
 lated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or pieces 
 of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, 
 and has not been meddled with, further than by re- 
 moving the superincumbent earth and rubbish. 
 
 Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded 
 about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw 
 a place where the stone pavement had been worn away 
 by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as 
 they knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin. 
 
 Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of 
 more venerable appearance than we had heretofore 
 seen, bordered with houses, the high-peaked roofs of 
 which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us 
 to a Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a 
 fortification, and has been striding across the English 
 street ever since the latter was a faint village - path, 
 and for centuries before. The arch is about four hun- 
 dred yards from the Cathedral, and it is to be noticed 
 that there are Roman remains in all this neighbor- 
 hood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable 
 more beneath it ; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an in- 
 undation of accumulated soil seems to have swept over 
 what was the surface of that earlier day. The gate- 
 way which I am speaking about is probably buried to 
 a third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Ro' 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 181 
 
 man pavement (if sought for at the original depth) as 
 that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. It is a 
 rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now 
 as it could have been two thousand years ago ; and 
 though Time has gnawed it externally, he has made 
 what amends he could by crowning its rough and bro- 
 ken summit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts 
 of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the 
 sides. 
 
 There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the 
 Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral ; 
 but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of 
 wood, and we were denied admittance, because some 
 part of the precincts are used as a prison. We now 
 rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, 
 besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of 
 some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean 
 little hovels. I suspect that all or most of the life of 
 the present day has subsided into the lower town, and 
 that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in 
 these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat, at the 
 base of the castle-wall, are clustered whole colonies of 
 small houses, some of brick, but the larger portion 
 built of old stones which once made part of the Nor- 
 man keep, or of Roman structures that existed before 
 the Conqueror’s castle was ever dreamed about. They 
 are like toadstools that spring up from the mould of 
 a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonder- 
 fully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite 
 as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, pon- 
 derous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above 
 our heads, heaving its huge, gray mass out of a bank 
 of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as 
 lilacs, and other flowering plants, in which its founda- 
 tions were completely hidden. 
 
182 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON, 
 
 After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex- 
 cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant 
 and level road bordered with dwellings of various char- 
 acter. One or two were houses of gentility, with de- 
 lightful and shadowy lawns before them ; many had 
 those high, red - tiled roofs, ascending into acutely 
 pointed gables, which seem to belong to the same epoch 
 as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns ; and 
 there were pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and 
 rural, with hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, 
 as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their thatched 
 roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, 
 crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were 
 fragments of old Catholic tombstones, disposed by 
 way of ornament. 
 
 We now went home to the Saracen’s Head ; and as 
 the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a 
 little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself 
 released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But 
 it had taken possession of me, and would not let me 
 be at rest ; so at leng1;h I found myself compelled to 
 climb the hill again between daylight and dusk. A 
 mist was now hovering about the upper height of the 
 great central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate 
 its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in 
 the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view 
 that I had had. The whole lower part of the structure 
 was seen with perfect distinctness ; but at the very sum- 
 mit the mist was so dense as to form an actual cloud, 
 as well defined as ever I saw resting on a mountain- 
 top. Really and literally, here was a “ cloud - capt 
 tower.” 
 
 The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a 
 richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 183 
 
 The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exte- 
 rior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York 
 Minster ; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the 
 many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the 
 pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and reecho them 
 into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square 
 and angular in its general effect ; but in this at Lin- 
 coln there is a continual mystery of variety, so that at 
 every glance you are aware of a change, and a disclos- 
 ure of something new, yet working an harmonious 
 development of what you have heretofore seen. The 
 west front is unspeakably grand, and may be read 
 over and over again forever, and still show undetected 
 meanings, like a great, broad page of marvellous writ- 
 ing in black-letter, — so many sculptured ornaments 
 there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray 
 statues that have grown there since you looked last, 
 and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies be- 
 neath which carved images used to be, and where they 
 will show themselves again, if you gaze long enough. 
 — But I will not say another word about the Cathe- 
 dral. 
 
 We spent the rest of the day within the sombre 
 precincts of the Saracen’s Head, reading yesterday’s 
 ‘‘ Times,” The Guide-Book of Lincoln,” and The 
 Directory of the Eastern Counties.” Dismal as the 
 weather was, the street beneath our window was en- 
 livened with a great bustle and turmoil of people all 
 the evening, because it was Saturday night, and they 
 had accomplished their week’s toil, received their wa- 
 ges, and were making their small purchases against 
 Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew 
 how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, 
 with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of the bra- 
 
184 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 zen trumpet and pattering on the bass-drum ; a spirit- 
 shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of custom; 
 and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occasional 
 vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold water that 
 dripped into the cups. The whole breadth of the 
 street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across 
 the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and hum- 
 ming with human life. 
 
 Observing in the Guide-Book that a steamer runs on 
 the river Witham between Lincoln and Boston, I in- 
 quired of the waiter, and learned that she was to start 
 on Monday at ten o’clock. Thinking it might be an 
 interesting trip, and a pleasant variation of our cus- 
 tomary mode of travel, we determined to make the 
 voyage. The Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing 
 the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic con- 
 struction, a little below the Saracen’s Head. It has 
 more the appearance of a canal than of a river, in its 
 passage through the town, — being bordered with hewn- 
 stone mason-work on each side, and provided with one 
 or two locks. The steamer proved to be small, dirty, 
 and altogether inconvenient. The early morning had 
 been bright ; but the sky now lowered upon us with 
 a sulky English temper, and we had not long put off 
 before we felt an ugly wind from the German Ocean 
 blowing right in our teeth. There were a number of 
 passengers on board, country-people, such as travel by 
 third-class on the railway ; for, I suppose, nobody but 
 ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the steamer for 
 the sake of what he might happen upon in the way of 
 river-scenery. 
 
 W e bothered a good while about getting through a 
 preliminary lock ; nor, when fairly under way, did we 
 ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour. Constant 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 185 
 
 delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take 
 up passengers and freight, — not at regular landing- 
 places, but anywhere along the green banks. The 
 scenery was identical with that of the railway, because 
 the latter runs along by the river - side through the 
 whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to 
 make a short cut across some sinuosity ; so that our 
 only advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like sloth- 
 fulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough 
 and to spare for the objects along the shore. Unfor- 
 tunately, there was nothing, or next to nothing, to be 
 seen, — the country being one unvaried level over the 
 whole thirty miles of our voyage, — not a hill in sight 
 either near or far, except that solitary one on the sum- 
 mit of which we had left Lincoln Cathedral. And 
 the Cathedral was our landmark for four hours or 
 more, and at last rather faded out than was hidden by 
 any intervening object. 
 
 It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if 
 the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in 
 our faces, and chilled us through, in spite of the sun- 
 shine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. 
 These English east-winds, which prevail from Febru- 
 ary till June, are greater nuisances than the east- wind 
 of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not bring 
 mist and storm, as with us, but some of the sunniest 
 weather that England sees. Under their influence, 
 the sky smiles and is villanous. 
 
 The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had 
 an English character that was abundantly worth our 
 looking at. A green luxuriance of early grass ; old, 
 high -roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone 
 barns and ricks of hay and grain ; ancient villages, 
 with the square, gray tower of a church seen afar over 
 
186 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs ; here 
 and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, sur- 
 rounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan hall, 
 though it looked more like the abode of some rich 
 yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a mediaeval 
 castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Cromwell, but 
 whether of the Protector’s family I cannot tell. But 
 the gentry do not appear to have settled multitudi- 
 nously in this tract of country ; nor is it to be won- 
 dered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as 
 soon think of settling in Holland. The river retains 
 its canal-like aspect all along ; and only in the latter 
 part of its course does it become more than wide 
 enough for the little steamer to turn itself round, — 
 at broadest, not more than twice that width. 
 
 The only memorable incident of our voyage hap- 
 pened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet 
 of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer 
 went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into 
 great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I 
 saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to 
 the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, 
 since I could not possibly avert it. The poor duck- 
 lings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with 
 all their tiny might to escape ; four of them, I believe, 
 were washed aside and thrown off unhurt from the 
 steamer’s prow ; but the fifth must have gone under 
 the whole length of the keel, and never could have 
 come up alive. 
 
 At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower 
 of Saint Botolph’s Church (three hundred feet high, 
 the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Ca- 
 thedral) looming in the distance. At about half past 
 four we reached Boston (which name has been short* 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 187 
 
 ened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly 
 English pronunciation, from Botolph’s town), and 
 were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market- 
 place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor 
 one enough ; and we were shown into a small, stifled 
 parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale toba^cco- 
 smoke, — tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter 
 assured us that the room had not more recently been 
 fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, ap- 
 parently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans of 
 this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who 
 people the daughter-city in New England. Our par- 
 lor had the one recommendation of looking into the 
 market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the 
 tall spire and noble old church. 
 
 In my first ramble about the town, chance led me 
 to the river-side, at that quarter where the port is sit- 
 uated. Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned 
 aspect, seemingly warehouses, with windows in the 
 high, steep roofs. The Custom House found ample 
 accommodation within an ordinary dwelling - house. 
 Two or three large schooners were moored along the 
 river’s brink, which had here a stone margin ; another 
 large and handsome schooner was evidently just fin- 
 ished, rigged and equipped for her first voyage ; the 
 rudiments of another were on the stocks, in a ship-yard 
 bordering on the river. Still another, while I was 
 looking on, came up the stream, and lowered her 
 mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old man on the 
 bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo ; but 
 the Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of 
 talking English that I could not understand the reply. 
 Farther down the river, I saw a brig, approaching 
 rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd 
 
188 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 impression of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and 
 a remnant of wholesome life ; and I could not but con- 
 trast it with the mighty and populous activity of our 
 own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this 
 old English town, — the latter, perhaps, almost sta- 
 tionary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an 
 offspring had taken away its own principle of growth, 
 I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, and 
 Washington Street, and the Great Elm, and the State 
 House, and exulted lustily, — but yet began to feel 
 at home in this good old town, f(?r its very name’s 
 sake, as I never had before felt, in England. 
 
 The next morning we came out in the early sun- 
 shine (the sun must have been shining nearly four 
 hours, however, for it was after eight o’clock), and 
 strolled about the streets, like people who had a right 
 to be there. The market-place of Boston is an irreg- 
 ular square, into one end of which the chancel of 
 the church slightly projects. The gates of the church- 
 yard were open and free to all passengers, and the 
 common footway of the towns-people seems to lie to 
 and fro across it. It is paved, according to English 
 custom, with flat tombstones ; and there are also raised 
 or altar tombs, some of which have armorial bearings 
 on them. One clergyman has caused himself and his 
 wife to be buried right in the middle of the stone-bor- 
 dered path that traverses the churchyard ; so that not 
 an individual of the thousands who pass along this 
 public way can help trampling over him or her. The 
 scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in the morning 
 sun : people going about their business in the day’s 
 primal freshness, which was just as fresh here as in 
 younger villages ; children with milk - pails loitering 
 over the burial-stones ; school-boys playing leap-frog 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON, 
 
 189 
 
 with the altar-tombs ; the simple old town preparing 
 itself for the day, which would be like myriads of 
 other days that had passed over it, but yet would be 
 worth living through. And down on the churchyard, 
 where were buried many generations whom it remem- 
 bered in their time, looked the stately tower of Saint 
 Botolph ; and it was good to see and think of such an 
 age-long giant intermarrying the present epoch with 
 a distant past, and getting quite imbued with human 
 nature by being so immemorially connected with men’s 
 familiar knowledge and homely interests. It is a 
 noble tower ; and the jackdaws, evidently have pleas- 
 ant homes in their hereditary nests among its top- 
 most windows, and live delightful lives, flitting and 
 cawing about its pinnacles and flying buttresses. I 
 should almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the 
 sake of living up there. 
 
 In front of the church, not more than twenty yards 
 off, and with a low brick wall between, flows the river 
 Witham. On the hither bank a fisherman was v/ash- 
 ing his boat ; and another skiff, with her sail lazily 
 half twisted, lay on the opposite strand. The stream 
 at this point is about of such width, that, if the tall 
 tower were to tumble over flat on its face, its top- 
 stone might perhaps reach to the middle of the chan- 
 nel. On the farther shore there is a line of antique- 
 looking houses, with roofs of red tile, and windows 
 opening out of them, — some of these dwellings be- 
 ing so ancient, that the Reverend Mr. Cotton, subse- 
 quently our first Boston minister, must have seen 
 them with his own bodily eyes when he used to issue 
 from the front -portal after service. Indeed, there 
 must be very many houses here, and even some streets, 
 that bear much the aspect that they did when the Pu- 
 ritan divine paced solemnly among them. 
 
190 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 In our rambles about town, we went into a book- 
 seller’s shop to inquire if he had any description of 
 Boston for sale. He offered me (or, rather, produced 
 for inspection, not supposing that I would buy it) a 
 quarto history of the town, published by subscription, 
 nearly forty years ago. The bookseller showed him- 
 self a well-informed and affable man, and a local anti- 
 quary, to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were 
 a godsend. He had met with several Americans, who, 
 at various times, had come on pilgrimages to this 
 place, and he had been in correspondence with others. 
 Happening to have heard the name of one member of 
 our party, he showed us great courtesy and kindness, 
 and invited us into his inner domicile, where, as he 
 modestly intimated, he kept a few articles which it 
 might interest us to see. So we went with him 
 through the shop, up stairs, into the private part of 
 his establishment ; and, really, it was one of the rar- 
 est adventures I ever met with, to stumble upon this 
 treasure of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and 
 curiosities, veiled behind the unostentatious front of a 
 bookseller’s shop, in a very moderate line of village 
 business. The two up-stair rooms into which he intro- 
 duced us were so crowded with inestimable articles, 
 that we were almost afraid to stir for fear of breaking 
 some fragile thing that had been accumulating value 
 for unknown centuries. 
 
 The apartment was hung round with pictures and 
 old engravings, many of which were extremely rare. 
 Premising that he was going to show us something 
 very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room 
 and returned with a counterpane of fine linen, elabo- 
 rately embroidered with silk, wliich so profusely cov- 
 ered the linen that the general effect was as if the 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 191 
 
 main texture were silken. It was stained and seemed 
 very old, and had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought 
 all over with birds and flowers in a most delicate style 
 of needlework, and among other devices, more than 
 once repeated, was the cipher, M. S., — being the ini- 
 tials of one of the most unhappy names that ever a 
 woman bore. This quilt was embroidered by the 
 hands of Mary Queen of Scots, during her imprison- 
 ment at Fotheringay Castle; and having evidently 
 been a work of years, she had doubtless shed many 
 tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and 
 abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds 
 and flowers. As a counterpart to this most precious 
 relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a 
 former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Cap- 
 tain Cook ; it was a bag, cunningly made of some 
 delicate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. 
 Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of very 
 antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket- 
 holes with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and 
 silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, 
 by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) 
 was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth’s Lord 
 Burleigh ; but that great statesman must have been a 
 person of very moderate girth in the chest and waist ; 
 for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable 
 fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our 
 party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, 
 Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drink- 
 ing-glasses, with a view of Saint Botolph’s steeple on 
 one of them, and other Boston edifices, public or do- 
 mestic, on the remaining two, very admirably done. 
 These crystal goblets had been a present, long ago, to 
 an old master of the Free School from his pupils ; and 
 
192 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON, 
 
 it is very rarely, I imagine, that a retired sclioolmas- 
 ter can exhibit such trophies of gratitude and affec- 
 tion, won from the victims of his birch rod. 
 
 Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected 
 and wholly unexpectable thing after another, as if he 
 were a magician, and had only to fling a private sig- 
 nal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand 
 forth any strange relic he might choose to ask for. 
 He was especially rich in drawings by the Old Mas- 
 ters, producing two or three, of exquisite delicacy, by 
 Raphael, one by Salvator, a head by Rembrandt, and 
 others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by Giordano, Benve- 
 nuto Cellini, and hands almost as famous ; and besides 
 what were shown us, there seemed to be an endless 
 supply of these art-treasures in reserve. On the wall 
 hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never engraved, rep- 
 resenting him as a rather young man, blooming, and 
 not uncomely ; it was the worldly face of a man fond 
 of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, 
 odd expression that we see in his only engraved por- 
 trait. The picture is an original, and must needs be 
 very valuable ; and we wish it might be prefixed to 
 some new and worthier biography of a writer whose 
 character the world has always treated with singular 
 harshness, considering how much it owes him. There 
 was likewise a crayon-portrait of Sterne’s wife, look- 
 ing so haughty and unamiable, that the wonder is, not 
 that he ultimately left her, but how he ever contrived 
 to live a week with such an awful woman. 
 
 After looking at these, and a great many more 
 things than I can remember, above stairs, we went 
 down to a parlor, where this wonderful bookseller 
 opened an old cabinet, containing numberless drawers, 
 and looking just fit to be the repository of such knick- 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 193 
 
 knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to pos- 
 sess more treasures than he himself knew of, or knew 
 where to find; hut, rummaging here and there, he 
 brought forth things new and old : rose-nobles, Victo- 
 ria crowns, gold angels, double sovereigns of George 
 IV., two - guinea pieces of George II. ; a marriage- 
 medal of the first Napoleon, only forty-five of which 
 were ever struck off, and of which even the British 
 Museum does not contain a specimen like this, in 
 gold ; a brass medal, three or four inches in diameter, 
 of a Roman emperor; together with buckles, brace- 
 lets, amulets, and I know not what besides. There 
 was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen 
 Mary’s bed at Holyrood Palace. There were illumi- 
 nated missals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may 
 seem of especial interest to the historian) a Secret- 
 Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for 
 aught I know, by her own hand. On examination, 
 however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but 
 recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all 
 such matters of housewifery, the toilet, and domestic 
 quackery, among which we were horrified by the title of 
 one of the nostrums, “ How to kill a Fellow quickly” ! 
 We never doubted that bloody Queen Bess might 
 often have had occasion for such a recipe, but won- 
 dered at her frankness, and at her attending to these 
 anomalous necessities in such a methodical way. The 
 truth is, we had read amiss, and the Queen had spelt 
 amiss: the word was ‘‘Fellon,” — a sort of whitlow, 
 — not “ Fellow.” 
 
 Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass 
 of wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his 
 cabinet ; and, while sipping it, we ungratefully tried 
 to excite his envy, by telling him various things, 
 
 VOL. VII. 13 
 
194 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 interesting to an antiquary and virtuoso, which we 
 had seen in the course of our travels about England. 
 We spoke, for instance, of a missal bound in solid 
 gold and set around with jewels, but of such intrinsic 
 value as no setting could enhance, for it was exqui- 
 sitely illuminated, throughout, by the hand of Raphael 
 himself. We mentioned a little silver case which 
 once contained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV. 
 nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner’s horror 
 and astonishment. Dean Buckland popped the kingly 
 morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told 
 about the black - letter prayer - book of King Charles 
 the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking 
 which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Com- 
 munion Service ; and there, on the left - hand page, 
 appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yel- 
 lowish or brownish hue : a drop of the king’s blood 
 had fallen there. 
 
 Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but 
 first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old 
 John Cotton’s vicarage had stood till a very short 
 time since. According to our friend’s description, it 
 was a humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of 
 brick, with a thatched roof. The site is now rudely 
 fenced in, and cultivated as a vegetable garden. In 
 the right - hand aisle of the church there is an ancient 
 chapel, which, at the time of our visit, was in process 
 of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, 
 whom these English people consider as the founder of 
 our American Boston. It would contain a painted 
 memorial-window, in honor of the old Puritan minis- 
 ter. A festival in commemoration of the event was to 
 take place in the ensuing July, to which I had myself 
 received an invitation, but I knew too well the pains 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 195 
 
 and penalties incurred by an invited guest at public 
 festivals in England to accept it. It ought to be re- 
 corded (and it seems to have made a very kindly 
 impression on our kinsfolk here) that five hundred 
 pounds had been contributed by persons in the United 
 States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of the 
 memorial - window, and the repair and restoration of 
 the chapel. 
 
 After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap- 
 proached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly intro- 
 duced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger’s 
 benediction rest upon him ! He is a most pleasant 
 man ; rather, I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary ; 
 for he seemed to value the Queen of Otaheite’s bag as 
 highly as Queen Mary’s embroidered quilt, and to 
 have an omnivorous appetite for everything strange 
 and rare. Would that we could fill up his shelves and 
 drawers (if there are any vacant spaces left) with the 
 choicest trifles that have dropped out of Time’s carpet- 
 bag, or give him the carpet-bag itself, to take out 
 what he will ! 
 
 The vicar looked about thirty years old, a gentle- 
 man, evidently assured of his position (as clergymen 
 of the Established Church invariably are), comfortable 
 and well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be 
 a bishop, knowing how to make the most of life with- 
 out prejudice to the life to come. I was glad to see 
 such a model English priest so suitably accommodated 
 with an old English church. He kindly and courte- 
 ously did the honors, showing us quite round the inte- 
 rior, giving us all the information that we required, 
 and then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of what 
 we came to see. 
 
 The interior of St. Botolph’s is very fine and satis- 
 
196 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON, 
 
 factory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has been 
 repaired — so far as repairs were necessary — in a 
 chaste and noble style. The great eastern window is 
 of modern painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, 
 and tenderest modern window that I have ever seen : 
 the art of painting these glowing transparencies in 
 pristine perfection being one that the world has lost. 
 The vast, clear space of the interior church delighted 
 me. There was no screen, — nothing between the ves- 
 tibule and the altar to break the long vista ; even the 
 organ stood aside, — though it by and by made us 
 aware of its presence by a melodious roar. Around 
 the walls there were old engraved brasses, and a stone 
 coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint J ohn, and an 
 alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large 
 as life, and in perfect preservation, except for a slight 
 modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chan- 
 cel we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly and 
 admirably carved, especially about the seats formerly 
 appropriated to the monks, which were so contrived as 
 to tumble down with a tremendous crash if the occu- 
 pant happened to fall asleep. 
 
 We now essayed to climb into the upper regions. 
 Up we went, winding and still winding round the cir- 
 cular stairs, till we came to the gallery beneath the 
 stone roof of the tower, whence we could look down 
 and see the raised Font, and my Talma lying on one 
 of the steps, and looking about as big as a pocket- 
 handkerchief. Then up again, up, up, up, through a 
 yet smaller staircase, till we emerged into another 
 stone gallery, above the jackdaws, and far above the 
 roof beneath which we had before made a halt. Then 
 up another flight, which led us into a pinnacle of the 
 temple, but not the highest ; so, retracing our steps, 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 197 
 
 we took the right turret this time, and emerged into 
 the loftiest lantern, where we saw level Lincolnshire, 
 far and near, though with a haze on the distant hori- 
 zon. There were dusty roads, a river, and canals, con- 
 verging towards Boston, which — a congregation of 
 red - tiled roofs — lay beneath our feet, with pygmy 
 people creeping about its narrow streets. We were 
 three hundred feet aloft, and the pinnacle on which 
 we stood is a landmark forty miles at sea. 
 
 Content, and weary of our elevation, we descended 
 the corkscrew stairs and left the church ; the last ob- 
 ject that we noticed in the interior being a bird, which 
 appeared to be at home there, and responded with its 
 cheerful notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on 
 the church-steps, we observed that there were formerly 
 two statues, one on each side of the doorway ; the can- 
 opies still remaining and the pedestals being about a 
 yard from the ground. Some of Mr. Cotton’s Puri- 
 tan parishioners are probably responsible for the dis- 
 appearance of these stone saints. This doorway at 
 the base of the tower is now much dilapidated, but 
 must once have been very rich and of a peculiar fash- 
 ion. It opens its arch through a great square tablet 
 of stone, reared against the front of the tower. On 
 most of the projections, whether on the tower or about 
 the body of the church, there are gargoyles of genu- 
 ine Gothic grotesqueness, — fiends, beasts, angels, and 
 combinations of all three ; and where portions of the 
 edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have tried 
 to imitate these wild fantasies, but with very poor suc- 
 cess, Extravagance and absurdity have still their law, 
 and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the prim- 
 mest things on earth. 
 
 In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed 
 
198 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 the river by a bridge, and observed that the larger 
 part of the town seems to lie on that side of its navi- 
 gable stream. The crooked streets and narrow lanes 
 reminded me much of Hanover Street, Ann Street, 
 and other portions of the North End\)f our American 
 Boston, as I remember that picturesque region in my 
 boyish days. It is not unreasonable to suppose that 
 the local habits and recollections of the first settlers 
 may have had some influence on the physical char- 
 acter of the streets and houses in the New England 
 metropolis ; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy of 
 bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked and pro- 
 jecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. 
 It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kin- 
 dred I derived from this hereditary connection and 
 fancied physiognomical resemblance between the old 
 town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant 
 I was, after chill years of banishment, to leave this 
 hospitable place, on that account. Moreover, it re- 
 called some of the features of another American town, 
 my own dear native place, when I saw the seafaring 
 people leaning against posts, and sitting on planks, 
 under the lee of warehouses, — or lolling on long- 
 boats, drawn up high and dry, as sailors and old wharf- 
 rats are accustomed to do, in seaports of little busi- 
 ness. In other respects, the English town is more 
 village-like than either of the American ones. The 
 women and budding girls chat together at their doors, 
 and exchange merry greetings with young men ; chil- 
 dren chase one another in the summer twilight ; school- 
 boys sail little boats on the river, or play at marbles 
 across the flat tombstones in the churchyard ; and an- 
 cient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wander 
 slowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 199 
 
 deportment, as if each one were everybody’s grand- 
 father. I have frequently observed, in old English 
 towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully and 
 genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where 
 the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth 
 are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires 
 begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in 
 such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads 
 in solitude. Speaking of old men, I am reminded of 
 the scholars of the Boston Charity School, who walk 
 about in antique, long-skirted blue coats, and knee- 
 breeches, and with bands at their necks, — perfect and 
 grotesque pictures of the costume of three centuries 
 ago. 
 
 On the morning of our departure, I looked from the 
 parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, 
 and beheld its irregular square already well covered 
 with booths, and more in process of being put up, by 
 stretching tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market- 
 day. The dealers were arranging their commodities, 
 consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which 
 seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there 
 was a much greater variety of merchandise : basket- 
 work, both for fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, 
 oranges, rustic attire ; all sorts of things, in short, that 
 are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing 
 of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found 
 that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in 
 another part of the town. A crowd of towns-people 
 and Lincolnshire yeomen elbowed one another in the 
 square ; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one corner, and 
 a vagabond juggler tried to And space for his exhibi- 
 tion in another : so that my flnal glimpse of Boston 
 was calculated to leave a livelier impression than my 
 
200 
 
 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 
 
 former ones. Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph’s 
 looked benignantly down; and I fancied it was bid- 
 ding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three 
 hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its ven- 
 erable height, and the town beneath it, to the people 
 of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the 
 living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the 
 dust that lies in its churchyard. 
 
 One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the 
 vicinity of their town ; and (what could hardly be ex- 
 pected of an English community) seem proud to think 
 that their neighborhood has given name to our first 
 and most widely celebrated and best remembered bat- 
 tle-field. 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 On a fine morning in September we set out on an 
 excursion to Blenheim, — the sculptor and myself being 
 seated on the box of our four-horse carriage, two more 
 of the party in the dicky, and the others less agreeably 
 accommodated inside. W e had no coachman, but two 
 postilions in short scarlet jackets and leather breeches 
 with top-boots, each astride of a horse ; so that, all the 
 way along, when not otherwise attracted, we had the 
 interesting spectacle of their up-and-down bobbing in 
 the saddle. It was a sunny and beautiful day, a speci- 
 men of the perfect English weather, just Warm enough 
 for comfort, — indeed, a little too warm, perhaps, in 
 the noontide sun, — yet retaining a mere spice or 
 suspicion of austerity, which made it all the more en- 
 joyable. 
 
 The country between Oxford and Blenheim is not 
 particularly interesting, being almost level, or undulat- 
 ing very slightly ; nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, 
 a rich part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, 
 and I especially remember a picturesque old gabled 
 house at a turnpike-gate, and, altogether, the wayside 
 scenery had an aspect of old-fashioned English life ; 
 but there was nothing very memorable till we reached 
 Woodstock, and stopped to water our horses at the 
 Black Bear. This neighborhood is called New Wood- 
 stock, but has by no means the brand-new appearance 
 of an American town, being a large village of stone 
 houses, most of them pretty well time-worn and 
 
202 
 
 NEAR OXFORD, 
 
 weather-stained. The Black Bear is an ancient inn, 
 large and respectable, with balustraded staircases, and 
 intricate passages and corridors, and queer old pic- 
 tures and engravings hanging in the entries and apart- 
 ments. We ordered a lunch (the most delightful of 
 English institutions, next to dinner) to be ready 
 against our return, and then resumed our drive to 
 Blenheim. 
 
 The park-gate of Blenheim stands close to the end 
 of the village street of Woodstock. Immediately on 
 passing through its portals we saw the stately palace 
 in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park 
 before approaching it. This noble park contains three 
 thousand acres of land, and is fourteen miles in cir- 
 cumference. Having been, in part, a royal domain 
 before it was granted to the Marlborough family, it 
 contains many trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has 
 doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for cen- 
 turies. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding in 
 the open lawns and glades ; and the stags tossed their 
 antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but only 
 shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a magnif- 
 icent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly 
 subjected within rule, but vast enough to have lapsed 
 back into nature again, after all the pains that the 
 landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne’s time bestowed 
 on it, when the domain of Blenheim was scientifically 
 laid out. The great, knotted, slanting trunks of the 
 old oaks do not now look as if man had much inter- 
 meddled with their growth and postures. The trees 
 of later date, that were set out in the Great Duke’s 
 time, are arranged on the plan of the order of battle 
 in which the illustrious commander ranked his troops 
 at Blenheim ; but the ground covered is so extensive, 
 
NEAR OXFORD, 
 
 203 
 
 and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is 
 not disagreeably conscious of their standing in military 
 array, as if Orpheus had summoned them together by 
 beat of drum. The effect must have been very formal 
 a hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so, 
 — although the trees, I presume, have kept their ranks 
 with even more fidelity than Marlborough’s veterans 
 did. 
 
 One of the park-keepers, on horseback, rode be- 
 side our carriage, pointing out the choice views, and 
 glimpses at the palace, as we drove through the do- 
 main. There is a very large artificial lake (to say 
 the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being com- 
 pared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those 
 of Westmoreland), which was created by Capability 
 Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just 
 as if Nature had poured these broad waters into one 
 of her own valleys. It is a most beautiful object at a 
 distance, and not less so on its immediate banks ; for 
 the water is very pure, being supplied by a small river, 
 of the choicest transparency, which was turned thither- 
 ward for the purpose. And Blenheim owes not merely 
 this water-scenery, but almost all its other beauties, to 
 the contrivance of man. Its natural features are not 
 striking ; but Art has effected such wonderful things 
 that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that 
 nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought 
 of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more 
 for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gar- 
 dener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for 
 the monotonous surface of Blenheim, — making the 
 most of every undulation, — flinging down a hillock, 
 a big lump of earth out of a giant’s hand, wherever 
 it was needed, — putting in beauty as often as there 
 
204 
 
 l^EAR OXFORD. 
 
 was a niche for it, — opening vistas to every point 
 that deserved to he seen, and throwing a veil of im- 
 penetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden ; — 
 and then, to be sure, the lapse of a century has soft- 
 ened the harsh outline of man’s labors, and has given 
 the place back to Nature again with the addition of 
 what consummate science could achieve. 
 
 After driving a good way, we came to a battle- 
 mented tower and adjoining house, which used to be 
 the residence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who 
 held charge of the property for the King before the 
 Duke of Marlborough possessed it. The keeper opened 
 the door for us, and in the entrance-hall we found va- 
 rious things that had to do with the chase and wood- 
 land sports. We mounted the staircase, through sev- 
 eral stories, up to the top of the tower, whence there 
 was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much 
 farther off, — very indistinctly seen, however, as is 
 usually the case with the misty distances of England. 
 Returning to the ground-floor, we were ushered into 
 the room in which died Wilmot, the wicked Earl of 
 Rochester, who was Ranger of the Park in Charles 
 II.’s time. It is a low and bare little room, with a 
 window in front, and a smaller one behind ; and in the 
 contiguous entrance-room there are the remains of an 
 old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, perhaps, 
 Rochester may have made the penitent end that Bishop 
 Burnet attributes to him. I hardly know what it is, 
 in this poor fellow’s character, which affects us with 
 greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other 
 profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither 
 better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that 
 he had a human heart which never quite died out of 
 him, and the warmth of which is still faintly percep' 
 tible amid the dissolute trash which he left behind. 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 205 
 
 Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish 
 man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, 
 with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and 
 all the seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ram- 
 ble in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, 
 catching glimpses of the palace in new points of view, 
 and by and by came to Rosamond’s Well. The par- 
 ticular tradition that connects Fair Rosamond with it 
 is not now in my memory ; but if Rosamond ever lived 
 and loved, and ever had her abode in the maze of 
 Woodstock, it may well be believed that she and 
 Henry sometimes sat beside this spring. It gushes 
 out from a bank, through some old stone-work, and 
 dashes its little cascade (about as abundant as one 
 might turn out of a large pitcher) into a pool, whence 
 it steals away towards the lake, which is not far re- 
 moved. The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure 
 as the legendary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to 
 possess medicinal virtues, like springs at which saints 
 have quenched their thirst. There were two or three 
 old women and some children in attendance with tum- 
 blers, which they present to visitors, full of the con- 
 secrated water ; but most of us filled the tumblers for 
 ourselves, and drank. 
 
 Thence we drove to the Triumphal Pillar which was 
 erected in honor of the Great Duke, and on the sum- 
 mit of which he stands, in a Roman garb, holding a 
 winged figure of Victory in his hand, as an ordinary 
 man might hold a bird. The column is I know not 
 how many feet high, but lofty enough, at any rate, to 
 elevate Marlborough far above the rest of the world, 
 and to be visible a long way ofE ; and it is so placed 
 in reference to other objects, that, wherever the hero 
 wandered about his grounds, and especially as he is- 
 
206 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 sued from his mansion, he must inevitably have been 
 reminded of his glory. In truth, until I came to 
 Blenheim, I never had so positive and material an 
 idea of what Fame really is — of what the admiration 
 of his country can do for a successful warrior — as I 
 carry away with me and shall always retain. Unless 
 he had the moral force of a thousand men together, 
 his egotism (beholding himself everywhere, imbuing 
 the entire soil, growing in the woods, rippling and 
 gleaming in the water, and pervading the very air 
 with his greatness) must have been swollen within him 
 like the liver of a Strasburg goose. On the huge tab- 
 lets inlaid into the pedestal of the column, the entire 
 Act of Parliament, bestowing Blenheim on the Duke 
 of Marlborough and his posterity, is engraved in deep 
 letters, painted black on the marble ground. The pil- 
 lar stands exactly a mile from the principal front of 
 the palace, in a straight line with the precise centre of 
 its entrance-hall ; so that, as already said, it was the 
 Duke’s principal object of contemplation. 
 
 We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a 
 great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and 
 state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. 
 A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery 
 appeared at the entrance, and took possession of what- 
 ever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold 
 of, in order to claim sixpence on our departure. This 
 had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is much pub- 
 lic outcry against the meanness of the present Duke 
 in his arrangements for the admission of visitors 
 (chiefly, of course, his native countrymen) to view 
 the magnificent palace which their forefathers be- 
 stowed upon his own. In many cases, it seems hard 
 that a private abode should be exposed to the intru- 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 207 
 
 sion of the public merely because the proprietor has 
 inherited or created a splendor which attracts general 
 curiosity 5 insomuch that his home loses its sanctity 
 and seclusion for the very reason that it is better than 
 other men’s houses. But in the case of Blenheim, 
 the public have certainly an equitable claim to admis^ 
 sion, both because the fame of its first inhabitant is 
 a national possession, and because the mansion was a 
 national gift, one of the purposes of which was to be 
 a token of gratitude and glory to the English people 
 themselves. If a man chooses to be illustrious, he is 
 very likely to incur some little inconveniences himself, 
 and entail them on his posterity. Nevertheless, his 
 present Grace of Marlborough absolutely ignores the 
 public claim above suggested, and (with a thrift of 
 which even the hero of Blenheim himself did not set 
 the example) sells tickets admitting six persons at ten 
 shillings; if only one person enters the gate, he must 
 pay for six ; and if there are seven in company, two 
 tickets are required to admit them. The attendants, 
 who meet you everywhere in the park and palace, ex- 
 pect fees on their own private account, — their noble 
 master pocketing the ten shillings. But, to be sure, 
 the visitor gets his money’s worth, since it buys him 
 the right to speak just as freely of the Duke of Marl- 
 borough as if he were the keeper of the Cremorne 
 Gardens.^ 
 
 Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of 
 the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic 
 
 ^ The above was written two or three years a^o, or more ; and the 
 Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to his successor, 
 who, we understand, has adopted much more liberal arrangements. 
 There is seldom anything to criticise or complain of, as regards the 
 facility of obtaining admission to interesting private houses in Eng- 
 land. 
 
208 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 front of the palace, with its two projecting wings. 
 We ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and were 
 admitted into the entrance-hall, the height of which, 
 from floor to ceiling, is not much less than seventy 
 feet, being the entire elevation of the edifice. The 
 hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and, it 
 being a clear, bright day, was very radiant with lofty 
 sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and 
 fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thorn- 
 hill in some allegorical design (doubtless commemora- 
 tive of Marlborough’s victories), the purport of which 
 I did not take the trouble to make out, — contenting 
 myself with the general effect, which was most splen- 
 didly and effectively ornamental. 
 
 We were guided through the show-rooms by a very 
 civil person, who allowed us to take pretty much our 
 own time in looking at the pictures. The collection 
 is exceedingly valuable, — many of these works of 
 Art having been presented to the Great Duke by the 
 crowned heads of England or the Continent. One 
 room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens; and 
 there were works of Raphael, and many other famous 
 painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illus- 
 trate the meanest house that might contain it. I re- 
 member none of them, however (not being in a pic- 
 ture-seeing mood), so well as Vandyck’s large and 
 familiar picture of Charles I. on horseback, with a 
 figure and face of melancholy dignity such as never 
 by any other hand was put on canvas. Yet, on com 
 sidering this face of Charles (which I find often re- 
 peated in half-lengths) and translating it from the 
 ideal into literalism, I doubt whether the unfortunate 
 king was really a handsome or impressive - looking 
 man : a high, thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 209 
 
 and reddish hair and beard, — these are the literal 
 facts. It is the painter’s art that has thrown such 
 pensive and shadowy grace around him. 
 
 On our passage through this beautiful suite of 
 apartments, we saw, through the vista of open door- 
 ways, a boy of ten or twelve years old coming towards 
 us from the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, 
 a linen sack that had certainly been washed and re- 
 washed for a summer or two, and gray trousers a good 
 deal worn, — a dress, in short, which an American 
 mother in middle station would have thought too 
 shabby for her darling school -boy’s ordinary wear. 
 This urchin’s face was rather pale (as those of Eng- 
 glish children are apt to be, quite as often as our own), 
 but he had pleasant eyes, an intelligent look, and an 
 agreeable boyish manner. It was Lord Sunderland, 
 grandson of the present Duke, and heir — though not, 
 I think, in the direct line — of the blood of the great 
 Marlborough, and of the title and estate. 
 
 After passing through the first suite of rooms, we 
 were conducted through a corresponding suite on the 
 opposite side of the entrance - hall. These latter 
 apartments are most richly adorned with tapestries, 
 wrought and presented to the first Duke by a sister- 
 hood of Flemish nuns ; they look like great, glowing 
 pictures, and completely cover the walls of the rooms. 
 The designs purport to represent the Duke’s battles 
 and sieges ; and everywhere we see the hero himself, 
 as large as life, and as gorgeous in scarlet and gold as 
 the holy sisters could make him, with a three-cornered 
 hat and flowing wig, reining in his horse, and extend- 
 ing his leading - staff in the attitude of command. 
 Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the most 
 prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there 
 
 VOL. VII. 14 
 
210 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 can never have been anything more magnificent than 
 these tapestries ; and, considered as works of Art, they 
 have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten. 
 
 One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the 
 library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective 
 length from end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter 
 and more cheerful than that of most libraries : a won- 
 derful contrast to the old college-libraries of Oxford, 
 and perhaps less sombre and suggestive of thoughtful- 
 ness than any large library ought to be ; inasmuch as 
 so many studious brains as have left their deposit on 
 the shelves cannot have conspired without producing 
 a very serious and ponderous result. Both walls and 
 ceiling are white, and there are elaborate doorways 
 and fireplaces of white marble. The floor is of oak, 
 so highly polished that our feet slipped upon it as if 
 it had been New England ice. At one end of the 
 room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her royal 
 robes, which are so admirably designed and exqui- 
 sitely wrought that the spectator certainly gets a 
 strong conception of her royal dignity ; while the face 
 of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a 
 suitable idea of her personal character. The marble 
 of this work, long as it has stood there, is as white as 
 snow just fallen, and must have required most faithful 
 and religious care to keep it so. As for the volumes 
 of the library, they are wired within the cases, and 
 turn their gilded backs upon the visitor, keeping their 
 treasures of wit and wisdom just as intangible as if 
 still in the unwrought mines of human thought. 
 
 I remember nothing else in the palace, except the 
 ehapel, to which we were conducted last, and where 
 we saw a splendid monument to the first Duke and 
 Duchess, sculptured by Bysbrach, at the cost, it is 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 211 
 
 said, of forty thousand pounds. The design includes 
 the statues of the deceased dignitaries, and various al- 
 legorical flourishes, fantasies, and confusions ; and be- 
 neath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their 
 veritable bones and dust, and probably all the Marl- 
 boroughs that have since died. It is not quite a com- 
 fortable idea, that these mouldy ancestors still inhabit, 
 after their fashion, the house where their successors 
 spend the passing day; but the adulation lavished 
 upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been con- 
 summated, unless the palace of his lifetime had be- 
 come likewise a stately mausoleum over his remains, 
 — and such we felt it all to be, after gazing at his 
 tomb. 
 
 The next business was to see the private gardens. 
 An old Scotch under -gardener admitted us and led 
 the way, and seemed to have a fair prospect of earn- 
 ing the fee all by himself ; but by and by another re- 
 spectable Scotchman made his appearance and took 
 us in charge, proving to be the head-gardener in per- 
 son. He was extremely intelligent and agreeable, 
 talking both scientifically and lovingly about trees 
 and plants, of which there is every variety capable of 
 English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of Eden 
 cannot have been more beautiful than this private 
 garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres, 
 and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, and the 
 undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps of 
 trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan de- 
 lights of a whole country are compressed into this 
 space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the con- 
 coction of an ounce of precious attar. The world 
 within that garden-fence is not the same weary and 
 dusty world with which we outside mortals are conver 
 
212 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 sant; it Is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious Nature; 
 and the Great Mother lends herself kindly to the gar- 
 dener’s will, knowing that he will make evident the 
 half-obliterated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty, 
 and allow her to take all the credit and praise to her-^ 
 self. I doubt whether there is ever any winter within 
 that precinct, — any clouds, except the fleecy ones of 
 summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon 
 my recollection of it as if it were eternal. The lawns 
 and glades are like the memory of places where one 
 has wandered when first in love. 
 
 What a good and happy life might be spent in a 
 paradise like this ! And yet, at that very moment, 
 the besotted Duke (ah ! I have let out a secret which 
 I meant to keep to myself ; but the ten shillings must 
 pay for all) was in that very garden (for the guide 
 told us so, and cautioned our young people not to be 
 too uproarious), and, if in a condition for arithmetic, 
 was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten- 
 shilling tickets had that day been sold. Republican 
 as I am, 1 should still love to think that noblemen 
 lead noble lives, and that all this stately and beautiful 
 environment may serve to elevate them a little way 
 above the rest of us. If it fail to do so, the disgrace 
 falls equally upon the whole race of mortals as on 
 themselves ; because it proves that no more favorable 
 conditions of existence would eradicate our vices and 
 weaknesses. How sad, if this be so ! Even a herd of 
 swine, eating the acorns under those magnificent oaks 
 of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits 
 than ordinary swine. 
 
 Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as 
 a description of Blenheim ; and I hate to leave it witR 
 out some more adequate expression of the noble edi- 
 
NEAR OXFORD, 
 
 213 
 
 fice, with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that 
 beautiful sunshine ; for, if a day had been chosen out 
 of a hundred years, it could not have been a finer one. 
 But I must give up the attempt ; only further remark- 
 ing that the finest trees here were cedars, of which I 
 saw one — and there may have been many such — im- 
 mense in girth, and not less than three centuries old. 
 I likewise saw a vast heap of laurel, two hundred feet 
 in circumference, all growing from one root ; and the 
 gardener offered to show us another growth of twice 
 that stupendous size. If the Great Duke himself had 
 been buried in that spot, his heroic heart could not 
 have been the seed of a more plentiful crop of laurels. 
 
 We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat down 
 to a cold collation, of which we ate abundantly, and 
 drank (in the good old English fashion) a due pro- 
 portion of various delightful liquors. A stranger in 
 England, in his rambles to various quarters of the 
 country, may learn little in regard to wines (for the 
 ordinary English taste is simple, though sound, in that 
 particular), but he makes acquaintance with more 
 varieties of hop and malt liquor than he previously 
 supposed to exist. I remember a sort of foaming 
 stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very vivacious, 
 and appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled 
 cider. Another excellent tipple for warm weather is 
 concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter ale with 
 ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier 
 liquor from its depths, forming a compound of singu- 
 lar vivacity and sufficient body. But of all things 
 ever brewed from malt (unless it be the Trinity Ale of 
 Cambridge, which I drank long afterwards, and which 
 Barry Cornwall has celebrated in immortal verse), 
 commend me to the Archdeacon, as the Oxford schol 
 
214 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 ars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary who first 
 taught these erudite worthies how to brew their favor- 
 ite nectar. John Barleycorn has given his very heart 
 to this admirable liquor ; it is a superior kind of ale, 
 the Prince of Ales, with a richer flavor and a mightier 
 spirit than you can find elsewhere in this weary world. 
 Much have we been strengthened and encouraged by 
 the potent blood of the Archdeacon ! 
 
 A few days after our excursion to Blenheim, the 
 same party set forth, in two flies, on a tour to some 
 other places of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford. 
 It was again a delightful day ; and, in truth, every 
 day, of late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if 
 each must be the very last of such perfect weather ; 
 and yet the long succession had given us confidence in 
 as many more to come. The climate of England has 
 been shamefully maligned, its sulkiness and asperities 
 are not nearly so offensive as Englishmen tell us (their 
 climate being the only attribute of their country which 
 they never overvalue) ; and the really good summer- 
 weather is the very kindest and sweetest that the 
 world knows. 
 
 We first drove to the village of Cumnor, about six 
 miles from Oxford, and alighted at the entrance of 
 the church. Here, while waiting for the keys, we 
 looked at an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of 
 loose gray stones, which are said to have once formed 
 a portion of Cumnor Hall, celebrated in Mickle’s bal- 
 lad and Scott’s romance. The hall must have been 
 in very close vicinity to the church, — not more than 
 twenty yards off ; and 1 waded through the long, dewj 
 grass of the churchyard, and tried to peep over the 
 wall, in hopes to discover some tangible and traceable 
 remains of the edifice. But the wall was just too high 
 
NEAR OXFORD, 
 
 215 
 
 to be overlooked, and difficult to clamber over without 
 tumbling down some of the stones ; so I took the word 
 of one of our party, who had been here before, that 
 there is nothing interesting on the other side. The 
 churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and seems 
 not to have been mown for the benefit of the parson’s 
 cow ; it contains a good many gravestones, of which I 
 remember only some upright memorials of slate to in- 
 dividuals of the name of Tabbs. 
 
 Soon a woman arrived with the key of the^ church- 
 door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has 
 the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars 
 and low arches, and other ordinary characteristics of 
 an English country church. One or two pews, prob- 
 ably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were 
 better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest 
 style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there 
 is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, 
 built against the wall, and surmounted by a carved 
 canopy of the same material ; and over the tomb, and 
 beneath the canopy, are two monumental brasses, such 
 as we oftener see inlaid into a church pavement. On 
 these brasses are engraved the figures of a gentleman 
 in armor, and a lady in an antique garb, each about a 
 foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer ; and there is a 
 long Latin inscription likewise cut into the enduring 
 brass, bestowing the highest eulogies on the character 
 of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous dame, lies 
 buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightly 
 figure that kneels above ; and if Sir Walter Scott ever 
 saw this tomb, he must have had an even greater than 
 common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to venture on 
 depicting Anthony Forster in such hues as blacken him 
 in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription 
 
216 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 in full faith, and believe the poor deceased gentleman 
 to be a much-wronged individual, with good grounds 
 for bringing an action of slander in the courts above. 
 
 But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its 
 serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety, which 
 so worries us about our good fame, or our bad fame, 
 after death ! If it were of the slightest real moment, 
 our reputations would have been placed by Providence 
 more in our own power, and less in other people’s, 
 than we now find them to be. If poor Anthony Fors- 
 ter happens to have met Sir W alter in the other world, 
 I doubt whether he has ever thought it worth while 
 to complain of the latter’s misrepresentations. 
 
 We did not remain long in the church, as it con- 
 tains nothing else of interest ; and, driving through the 
 village, we passed a pretty large and rather antique- 
 looking inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged 
 Staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a 
 hundred years, as Giles Gosling’s time ; nor is there 
 any other object to remind the visitor of the Eliza- 
 bethan age, unless it be a few ancient cottages, that 
 are perhaps of still earlier date. Cumnor is not nearly 
 so large a village, nor a place of such mark, as one an- 
 ticipates from its romantic and legendary fame ; but, 
 being still inaccessible by railway, it has retained more 
 of a sylvan character than we often find in English 
 country towns. In this retired neighborhood the road 
 is narrow and bordered with grass, and sometimes in- 
 terrupted by gates ; the hedges grow in unpruned 
 luxuriance ; there is not that close-shaven neatness and 
 trimness that characterize the ordinary English land- 
 scape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclusion 
 and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether on 
 foot or otherwise. 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 217 
 
 I cannot very distinctly trace out this day’s pere- 
 grinations ; but, after leaving Cumnor a few miles be- 
 hind us, I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, 
 where an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a 
 boat across by means of a rope stretching from shore 
 to shore. Our two vehicles being thus placed on the 
 other side, we resumed our drive, — first glancing, 
 however, at the old woman’s antique cottage, with its 
 stone floor, and the circular settle round the kitchen 
 fireplace, which was quite in the mediaeval English 
 style. 
 
 We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we 
 were received at the parsonage with a hospitality 
 which we should take delight in describing, if it were 
 allowable to make public acknowledgment of the pri- 
 vate and personal kindnesses which we never failed to 
 find ready for our needs. An American in an Eng- 
 lish house will soon adopt the opinion that the English 
 are the very kindest people on earth, and will retain 
 that idea as long, at least, as he remains on the inner 
 side of the threshold. Their magnetism is of a kind 
 that repels strongly while you keep beyond a certain 
 limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within the 
 magic line. 
 
 It was at this place, if I remember right, that I 
 heard a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he 
 was the author of The Red Letter A ” ; and, after 
 some consideration (for he did not seem to recognize 
 his own book, at first, under this improved title), our 
 countryman responded, doubtfully, that he believed 
 so. The gentleman proceeded to inquire whether our 
 friend had spent much time in America, — evidently 
 thinking that he must have been caught young, and 
 have had a tincture of English breeding, at least, if 
 
218 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and ap- 
 pear so much like other people. This insular narrow- 
 ness is exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occur- 
 rence, and is quite as much a characteristic of men of 
 education and culture as of clowns. 
 
 Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It 
 was formerly the seat of the ancient family of Har- 
 court, which now has its principal abode at Nuneham 
 Courtney, a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic 
 of the family mansion, or castle, other portions of 
 which are close at hand ; for, across the garden, rise 
 two gray towers, both of them picturesquely venerable, 
 and interesting for more than their antiquity. One 
 of these towers, in its entire capacity, from height to 
 depth, constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle, 
 and is still used for domestic purposes, although it 
 has not, nor ever had, a chimney ; or, we might rather 
 say, it is itself one vast chimney, with a hearth of 
 thirty feet square, and a flue and aperture of the same 
 size. There are two huge fireplaces within, and the 
 interior walls of the tower are blackened with the 
 smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from 
 them, and climb upward, seeking an exit through 
 some wide air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy 
 feet above. These lofty openings were capable of be- 
 ing so arranged, with reference to the wind, that the 
 cooks are said to have been seldom troubled by the 
 smoke ; and here, no doubt, they were accustomed to 
 roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and ado as a mod- 
 ern cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the tower 
 is very dim and sombre (being nothing but rough 
 stone walls, lighted only from the apertures above 
 mentioned), and has still a pungent odor of smoke 
 and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and feasts of 
 
neah oxford. 
 
 219 
 
 generations that have passed away. Methinks the ex- 
 tremest range of domestic economy lies between an 
 American cooking-stove and the ancient kitchen, sev- 
 enty dizzy feet in height and all one fireplace, of Stan- 
 ton Harcourt. 
 
 Now — the place being without a parallel in Eng- 
 land, and therefore necessarily beyond the experience 
 of an American — it is somewhat remarkable, that, 
 while we stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted 
 and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I 
 had seen just this strange spectacle before. The 
 height, the blackness, the dismal void, before my eyes, 
 seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my 
 grandmother’s kitchen ; only my unaccountable mem- 
 ory of the scene was lighted up with an image of lurid 
 fires blazing all round the dim interior circuit of the 
 tower. I had never before had so pertinacious an at- 
 tack, as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state 
 of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly remember 
 some previous scene or incident, of which the one now 
 passing appears to be but the echo and reduplication. 
 Though the explanation of the mystery did not for 
 some time occur to me, I may as well conclude the mat- 
 ter here. In a letter of Pope’s, addressed to the Duke 
 of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton Har- 
 court (as I now find, although the name is not men- 
 tioned), where he resided while translating a part of 
 the “ Iliad.” It is one of the most admirable pieces 
 of description in the language, — playful and pictur- 
 esque, with fine touches of humorous pathos, — and 
 conveys as perfect a picture as ever was drav/n of a de- 
 cayed English country-house ; and among other rooms, 
 most of which have since crumbled down and disap- 
 peared, he dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen, 
 
220 
 
 NEAR OXFORD, 
 
 — which, moreover, he peoples with witches, engaging 
 Satan himself as head-cook, who stirs the infernal cal- 
 drons that seethe and bubble over the fires. This let- 
 ter, and others relative to his abode here, were very 
 familiar to my earlier reading, and, remaining still 
 fresh at the bottom of my memory, caused the weird 
 and ghostly sensation that came over me on beholding 
 the real spectacle that had formerly been made so 
 vivid to my imagination. 
 
 Our next visit was to the church, which stands close 
 by, and is quite as ancient as the remnants of the cas- 
 tle. In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the Har- 
 courts, are found some very interesting family monu- 
 ments, — and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, 
 the figure of an armed knight of the Lancastrian 
 party, who was slain in the Wars of the Roses. His 
 features, dress, and armor are painted in colors, still 
 wonderfully fresh, and there still blushes the symbol 
 of the Red Rose, denoting the faction for which he 
 fought and died. His head rests on a marble or ala- 
 baster helmet ; and on the tomb lies the veritable 
 helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore in battle, 
 
 — a ponderous iron case, with the visor complete, and 
 remnants of the gilding that once covered it. The 
 crest is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood. 
 Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adorn- 
 ment of his tomb ; and, indeed, it seems strange that 
 it has not been stolen before now, especially in Crom- 
 well’s time, when knightly tombs were little respected, 
 and when armor was in request. However, it is need- 
 less to dispute with the dead knight about the identity 
 of his iron pot, and we may as well allow it to be the 
 very same that so often gave him the headache in his 
 lifetime. Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 221 
 
 tomb, is the shaft of a spear, with a wofully tattered 
 and utterly faded banner appended to it, — the knightly 
 banner beneath which he marshalled his followers in 
 the field. As it was absolutely falling to pieces, 1 
 tore off one little bit, no bigger than a finger-nail, and 
 put it into my waistcoat-pocket ; but seeking it subse^ 
 quently, it was not to be found. 
 
 On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or 
 three yards from this tomb, is another monument, on 
 which lie, side by side, one of the same knightly race 
 of Harcourts, and his lady. The tradition of the 
 family is, that this knight was the standard-bearer of 
 Henry of Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field ; 
 and a banner, supposed to be the same that he carried, 
 now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless 
 silk rag as the one already described. The knight has 
 the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady wears 
 it on her left arm, — an odd place enough fora garter ; 
 but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be dec- 
 orously visible. The complete preservation and good 
 condition of these statues, even to the minutest adorn- 
 ment of the sculpture, and their very noses, — the 
 most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living 
 one, — are miraculous. Except in Westminster Ab- 
 bey, among the chapels of the kings, I have seen none 
 so well preserved. Perhaps they owe it to the loyalty 
 of Oxfordshire, diffused throughout its neighborhood 
 by the influence of the University, during the great 
 Civil War and the rule of the Parliament. It speaks 
 well, too, for the upright and kindly character of this 
 old family, that the peasantry, among whom they had 
 lived for ages, did not desecrate their tombs, when it 
 might have been done with impunity. 
 
 There are other and more recent memorials of the 
 
222 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 Harcourts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord, 
 who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like 
 those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad, 
 not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title 
 is now extinct, but the family survives in a younger 
 branch, and still holds this patrimonial estate, though 
 they have long since quitted it as a residence. 
 
 We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds apper- 
 taining to the mansion, and which used to be of vast 
 dietary importance to the family in Catholic times, 
 and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There 
 are two or three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of 
 which is of very respectable size, — large enough, in- 
 deed, to be really a picturesque object, with its grass- 
 green borders, and the trees drooping over it, and the 
 towers of the castle and the church refiected within 
 the weed-grown depths of its smooth mirror. A sweet 
 fragrance, as it were, of ancient time and present quiet 
 and seclusion was breathing all around ; the sunshine 
 of to-day had a mellow charm of antiquity in its bright- 
 ness. These ponds are said still to breed abimdance 
 of such fish as love deep and quiet waters ; but I saw 
 only some minnows, and one or two snakes, which were 
 lying among the weeds on the top of the water, sun- 
 ning and bathing themselves at once. 
 
 I mentioned that there were two towers remaining 
 of the old castle : the one containing the kitchen we 
 have already visited ; the other, still more interesting, 
 is next to be described. It is some seventy feet high, 
 gray and reverend, but in excellent repair, though I 
 could not perceive that anything had been done to 
 renovate it. The basement story was once the family 
 chapel, and is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At 
 one corner of the tower is a circular turret, within 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 223 
 
 which a narrow staircase, with worn steps of stone, 
 winds round and round as it climbs upward, giving 
 access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerg- 
 ing on the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret- 
 stair, and arriving at the third story, we entered a 
 chamber, not large, though occupying the whole area 
 of the tower, and lighted by a window on each side. 
 It was wainscoted from floor to ceiling with dark 
 oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the corners. 
 The window-panes were small and set in lead. The 
 curiosity of this room is, that it was once the residence 
 of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of 
 the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, the 
 admirable letters to which I have referred above. The 
 room once contained a record by himself, scratched 
 with a diamond on one of the window-panes (since re- 
 moved for safe-keeping to Nuneham Courtney, where 
 it was shown me), purporting that he had here fin- 
 ished the fifth book of the Iliad ” on such a day. 
 
 A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other 
 human being is gifted withal ; it is indestructible, and 
 clings for evermore to everything that he has touched. 
 I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that 
 the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was 
 created for him ; but here, after a century and a half, 
 we are still conscious of the presence of that decrepit 
 little figure of Queen Anne’s time, although he was 
 merely a casual guest in the old tower, during one or 
 two summer months. However brief the time and 
 slight the connection, his spirit cannot be exorcised 
 so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, 
 Pope, or any other person with an available claim, is 
 right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive ; for I 
 never saw a chamber that I should like better to in- 
 
224 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 habit, — so comfortably small, in such a safe and in- 
 accessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from 
 each window. One of them looks upon the church, 
 close at hand, and down into the green churchyard, 
 extending almost to the foot of the tower ; the others 
 have views wide and far, over a gently undulating 
 tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, 
 about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring 
 the occupant to the summit of the tower, — where 
 Pope used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings, 
 and peep — poor little shrimp that he was ! — through 
 the embrasures of the battlement. 
 
 From Stanton Harcourt we drove — I forget how 
 far — to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon 
 the Thames, or some other stream ; for I am ashamed 
 to confess my ignorance of the precise geographical 
 whereabout. We were, at any rate, some miles above 
 Oxford, and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the 
 sources of England’s mighty river. It was little more 
 than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars, to 
 pass, — shallow, too, and bordered with bulrushes and 
 water-weeds, which, in some places, quite overgrew the 
 surface of the river from bank to bank. The shores 
 were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the boat- 
 man told us, are overflowed by the rise of the stream. 
 The water looked clean and pure, but not particularly 
 transparent, though enough so to show us that the bot- 
 tom is very much weed - grown ; and I was told that 
 the weed is an American production, brought to Eng- 
 land with importations of timber, and now threatening 
 to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. I 
 wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the 
 Merrimack, the Connecticut, or the Hudson, — not to 
 speak of the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi ! 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 225 
 
 It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, 
 comfortably accommodating our party ; the day con- 
 tinued sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boat- 
 man, well trained to his business, managed the oars 
 skilfully and vigorously ; and we went down the 
 stream quite as swiftly as it was desirable to go, the 
 scene being so pleasant, and the passing hours so thor- 
 oughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider and 
 deeper, perhaps, as we glided on, but was still an in- 
 considerable stream : for it had a good deal more than 
 a hundred miles to meander through before it should 
 bear fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces and tow- 
 ers and Parliament houses and dingy and sordid piles 
 of various structure, as it rolled to and fro with the 
 tide, dividing London asunder. Not, in truth, that I 
 ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its turbid 
 breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it now, 
 is swollen into the Thames at London. 
 
 Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the 
 boatman and some other persons drew our skiff round 
 some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed ; 
 another time, the boat went through a lock. We, 
 meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the 
 old nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Eosamond se- 
 cluded herself, after being separated from her royal 
 lover. There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a 
 shattered tower at one of the angles ; the whole much 
 ivy-grown, — brimming over, indeed, with clustering 
 ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls. The nunnery 
 is now, I believe, held in lease by the city of Oxford, 
 which has converted its precincts into a barn-yard. 
 The gate was under lock and key, so that we could 
 merely look at the outside, and soon resmned our 
 places in the boat. 
 
 VOL. VII. 
 
 15 
 
226 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 At three o’clock oi: thereabouts (or sooner or later, 
 — for I took little heed of time, and only wished that 
 these delightful wanderings might last forever) we 
 reached Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took pos- 
 session of a spacious barge, with a house in it, and a 
 comfortable dining-room or drawing-room within the 
 house, and a level roof, on which we could sit at ease, 
 or dance if so inclined. These barges are common at 
 Oxford, — some very splendid ones being owned by 
 the students of the different colleges, or by clubs. They 
 are drawn by horses, like canal-boats ; and a horse be- 
 ing attached to our own barge, he trotted off at a rea- 
 sonable pace, and we slipped through the water behind 
 him, with a gentle and pleasant motion, which, save 
 for the constant vicissitude of cultivated scenery, was 
 like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble 
 of living; nothing was ever more quietly agreeable. 
 In this happy state of mind and body we gazed at 
 Christ Church meadows, as we passed, and at the re- 
 ceding spires and towers of Oxford, and on a good 
 deal of pleasant variety along the banks : young men 
 rowing or fishing; troops of naked boys bathing, as 
 if this were Arcadia, in the simplicity of the Golden 
 Age ; country-houses, cottages, water-side inns, all 
 with something fresh about them, as not being sprin- 
 kled with the dust of the highway. We were a large 
 party now; for a number of additional guests had 
 joined us at Folly Bridge, and we comprised poets, 
 novelists, scholars, sculptors, painters, architects, men 
 and women of renown, dear friends, genial, outspoken, 
 open-hearted Englishmen, — all voyaging onward to- 
 gether, like the wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I re- 
 member not a single annoyance, except, indeed, that a 
 swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 227 
 
 head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the 
 scent of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into 
 his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble 
 the one little flaw in our day’s felicity, to put us in 
 mind that we were mortal. 
 
 Meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of 
 our barge, and spread with cold ham, cold fowl, cold 
 pigeon-pie, cold beef, and other substantial cheer, such 
 as the English love, and Yankees too, — besides tarts, 
 and cakes, and pears, and plums, — not forgetting, of 
 course, a goodly provision of port, sherry, and cham- 
 pagne, and bitter ale, which is like mother’s milk to 
 an Englishman, and soon grows equally acceptable to 
 his American cousin. By the time these matters had 
 been properly attended to, we had arrived at that part 
 of the Thames which passes by Nuneham Courtney, a 
 fine estate belonging to the Harcourts, and the present 
 residence of the family. Here we landed, and, climb- 
 ing a steep slope from the river-side, paused a moment 
 or two to look at an architectural object, called the 
 Carfax, the purport of which I do not well understand. 
 Thence we proceeded onward, through the loveliest 
 park and woodland scenery I ever saw, and under as 
 beautiful a declining sunshine as heaven ever shed 
 over earth, to the stately mansion-house. 
 
 As we here cross a private threshold, it is not allow- 
 able to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful 
 day with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, 
 1 may as well bring it to a close. I may mention, 
 however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apart- 
 ment, hung round with portraits of eminent literary 
 men, principally of the last century, most of whom 
 were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house it- 
 self is about eighty years old, and is built in the clas- 
 
228 
 
 NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 sic style, as if the family had been anxious to diverge 
 as far as possible from the Gothic picturesqueness of 
 their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The grounds 
 were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed 
 to me even more beautiful than those of Blenheimo 
 Mason the poet, a friend of the house, gave the design 
 of a portion of the garden. Of the whole place I will 
 not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic praise, but 
 be bold to say that it appeared to me as perfect as 
 anything earthly can be, — utterly and entirely fin- 
 ished, as if the years and generations had done all 
 that the hearts and minds of the successive owners 
 could contrive for a spot they dearly loved. Such 
 homes as Nuneham Courtney are among the splendid 
 results of long hereditary possession ; and we Republi- 
 cans, whose households melt away like new-fallen snow 
 in a spring morning, must content ourselves with our 
 many counterbalancing advantages, — for this one, so 
 apparently desirable to the far-projecting selfishness of 
 our nature, we are certain never to attain. 
 
 It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nune- 
 ham Courtney is one of the great show-places of Eng- 
 land. It is merely a fair specimen of the better class 
 of country-seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many 
 superiors, in the features of beauty, and expansive, 
 manifold, redundant comfort, which most impressed 
 me. A moderate man might be content with such a 
 home, — that is all. 
 
 And now I take leave of Oxford without even an at- 
 tempt to describe it, — there being no literary faculty, 
 attainable or conceivable by me, which can avail to 
 put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It 
 must remain its own sole expression ; and those whose 
 sad fortune it may be never to behold it have no bet- 
 
NEAR OXFORD. 
 
 229 
 
 ter resource than to dream about gray, weather-stained, 
 ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic orna- 
 ment, and standing around grassy quadrangles, where 
 cloistered walks have echoed to the quiet footsteps 
 of twenty generations, — lawns and gardens of luxuri- 
 ous repose, shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit 
 up with sunny glimpses through archways of great 
 boughs, — spires, towers, and turrets, each with its 
 history and legend, — dimly magnificent chapels, with 
 painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diver- 
 sified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest gloom, 
 — vast college-halls, high-windowed, oaken-panelled, 
 and hung round with portraits of the men, in every 
 age, whom the University has nurtured to be illustri- 
 ous, — long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wis- 
 dom and learned folly of all time i^ shelved, — kitch- 
 ens (we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and 
 because it would not be English Oxford without its 
 beef and beer), with huge fireplaces, capable of roast- 
 ing a hundred joints at once, — and cavernous cellars, 
 where rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume 
 with that mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk 
 of Alma Mater : make all these things vivid in your 
 dream, and you will never know nor believe how in- 
 adequate is the result to represent even the merest 
 outside of Oxford. 
 
 W e feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this ar- 
 ticle without making our grateful acknowledgments, 
 by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness 
 was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and 
 enjoyments. Delightful as will always be our recol- 
 lection of Oxford and its neighborhood, we partly sus- 
 pect that it owes much of its happy coloring to the 
 genial medium through which the objects were pre- 
 
230 
 
 NEAR OXFORD, 
 
 sented to us, — to the kindly magic of a hospitality 
 unsurpassed, within our experience, in the quality of 
 making the guest contented with his host, with him« 
 self, and everything about him. He has inseparably 
 mingled his image with our remembrance of the Spires 
 of Oxford. 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 We left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within 
 the half-hour were at Gretna Green. Thence we 
 rushed onward into Scotland through a flat and dreary 
 tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, 
 where probably the moss-troopers were accustomed to 
 take refuge after their raids into England. Anon, 
 however, the hills hove themselves up to view, occa- 
 sionally attaining a height which might almost be 
 called mountainous. In about two hours we reached 
 Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. 
 
 Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we 
 found it an awfully hot day, not a whit less so than 
 the day before ; but we sturdily adventured through 
 the burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our 
 way to the residence of Burns. The street leading 
 from the station is called Shakespeare Street ; and at 
 its farther extremity we read ‘‘ Burns Street ” on a 
 corner-house, — the avenue thus designated having 
 been formerly known as Mill-Hole Brae.” It is a 
 vile lane, paved with small, hard stones from side to 
 side, and bordered by cottages or mean houses of 
 whitewashed stone, joining one to another along the 
 whole length of the street. With not a tree, of course, 
 or a blade of grass between the paving - stones, the 
 narrow lane w'as as hot as Tophet, and reeked with 
 a genuine Scotch odor, being infested with unwashed 
 children, and altogether in a state of chronic filth; 
 although some women seemed to be hopelessly scrub- 
 
232 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 bing the thresholds of their wretched dwellings. 1 
 never saw an outskirt of a town less fit for a poet’s 
 residence, or in which it would be more miserable for 
 any man of cleanly predilections to spend his days. 
 
 We asked for Burns’s dwelling; and a woman 
 pointed across the street to a two-story house, built of 
 stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors, but per- 
 haps of a little more respectable aspect than most of 
 them, though I hesitate in saying so. It was not a 
 separate structure, but under the same continuous roof 
 with the next. There was an inscription on the door, 
 bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the 
 house was now occupied by a ragged or industrial 
 school. On knocking, we were instantly admitted by 
 a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when we told 
 our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain 
 parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A 
 young woman, who seemed to be a teacher in the 
 school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been 
 Burns’s usual sitting-room, and that he had written 
 many of his songs here. 
 
 She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little 
 bedchamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, 
 there is a very small room, or windowed closet, which 
 Burns used as a study ; and the bedchamber itself was 
 the one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in 
 which he died at last. Altogether, it is an exceed- 
 ingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and rural poet to 
 live or die in, — even more unsatisfactory than Shake- 
 speare’s house, which has a certain homely pictur- 
 esqueness that contrasts favorably with the suburban 
 sordidness of the abode before us. The narrow lane, 
 the paving - stones, and the contiguity of wretched 
 hovels are depressing to remember ; and the steam of 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 233 
 
 them (such is our human weakness) might almost 
 make the poet’s memory less fragrant. 
 
 As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. 
 After leaving the house, we found our way into the 
 principal street of the town, which, it may be fair to 
 say, is of very different aspect from the wretched out- 
 skirt above described. Entering a hotel (in which, 
 as a Dumfries guide-book assured us. Prince Charles 
 Edward had once spent a night), we rested and re- 
 freshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the 
 mausoleum of Burns. 
 
 Coming to St. Michael’s Church, we saw a man 
 digging a grave, and, scrambling out of the hole, he 
 let us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of 
 monuments. Their general shape and construction 
 are peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet 
 of marble or other stone, within a framework of the 
 same material, somewhat resembling the frame of a 
 looking-glass ; and, all over the churchyard, these se- 
 pulchral memorials rise to the height of ten, fifteen, 
 or twenty feet, forming quite an imposing collection of 
 monuments, but inscribed with names of small general 
 significance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain the 
 rank of those who slept below ; for in Scotland it is 
 the custom to put the occupation of the buried person- 
 age (as “ Skinner,” Shoemaker,” ‘‘ Flesher ”) on his 
 tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives are buried 
 under their maiden names, instead of those of their 
 husbands , thus giving a disagreeable impression that 
 the married pair have bidden each other an eternal 
 farewell on the edge of the grave. 
 
 There was a foot-path through this crowded church 
 yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of 
 Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it ap- 
 
234 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 peared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was priv- 
 ileged to show it to strangers. The monument is a 
 sort of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, 
 covering a space of about twenty feet square. It was 
 formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch 
 atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large 
 squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of 
 one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked 
 the door, and admitted us into the interior. Inlaid 
 into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of 
 Burns, — the very same that was laid over his grave 
 by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. 
 Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble 
 statue of Burns at the plough, with the Genius of Cal- 
 edonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet. Me- 
 thought it was not a very successful piece of work ; 
 for the plough was better sculptured than the man, 
 and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more 
 effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us 
 that an old man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies 
 this statue to be very like the original. 
 
 The bones of the poet, and of J ean Armour, and of 
 some of their children, lie in the vault over which we 
 stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in her own 
 plain way. and very agreeable to talk withal) said 
 that the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on 
 occasion of the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The 
 poet’s bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so 
 brimming over with powerful thought and bright and 
 tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for several 
 days by a Dumfries doctor. It has since been depos- 
 ited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault. 
 We learned that there is a surviving daughter of 
 Burns’s eldest son, and daughters likewise of the two 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235 
 
 younger sons, — and, besides these, an illegitimate 
 posterity by the eldest son, who appears to have been 
 of disreputable life in his younger days. He inher- 
 ited his father’s failings, with some faint shadow, I 
 have also understood, of the great qualities which 
 have made the world tender of his father’s vices and 
 weaknesses. 
 
 We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, 
 but found that it robbed the poet’s memory of some of 
 the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over 
 his grave had very much the same tendency and effect 
 as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visit- 
 ing just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwell- 
 ing and its surroundings, and picturing his outward 
 life and earthly manifestations from these, one does 
 not so much wonder that the people of that day should 
 have failed to recognize all that was admirable and 
 immortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily clothed, 
 and shabbily housed man, consorting with associates 
 of damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occu- 
 pation, gauging the whiskey, which he too often tasted. 
 Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea 
 against the world, let us try to do the world a little 
 justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet 
 when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of 
 marble than when the actual man comes staggering 
 before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his 
 daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his rec- 
 ognition dawned so brightly while he was still living. 
 There must have been something very grand in his 
 immediate presence, some strangely impressive charac- 
 teristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to 
 seem like a demigod so soon. 
 
 As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a 
 
236 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS, 
 
 spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dum« 
 fries were buried during the cholera year ; and also 
 some curious old monuments, with raised letters, the 
 inscriptions on which were not sufficiently legible to 
 induce us to puzzle them out; but, I believe, they 
 mark the resting-places of old Covenanters, some of 
 whom were killed by Claverhouse and his fellow-rut 
 fians. 
 
 St. Michael’s Church is of red freestone, and was 
 built about a hundred years ago, on an old Catholic 
 foundation. Our guide admitted us into it, and 
 showed us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble 
 figure of a child asleep, with a drapery over the lower 
 part, from beneath which appeared its two baby feet. 
 It was truly a sweet little statue ; and the woman told 
 us that it represented a child of the sculptor, and that 
 the baby (here still in its marble infancy) had died 
 more than twenty-six years ago. Many ladies,” she 
 said, especially such as had ever lost a child, had 
 shed tears over it.” It was very pleasant to think of 
 the sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art 
 to re-create his tender child in stone, and to make the 
 representation as soft and sweet as the original ; but 
 the conclusion of the story has something that jars 
 with our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from 
 London had seen the statue, and was so much de- 
 lighted with it that he bought it of the father-artist, 
 after it had lain above a quarter of a century in the 
 church-porch. So this was not the real, tender image 
 that came out of the father’s heart ; he had sold that 
 truest one for a hundred guineas, and sculptured this 
 mere copy to replace it. The first figure was en- 
 tirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. 
 The copy, as I have said above, has a drapery over 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 237 
 
 the lower limbs. But, after all, if we come to the 
 truth of the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fitly 
 reposited in the drawing-room of a connoisseur as in a 
 cold and dreary church-porch. 
 
 We went into the church, and found it very plain 
 and naked, without altar-decorations, and having its 
 floor quite covered with unsightly wooden pews. The 
 woman led us to a pew cornering on one of the side- 
 aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns’s family- 
 pew, showed us his seat, which is in the corner by the 
 aisle. It is so situated, that a sturdy pillar hid him 
 from the pulpit, and from the minister’s eye ; for 
 Robin was no great friends with the ministers,” said 
 she. This touch — his seat behind the pillar, and 
 Burns himself nodding in sermon-time, or keenly ob- 
 servant of profane things — brought him before us to 
 the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right be- 
 fore Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the 
 young lady on whom the poet saw that unmentionable 
 parasite which he has immortalized in song. W e were 
 ungenerous enough to ask the lady’s name, but the 
 good woman could not tell it. This was the last 
 thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record ; 
 and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some 
 money which my companion offered her, because I 
 had already paid her what she deemed sufficient. 
 
 At the railway-station we spent more than a weary 
 hour, waiting for the train, which at last came up, and 
 took us to Mauchline. We got into an omnibus, the 
 only conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to 
 the village, where we established ourselves at the Lou- 
 doun Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which we 
 have found in Great Britain. The town of Mauch- 
 line, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any 
 
238 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cot- 
 tages, mostly white-washed, and with thatched roofs. 
 It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate vil- 
 lage, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could con- 
 trive to make, or to render uglier through a succes- 
 sion of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the 
 village street, and patching one shabby house on the 
 gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and 
 pleasantness ; but, I presume, we are not likely to see 
 a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used 
 to be in Burns’s time, and long before, than this of 
 Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the 
 street, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its 
 architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In 
 this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene 
 of one of Burns’s most characteristic productions. 
 The Holy Fair.” 
 
 Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village 
 street, stands Posie Nansie’s inn, where the Jolly 
 Beggars ” congregated. The latter is a two-story, red- 
 stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means 
 venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old- 
 fashioned windows, and may well have stood for cen- 
 turies, — though, seventy or eighty years ago, when 
 Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might 
 have been something better than a beggars’ alehouse. 
 The whole town of Mauchline looks rusty and time- 
 worn, — even the newer houses, of which there are 
 several, being shadowed and darkened by the general 
 aspect of the place. When we arrived, all the wretched 
 little dwellings seemed to have belched forth their in- 
 habitants into the warm summer evening : everybody 
 was chatting with everybody, on the most familiar 
 terms ; the bare-legged children gambolled or quar- 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 239 
 
 relied uproariously, and came freely, moreover, and 
 looked into the window of our parlor. When we ven- 
 tured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old 
 town: people standing in their doorways, old women 
 popping their heads from the chamber- windows, and 
 stalwart men — idle on Saturday at e’en, after their 
 week’s hard labor — clustering at the street-corners, 
 merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except 
 in some remote little town of Italy (where, besides, 
 the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beg- 
 gary), I have never been honored with nearly such an 
 amount of public notice. 
 
 The next forenoon my companion put me to shame 
 by attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do 
 the like ; and it being Sacrament Sunday, and my 
 poor friend being wedged into the farther end of a 
 closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the 
 preaching of four several sermons, and came back per- 
 fectly exhausted and desperate. He was somewhat con- 
 soled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a spec- 
 tacle of Scotch manners identical with that of Burns’s 
 
 Holy Fair ” on the very spot where the poet located 
 that immortal description. By way of further con- 
 formance to the customs of the country, we ordered a 
 sheep’s head and the broth, and did penance accord- 
 ingly ; and at five o’clock we took a fly, and set out 
 for Burns’s farm of Moss Giel. 
 
 Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, 
 and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with a 
 view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just 
 before we reaehed the farm, the driver stopped to 
 point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which 
 he said was Burns’s Lousie Thorn ” ; and I devoutly 
 plucked a branch, although I have really forgotten 
 
240 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 where or how this illustrious shrub has been cele- 
 brated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and 
 almost immediately came to the farm-house of Moss 
 Giel, standing some fifty yards removed from the high- 
 road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and consider- 
 ably overshadowed by trees. The house is a white- 
 washed stone cottage, like thousands of others in Eng- 
 land and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on which 
 grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though 
 alien growth. There is a door and one window in 
 front, besides another little window that peeps out 
 among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extend- 
 ing back at right angles from it, so as to enclose the 
 farm-yard, are two other buildings of the same §ize, 
 shape, and general appearance as the house : any one 
 of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as 
 the two others, and all three look still more suitable 
 for donkey-stables and pigsties. As we drove into the 
 farm-yard, bounded on three sides by these three hov- 
 els, a large dog began to bark at us ; and some women 
 and children made their appearance, but seemed to de- 
 mur about admitting us, because the master and mis- 
 tress were very religious people, and had not yet come 
 back from the Sacrament at Mauchline. 
 
 However, it would not do to be turned back from the 
 very threshold of Robert Burns; and as the women 
 seemed to be merely straggling visitors, and nobody? 
 at all events, had a right to send us away, we went 
 into the back door, and, turning to the right, entered a 
 kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely 
 neatness, and in it there were three or four children, 
 one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a 
 baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of 
 the people of the house, and gave us what leave she 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 241 
 
 could to look about us. Thence we stepped across the 
 narrow mid-passage of the cottage into the only other 
 apartment below stairs, a sitting-room, where we found 
 a young man eating bread and cheese. He informed 
 us that he did not live there, and had only called in to 
 refresh himself on his way home from church. This 
 room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor one, and, 
 besides being all that the cottage had to show for a 
 parlor, it was a sleeping-apartment, having two beds, 
 which might be curtained off, on occasion. The young 
 man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go up 
 stairs. Up we crept, accordingly ; and a few steps 
 brought us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen, 
 where we found the wretchedest little sleeping-cham- 
 ber in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, 
 and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most** 
 probably, was Burns’s chamber ; or, perhaps, it may 
 have been that of his mother’s servant-maid ; and, in 
 either case, this rude floor, at one time or another, 
 must have creaked beneath the poet’s midnight tread. 
 On the opposite side of the passage was the door of 
 another attic-chamber, opening which, I saw a consid- 
 erable number of cheeses on the floor. 
 
 The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, 
 and also a dunghill odor ; and it is not easy to under- 
 stand how the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be 
 any more agreeable or salubrious morally than it ap- 
 peared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep 
 a holy awe about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy 
 with coarse-natured rustics into this narrowness and 
 filth. Such a habitation is calculated to make beasts 
 of men and women ; and it indicates a degree of bar- 
 barism which I did not imagine to exist in Scotland, 
 that a tiller of broad fields, like the farmer of Mauch- 
 16 
 
 VOL. VII. 
 
242 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS, 
 
 line, should have his abode in a pigsty. It is sad to 
 think of anybody — not to say a poet, but any human 
 being — sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spend- 
 ing all his home-life in this miserable hovel ; but, me- 
 thinks, I never in the least knew how to estimate the 
 miracle of Burns’s genius, nor his heroic merit for be- 
 ing no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid 
 hindrances amid which he developed himself. Space, 
 a free atmosphere, and cleanliness have a vast deal to 
 do with the possibilities of human virtue. 
 
 The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as 
 being damp and unwholesome ; but I do not see why, 
 outside of the cottage-walls, it should possess so evil 
 a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge, enjoy- 
 ing, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, 
 and sloping far downward before any marshy soil is 
 reached. The high hedge, and the trees that stand 
 beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect enough to 
 one who does not know the grimy secrets of the inte- 
 rior ; and the summer afternoon was now so bright 
 that I shall remember the scene with a great deal of 
 sunshine over it. 
 
 Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which 
 the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up 
 the mouse’s nest. It is the enclosure nearest to the 
 cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather 
 remarkably unfertile one. A little farther on, the 
 ground was whitened with an immense number of 
 daisies, — daisies, daisies everywhere ; and in answer 
 to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field 
 where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If 
 so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies 
 by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal 
 one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 243 
 
 ‘‘ wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers,” which will be 
 precious to many friends in our own country as com- 
 ing from Burns’s farm, and being of the same race 
 and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an am- 
 aranthine flower while seeming to destroy it. 
 
 From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of 
 pleasant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by 
 their connection with Burns. We skirted, too, along 
 a portion of the estate of Auchinleck, which still be- 
 longs to the Boswell family, — the present possessor 
 being Sir James Boswell,^ a grandson of Johnson’s 
 friend, and son of the Sir Alexander who was killed 
 in a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as a kind, 
 free-hearted man, but addicted to horse-races and 
 similar pastimes, and a little too familiar with the 
 wine-cup ; so that poor Bozzy’s booziness would appear 
 to have become hereditary in his ancient line. There 
 is no male heir to the estate of Auchinleck. The por- 
 tion of the lands which we saw is covered with wood 
 and much undermined with rabbit-warrens ; nor, though 
 the territory extends over a large number of acres, is 
 the income very considerable. 
 
 By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw 
 Miss Alexander, the Lass of Ballochmyle. It was on 
 a bridge, which (or, more probably, a bridge that has 
 succeeded to the old one, and is made of iron) crosses 
 from bank to bank, high in air over a deep gorge of 
 the road ; so that the young lady may have appeared 
 to Burns like a creature between earth and sky, and 
 compounded chiefly of celestial elements. But, in 
 honest truth, the great charm of a woman, in Burns’s 
 eyes, was always her womanhood, and not the angelic 
 mixture which other poets find in her. 
 
 1 Sir James Boswell is now dead. 
 
244 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass 
 of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on 
 the banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tra- 
 dition that Burns accosted her. The song implies no 
 such interview. Lovers, of whatever condition, high 
 or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to 
 breathe their vows : the river flowing over its pebbly 
 bed, sometimes gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes 
 hidden deep in verdure, and here and there eddying 
 at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs. This beau- 
 tiful estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the family of 
 Alexanders, to whom Burns’s song has given renown 
 on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever 
 attained it. How slight the tenure seems ! A young 
 lady happened to walk out, one summer afternoon, 
 and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who 
 celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, 
 rude, — at least, not refined, though rather ambitious, 
 — and somewhat ploughman-like verses. Burns has 
 written hundreds of better things ; but henceforth, for 
 centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the 
 dream-land of Beautiful W omen, and she and all her 
 race are famous. I should like to know the present 
 head of the family, and ascertain what value, if any, 
 the members of it put upon the celebrity thus won. 
 
 We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as 
 the clean village of Scotland.” Certainly, as regards 
 the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of 
 Mauchline, whither we now returned without seeing 
 anything else worth writing about. 
 
 There was a rain-storm during the night, and, in 
 the morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauch- 
 line was glistening with wet, while frequent showers 
 came spattering down. The intense heat of many 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 245 
 
 days past was exchanged for a chilly atmosphere, 
 much more suitable to a stranger’s idea of what Scotch 
 temperature ought to be. We found, after breakfast, 
 that the first train northward had already gone by, 
 and that we must wait till nearly two o’clock for the 
 next. I merely ventured out once, during the fore- 
 noon, and took a brief walk through the village, in 
 which I have left little to describe. Its chief business 
 appears to be the manufacture of snuff-boxes. There 
 are perhaps five or six shops, or more, including those 
 licensed to sell only tea and tobacco ; the best of them 
 have the characteristics of village stores in the United 
 States, dealing in a small way with an extensive 
 variety of articles. I peeped into the open gateway 
 of the churchyard, and saw that the ground was ab- 
 solutely stuffed with dead people,, and the surface 
 crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and 
 horizontal. All Burns’s old Mauchline acquaintance 
 are doubtless there, and the Armours among them, 
 except Bonny Jean, who sleeps by her poet’s side. 
 The family of Armour is now extinct in Mauchline. 
 
 Arriving at the railway-station, we found a tall, el- 
 derly, comely gentleman walking to and fro and wait- 
 ing for the train. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander, 
 — it may fairly be presumed the Alexander of Bal- 
 lochmyle, a blood relation of the lovely lass. W onder- 
 ful efficacy of a poet’s verse, that could shed a glory 
 from Long Ago on this old gentleman’s white hair ! 
 These Alexanders, by the by, are not an old family on 
 the Ballochmyle estate ; the father of the lass having 
 made a fortune in trade, and established himself as the 
 first landed proprietor of his name in these parts. The 
 original family was named Whitefoord. 
 
 Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable ; 
 
246 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish 
 off the scenery, and causes a woful diminution in the 
 beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much 
 of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly 
 direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless 
 rain, and drove to the King’s Arms Hotel. In the 
 intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which 
 appeared to have many modern or modern-fronted 
 edifices ; although there are likewise tall, gray, gabled, 
 and quaint-looking houses in the by-streets, here and 
 there, betokening an ancient place. The town lies on 
 both sides of the Ayr, which is here broad and stately, 
 and bordered with dwellings that look from their win- 
 dows directly down into the passing tide. 
 
 I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone 
 bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, by a 
 venerable structure of four gray arches, which must 
 have bestridden the stream ever since the early days 
 of Scottish history. These are the ‘^Two Briggs of 
 Ayr,” whose midnight conversation was overheard by 
 Burns, while other auditors were aware only of the 
 rush and rumble of the wintry stream among the 
 arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and 
 paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red 
 freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean 
 old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep 
 between. Nothing else impressed me hereabouts, un- 
 less I mention that, during the rain, the women and 
 girls went about the streets of Ayr barefooted to save 
 their shoes. 
 
 The next morning wore a lowering aspect as if it 
 felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days 
 of storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of 
 fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started at 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 247 
 
 a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our 
 way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a 
 roadside cottage, on which was an inscription to the 
 effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. 
 It is now a public house ; and, of course, we alighted 
 and entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at 
 present see it, is a neat apartment with the modern 
 improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much over- 
 scribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door 
 of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other 
 wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial 
 letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having 
 received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form 
 really curious and interesting articles of furniture. I 
 have seldom (though I do not personally adopt this 
 mode of illustrating my humble name) felt inclined to 
 ridicule the natural impulse of most people thus to 
 record themselves at the shrines of poets and heroes. 
 
 On a panel, let into the wall in a corner of the room, 
 is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture 
 by Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, 
 which are probably a recent substitute for the ordi- 
 nary flag-stones of a peasant’s cottage. There is but 
 one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of 
 Robert Burns : it is the kitchen, into which we now 
 went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than 
 those of Shakespeare’s house, — though, perhaps, not 
 so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over 
 which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have 
 been trampling. A new window has been opened 
 through the wall, towards the road ; but on the opposite 
 side is the little original window, of only four small 
 panes, through which came the first daylight that shone 
 upon the Scottish poet. At the side of the room, op 
 
248 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 posite the fireplace, is a recess, containing a bed, which 
 can be hidden by curtains. In that humble nook, of 
 all places in the world, Providence was pleased to de- 
 posit the germ of richest human life which mankind 
 then had within its circumference. 
 
 These two rooms, as I have said, make up the whole 
 sum and substance of Burns’s birthplace : for there 
 were no chambers, nor even attics ; and the thatched 
 roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting- 
 room, the height of which was that of the whole house. 
 The cottage, however, is attached to another edifice of 
 the same size and description, as these little habita- 
 tions often are ; and, moreover, a splendid addition 
 has been made to it, since the poet’s renown began to 
 draw visitors to the wayside alehouse. The old wo- 
 man of the house led us through an entry, and showed 
 a vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions, to be sure, but 
 marvellously large and splendid as compared with 
 what might be anticipated from the outward aspect of 
 the cottage. It contained a bust of Burns, and was 
 hung round with pictures and engravings, principally 
 illustrative of his life and poems. In this part of the 
 house, too, there is a parlor, fragrant with tobacco- 
 smoke ; and, no doubt, many a noggin of whiskey is 
 here quaffed to the memory of the bard, who professed 
 to draw so much inspiration from that potent liquor. 
 
 We bought some engravings of Kirk Alloway, the 
 Bridge of Doon, and the monument, and gave the old 
 woman a fee besides, and took our leave. A very short 
 drive farther brought us within sight of the monu- 
 ment, and to the hotel, situated close by the entrance 
 of the ornamental grounds within which the former is 
 enclosed. We rang the bell at the gate of the enclos- 
 ure, but were forced to wait a considerable time ; be- 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS, 249 
 
 cause the old man, the regular superintendent of the 
 spot, had gone to assist at the laying of the corner- 
 stone of a new kirk. He appeared anon, and admit- 
 ted us, but immediately hurried away to be present at 
 the concluding ceremonies, leaving us locked up with 
 Burns. 
 
 The enclosure around the monument is beautifully 
 laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly pro- 
 vided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with 
 loving care. The monument stands on an elevated 
 site, and consists of a massive basement-story, three- 
 sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian 
 temple, — a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pil- 
 lars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beauti- 
 ful in itself ; though I know not what peculiar appro- 
 priateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish 
 rural poet. 
 
 The door of the basement-story stood open ; and, 
 entering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking 
 keener, more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled 
 as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness can- 
 not be good. In the centre of the room stood a glass 
 case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the 
 little Pocket Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, 
 when they pledged their troth to one another. It is 
 poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, 
 referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is 
 written within the cover of each volume, in the poet’s 
 own hand ; and fastened to one of the covers is a 
 lock of Highland Mary’s golden hair. This Bible had 
 been carried to America by 'one of her relatives, but 
 was sent back to be fitly treasured here. 
 
 There is a staircase within the monument, by which 
 we ascended to the top, and had a view of both Briggs 
 
250 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 
 
 of Doon ; the scene of Tam O’Shanter’s misadventure 
 being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through 
 the enclosed garden, and came to a little building in a 
 corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of 
 Tam and Sutor Wat, — ponderous stone-work enough, 
 yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living 
 warmth and jovial hilarity. From this part of the 
 garden, too, we again beheld the old Brigg of Doon, 
 over which Tam galloped in such imminent and awful 
 peril. It is a beautiful object in the landscape, with 
 one high, graceful arch, ivy - grown, and shadowed all 
 over and around with foliage. 
 
 When we had waited a good while, the old gardener 
 came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer 
 at laying the corner - stone of the new kirk. He now 
 gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us out from 
 his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to 
 Kirk Alloway, which is within two or three minutes’ 
 walk of the monument. A few steps ascend from the 
 roadside, through a gate, into the old graveyard, in 
 the midst of which stands the kirk. The edifice is 
 wholly roofless, but the side - walls and gable - ends 
 are quite entire, though portions of them are evidently 
 modern restorations. Never was there a plainer little 
 church, or one with smaller architectural pretensions ; 
 no New England meeting-house has more simplicity in 
 its very self, though poetry and fun have clambered 
 and clustered so wildly over Kirk Alloway that it is 
 difficult to see it as it actually exists. By the by, I do 
 not understand why Satan and an assembly of witches 
 should hold their revels' within a consecrated pre- 
 cinct ; but the weird scene has so established itself in 
 the world’s imaginative faith that it must be accepted 
 as an authentic incident, in spite of rule and reason 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS, 251 
 
 to the contrary. Possibly, some carnal minister, some 
 priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dis- 
 pelled the consecration of the holy edifice by his pre- 
 tence of prayer, and thus made it the resort of un- 
 happy ghosts and sorcerers and devils. 
 
 The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to 
 quite as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the 
 witches used it as a dancing-hall ; for it is divided in 
 the midst by a wall of stone-masonry, and each com- 
 partment has been converted into a family burial-place. 
 The name on one of the monuments is Crawfurd ; the 
 other bore no inscription. It is impossible not to feel 
 that these good people, whoever they may be, had no 
 business to thrust their prosaic bones into a spot that 
 belongs to the world, and where their presence jars 
 with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the 
 pilgrim brings thither. They shut us out from our 
 own precincts, too, — from that inalienable possession 
 which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by 
 taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to 
 the domain of imagination. And here these wretched 
 squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after bar- 
 ring each of the two doorways of the kirk with an 
 iron grate ! May their rest be troubled, till they rise 
 and let us in ! 
 
 Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering 
 how large a space it fills in our imagination before we 
 see it. I paced its length, outside of the wall, and 
 found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more 
 than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have 
 been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly 
 remember, are now blocked up with mason-work of 
 stone. One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in 
 the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tam 
 
262 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS, 
 
 O’Shanter, blazing with devilish light, as he ap- 
 proached along the road from Ayr; and there is a 
 small and square one, on the side nearest the road, 
 into which he might have peered, as he sat on horse- 
 back. Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, 
 standing on the ground, had not the opening been 
 walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the 
 peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still 
 hanging in it. And this is all that I remember of 
 Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material 
 are gray and irregular. 
 
 The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and 
 crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerv- 
 ing much from a straight line. To reach the old 
 bridge, it appears to have made a bend, shortly after 
 passing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply to- 
 wards the river. The new bridge is within a minute’s 
 walk of the monument ; and we went thither, and 
 leaned over its parapet to admire the beautiful Doon, 
 flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and 
 wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier scene ; although 
 this might have been even lovelier if a kindly sun had 
 shone upon it. The ivy-grown, ancient bridge, with its 
 high arch, through which we had a picture of the river 
 and the green banks beyond, was absolutely the most 
 picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever 
 blessed my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its wooded banks, 
 and the boughs dipping into the water ! The mem- 
 ory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song 
 of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and 
 wild, in accordance with their native melody. 
 
 It was impossible to depart without crossing the very 
 bridge of Tam’s adventure ; so we went thither, over a 
 now disused portion of the road, and, standing on the 
 
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 253 
 
 centre of the arch, gathered some ivy leaves from that 
 sacred spot. This done, we returned as speedily as 
 might he to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon be- 
 held Ailsa Craig rising like a pyramid out of the sea. 
 Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in 
 sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by a shoul- 
 der on each side. But a man is better than a moun- 
 tain ; and we had been holding intercourse, if not with 
 the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost of one of 
 Earth’s memorable sons, amid the scenes where he 
 lived and sung. We shall appreciate him better as a 
 poet, hereafter ; for there is no writer whose life, as 
 a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws 
 such a necessary light upon whatever he has produced. 
 Henceforth, there will be a personal warmth for us in 
 everything that he wrote ; and, like his countrymen, 
 we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we 
 had shaken hands with him, and felt the thrill of his 
 actual voice. 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 One of our English summers looks, in the retro- 
 spect, as if it had been patched with more frequent 
 sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords ; 
 but I believe that it may be only a moral effect, — a 
 ‘‘ light that never was on sea nor land,” — caused by 
 our having found a particularly delightful abode in the 
 neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, how- 
 ever, I was compelled to solve the problem of living in 
 two places at once, — an impossibility which I so far 
 accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, out 
 of men’s sight and knowledge on one side of Eng- 
 land, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces 
 on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been 
 there all along. It was the easier to get accustomed 
 to our new residence, because it was not only rich in 
 all the material properties of a home, but had also the 
 home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is 
 of too intangible a character to be let even with the 
 most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend 
 had given us his suburban residence, with all its con- 
 veniences, elegances, and snuggeries, — its drawing- 
 rooms and library, still warm and bright with the rec- 
 ollection of the genial presences that we had known 
 there, — its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its 
 wine-cellar, if we could have availed ourselves of so 
 dear and delicate a trust, — its lawn and cosey garden- 
 nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous 
 idea of an English home, — he had transferred it all 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 265 
 
 to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might 
 rest and take our ease during his summer’s absence on 
 the Continent. W e had long been dwelling in tents, 
 as it were, and morally shivering by hearths which, 
 heap the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no 
 blaze could render cheerful. I remember, to this day, 
 the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English 
 fireside, and watched the chill and rainy twilight of an 
 autumn day darkening down upon the garden ; while 
 the portrait of the preceding occupant of the house 
 (evidently a most unamiable personage in his lifetime) 
 scowled inhospitably from above the mantel-piece, as 
 if indignant that an American should try to make him- 
 self at home there. Possibly it may appease his sulky 
 shade to know that I quitted his abode as much a 
 stranger as I entered it. But now, at last, we were 
 in a genuine British home, where refined and warm- 
 hearted people had just been living their daily life, 
 and had left us a summer’s inheritance of slowly ri- 
 pened days, such as a stranger’s hasty opportunities so 
 seldom permit him to enjoy. 
 
 Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of 
 all the world (which, as Americans have at present no 
 centre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere 
 in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul’s Cathedral), 
 it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed 
 about by the turbulence of the vast London whirlpool. 
 But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting 
 movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good 
 deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my 
 temporary haven more attractive than anything that 
 the great town could offer. I already knew London 
 well ; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so far as 
 it was capable of satisfaction) that mysterious yearn- 
 
256 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 ing — the magnetism of millions of hearts operating 
 upon one — which impels every man’s individuality to 
 mingle itself with the immensest mass of human life 
 within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, 
 I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, 
 lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange labyrin- 
 thine courts, the parks, the gardens and enclosures of 
 ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid 
 the city uproar, the markets, the foggy streets along 
 the river-side, the bridges, — I had sought all parts of 
 the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and in- 
 discriminating curiosity ; until few of the native in- 
 habitants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners 
 as myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my 
 prime purpose and achievement were to lose my way, 
 and so to find it the more surely) had brought me, at 
 one time or another, to the sight and actual presence 
 of almost all the objects and renowned localities that 
 I had read about, and which had made London the 
 dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than 
 my dream ; for there is nothing else in life compar- 
 able (in that species of enjoyment, I mean) to the 
 thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which an 
 American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to 
 call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of Lon- 
 don. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling 
 there, as nowhere else in the world, — though after- 
 wards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment 
 in regard to Rome ; and as long as either of those two 
 great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and of 
 the Present, a man’s native soil may crumble beneath 
 his feet without leaving him altogether homeless upon 
 earth. 
 
 Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 257 
 
 was in a manner free of the city, and could approach 
 or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it hap- 
 pened, that, living within a quarter of an hour’s 
 rush of the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener 
 tempted to spend a whole summer-day in our garden 
 than to seek anything new or old, wonderful or com- 
 monplace, beyond its precincts. It was a delightful 
 garden, of no great extent, but comprising a good 
 many facilities for repose and enjoyment, such as ar- 
 bors and garden - seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose- 
 bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, poppies, gerani- 
 ums, sweet-peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, 
 blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble 
 myself to recognize individually, yet had always a 
 vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim sky 
 of England has a most happy effect on the coloring of 
 flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same 
 texture ; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the 
 exuberance of English verdure had a greater charm 
 than any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The 
 hunger for natural beauty might be satisfied with 
 grass and green leaves forever. Conscious of the 
 triumph of England in this respect, and loyally anx- 
 ious for the credit of my own country, it gratified me 
 to observe what trouble and pains the English gar- 
 deners are fain to throw away in producing a few sour 
 plums and abortive pears and apples, — as, for ex- 
 ample, in this very garden, where a row of unhappy 
 trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick 
 wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a 
 cruel and unattainable purpose of compelling them to 
 produce rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never 
 ate an English fruit, raised in the open air, that could 
 compare in flavor with a Yankee turnip. 
 
 VOL. VII. 17 
 
258 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 The garden included that prime feature of English 
 domestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, care- 
 fully shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on 
 which we sometimes essayed to practise the time-hon- 
 ored game of bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without 
 a perception that it involves a very pleasant mixture 
 of exercise and ease, as is the case with most of the 
 old English pastimes. Our little domain was shut in 
 by the house on one side, and in other directions by a 
 hedge-fence and a brick wall, which last was concealed 
 or softened by shrubbery and the impaled fruit-trees 
 already mentioned. Over all the outer region, beyond 
 our immediate precincts, there was an abundance of 
 foliage, tossed aloft from the near or distant trees 
 with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. The ef- 
 fect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch that 
 we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a 
 wooded seclusion ; only that, at brief intervals, we 
 could hear the galloping sweep of a railway-train pass- 
 ing within a quarter of a mile, and its discordant 
 screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it 
 reached the Blackheath Station. That harsh, rough 
 sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of 
 the great world summoning me forth. I know not 
 whether I was the more pained or pleased to be thus 
 constantly put in mind of the neighborhood of Lon- 
 don ; for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a 
 little for reading a book, or playing with children in 
 the grass, when there were so many better things for 
 an enlightened traveller to do, — while, at the same 
 time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idle- 
 ness, to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. 
 On the whole, however, I do not repent of a single 
 wasted hour, and only wish that I could have spent 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 259 
 
 twice as many in the same way; for the impression on 
 my memory is, that 1 was as happy in that hospitable 
 garden as the English summer-day was long. 
 
 One chief condition of my enjoyment was the 
 weather. Italy has nothing like it, nor Americac 
 There never was such weather except in England^ 
 where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible east- 
 wind between February and June, and a brown Oc- 
 tober and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless 
 winter, there are a few weeks of incomparable sum- 
 mer, scattered through July and August, and the ear- 
 lier portion of September, small in quantity, but ex- 
 quisite enough to atone for the whole year’s atmos- 
 pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent som- 
 breness may have brought out those sunny intervals 
 in such high relief, that I see them, in my recollection, 
 brighter than they really were : a little light makes a 
 glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. 
 The English, however, do not seem to know how en- 
 joyable the momentary gleams of their summer are ; 
 they call it broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside 
 with red, perspiring faces, in a state of combustion 
 and deliquescence ; and I have observed that even 
 their cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the 
 deepest shade, or standing midleg deep in pools and 
 streams to cool themselves, at temperatures which our 
 own cows would deem little more than barely comfort- 
 able. To myself, after the summer heats of my na- 
 tive land had somewhat effervesced out of my blood 
 and memory, it was the weather of Paradise itself. 
 It might be a little too warm ; but it was that mod- 
 est and inestimable superabundance which constitutes 
 a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly 
 enough. During my first year in England, residing 
 
260 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, I 
 could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the 
 hearth ; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get 
 acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendli- 
 ness, shy, but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled, 
 shadowy, seldom smiling summer ; and in the succeed- 
 ing years, — whether that I had renewed my fibre 
 with English beef and replenished my blood with 
 English ale, or whatever were the cause, — I grew 
 content with winter and .especially in love with sum- 
 mer, desiring little more for happiness than merely to 
 breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are 
 now speaking of, I must needs confess that the noon- 
 tide sun came down more fervently than I found al- 
 together tolerable ; so that I was fain to shift my 
 position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making 
 myself the movable index of a sundial that reckoned 
 up the hours of an almost interminable day. 
 
 For each day seemed endless, though never weari- 
 some. As far as your actual experience is concerned, 
 the English summer-day has positively no beginning 
 and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable 
 hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains ; 
 you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quie- 
 tude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched 
 upon their tranquil lapse ; and at length you become 
 conscious that it is bedtime again, while there is still 
 enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your 
 book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such 
 season, hangs down a transparent veil through which 
 the by-gone day beholds its successor ; or, if not quite 
 true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly af- 
 firmed of the more northern parts of the island, that 
 To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is dead. They 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 261 
 
 exist together in the golden twilight, where the de- 
 crepit old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous 
 infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may simul- 
 taneously touch them both with one finger of recollec- 
 tion and another of prophecy. I cared not how long 
 the day might be, nor how many of them, I had 
 earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and 
 perturbation, and could have been content never to 
 stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its 
 garden. If I lacked anything beyond, it would have 
 satisfied me well enough to dream about it, instead of 
 struggling for its actual possession. At least, this was 
 the feeling of the moment ; although the transitory, 
 flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there 
 was perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as al- 
 lowing me much of the comfort of house and home, 
 without any sense of their weight upon my back. The 
 nomadic life has great advantages, if we can find tents 
 ready pitched for us at every stage. 
 
 So much for the interior of our abode, — a spot of 
 deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity. 
 But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we 
 were not shocked with any immediate presence of the 
 great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases 
 that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I 
 believe) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which other- 
 wise offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in sin- 
 gular proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, 
 the proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in every- 
 body and nobody ; but exclusive rights have been ob- 
 tained, here and there, chiefly by men whose daily con- 
 cerns link them with London, so that you find their 
 villas or boxes standing along village streets which 
 have often more of an American aspect than the elder 
 
262 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 English settlements. The scene is semi-rural. Orna- 
 mental trees overshadow the sidewalks, and grassy mar- 
 gins border the wheel-tracks. The houses, to be sure, 
 have certain points of difference from those of an 
 American village, bearing tokens of architectural de- 
 sign, though seldom of individual taste ; and, as far as 
 possible, they stand aloof from the street, and sepa- 
 rated each from its neighbor by hedge or fence, in ac- 
 cordance with the careful exclusiveness of the English 
 character, which impels the occupant, moreover, to 
 cover the front of his dwelling with as much conceal- 
 ment of shrubbery as his limits will allow. Through 
 the interstices, you catch glimpses of well-kept lawns, 
 generally ornamented with flowers, and with what the 
 English call rock -work, being heaps of ivy -grown 
 stones and fossils, designed for romantic effect in a 
 small way. Two or three of such village streets as are 
 here described take a collective name, — as, for in- 
 stance, Blackheath Park, — and constitute a kind of 
 community of residents, with gateways, kept by a 
 policeman, and a semi-privacy, stepping beyond which, 
 you find yourself on the breezy heath. 
 
 On this great, bare, dreary common I often went 
 astray, as I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, 
 and drew the air (tainted with London smoke though 
 it might be) into my lungs by deep inspirations, with 
 a strange and unexpected se^ise of desert freedom. 
 The misty atmosphere helps you to fancy a remoteness 
 that perhaps does not quite exist. During the little 
 time that it lasts, the solitude is as impressive as that 
 of a Western prairie or forest ; but soon the railway 
 shriek, a mile or two away, insists upon informing you 
 of your whereabout ; or you recognize in the distance 
 some landmark that you may have known, — an in- 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 263 
 
 sulated villa, perhaps, with its garden-wall around it, 
 or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is 
 sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a cen- 
 tury ago, the most frequent token of man’s beneficent 
 contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creak, 
 like a tavern sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro 
 in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen and foot- 
 pads, was dangerous in those days ; and even now, for 
 aught I know, the Western prairie may still compare 
 favorably with it as a safe region to go astray in. 
 When I was acquainted with Blackheath, the ingen- 
 ious device of garroting had recently come into fash- 
 ion ; and I can remember, while crossing those waste 
 places at midnight, and hearing footsteps behind me, 
 to have been sensibly encouraged by also hearing, not 
 far off, the clinking hoof-tramp of one of the horse- 
 patrols who do regular duty there. About sunset, or 
 a little later, was the time when the broad and some- 
 what desolate peculiarity of the heath seemed to me 
 to put on its utmost impressiveness. At that hour^ 
 finding myself on elevated ground, I once had a view 
 of immense London, four or five miles off, with the 
 vast Dome in the midst, and the towers of the two 
 Houses of Parliament rising up into the smoky can- 
 opy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass 
 of things, and hovered about the objects that were 
 most distinctly visible, — a glorious and sombre pic- 
 ture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a 
 young man’s dream of the great world, foretelling at 
 that distance a grandeur never to be fully realized. 
 While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of 
 two or three sets of cricket-players were constantly 
 pitched on Blackheath, and matches were going for- 
 ward that seemed to involve the honor and credit of 
 
264 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 communities or counties, exciting an interest in every- 
 body but myself, who cared not what part of England 
 might glorify itself at the expense of another. It is 
 necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in 
 order to enjoy this great national game ; at any rate, 
 as a spectacle for an outside observer, I found it lazy, 
 lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of pictorial ef- 
 fects. Choice of other amusements was at hand. Butts 
 for archery were established, and bows and arrows 
 were to be let, at so many shots for a penny, — there 
 being abundance of space for a farther flight-shot than 
 any modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then there 
 was an absurd game of throwing a stick at crockery- 
 ware, which I have witnessed a hundred times, and 
 personally engaged in once or twice, without ever hav- 
 ing the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery. 
 In other spots you found donkeys for children to ride, 
 and ponies of a very meek and patient spirit, on which 
 the Cockney pleasure-seekers of both sexes rode races 
 and made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By 
 way of refreshment there was gingerbread (but, as a 
 true patriot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior to 
 our native dainty), and ginger -beer, and probably 
 stancher liquor among the booth - keeper’s hidden 
 stores. The frequent railway - trains, as well as the 
 numerous steamers to Greenwich, have made the va- 
 cant portions of Blackheath a play-ground and breath- 
 ing-place for the Londoners, readily and very cheaply 
 accessible ; so that, in view of this broader use and 
 enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have been 
 filched away, so to speak, and individualized by thriv- 
 ing citizens. One sort of visitors especially interested 
 me : they were schools of little boys or girls, under the 
 guardianship of their instructors, — charity schools, as 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 265 
 
 I often surmised from their aspect, collected among 
 dark alleys and squalid courts ; and hither they were 
 brought to spend a summer afternoon, these pale little 
 progeny of the sunless nooks of London, who had 
 never known that the sky was any broader than that 
 narrow and vapory strip above their native lane. I 
 fancied that they took but a doubtful pleasure, being 
 half affrighted at the wide, empty space overhead and 
 round about them, finding the air too little medicated 
 with smoke, soot, and graveyard exhalations, to be 
 breathed with comfort, and feeling shelterless and lost 
 because grimy London, their slatternly and disreput- 
 able mother, had suffered them to stray out of her 
 arms. 
 
 Passing among these holiday people, we come to one 
 of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening through 
 an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath 
 into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland orna- 
 ment, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, 
 many of which bear tokens of a venerable age. These 
 broad and well-kept pathways rise and decline over the 
 elevations, and along the bases of gentle hills, which 
 diversify the whole surface of the Park. The loftiest 
 and most abrupt of them (though but of very mod- 
 erate height) is one of the earth’s noted summits, and 
 may hold up its head with Mont Blanc and Chim- 
 borazo, as being the site of Greenwich Observatory, 
 where, if all nations will consent to say so, the longi- 
 tude of our great globe begins. I used to regulate my 
 watch by the broad dial-plate against the Observatory 
 wall, and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very 
 centre of Time and Space. 
 
 There are lovelier parks than this in the neighbor- 
 hood of London, richer scenes of greensward and cul- 
 
266 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 tivated trees ; and Kensington, especially, in a sum« 
 mer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as any 
 place can or ought to be, in a world which, some time 
 or other, we must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beau- 
 tiful, — a spot where the art of man has conspired 
 with Nature, as if he and the great mother had taken 
 counsel together how to make a pleasant scene, and 
 the longest liver of the two had faithfully carried out 
 their mutual design. It has, likewise, an additional 
 charm of its own, because, to all appearance, it is the 
 people’s property and play-ground in a much more 
 genuine way than the aristocratic resorts in closer vi- 
 cinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the in- 
 stances in which the monarch’s property is actually 
 the people’s, and shows how much more natural is 
 their relation to the sovereign than to the nobility, 
 which pretends to hold the intervening space between 
 the two: for a nobleman makes a paradise only for 
 himself, and fills it with his own pomp and pride ; 
 whereas the people are sooner or later the legitimate 
 inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create, 
 as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays, when tlie 
 sun shone, and even on those grim and sombre days 
 when, if it do not actually rain, the English persist in 
 calling it fine weather, it was too good to see how stur- 
 dily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and what 
 fulness of simple enjoyment they evidently found there. 
 They were the people, — not the populace, — speci- 
 mens of a class whose Sunday clothes are a distinct 
 kind of garb from their week-day ones ; and this, in 
 England, implies wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, 
 and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be ac- 
 quainted with them, in order to investigate what man- 
 ner of folks they were, what sort of households they 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 267 
 
 kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, and 
 whether they were as narrow-minded as their betters. 
 There can be very little doubt of it : an Englishman 
 is English, in whatever rank of life, though no more 
 intensely so, I should imagine, as an artisan or petty 
 shopkeeper, than as a member of Parliament. 
 
 The English character, as I conceive it, is by no 
 means a very lofty one; they seem to have a great 
 deal of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as 
 was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrel- 
 some people who sprouted up out of the soil, after 
 Cadmus had sown the dragon’s teeth. And yet, though 
 the individual Englishman is sometimes preternatu- 
 rally disagreeable, an observer standing aloof has a 
 sense of natural kindness towards them in the lump. 
 They adhere closer to the original simplicity in which 
 mankind was created than we ourselves do ; they love, 
 quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn their actual selves inside 
 out with greater freedom than any class of Americans 
 would consider decorous. It was often so with these 
 holiday folks in Greenwich Park ; and, ridiculous as 
 it may sound, I fancy myself to have caught very sat- 
 isfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cock- 
 neys there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow -Bells, 
 picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on the 
 broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or by sin- 
 gle pairs of love-making youths and maidens, along 
 the sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent po- 
 licemen or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific 
 impression on my mind. One feature, at all events, 
 of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds of deer 
 that encountered you in the somewhat remoter recesses 
 of the Park, and were readily prevailed upon to nib- 
 ble a bit of bread out of your hand. But, though no 
 
268 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had 
 sounded nor hound bayed at the heels of themselves 
 or their antlered progenitors for centuries past, there 
 was still an apprehensiveness lingering in their hearts ; 
 so that a slight movement of the hand or a step too 
 near would send a whole squadron of them scamper- 
 ing away, just as a breath scatters the winged seeds of 
 a dandelion. 
 
 The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those fes- 
 tal people wandering through it, resembled that of the 
 Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sun- 
 day or Saint’s day ; but, I am not ashamed to say, it 
 a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of Puritanic 
 strictness might be lingering in the sombre depths of 
 a New England heart, among severe and sunless re- 
 membrances of the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs 
 of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the catechism, and 
 for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in 
 the middle of long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to 
 take the long-hoarded sting out of these compunctious 
 smarts by attending divine service in the open air. 
 On a cart outside of the Park-wall (and, if I mistake 
 not, at two or three corners and secluded spots within 
 the Park itself) a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice 
 and speedily gathers a congregation, his zeal for whose 
 religious welfare impels the good man to such earnest 
 vociferation and toilsome gesture that his perspiring 
 face is quickly in a stew. His inward flame conspires 
 with the too fervid sun, and makes a positive martyr 
 of him, even in the very exercise of his pious labor ; 
 insomuch that he purchases every atom of spiritual 
 increment to his hearers by loss of his own corporeal 
 solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, 
 must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 269 
 
 him, be it understood, it is not in scorn ; he performs 
 his sacred office more acceptably than many a prelate. 
 These wayside services attract numbers who would not 
 otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one 
 year’s end to another, and who, for that very reason, 
 are the auditors most likely to be moved by the 
 preacher’s eloquence. Yonder Greenwich pensioner, 
 too, — in his costume of three-cornered hat, and old- 
 fashioned, brass-buttoned blue coat with ample skirts, 
 which makes him look like a contemporary of Admi- 
 ral Benbow, — that tough old mariner may hear a 
 word or two which will go nearer his heart than any- 
 thing that the chaplain of the Hospital can be ex- 
 pected to deliver. I always noticed, moreover, that a 
 considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers, 
 who came hither with a day’s leave from Woolwich, — 
 hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom wore as many 
 as four or five medals, Crimean or East Indian, on 
 the breasts of their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous 
 congregation listen with every appearance of heartfelt 
 interest; and, for my own part, I must frankly ac- 
 knowledge that I never found it possible to give five 
 minutes’ attention to any other English preaching: 
 so cold and commonplace are the homilies that pass 
 for such, under the aged roofs of churches. And as 
 for cathedrals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminu- 
 tive and unimportant part of the religious services, 
 — - if, indeed, it be considered a part, among the 
 pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resound- 
 ing and lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The 
 magnificence of the setting quite dazzles out what we 
 Puritans look upon as the jewel of the whole affair ; 
 for I presume that it was our forefathers, the Dissen- 
 ters in England and America, who gave the sermon 
 its present prominence in the Sabbath exercises. 
 
270 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 The Methodists are probably the first and only 
 Englishmen who have worshipped in the open air 
 since the ancient Britons listened to the preaching of 
 the Druids , and it reminded me of that old priest- 
 hood, to see certain memorials of their dusky epoch 
 — not religious, however, but warlike — in the neigh- 
 borhood of the spot where the Methodist was holding 
 forth. These were some ancient barrows, beneath or 
 within which are supposed to lie buried the slain of a 
 forgotten or doubtfully remembered battle, fought on 
 the site of Greenwich Park as long ago as two or 
 three centuries after the birth of Christ. Whatever 
 may once have been their height and magnitude, they 
 have now scarcely more prominence in the actual scene 
 than the battle of which they are the sole monuments 
 retains in history, — being only a few mounds side by 
 side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, 
 ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depres- 
 sion in their summits. When one of them was opened, 
 not long since, no bones, nor armor, nor weapons were 
 discovered, nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft 
 of hair, — perhaps from the head of a valiant general, 
 who, dying on the field of his victory, bequeathed this 
 lock, together with his indestructible fame, to after 
 ages. The hair and jewels are probably in the Brit- 
 ish Museum, where the potsherds and rubbish of in- 
 numerable generations make the visitor wish that each 
 passing century could carry off all its fragments and 
 relics along with it, instead of adding them to the con- 
 tinually accumulating burden which human knowledge 
 is compelled to lug upon its back. As for the fame, I 
 know not what has become of it. 
 
 After traversing the Park, we come into the neigh- 
 borhood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 271 
 
 one of its spacious gateways for the sake of glancing 
 at an establishment which does more honor to the 
 heart of England than anything else that I am ac- 
 quainted with, of a public nature. It is very seldom 
 that we can be sensible of anything like kindliness in 
 the acts or relations of such an artificial thing as a 
 National Government. Our own government, I should 
 conceive, is too much an abstraction ever to feel any 
 sympathy for its maimed sailors and soldiers, though 
 it will doubtless do them a severe kind of justice, as 
 chilling as the touch of steel. But it seemed to me 
 that the Greenwich pensioners are the petted children 
 of the nation, and that the government is their dry- 
 nurse, and that the old men themselves have a child- 
 like consciousness of their position. Very likely, a 
 better sort of life might have been arranged, and a 
 wiser care bestowed on them ; but, such as it is, it en- 
 ables them to spend a sluggish, careless, comfortable 
 old age, grumbling, growling, gruff, as if all the foul 
 weather of their past years were pent up within them, 
 yet not much more discontented than such weather- 
 beaten and battle -battered fragments of human kind 
 must inevitably be. Their home, in its outward form, 
 is on a very magnificent plan. Its germ was a royal 
 palace, the full expansion of which has resulted in a 
 series of edifices externally more beautiful than any 
 English palace that I have seen, consisting of several 
 quadrangles of stately architecture, united by colon- 
 nades and gravel-walks, and enclosing grassy squares, 
 with statues in the centre, the whole extending along 
 the Thames. It is built of marble, or very light-col- 
 ored stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porti- 
 cos, which (to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of 
 the old sailors) produce but a cold and shivery effect 
 
272 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 in the English climate. Had I been the architect, I 
 would have studied the characters, habits, and predh 
 lections of nautical people in Wapping, Rotherhithe, 
 and the neighborhood of the Tower (places which I 
 visited in affectionate remembrance of Captain Lem- 
 uel Gulliver, and other actual or mythological naviga- 
 tors), and would have built the hospital in a kind of 
 ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, and in- 
 convenient, but snug and cosey homeliness of the 
 sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no ques- 
 tion that all the above attributes, or enough of them 
 to satisfy an old sailor’s heart, might be reconciled 
 with architectural beauty and the wholesome contriv- 
 ances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel and gen- 
 uine style of building be given to the world. 
 
 But their countrymen meant kindly by the old fel- 
 lows in assigning them the ancient royal site where 
 Elizabeth held her court and Charles II. began to 
 build his palace. So far as the locality went, it was 
 treating them like so many kings ; and, with a discreet 
 abundance of grog, beer, and tobacco, there was per- 
 haps little more to be accomplished in behalf of men 
 whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them 
 for old age. Their chief discomfort is probably for 
 lack of something to do or think about. But, judging 
 by the few whom I saw, a listless habit seems to have 
 crept over them, a dim dreaminess of mood, in which 
 they sit between asleep and awake, and find the long 
 day wearing towards bedtime without its having made 
 any distinct record of itself upon their consciousness. 
 Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, they subside 
 into slumber, or nearly so, and start at the approach 
 of footsteps echoing under the colonnades, ashamed to 
 be caught napping, and rousing themselves in a hurry. 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 273 
 
 as formerly on the midnight watch at sea. In their 
 brightest moments, they gather in groups and bore 
 one another with endless sea -yarns about their voy- 
 ages under famous admirals, and about gale and calm, 
 battle and chase, and all that class of incident that 
 has its sphere on the deck and in the hollow interior 
 of a ship, where their world has exclusively been. For 
 other pastime, they quarrel among themselves, com- 
 rade with comrade, and perhaps shake paralytic fists 
 in furrowed faces. If inclined for a little exercise, 
 they can bestir their wooden legs on the long espla- 
 nade that borders by the Thames, criticising the rig of 
 passing ships, and firing off volleys of malediction at 
 the steamers, which have made the sea another element 
 than that they used to be acquainted with. All this 
 is but cold comfort for the evening of life, yet may 
 compare rather favorably with the preceding portions 
 of it, comprising little save imprisonment on ship- 
 board, in the course of which they have been tossed 
 all about the world and caught hardly a glimpse of it, 
 forgetting what grass and trees are, and never finding 
 out what woman is, though they may have encountered 
 a painted spectre which they took for her. A country 
 owes much to human beings whose bodies she has worn 
 out and whose immortal part she has left undeveloped 
 or debased, as we find them here ; and having wasted 
 an idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that 
 old men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impres- 
 sions, and even (up to an advanced period) a recep- 
 tivity of truth, which often appears to come to them 
 after the active time of life is past. The Greenwich 
 pensioners might prove better subjects for true educa- 
 tion now than in their school-boy days ; but then where 
 
 VOL. VII. 18 
 
274 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 is the Normal School that could educate instructors for 
 such a class ? 
 
 There is a beautiful chapel for the pensioners, in the 
 classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture 
 by West. I never could look at it long enough to 
 make out its design ; for this artist (though it pains 
 me to say it of so respectable a countryman) had a 
 gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, 
 a power of stupefying the spectator’s perceptions and 
 quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that 
 ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of con- 
 science, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong 
 abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake 
 of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty 
 fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athe- 
 naeum Exhibition. Would fire burn it, I wonder? 
 
 The principal thing that they have to show you, 
 at Greenwich Hospital, is the Painted Hall. It is a 
 splendid and spacious room, at least a hundred feet 
 long and half as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco 
 by Sir J ames Thornhill. As a work of art, I presume, 
 this frescoed canopy has little merit, though it pro- 
 duces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant color- 
 ing and as a specimen of magnificent upholstery. The 
 walls of the grand apartment are entirely covered with 
 pictures, many of them representing battles and other 
 naval incidents that were once fresher in the world’s 
 memory than now, but chiefly portraits of old admirals, 
 comprising the whole line of heroes who have trod the 
 quarter-decks of British ships for more than two hun- 
 dred years back. Next to a tomb in Westminster Ab- 
 bey, which was Nelson’s most elevated object of ambi- 
 tion, it would seem to be the highest meed of a naval 
 warrior to have his portrait hung up in the Painted 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 275 
 
 Hall ; but, by dint of victory upon victory, these illus- 
 trious personages have grown to be a mob, and by no 
 means a very interesting one, so far as regards the 
 character of the faces here depicted. They are gen- 
 erally commonplace, and often singularly stolid ; and 
 I have observed (both in the Painted Hall and else- 
 where, and not only in portraits, but in the actual pres- 
 ence of such renowned people as I have caught glimpses 
 of) that the countenances of heroes are not nearly so 
 impressive as those of statesmen, — except, of course, 
 in the rare instances where warlike ability has been but 
 the one-sided manifestation of a profound genius for 
 managing the world’s affairs. Nine tenths of these 
 distinguished admirals, for instance, if their faces tell 
 truth, must needs have been blockheads, and might 
 have served better, one would imagine, as wooden fig- 
 ure-heads for their own ships than to direct any diffi- 
 cult and intricate scheme of action from the quarter- 
 deck. It is doubtful whether the same kind of men 
 will hereafter meet with a similar degree of success ; 
 for they were victorious chiefly through the old Eng- 
 lish hardihood, exercised in a field of which modern 
 science had not yet got possession. Rough valor has 
 lost something of its value since their days, and must 
 continue to sink lower and lower in the comparative 
 estimate of warlike qualities. In the next naval war, 
 as between England and France, I would bet, me- 
 thinks, upon the Frenchman’s head. 
 
 It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero 
 of England — the greatest, therefore, in the world, and 
 of all time — had none of the stolid characteristics 
 that belong to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted 
 as their representative man. Foremost in the rough- 
 est of professions, he was as delicately organized as a 
 
276 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 woman, and as painfully sensitive as a poet. More 
 than any other Englishman he won the love and ad- 
 miration of his country, but won them through the 
 efficacy of qualities that are not English, or, at all 
 events, were intensified in his case and made poignant 
 and powerful by something morbid in the man, which 
 put him otherwise at cross-purposes with life. He was 
 a man of genius ; and genius in an Englishman (not 
 to cite the good old simile of a pearl in the oyster) is 
 usually a symptom of a lack of balance in the general 
 making-up of the character ; as we may satisfy our- 
 selves by running over the list of their poets, for ex- 
 ample, and observing how many of them have been 
 sickly or deformed, and how often their lives have 
 been darkened by insanity. An ordinary Englishman 
 is the healthiest and wholesomest of human beings ; an 
 extraordinary one is almost always, in one way or an- 
 other, a sick man. It was so with Lord Nelson. The 
 wonderful contrast or relation between his personal 
 qualities, the position which he held, and the life that 
 he lived, makes him as interesting a personage as all 
 history has to show ; and it is a pity that Southey’s 
 biography — so good in its superficial way, and yet so 
 inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man 
 < — should have taken the subject out of the hands of 
 some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation 
 and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman pos- 
 sessed. But Southey accomplished his own purpose, 
 which, apparently, was to present his hero as a pattern 
 for England’s young midshipmen. 
 
 But the English capacity for hero-worship is full to 
 the brim with what they are able to comprehend of 
 Lord Nelson’s character. Adjoining the Painted Hal] 
 is a smaller room, the walls of which are completely 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 277 
 
 and exclusively adorned with pictures of the great Ad- 
 miral’s exploits. We see the frail, ardent man in all 
 the most noted events of his career, from his encoun- 
 ter with a Polar Bear to his deat^ at Trafalgar, quiv- 
 ering here and there about the ^^om like a blue, lam- 
 bent flame. No Briton ever enters'that apartment with* 
 out feeling the beef and ale of his composition stirred 
 to its depths, and finding himself changed into a hero 
 for the nonce, however stolid his brain, however tough 
 his heart, however unexcitable his ordinary mood. To 
 confess the truth, I myself, though belonging to an- 
 other parish, have been deeply sensible to the sublime 
 recollections there aroused, acknowledging that Nelson 
 expressed his life in a kind of symbolic poetry which 
 I had as much right to understand as these burly isl- 
 anders. Cool and critical observer as I sought to be, 
 I enjoyed their burst of honest indignation when a vis- 
 itor (not an American, I am glad to say) thrust his 
 walking-stick almost into Nelson’s face, in one of the 
 pictures, by way of pointing a remark ; and the by- 
 standers immediately glowed like so many hot coals, 
 and would probably have consumed the offender in 
 their wrath, had he not effected his retreat. But the 
 most sacred objects of all are two of Nelson’s coats, 
 under separate glass cases. One is that which he wore 
 at the Battle of the Nile, and it is now sadly injured 
 by moths, which will quite destroy it in a few years, 
 unless its guardians preserve it as we do Washington’s 
 military suit by occasionally baking it in an oven. 
 The other is the coat in which he received his death- 
 wound at Trafalgar. On its breast are sewed three or 
 four stars and orders of knighthood, now much dimmed 
 by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough 
 on the battle-day to draw the fatal aim of a French 
 
278 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 marksman. The bullet-hole is visible on the shoulder, 
 as well as a part of the golden tassels of an epaulet, 
 the rest of which was shot away. Over the coat ia 
 laid a white waistcoat, with a great blood-stain on it, 
 out of which all the redness has utterly faded, leav- 
 ing it of a dingy yellow hue, in the threescore years 
 since that blood gushed out. Yet it was once the red- 
 dest blood in England, — Nelson’s blood ! 
 
 The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of 
 Greenwich, which will always retain a kind of festal 
 aspect in my memory, in consequence of my having 
 first become acquainted with it on Easter Monday. 
 Till a few years ago, the first three days of Easter 
 were a carnival season in this old town, during which 
 the idle and disreputable part of London poured itself 
 into the streets like an inundation of the Thames, — 
 as unclean as that turbid mixture of the offscourings 
 of the vast city, and overflowing with its grimy pollu- 
 tion whatever rural innocence, if any, might be found 
 in the suburban neighborhood. This festivity was 
 called Greenwich Fair, the final one of which, in an 
 immemorial succession, it was my fortune to behold. 
 
 If I had bethought myself of going through the fair 
 with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the 
 prominent objects, I doubt not that the result might 
 have been a sketch of English life quite as character- 
 istic and worthy of historical preservation as an ac- 
 count of the Roman Carnival. Having neglected to 
 do so, I remember little more than a confusion of un- 
 washed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with 
 some smarter figures, but, on the whole, presenting a 
 mobbish appearance such as we never see in our own 
 country. It taught me to understand why Shake- 
 speare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to its 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 279 
 
 attribute of evil odor. The common people of Eng* 
 land, I am afraid, have no daily familiarity with even 
 so necessary a thing as a wash-bowl, not to mention a 
 bathing-tub. And, furthermore, it is one mighty dif- 
 ference between them and us, that every man and 
 woman on our side of the water has a working-day 
 suit and a holiday suit, and is occasionally as fresh as 
 a rose, whereas, in the good old country, the griminess 
 of his labor or squalid habits clings forever to the in- 
 dividual, and gets to be a part of his personal sub- 
 stance. These are broad facts, involving great corol- 
 laries and dependencies. There are really, if you stop 
 to think about it, few sadder spectacles in the world 
 than a ragged coat, or a soiled and shabby gown, at a 
 festival. 
 
 This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, be- 
 ing welded together, as it were, in the street through 
 which we strove to make our way. On either side 
 were oyster-stands, stalls of oranges (a very prevalent 
 fruit in England, where they give the withered ones a 
 guise of freshness by boiling them), and booths cov- 
 ered with old sail-cloth, in which the commodity that 
 most attracted the eye was gilt gingerbread. It was 
 so completely enveloped in Dutch gilding that I did 
 not at first recognize an old acquaintance, but won- 
 dered what those golden crowns and images could be. 
 There were likewise drums and other toys for small 
 children, and a variety of showy and worthless articles 
 for children of a larger growth ; though it perplexed 
 me to imagine who, in such a mob, could have the in- 
 nocent taste to desire playthings, or the money to pay 
 for them. Not that I have a right to accuse the mob, 
 on my own knowledge, of being any less innocent than 
 a set of cleaner and better dressed people might have 
 
280 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 been ; for, though one of them stole my pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, I could not but consider it fair game, under 
 the circumstances, and was grateful to the thief for 
 sparing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and re- 
 markably good-humored, making due allowance for 
 the national gruffness ; there was no riot, no tumul- 
 tuous swaying to and fro of the mass, such as I have 
 often noted in an American crowd ; no noise of voices, 
 except frequent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, 
 and a widely diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling 
 nothing so much as the rumbling of the tide among 
 the arches of London Bridge. What immensely per- 
 plexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all 
 quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes 
 right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout 
 fabric of my English surtout had been ruthlessly rent 
 in twain ; and everybody’s clothes, all over the fair, 
 were evidently being torn asunder in the same way. 
 By and by, I discovered that this strange noise was 
 produced by a little instrument called “The Fun of 
 the Fair,” — a sort of rattle, consisting of a wooden 
 wheel, the cogs of which turn against a thin slip of 
 wood, and so produce a rasping sound when drawn 
 smartly against a person’s back. The ladies draw 
 their rattles against the backs of their male friends 
 (and everybody passes for a friend at Greenwich 
 Fair), and the young men return the compliment on 
 the broad British backs of the ladies ; and all are 
 bound by immemorial custom to take it in good part 
 and be merry at the joke. As it was one of my pre- 
 scribed official duties to give an account of such me- 
 chanical contrivances as might be unknown in my own 
 country, I have thought it right to be thus particular 
 in describing the Fun of the Fair. 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 281 
 
 But this was far from being the sole amusement. 
 There were theatrical booths, in front of which were 
 pictorial representations of the scenes to be enacted 
 within ; and anon a drummer emerged from one of 
 them, thumping on a terribly lax drum, and followed 
 by the entire dramatis personce,) who ranged them 
 selves on a wooden platform in front of the theatre 
 They were dressed in character, but v/ofully shabby, 
 with very dingy and wrinkled white tights, threadbare 
 cotton-velvets, crumpled silks, and crushed muslin, and 
 all the gloss and glory gone out of their aspect and at- 
 tire, seen thus in the broad daylight and after a long 
 series of performances. They sang a song together, 
 and withdrew into the theatre, whither the public were 
 invited to follow them at the inconsiderable cost of a 
 penny a ticket. Before another booth stood a pair of 
 brawny fighting-men, displaying their muscle, and so- 
 liciting patronage for an exhibition of the noble Brit- 
 ish art of pugilism. There were pictures of giants, 
 monsters, and outlandish beasts, most prodigious, to 
 be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist 
 had gone incomparably beyond his subject. Jugglers 
 proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were pre- 
 pared to work; and posture-makers dislocated every 
 joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inextri- 
 cable knots, wherever they could find space to spread 
 a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst 
 of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his 
 neighbor’s toes, some little boys were very solicitous 
 to brush your boots. These lads, I believe, are a prod- 
 uct of modern society, — at least, no older than the 
 time of Gay, who celebrates their origin in his “ Tri- 
 via ” ; but in most other respects the scene reminded 
 me of Bunyan’s description of Vanity Fair, — nor is 
 
282 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 it at all improbable that the Pilgrim may have been a 
 merry-maker here in his wild youth. 
 
 It seemed very singular — though, of course, I im- 
 mediately classified it as an English characteristic — 
 to see a great many portable weighing-machines, the 
 owners of which cried out continually and amain, 
 ‘‘ Come, know your weight ! Come, come, know your 
 weight to-day ! Come, know your weight ! ” and a 
 multitude of people, mostly large in the girth, were 
 moved by this vociferation to sit down in the ma- 
 chines. I know not whether they valued themselves 
 on their beef, and estimated their standing as mem- 
 bers of society at so much a pound ; but I shall set it 
 down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol of the 
 prevalence of the earthly over the spiritual element, 
 that Englishmen are wonderfully bent on knowing 
 how solid and physically ponderous they are. 
 
 On the whole, having an appetite for the brown 
 bread and the tripe and sausages of life, as well as for 
 its nicer cates and dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and 
 was amused at the sight of a gruff old Greenwich pen- 
 sioner, w^ho, forgetful of the sailor-frolics of his young 
 days, stood looking with grim disapproval at all these 
 vanities. Thus we squeezed our way through the 
 mob-jammed town, and emerged into the Park, where, 
 likewise, we met a great many merry-makers, but with 
 freer space for their gambols than in the streets. We 
 soon found ourselves the targets for a cannonade with 
 oranges (most of them in a decayed condition), which 
 went humming past our ears from the vantage-ground 
 of neighboring hillocks, sometimes hitting our sacred 
 persons with an inelastic thump. This was one of the 
 privileged freedoms of the time, and was nowise to be 
 resented, except by returning the salute. Many per. 
 
A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 283 
 
 sons were running races, hand in hand, down the de- 
 clivities, especially that steepest one on the summit of 
 which stands the world-central Observatory, and (as 
 in the race of life) the partners were usually male and 
 female, and often caught a tumble together before 
 reaching the bottom of the hill. Hereabouts we were 
 pestered and haunted by two young girls, the eldest 
 not more than thirteen, teasing us to buy matches ; 
 and finding no market for their commodity, the taller 
 one suddenly turned a somerset before our faces, and 
 rolled heels over head from top to bottom of the hill 
 on which we stood. Then, scrambling up the accliv- 
 ity, the topsy-turvy trollop offered us her matches 
 again, as demurely as if she had never flung aside her 
 equilibrium ; so that, dreading a repetition of the feat, 
 we gave her sixpence and an admonition, and enjoined 
 her never to do so any more. 
 
 The most curious amusement that we witnessed 
 here — or anywhere else, indeed — was an ancient and 
 hereditary pastime called Kissing in the Ring.” I 
 shall describe the sport exactly as I saw it, although 
 an English friend assures me that there are certain 
 ceremonies with a handkerchief, which make it much 
 more decorous and graceful. A handkerchief, indeed ! 
 There was no such thing in the crowd, except it were 
 the one which they had just filched out of my pocket. 
 It is one of the simplest kinds of games, needing little 
 or no practice to make the player altogether perfect ; 
 and the manner of it is this. A ring is formed (in 
 the present case, it was of large circumference and 
 thickly gemmed around with faces, mostly on the 
 broad grin), into the centre of which steps an adven- 
 turous youth, and, looking round the circle, selects 
 whatever maiden may most delight his eye. He pre- 
 
284 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 sents his hand (which she is bound to accept), leads 
 her into the centre, salutes her on the lips, and retires, 
 taking his stand in the expectant circle. The girl, in 
 her turn, throws a favorable regard on some fortunate 
 young man, offers her hand to lead him forth, makes 
 him happy with a maidenly kiss, and withdraws to 
 hide her blushes, if any there be, among the simpering 
 faces in the ring ; while the favored swain loses no 
 time in transferring her salute to the prettiest and 
 plumpest among the many mouths that are primming 
 themselves in anticipation. And thus the thing goes 
 on, till all the festive throng are inwreathed and in- 
 tertwined into an endless and inextricable chain of 
 kisses ; though, indeed, it smote me with compassion 
 to reflect that some forlorn pair of lips might be left 
 out, and never know the triumph of a salute, after 
 throwing aside so many delicate reserves for the sake 
 of winning it. If the young men had any chivalry, 
 there was a fair chance to display it by kissing the 
 homeliest damsel in the circle. 
 
 To be frank, however, at the first glance, and to my 
 American eye, they looked all homely alike, and the 
 chivalry that I suggest is more than I could have been 
 capable of, at any period of my life. They seemed to 
 be country - lasses, of sturdy and wholesome aspect, 
 with coarse-grained, cabbage-rosy cheeks, and, I am 
 willing to suppose, a stout texture of moral principle, 
 such as woidd bear a good deal of rough usage without 
 suffering much detriment. But how unlike the trim 
 little damsels of my native land ! I desire above all 
 things to be courteous ; but, since the plain truth must 
 be told, the soil and climate of England produce fem- 
 inine beauty as rarely as they do delicate fruit ; and 
 though admirable specimens of both are to be met 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 286 
 
 with, they are the hot-house ameliorations of refined 
 society, and apt, moreover, to relapse into the coarse- 
 ness of the original stock. The men are manlike, but 
 the women are not beautiful, though the female Bull 
 be well enough adapted to the male. To return to the 
 lasses of Greenwich Fair, their charms were few, and 
 their behavior, perhaps, not altogether commendable ; 
 and yet it was impossible not to feel a degree of faith 
 in their innocent intentions, with such a half-bashful 
 zest and entire simplicity did they keep up their part 
 of the game. It put the spectator in good-humor to 
 look at them, because there was still something of the 
 old Arcadian life, the secure freedom of the antique 
 age, in their way of surrendering their lips to stran- 
 gers, as if there were no evil or impurity in the world. 
 As for the young men, they were chiefly specimens of 
 the vulgar sediment of London life, often shabbily gen- 
 teel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, uii- 
 shifted linen, and unwashed faces of yesterday, as well 
 as the haggardness of last night’s jollity in a gin-shop. 
 Gathering their character from these tokens, I won- 
 dered whether there were any reasonable prospect of 
 their fair partners returning to their rustic homes with 
 as much innocence (whatever were its amount or qual- 
 ity) as they brought to Greenwich Fair, in spite of 
 the perilous familiarity established by Kissing in the 
 Ring. 
 
 The manifold disorders resulting from the fair, at 
 which a vast city was brought into intimate relations 
 with a comparatively rural district, have at length led 
 to its suppression ; this was the very last celebration 
 of it, and brought to a close the broad-mouthed merri- 
 ment of many hundred years. Thus my poor sketch, 
 faint as its colors are, may acquire some little value in 
 
286 
 
 A LONDON SUBURB. 
 
 the reader’s eyes from the consideration that no obser- 
 ver of the coming time will ever have an opportunity 
 to give a better. I should find it difficult to believe, 
 however, that the queer pastime just described, or any 
 moral mischief to which that and other customs might 
 pave the way, can have led to the overthrow of Green- 
 wich Fair ; for it has often seemed to me that Eng- 
 lishmen of station and respectability, unless of a pe- 
 culiarly philanthropic turn, have neither any faith in 
 the feminine purity of the lower orders of their coun- 
 trywomen, nor the slightest value for it, allowing its 
 possible existence. The distinction of ranks is so 
 marked, that the English cottage damsel holds a posi- 
 tion somewhat analogous to that of the negro girl in 
 our Southern States. Hence comes inevitable detri- 
 ment to the moral condition of those men themselves, 
 who forget that the humblest woman has a right and 
 a duty to hold herself in the same sanctity as the high- 
 est. The subject cannot well be discussed in these 
 pages ; but I offer it as a serious conviction, from what 
 I have been able to observe, that the England of to- 
 day is the unscrupulous old England of Tom Jones 
 and Joseph Andrews, Humphrey Clinker and Roder- 
 ick Random ; and in our refined era, just the same as 
 at that more free-spoken epoch, this singular people 
 has a certain contempt for any fine-strained purity, 
 any special squeamishness, as they consider it, on the 
 part- of an ingenuous youth. They appear to look 
 upon it as a suspicious phenomenon in the masculine 
 character. 
 
 Nevertheless, I by no means take upon me to affirm 
 that English morality, as regards the phase here al- 
 luded to, is really at a lower point than our own. As- 
 suredly, I hope so, because, making a higher preteu 
 
A LONDON SUBURB, 
 
 287 
 
 sion, or, at all events, more carefully hiding whatever 
 may be amiss, we are either better than they, or neces - 
 sarily a great deal worse. It impressed me that their 
 open avowal and recognition of immoralities served 
 to throw the disease to the surface, where it might be 
 more effectually dealt with, and leave a sacred interior 
 not utterly profaned, instead of turning its poison back 
 among the inner vitalities of the character, at the im- 
 minent risk of corrupting them all. Be that as it 
 may, these Englishmen are certainly a franker and 
 simpler people than ourselves, from peer to peasant ; 
 but if we can take it as compensatory on our part 
 (which I leave to be considered) that they owe those 
 noble and manly qualities to a coarser grain in their 
 nature, and that, with a finer one in ours, we shall ul- 
 timately acquire a marble polish of which they are un 
 susceptible, I believe that this may be the truth. 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 The upper portion of Greenwich (where my last 
 article left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, old- 
 fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, if there be 
 any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you 
 descend towards the Thames the streets get meaner, 
 and the shabby and sunken houses, elbowing one an- 
 other for frontage, bear the sign-boards of beer-shops 
 and eating-rooms, with especial promises of white-bait 
 and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, 
 also, a frequent announcement of ‘‘ Tea Gardens ” in 
 the rear ; although, estimating the capacity of the 
 premises by their external compass, the entire sylvan 
 charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts 
 must be limited within a small back-yard. These 
 places of cheap sustenance and recreation depend for 
 support upon the innumerable pleasure-parties who 
 come from London Bridge by steamer, at a fare of a 
 few pence, and who get as enjoyable a meal for a shil- 
 ling a head as the Ship Hotel would afford a gentle- 
 man for a guinea. 
 
 The steamers, which are constantly smoking their 
 pipes up and down the Thames, offer much the most 
 agreeable mode of getting to London. At least, it 
 might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad 
 fioating particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the 
 heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered 
 deck, or the chill, misty air-draught of a cloudy day, 
 and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 289 
 
 down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise 
 of the sky ; besides which there is some slight incon- 
 venience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers, 
 w^ho scarcely allow you standing-room, nor so much as 
 a breath of unappropriated air, and never a chance to 
 sit down. If these difficulties, added to the possibility 
 of getting your pocket picked, weigh little with you, 
 the panorama along the shores of the memorable river, 
 and the incidents and shows of passing life u]3on its 
 bosom, render the trip far preferable to the brief yet 
 tiresome shoot along the railway track. On one such 
 voyage, a regatta of wherries raced past us, and at 
 once involved every soul on board our steamer in the 
 tremendous excitement of the struggle. The spectacle 
 was but a moment within our view, and presented 
 nothing more than a few light skiffs, in each of which 
 sat a single rower, bare-armed, and with little apparel, 
 save a shirt and drawers, pale, anxious, with every 
 muscle on the stretch, and plying his oars in such 
 fashion that the boat skimmed along with the aerial 
 celerity of a swallow. I wondered at myself for so 
 immediately catching an interest in the affair, which 
 seemed to contain no very exalted rivalship of man- 
 hood ; but, whatever the kind of battle or the prize 
 of victory, it stirs one’s sympathy immensely, and is 
 even awful, to behold the rare sight of a man thor- 
 oughly in earnest, doing his best, putting forth all 
 there is in him, and staking his very soul (as these 
 rowers appeared willing to do) on the issue of the 
 contest. It was the seventy-fourth annual regatta of 
 the Free Watermen of Greenwich, and announced it- 
 self as under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and 
 other distinguished individuals, at whose expense, I 
 suppose, a prize -boat was offered to the conqueror, 
 
 VOL. VII, 19 
 
290 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 and some small amounts of money to the inferior com<i 
 petitors. 
 
 The aspect of London along the Thames, below 
 Bridge, as it is called, is by no means so impressive as 
 it ought to be, considering what peculiar advantages 
 are offered for the display of grand and stately archi- 
 tecture by the passage of a river through the midst of 
 a great city. It seems, indeed, as if the heart of Lon- 
 don had been cleft open for the mere purpose of show- 
 ing how rotten and drearily mean it had become. The 
 shore is lined with the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest 
 buildings that can be imagined, decayed warehouses 
 with blind windows, and wharves that look ruinous ; 
 insomuch that, had I known nothing more of the 
 world’s metropolis, I might have fancied that it had 
 already experienced the downfall which I have heard 
 commercial and financial prophets predict for it, within 
 the century. And the muddy tide of the Thames, re- 
 flecting nothing, and hiding a million of unclean se- 
 crets within its breast, — a sort of guilty conscience, as 
 it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that con- 
 stantly flow into it, — is just the dismal stream to glide 
 by such a city. The surface, to be sure, displays no 
 lack of activity, being fretted by the passage of a hun- 
 dred steamers and covered with a good deal of ship- 
 ping, but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been 
 accustomed to see in the Mersey : a fact which I com- 
 placently attributed to the smaller number of Ameri- 
 can clippers in the Thames, and the less prevalent in- 
 fluence of American example in refining away the 
 broad-bottomed capacity of the old Dutch or English 
 models. 
 
 About midway between Greenwich and London 
 Bridge, at a rude landing-place on the left bank of 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 291 
 
 the river, the steamer rings its bell and makes a mo- 
 mentary pause in front of a large circular structure, 
 where it may be worth our while to scramble ashore. 
 It indicates the locality of one of those prodigious 
 practical blunders that would supply John Bull with 
 a topic of inexhaustible ridicule, if his cousin Jona- 
 than had committed them, but of which he himself 
 perpetrates ten to our one in the mere wantonness of 
 wealth that lacks better employment. The circular 
 building covers the entrance to the Thames Tunnel, 
 and is surmounted by a dome of glass, so as to throw 
 daylight down into the great depth at which the pas- 
 sage of the river commences. Descending a wearisome 
 succession of staircases, we at last find ourselves, still 
 in the broad noon, standing before a closed door, on 
 opening which we behold the vista of an arched corri- 
 dor that extends into everlasting midnight. In these 
 days, when glass has been applied to so many new 
 purposes^ it is a pity that the architect had not thought 
 of arching portions of his abortive tunnel with im- 
 mense blocks of the lucid substance, over which the 
 dusky Thames would have flowed like a cloud, making 
 the sub - fluvial avenue only a little gloomier than a 
 street of upper London. At present, it is illuminated 
 at regular intervals by jets of gas, not very brilliantly, 
 yet with lustre enough to show the damp plaster of 
 the ceiling and walls, and the massive stone pavement, 
 the crevices of which are oozy with moisture, not from 
 the incumbent river, but from hidden springs in the 
 earth’s deeper heart. There are two parallel corridors, 
 with a wall between, for the separate accommodation 
 of the double throng of foot-passengers, equestrians, 
 and vehicles of all kinds, which was expected to roll 
 and reverberate continually through the Tunnel. Only 
 
292 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes are 
 but feebly awakened by infrequent footfalls. 
 
 Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives 
 here, and who probably blink like owls, when, once or 
 twice a year, perhaps, they happen to climb into the 
 sunshine. All along the corridor, which I believe to 
 be a mile in extent, we see stalls or shops in little 
 alcoves, kept principally by women ; they were of a 
 ripe age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed 
 England of none of its very moderate supply of femi- 
 nine loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like inter- 
 ment. As you approach (and they are so accustomed 
 to the dusky gaslight that they read all your charac- 
 teristics afar off), they assail you with hungry entrea- 
 ties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth 
 views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire 
 spar, with a magnifying-glass at one end to make the 
 vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap 
 jewelry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for 
 sixpence, and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at 
 a not much heavier cost, together with a multifarious 
 trumpery which has died out of the upper world to re- 
 appear in this Tartarean bazaar. That you may fancy 
 yourself still in the realms of the living, they urge you 
 to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and such small 
 refreshment, more suitable, however, for the shadowy 
 appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs of 
 Englishmen. The most capacious of the shops con- 
 tains a dioramic exhibition of cities and scenes in the 
 daylight world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among 
 them all ; so that they serve well enough to represent 
 the dim, unsatisfactory remembrances that dead people 
 might be supposed to retain from their past lives, mix- 
 ing them up with the ghastliness of their unsubstantial 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 298 
 
 state. I dwell the more upon these trifles, and do my 
 best to give them a mockery of importance, because, if 
 these are nothing, then all this elaborate contrivance 
 and mighty piece of work has been wrought in vain. 
 The Englishman has burrowed under the bed of his 
 great river, and set ships of two or three thousand 
 tons a-rolling over his head, only to provide new sites 
 for a few old women to sell cakes and ginger-beer ! 
 
 Yet the conception was a grand one ; and though it 
 has proved an absolute failure, swallowing an immen- 
 sity of toil and money, with anual returns hardly suf- 
 ficient to keep the pavement free from the ooze of 
 subterranean springs, yet it needs, I presume only 
 an expenditure three or four (or, for aught I know, 
 twenty) times as large, to make the enterprise brill- 
 iantly successful. The descent is so great from the 
 bank of the river to its surface, and the Tunnel dips 
 so profoundly under the river’s bed, that the ap- 
 proaches on either side must commence a long way 
 off, in order to render the entrance accessible to horse- 
 men or vehicles ; so that the larger part of the cost of 
 the whole* affair should have been expended on its 
 margins. It has turned out a sublime piece of folly ; 
 and when the New - Zealander of distant ages shall 
 have moralized sufficiently among the ruins of London 
 Bridge, he will bethink himself that somewhere there- 
 about was the marvellous Tunnel, the very existence 
 of which will seem to him as incredible as that of the 
 hanging gardens of Babylon. But the Thames will 
 long ago have broken through the massive arch, and 
 choked up the corridors with mud and sand and with 
 the large stones of the structure itself, intermixed with 
 skeletons of drowned people, the rusty ironwork of 
 sunken vessels, and the great many such precious and 
 
294 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 curious things as a river always contrives to hide in 
 its bosom ; the entrance will have been obliterated, 
 and its very site forgotten beyond the memory of 
 twenty generations of men, and the whole neighbor- 
 hood be held a dangerous spot on account of the mala- 
 ria ; insomuch that the traveller will make but a brief 
 and careless inquisition for the traces of the old won- 
 der, and will stake his credit before the public, in 
 some Pacific Monthly of that day, that the story of it 
 is but a myth, though enriched with a spiritual pro- 
 fundity which he will proceed to unfold. 
 
 Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at least) to see 
 so much magnificent ingenuity thrown away, without 
 trying to endow the unfortunate result with some kind 
 of usefulness, though perhaps widely different from 
 the purpose of its original conception. In former ages, 
 the mile-long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, 
 might have been utilized as a series of dungeons, the 
 fittest of all possible receptacles for prisoners of state. 
 Dethroned monarchs and fallen statesmen would not 
 have needed to remonstrate against a domicile so spa- 
 cious, so deeply secluded from the world’s* scorn, and 
 so admirably in accordance with their thenceforward 
 sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have suited 
 Sir W alter Raleigh better than that darksome hiding- 
 place communicating with the great chamber in the 
 Tower, pacing from end to end of which he meditated 
 upon his “ History of the World.” His track would 
 here have been straight and narrow, indeed, and would 
 therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that 
 his intellect demanded ; and yet the length to which 
 his footsteps might have travelled forth and retraced 
 themselves would partly have harmonized his physical 
 movement with the grand curves and planetary returns 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 295 
 
 of his thought, through cycles of majestic periods. 
 Having it in his mind to compose the world’s history, 
 methinks he could have asked no better retirement 
 than such a cloister as this, insulated from all the 
 seductions of mankind and womankind, deep beneath 
 their mysteries and motives, down into the heart of 
 things, full of personal reminiscences in order to the 
 comprehensive measurement and verification of his* 
 toric records, seeing into the secrets of human nature, 
 
 — secrets that daylight never yet revealed to mortal, 
 
 — but detecting their whole scope and purport with 
 the infallible eyes of unbroken solitude and night. 
 And then the shades of the old mighty men might 
 have risen from their still profounder abodes and 
 joined him in the dim corridor, treading beside him 
 with an antique stateliness of mien, telling him in 
 melancholy tones, grand, but always melancholy, of 
 the greater ideas and purposes which their most re- 
 nowned performances so imperfectly carried out, that, 
 magnificent successes in the view of all posterity, they 
 were but failures to those who planned them. As 
 Raleigh was a navigator, Noah would have explained 
 to him the peculiarities of construction that made the 
 ark so seaworthy ; as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses 
 would have discussed with him the principles of laws 
 and government ; as Raleigh was a soldier, C^sar and 
 Hannibal would have held debate in his presence, with 
 this martial student for their umpire ; as Raleigh was 
 a poet, David, or whatever most illustrious bard he 
 might call up, would have touched his harp, and made 
 manifest all the true significance of the past by means 
 of song and the subtle intelligences of music. 
 
 Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Ra- 
 leigh’s century knew nothing of gaslight, and that it 
 
296 
 
 UP THE THAMES, 
 
 would require a prodigious and wasteful expenditure 
 of tallow-candles to illummate the Tunnel sufficiently 
 to discern even a ghost. On this account, however, it 
 would be all the more suitable place of confinement 
 for a metaphysician, to keep him from bewildering 
 mankind with his shadowy speculations ; and, being 
 shut off from external converse, the dark corridor 
 would help him to make rich discoveries in those cav- 
 ernous regions and mysterious by-paths of the intel- 
 lect, which he had so long accustomed himself to ex- 
 plore. But how would every successive age rejoice in 
 so secure a habitation for its reformers, and especially 
 for each best and wisest man that happened to be then 
 alive ! He seeks to burn up our whole system of so- 
 ciety, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses ! 
 Away with him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by 
 setting the Thames on fire, if he is able ! 
 
 If not precisely these, yet akin to these were some 
 of the fantasies that haunted me as I passed under the 
 river : for the place is suggestive of such idle and irre- 
 sponsible stuff by its own abortive character, its lack 
 of whereabout on upper earth, or any solid foundation 
 of realities. Could I have looked forward a few years, 
 I might have regretted that American enterprise had 
 not provided a similar tunnel, under the Hudson or 
 the Potomac, for the convenience of our National Gov- 
 ernment in times hardly yet gone by. It would be 
 delightful to clap up all the enemies of our peace and 
 Union in the dark together, and there let them abide, 
 listening to the monotonous roll of the river above 
 their heads, or perhaps in a state of miraculously sus- 
 pended animation, until, — be it after months, years, 
 or centuries, — when the turmoil shall be all over, the 
 Wrong washed away in blood (since that must needs 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 297 
 
 be the cleansing fluid), and the Right firmly rooted 
 in the soil which that blood will have enriched, they 
 might crawl forth again and catch a single glimpse at 
 their redeemed country, and feel it to be a better land 
 than they deserve, and die ! 
 
 I was not sorry when the daylight reached me after 
 a much briefer abode in the nether regions than, I 
 fear, would await the troublesome personages just 
 hinted at. Emerging on the Surrey side of the 
 Thames, I found myself in Rotherhithe, a neighbor- 
 hood not unfamiliar to the readers of old books of 
 maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by 
 the mouth of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the 
 primitive fashion of an open boat, which the conflict 
 of wind and tide, together with the swash and swell 
 of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather 
 tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff 
 (which, indeed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so 
 much alarmed an old lady, the only other passenger, 
 that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. Never 
 fear, mother ! ” grumbled one of them, we ’ll make 
 the river as smooth as we can for you. W e ’ll get a 
 plane, and plane down the waves ! ” The joke may 
 not read very brilliantly ; but I make bold to record 
 it as the only specimen that reached my ears of the 
 old, rough water - wit for which the Thames used to 
 be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of 
 the sunken Tunnel, we landed in Wapping, which I 
 should have presupposed to be the most tarry and 
 pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and 
 full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful 
 life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a cold and tor- 
 pid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque, 
 both as to its buildings and inhabitants : the latter 
 
298 
 
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 comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a single 
 unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land - sharks, 
 who get a half-dishonest livelihood by business con- 
 nected with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults (as petty 
 drinking -establishments are styled in England, pre- 
 tending to contain vast cellars full of liquor within 
 the compass of ten feet square above ground) were 
 particularly abundant, together with apples, oranges, 
 and oysters, the stalls of fishmongers and butchers, 
 and slop-shops, where blue jackets and duck trousers 
 swung and capered before the doors. Everything 
 was on the poorest scale, and the place bore an aspect 
 of unredeemable decay. From this remote point of 
 London, I strolled leisurely towards the heart of the 
 city ; while the streets, at first but thinly occupied by 
 man or vehicle, got more and more thronged with 
 foot-passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all -per- 
 vading and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack 
 courage, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as 
 the gentlest reader would lack patience, to undertake 
 a descriptive stroll through London streets ; more es- 
 pecially as there would be a volume ready for the 
 printer before we could reach a midway resting-place 
 at Charing Cross. It will be the easier course to step 
 aboard another passing steamer, and continue our trip 
 up the Thames. 
 
 The next notable group of objects is an assemblage 
 of ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the 
 midst of which rises prominently one great square 
 tower, of a grayish hue, bordered with white stone, 
 and having a small turret at each corner of the roof. 
 This central structure is the White Tower, and the 
 whole circuit of ramparts and enclosed edifices consti- 
 tutes what is known in English history, and still more 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 299 
 
 widely and impressively in English poetry, as the 
 Tower. A crowd of river-craft are generally moored 
 in front of it ; but if we look sharply at the right mo- 
 ment under the base of the rampart, we may catch a 
 glimpse of an arched water-entrance, half submerged, 
 past which the Thames glides as indifferently as if it 
 were the mouth of a city-kennel. Nevertheless, it is 
 the Traitor’s Gate, a dreary kind of triumphal pas- 
 sageway (now supposed to be shut up and barred for- 
 ever), through which a multitude of noble and illus- 
 trious personages have entered the Tower and found 
 it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Pass- 
 ing it many times, I never observed that anybody 
 glanced at this shadowy and ominous trap-door, save 
 myself. It is well that America exists, if it were only 
 that her vagrant children may be impressed and af- 
 fected by the historical monuments of England in a 
 degree of which the native inhabitants are evidently 
 incapable. These matters are too familiar, too real, 
 and too hopelessly built in amongst and mixed up with 
 the common objects and affairs of life, to be easily 
 susceptible of imaginative coloring in their minds ; 
 and even their poets and romancers feel it a toil, and 
 almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of 
 what seems embodied poetry itself to an American. 
 An Englishman cares nothing about the Tower, which 
 to us is a haunted castle in dreamland. That honest 
 and excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. R. James 
 (whose mechanical ability, one might have supposed, 
 would nourish itself by devouring every old stone of 
 such a structure), once assured me that he had never 
 in his life set eyes upon the Tower, though for years 
 an historic novelist in London. 
 
 Not to spend a whole summer’s day upon the voy- 
 
300 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 age, we will suppose ourselves to have reached London 
 Bridge, and thence to have taken another steamer for a 
 farther passage up the river. But here the memorable 
 objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare 
 but a single sentence even for the great Dome, though 
 I deem it more picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, 
 than St. Peter’s in its clear blue sky. I must mention, 
 however (since everything connected with royalty is 
 especially interesting to my dear countrymen), that I 
 once saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded 
 and ornamented, and overspread with a rich covering, 
 lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul’s Cathedral ; it 
 had the royal banner of Great Britain displayed, be- 
 sides being decorated with a number of other flags ; 
 and many footmen (who are universally the grandest 
 and gaudiest objects to be seen in England at this day, 
 and these were regal ones, in a bright scarlet livery be- 
 dizened with gold-lace, and white silk stockings) were 
 in attendance. I know not what festive or ceremonial 
 occasion may have drawn out this pageant ; after all, 
 it might have been merely a city-spectacle, appertain- 
 ing to the Lord Mayor ; but the sight had its value in 
 bringing vividly before me the grand old times when 
 the sovereign and nobles were accustomed to use the 
 Thames as the high street of the metropolis, and join 
 in pompous processions upon it ; whereas, the desue- 
 tude of such customs, nowadays, has caused the whole 
 show of river-life to consist in a multitude of smoke- 
 begrimed steamers. An analogous change has taken 
 place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus have 
 crowded out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus life 
 gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and 
 appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of 
 its gold-lace among the wealthier classes, and to make 
 itself decent in the lower ones. 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 301 
 
 Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now 
 wearing as decorous a face as any other portion of 
 London ; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick 
 squares of the Temple, with that historic garden, close 
 upon the river-side, and still rich in shrubbery and 
 flowers, where the partisans of York and Lancaster 
 plucked the fatal roses, and scattered their pale and 
 bloody petals over so many English battle-fields. 
 Hard by, we see the long white front or rear of Som- 
 erset House, and, farther on, rise the two new Houses 
 of Parliament, with a huge unfinished tower already 
 hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky canopy, — 
 the whole vast and cumbrous edifice a specimen of the 
 best that modern architecture can effect, elaborately 
 imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages when 
 men “ builded better than they knew.” Close by it, 
 we have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the 
 holy Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral pile on the op- 
 posite side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a venerable 
 group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but 
 with at least one large tower of stone. In our course, 
 we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges, and, 
 emerging out of the black heart of London, shall soon 
 reach a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames, if I 
 remember, begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted in- 
 nocence. And now we look back upon the mass of in- 
 numerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, 
 columns, and the great crowning Dome, — look back, 
 in short, upon that mystery of the world’s proudest 
 city, amid which a man so longs and loves to be ; not, 
 perhaps, because it contains much that is positively ad- 
 mirable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the 
 world has nothing better. The cream of external life 
 is there ; and whatever merely intellectual or material 
 
302 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 good we fail to find perfect in London, we may as well 
 content ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no 
 farther on this earth. 
 
 The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old 
 town endowed with a prodigious number of pothouses, 
 and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for 
 public amusement. The most noticeable thing, how- 
 ever, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Green- 
 wich, was founded, I believe, by Charles IT. (whose 
 bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman, stands in 
 the centre of the quadrangle), and appropriated as a 
 home for aged and infirm soldiers of the British army. 
 The edifices are of three stories, with windows in the 
 high roofs, and are built of dark, sombre brick, with 
 stone edgings and facings. The effect is by no means 
 that of grandeur (which is somewhat disagreeably an 
 attribute of Greenwich Hospital), but a quiet and 
 venerable neatness. At each extremity of the street- 
 front there is a spacious and hospitably open gateway, 
 lounging about which I saw some gray veterans in 
 long scarlet coats of an antique fashion, and the cocked 
 hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern forag- 
 ing-cap. Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic 
 gait, two or three stumped on wooden legs, and here 
 and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of one of 
 these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could be 
 admitted to see the establishment, he replied most cor- 
 dially, Oh yes, sir, — anywhere ! W alk in and go 
 where you please, — up stairs, or anywhere ! ” So I 
 entered, and, passing along the inner side of the quad- 
 rangle, came to the door of the chapel, which forms a 
 part of the contiguity of edifices next the street. Here 
 another pensioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peace- 
 able and Christian demeanor, touched his three-cor- 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 303 
 
 nered hat and asked if I wished to see the interior ; 
 to which I assenting, he unlocked the door, and we 
 went in. 
 
 The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted 
 roof, and over the altar is a large painting in fresco, 
 the subject of which I did not trouble myself to make 
 out. More appropriate adornments of the place, dedi- 
 cated as well to martial reminiscences as religious wor- 
 ship, are the long ranges of dusty and tattered ban- 
 ners, that hang from their staves all round the celling 
 of the chapel. They are trophies of battles fought and 
 won in every quarter of the world, comprising the cap- 
 tured flags of all the nations with whom the British 
 lion has waged war since James II. ’s time, — French, 
 Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and 
 American, — collected together in this consecrated 
 spot, not to symbolize that there shall be no more dis- 
 cord upon earth, but drooping over the aisle in sullen, 
 though peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said ^‘Ameri- 
 can ” among the rest ; for the good old pensioner mis- 
 took me for an Englishman, and failed not to point 
 out (and, methought, with an especial emphasis of tri- 
 umph) some flags that had been taken at Bladensburg 
 and Washington. I fancied, indeed, that they hung 
 a little higher and drooped a little lower than any of 
 their companions in disgrace. It is a comfort, how- 
 ever, that their proud devices are already indistinguish- 
 able, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the 
 kind offices of the moths, and that they will soon rot 
 from the banner-staves and be swept out in unrecog- 
 nized fragments from the chapel-door. 
 
 It is a good method of teaching a man how imper- 
 fectly cosmopolitan he is, to show him his country’s 
 flag occupying a position of dishonor in a foreign 
 
304 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people 
 crowing over its military triumphs had far better be 
 dispensed with, both on account of the ill-blood that it 
 helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and be- 
 cause it operates as an accumulative inducement to fu- 
 ture generations to aim at a kind of glory, the gain 
 of which has generally proved more ruinous than its 
 loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory 
 might crumble away, and that every reminiscence or 
 tradition of a hero, from the beginning of the world 
 to this day, could pass out of all men’s memories 
 at once and forever. I might feel very differently, 
 to be sure, if we Northerners had anything especially 
 valuable to lose by the fading of those illuminated 
 names. 
 
 I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may 
 have been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guer- 
 don of all the silver I had in my pocket, to requite 
 him for having unintentionally stirred up my patriotic 
 susceptibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old 
 man, with a humble freedom and affability of manner 
 that made it pleasant to converse with him. Old sol- 
 diers, I know not why, seem to be more accostable 
 than old sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath 
 the smoothest courtesy of the latter. The mild veteran, 
 with his peaceful voice, and gentle reverend aspect, 
 told me that he had fought at a cannon all through 
 the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt; he had 
 now been in the hospital four or five years, and was 
 married, but necessarily underwent a separation from 
 his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my in- 
 quiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable 
 and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, “ Oh yes, 
 sir ! ” qualifying his evidence, after a moment’s com 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 305 
 
 sideration, by saying in an undertone, ‘‘ There are 
 some people, your Honor knows, who could not be 
 comfortable anywhere.” I did know it, and fear that 
 the system of Chelsea Hospital allows too little of that 
 wholesome care and regulation of their own occupa- 
 tions and interests which might assuage the sting of 
 life to those naturally uncomfortable individuals by 
 giving them something external to think about. But 
 my old friend here was happy in the hospital, and by 
 this time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in spite of 
 the bloodshed that he may have caused by touching 
 off a cannon at Waterloo. 
 
 Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of 
 Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the 
 Crystal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sun- 
 shine like an imaginary structure, — an air-castle by 
 chance descended upon earth, and resting there one 
 instant before it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap- 
 bubble touch unharmed on the carpet, — a thing of 
 only momentary visibility and no substance, destined 
 to be overburdened and crushed down by the first 
 cloud-shadow that might fall upon that spot. Even 
 as I looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt a picture 
 of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else 
 shall I try to paint? Everything in London and 
 its vicinity has been depicted innumerable times, but 
 never once translated into intelligible images ; it is 
 an ^‘old, old story,” never yet told, nor to be told. 
 While writing these reminiscences, I am continually 
 impressed with the futility of the effort to give any 
 creative truth to my sketch, so that it might produce 
 such pictures in the reader’s mind as would cause the 
 original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards be- 
 held. Nor have other writers often been more sue- 
 20 
 
 VOL. VII. 
 
300 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 cessful in representing definite objects prophetically 
 to my own mind. In truth, I believe that the chief 
 delight and advantage of this kind of literature is not 
 for any real information that it supplies to untravelled 
 people, but for reviving the recollections and reawak- 
 ening the emotions of persons already acquainted 
 with the scenes described. Thus I found an exquisite 
 pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tuckerman’s 
 Month in England,” — a fine example of the way in 
 which a refined and cultivated American looks at the 
 Old Country, the things that he naturally seeks there, 
 and the modes of feeling and reflection which they 
 excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though 
 truth of coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. 
 Impressions, however, states of mind produced by in- 
 teresting and remarkable objects, these, if truthfully 
 and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, 
 though but the result of what we see, go further to- 
 wards representing the actual scene than any direct 
 effort to paint it. Give the emotions that cluster 
 about it, and, without being able to analyze the spell 
 by which it is summoned up, you get something like a 
 simulachre of the object in the midst of them. From 
 some of the above reflections I draw the comfortable 
 inference, that, the longer and better known a thing 
 may be, so much the more eligible is it as the subject 
 of a descriptive sketch. 
 
 On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side- 
 entrance in the time - blackened wall of a place of 
 worship, and found myself among a congregation as- 
 sembled in one of the transepts and the immediately 
 contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old 
 edifice, spacious enough, within the extent covered by 
 its pillared roof and overspread by its stone pavement. 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 807 
 
 to accommodate the whole of church-going London, 
 and with a far wider and loftier concave than any hu- 
 man power of lungs could fill with audible prayer. 
 Oaken benches were arranged in the transept, on one 
 of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I 
 knew how, in the sacred business that was going for- 
 ward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice of 
 the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and 
 both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, 
 where he and all of us were bodily included within a 
 sublime act of religion, which could be seen above and 
 around us and felt beneath our feet. The structure 
 itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago, 
 miraculously preserved in stone without losing an atom 
 of its fragrance and fervor ; it was a kind of anthem- 
 strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ 
 in centuries gone by ; and being so grand and sweet, 
 the Divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged 
 for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came 
 to the conclusion, that, in my individual case, it would 
 be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander 
 about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts 
 on the evidently uninspired mortal who was venturing 
 — and felt it no venture at all — to speak here above 
 his breath. 
 
 The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader 
 recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is 
 built of rich brown stone ; and the whole of it — the 
 lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed 
 arches — appears to be in consummate repair. At all 
 points where decay has laid its finger, the structure is 
 clamped with iron or otherwise carefully protected ; 
 and being thus watched over, — whether as a place of 
 ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an 
 
308 
 
 UP THE THAMES, 
 
 object of national interest and pride, — it may reason- 
 ably be expected to survive for as many ages as have 
 passed over it already. It was sweet to feel its ven- 
 erable quietude, its long-enduring peace, and yet to 
 observe how kindly and even cheerfully it received the 
 sunshine of to-day, which fell from the great windows 
 into the fretted aisles and arches that laid aside some- 
 what of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine 
 always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, and 
 castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affec- 
 tionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it ac- 
 cords to edifices of later date. A square of golden 
 light lay on the sombre pavement of the nave, afar 
 off, falling through the grand western entrance, the 
 folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded 
 glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer 
 world, while we sat dimly enveloped in the solemnity 
 of antique devotion. In the south transept, separated 
 from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were 
 painted glass windows, of which the uppermost ap- 
 peared to be a great orb of many-colored radiance, 
 being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels whose 
 glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole ema- 
 nating from a cross in the midst. These windows 
 are modern, but combine softness with wonderful brill- 
 iancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw 
 that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were 
 almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yel- 
 low with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memori- 
 als of such men as their respective generations deemed 
 wisest and bravest. Some of them were commemo- 
 rated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others 
 by sculptured bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but 
 now forgotten, generals or admirals, these) by ponder- 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 309 
 
 ous tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, 
 or partly curtained the immense arch of a window. 
 These mountains of marble were peopled with the sis- 
 terhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic 
 figures in full-bottomed wigs ; but it was strange to 
 observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities 
 into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying 
 itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. 
 Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to over- 
 power the ridiculous without deigning to hide it ; and 
 these grotesque monuments of the last century answer 
 a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the 
 old architects scattered among their most solemn con- 
 ceptions. 
 
 From these distant wanderings (it was my first 
 visit to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have 
 taken it all in at a glance) my eyes came back and 
 began to investigate what was immediately about me 
 in the transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal 
 of Canning’s statue. Next beyond it was a massive 
 tomb, on the spacious tablet of which reposed the full- 
 length figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an 
 inscription announced to be the Duke and Duchess of 
 Newcastle, — the historic Duke of Charles I.’s time, 
 and the fantastic Duchess, traditionally remembered 
 by her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the 
 record on her tomb proudly informed us, of which all 
 the brothers had been valiant and all the sisters vir- 
 tuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new 
 marble as white as snow, held the next place ; and 
 near by was a mural monument and bust of Sir Peter 
 Warren. The round visage of this old British admiral 
 has a certain interest for a New-Englander, because it 
 was by no merit of his own (though he took care to 
 
310 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 assume it as such), but by the valor and warlike enter- 
 prise of our colonial forefathers, especially the stout 
 men of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown, 
 and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, 
 a huge mass of marble done into the guise of a judi- 
 cial gown and wig, with a stern face in the midst of 
 the latter, sat on the other side of the transept ; and 
 on the pedestal beside him was a figure of Justice, 
 holding forth, instead of the customary grocer’s scales, 
 an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is an ancient 
 and classic instrument, undoubtedly ; but I had sup- 
 posed that Portia (when Shylock’s pound of flesh was 
 to be weighed) was the only judge that ever really 
 called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and Fox were 
 in the same distinguished company ; and John Kem- 
 ble, in Roman costume, stood not far off, but strangely 
 shorn of the dignity that is said to have enveloped him 
 like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the evanescent 
 majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long en- 
 durance of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb ; 
 though, on the other hand, almost every illustrious 
 personage here represented has been invested with 
 more or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In 
 truth, the artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in 
 his touch, making evident a heretofore hidden dignity 
 in the actual form) feels it an imperious law to remove 
 his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary life as 
 may be possible without sacrificing every trace of re- 
 semblance. The absurd effect of the contrary course 
 is very remarkable in the statue of Mr. Wilberforce, 
 whose actual self, save for the lack of color, I seemed 
 to behold, seated just across the aisle. 
 
 This excellent man appears to have sunk into him- 
 self in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 311 
 
 his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other 
 under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his 
 nose, or to some equally familiar purpose ; while his 
 exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on 
 one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest compla- 
 cency, as if he were looking right into your eyes, and 
 twigged something there which you had half a mind 
 to conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertina- 
 ciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, 
 and bethink yourself what common ground there may 
 be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you 
 to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue is as like 
 Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might 
 fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he least 
 expected it, and before he had time to smooth away 
 his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the 
 Gorgon’s head, and whitened into marble, — not only 
 his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down 
 to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. Tho 
 ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing 
 the age-long duration of marble upon small, charac- 
 teristic individualities, such as might come within the 
 province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should 
 give permanence to the figure of a great man in his 
 mood of broad and grand composure, which would ob- 
 literate all mean peculiarities ; for, if the original were 
 unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were 
 incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable 
 whether he could really have been entitled to a marble 
 immortality. In point of fact, however, the English 
 face and form are seldom statuesque, however illustri- 
 ous the individual. 
 
 It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this 
 mood of half -jocose criticism in describing my first 
 
312 
 
 UP THE THAMES, 
 
 visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had 
 dreamed about more reverentially, from my child- 
 hood upward, than any other in the world, and which 
 I then beheld, and now look back upon, with profound 
 gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly in- 
 terest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has 
 contributed his little all to its impressiveness, by de- 
 positing his dust or his memory there. But it is a 
 characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you 
 to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as 
 if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. 
 Break into laughter, if you feel inclined, provided the 
 vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an 
 ordinary church you would keep your countenance for 
 fear of disturbing the sanctities or proprieties of the 
 place ; but you need leave no honest and decorous por- 
 tion of your human nature outside of these benign and 
 truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take 
 care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general im- 
 pression, when you come to be sensible that many of 
 the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a 
 mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, 
 and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from 
 posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey 
 Kneller’s objection to being buried in Westminster 
 Abbey, because they do bury fools there ! ” Never- 
 theless, these grotesque carvings of marble, that break 
 out in dingy-white blotches on the old freestone of the 
 interior walls, have come there by as natural a process 
 as might cause mosses and i\^ to cluster about the 
 external edifice ; for they are the historical and bio- 
 graphical record of each successive age, written with 
 its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mis- 
 takes, and none the less solemn for the occasional 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 313 
 
 absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting 
 to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you are con- 
 tent at last to read many names, both in literature 
 and history, that have now lost the reverence of man- 
 kind, if indeed they ever really possessed it. Let these 
 men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two 
 that you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. 
 It matters little a few more or less, or whether West- 
 minster Abbey contains or lacks any one man’s grave, 
 so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of per- 
 sonages that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as 
 their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves 
 down under its pavement. The inscriptions and de- 
 vices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluc- 
 tuating tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, 
 follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they combine 
 into a more truthful memorial of their dead times 
 than any individual epitaph - maker ever meant to 
 write. 
 
 When the services were over, many of the audience 
 seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away 
 among the mysterious aisles ; for there is nothing in 
 this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which 
 always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart 
 both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments. 
 Through the open-work screen that divides the nave 
 from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam 
 of a marvellous window, but were debarred from en- 
 trance into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by 
 the vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty 
 all the more strenuously because no fees could be ex- 
 acted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, 
 and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock 
 of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I hap- 
 
314 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 pened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone 
 inscribed with this familiar exclamation, O rare Ben 
 Jonson ! ” and remembered the story of stout old 
 Ben’s burial in that spot, standing upright, — not, I 
 presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on 
 his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but 
 because standing-room was all that could reasonably 
 be demanded for a poet among the slumberous nota- 
 bilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it I 
 
 — such a prodigious length of time to keep one’s feet ! 
 
 — apart from the honor of the thing, it would cer- 
 tainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at 
 ease in some country churchyard. To this day, how- 
 ever, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed 
 up with the admiration which the higher classes of 
 English society profess for their literary men. 
 
 Another day — in truth, many other days — I sought 
 out Poets’ Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed 
 finger directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of 
 a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. 
 The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south 
 transept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the 
 only free mode of access to the building. It is no 
 spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through 
 which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly 
 keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself 
 in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets 
 gazing at you from the otherwise bare stone-work of 
 the walls. Great poets, too ; for Ben Jonson is right 
 behind the door, and Spenser’s tablet is next, and 
 Butler’s on the same side of the transept, and Milton’s 
 (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to 
 one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and 
 sadder than that) is close by, and a profile-medallion 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 315 
 
 of Gray beneath it. A window high aloft sheds down 
 a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured 
 marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover 
 the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about 
 twenty feet above the pavement. It seemed to me 
 that I had always been familiar with the spot. En- 
 joying a humble intimacy — and how much of my life 
 had else been a dreary solitude ! — with many of its 
 inhabitants, I could not feel myself a stranger there. 
 It was delightful to be among them. There was a 
 genial awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendty 
 presences about me ; and I was glad, moreover, at 
 finding so many of them there together, in fit compan- 
 ionship, mutually recognized and duly honored, all 
 reconciled now, whatever distant generations, whatever 
 personal hostility or other miserable impediment, had 
 divided them far asunder while they lived. I have 
 never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, 
 nor have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary 
 presence of other famous dead people. A poet’s ghost 
 is the only one that survives for his fellow-mortals, 
 after his bones are in the dust, — and he not ghostly, 
 but cherishing many hearts with his own warmth in 
 the chillest atmosphere of life. What other fame is 
 worth aspiring for ? Or, let me speak it more boldly, 
 what other long-enduring fame can exist? We neither 
 remember nor care anything for the past, except as 
 the poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to 
 our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have 
 no substance ; they flit ineffectually about the dark- 
 ened stage where they performed their momentary 
 parts, save when the poet has thrown his own creative 
 soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than 
 ever they were able to manifest to mankind while they 
 
316 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 dwelt in the body. And therefore — though he cun- 
 ningly disguises himself in their armor, their robes of 
 state, or kingly purple — it is not the statesman, the 
 warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised 
 poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and 
 to whom they owe all that they now are or have, — a 
 name ! 
 
 In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been be- 
 trayed into a flight above or beyond the customary 
 level that best agrees with me ; but it represents fairly 
 enough the emotions with which I passed from Poets' 
 Corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres 
 of kings and great people. They are magnificent even 
 now, and must have been inconceivably so when the 
 marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and 
 the statues retained the brilliant colors with which 
 they were originally painted, and the shrines their rich 
 gilding, of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer 
 or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished 
 with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the 
 Abbey presents few memorials of personages whom 
 we care to remember. The shrine of Edward the Con- 
 fessor has a certain interest, because it was so long 
 held in religious reverence, and because the very dust 
 that settled upon it was formerly worth gold. The 
 helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at Agin- 
 court, and now suspended above his tomb, are memo- 
 rable objects, but more for Shakespeare’s sake than 
 the victor’s own. Rank has been the general passport 
 to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap 
 as dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect, 
 indeed (and it is too characteristic of the right Eng- 
 lish spirit not to be mentioned), one or two gigantic 
 statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 317 
 
 to the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly 
 in their marble chairs among forgotten kings and 
 queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of the earlier mon- 
 uments, and the antique beauty of some of them, are 
 what chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison 
 is buried among the men of rank ; not on the plea of 
 his literary fame, however, but because he was con- 
 nected with nobility by marriage, and had been a Sec- 
 retary of State. His gravestone is inscribed with a 
 resounding verse from Tickell’s lines to his memory, 
 the only lines by which Tickell himself is now remem- 
 bered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) 
 he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of some- 
 what earlier date. 
 
 Returning to Poets’ Corner, I looked again at the 
 walls, and wondered how the requisite hospitality can 
 be shown to poets of our own and the succeeding ages. 
 There is hardly a foot of space left, although room 
 has lately been found for a bust of Southey and a full- 
 length statue of Campbell. At best, only a little por- 
 tion of the Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary men, 
 musical composers, and others of the gentle artist 
 breed, and even into that small nook of sanctity men 
 of other pursuits have thought it decent to intrude 
 themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being at 
 home here, should recollect how they were treated in 
 their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking 
 askance at nobles and official personages, however 
 worthy of honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows 
 aptly and truly enough what portion of the world’s re- 
 gard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary 
 eminence in comparison with other modes of greatness, 
 — this dimly lighted corner (nor even that quietly to 
 themselves) in the vast minster, the walls of which 
 
318 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 are sheathed and hidden under marble that has been 
 wasted upon the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it 
 may not be worth while to quarrel with the world on 
 this account ; for, to confess the very truth, their own 
 little nook contains more than one poet whose memory 
 is kept alive by his monument, instead of imbuing the 
 senseless stone with a spiritual immortality, — men of 
 whom you do not ask, Where is he ? ” but, ‘‘ Why is 
 he here ? ” I estimate that all the literary people who 
 really make an essential part of one’s inner life, in- 
 cluding the period since English literature first ex- 
 isted, might have ample elbow-room to sit down and 
 quaff their draughts of Castaly round Chaucer’s 
 broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets 
 consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected glory over 
 the humblest of their companions. And as for the 
 latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long out- 
 grown the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensi- 
 bilities of their craft, and have found out the little 
 value (probably not amounting to sixpence in immor- 
 tal currency) of the posthumous renown which they 
 once aspired to win. It would be a poor compliment 
 to a dead poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky and 
 snuffing up the impure breath of earthly praise. 
 
 Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion 
 that those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of 
 an undying song would fain be conscious of its endless 
 reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and would 
 delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see tlieii* 
 names emblazoned in such a treasure-place of great 
 memories as Westminster Abbey. There are some 
 men, at all events, — true and tender poets, moreover, 
 and fully deserving of the honor, — whose spirits, I 
 feel certain, would linger a little while about Poets’ 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 319 
 
 Corner, for the sake of witnessing their own apotheo- 
 sis among their kindred. They have had a strong 
 natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympa- 
 thy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but 
 scantily supply ; so that this unsatisfied appetite may 
 make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate 
 and retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. 
 Leigh Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, 
 if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in 
 the midst of the old poets whom he admired and 
 loved ; though there is hardly a man among the au- 
 thors of to-day and yesterday whom the judgment of 
 Englishmen would be less likely to place there. He 
 deserves it, however, if not for his verse (the value of 
 which I do not estimate, never having been able to 
 read it), yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured 
 poetry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working 
 soft miracles by a life-process like the growth of grass 
 and flowers. As with all such gentle writers, his page 
 sometimes betrayed a vestige of affectation, but, the 
 next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and 
 buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since. 
 Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I 
 chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by their 
 decease, and as I assume no liberties with living men) 
 I will conclude this rambling article by sketching my 
 first interview with Leigh Hunt. 
 
 He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very 
 plain and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of 
 others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly vil- 
 lage street, and certainly nothing to gratify his crav- 
 ing for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slat- 
 ternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he 
 himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable 
 
320 
 
 UP THE THAMES. 
 
 old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, 
 tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all 
 over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous 
 manner. He ushered us into his little study, or par- 
 lor, or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor paper- 
 hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I re- 
 member, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch 
 distinctly upon these external blemishes and this 
 nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth 
 mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, 
 but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty 
 of enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if 
 Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying 
 them as in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath 
 from ordinary men. All kinds of mild magnificence, 
 tempered by his taste, would have become him well ; 
 but he had not the grim dignity that assumes naked- 
 ness as the better robe. 
 
 I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In 
 truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to 
 the mould of features or the expression, nor any that 
 showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the 
 slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child’s 
 face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, 
 when he met us in the entry, I discerned that he was 
 old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles many; 
 it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at 
 all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books 
 talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. 
 But when he began to speak, and as he grew more ear- 
 nest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his 
 age ; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened 
 through the gleam which his sprightl}^ thoughts dif- 
 fused about his face, but then another flash of youth 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 321 
 
 came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. 
 I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive trans- 
 formation, before or since ; and, to this day, trusting 
 only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to de- 
 cide which was his genuine and stable predicament, — 
 youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose man- 
 ners seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than pol- 
 ished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a 
 kindly and sensitive disposition without any reference 
 to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile that 
 the nicest observer could not detect the application 
 of it. 
 
 His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delight- 
 ful voice accompanied their visible language like mu- 
 sic. He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of 
 whatever was passing among those who surrounded 
 him, and especially of the vicissitudes in the conscious- 
 ness of the person to whom he happened to be address- 
 ing himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon 
 my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however 
 transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not 
 from any positive vigilance on his part, but because 
 his faculty of observ^ation was so penetrative and deli- 
 cate ; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to 
 discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive 
 to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner re- 
 servoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend 
 to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of 
 feeling, and within a certain depth, you might spare 
 yourself the trouble of utterance, because he already 
 knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little 
 more than you would have spoken. His figure was 
 full of gentle movement, though, somehow, without 
 disturbing its quietude ; and as he talked, he kept 
 
 VOL. VII. 21 
 
322 
 
 UP THE THAMES, 
 
 folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many 
 ways a fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel 
 pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable, I should im- 
 agine, of a passionate experience in either direction. 
 There was not an English trait in him from head to 
 foot, morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale, 
 or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into 
 his composition. In his earlier life, he appears to 
 have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle, 
 and of a tendency to fling himself into the rough 
 struggle of humanity on the liberal side. It would be 
 taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was 
 merely a projection of his fancy world into the actual, 
 and that he never could have hit a downright blow, 
 and was altogether an unsuitable person to receive 
 one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in his peace- 
 fulest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion 
 merely from what I saw, it would have occurred to me 
 that his main deficiency was a lack of grit. Though 
 anything but a timid man, the combative and defen- 
 sive elements were not prominently developed in his 
 character, and could have been made available only 
 when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. 
 It was on this account, and also because of the fine- 
 ness of his nature generally, that the English appre- 
 ciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate 
 poet poor, and with scanty laurels, in his declining 
 age. 
 
 It was not, I think, from his American blood that 
 Leigh Hunt derived either his amiability or his peace- 
 ful inclinations ; at least, I do not see how we can 
 reasonably claim the former quality as a national 
 charaeteristic, though the latter might have been 
 fairly inherited from his ancestors on the mother’s 
 
UP THE THAMES, 
 
 323 
 
 side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But the kind 
 of excellence that distinguished him — his fineness, 
 subtilty, and grace — was that which the richest cul- 
 tivation has heretofore tended to develop in the hap- 
 pier examples of American genius, and which (though 
 1 say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our future 
 intellectual advancement may make general among us. 
 His person, at all events, was thoroughly American, 
 and of the best type, as were likewise his manners ; 
 for we are the best as well as the worst mannered 
 people in the world. 
 
 Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to 
 say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, 
 and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth 
 of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In response 
 to all that we ventured to express about his writings 
 (and, for my part, I went quite to the extent of my 
 conscience, which was a long way, and there left the 
 matter to a lady and a young girl, who happily were 
 with me), his face shone, and he manifested great de- 
 light, with a perfect, and yet delicate, frankness, for 
 which I loved him. He could not tell us, he said, the 
 happiness that such appreciation gave him ; it always 
 took him by surprise, he remarked, for — perhaps be- 
 cause he cleaned his own boots, and performed other 
 little ordinary offices for himself — he never had been 
 conscious of anything wonderful in his own person. 
 And then he smiled, making himself and all the poor 
 little parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usu- 
 ally the hardest thing in the world to praise a man to 
 his face ; but Leigh Hunt received the incense with 
 such gracious satisfaction (feeling it to be sympathy, 
 not vulgar praise), that the only difficulty was to keep 
 the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of 
 
324 
 
 UP THE THAMES, 
 
 permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up 
 while we were talking ; the rain poured, the lightning 
 flashed, and the thunder broke ; but I hope, and have 
 great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour 
 for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice 
 that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those 
 of my companions. Women are- the fit ministers at 
 such a shrine. 
 
 He must ha;Ve suffered keenly in his lifetime, and 
 enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon 
 the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for 
 everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temper- 
 ament, happiness had probably the upperhand. His 
 was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet 
 seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results 
 from power ; for beauty, like woman, its human repre- 
 sentative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its con- 
 summate favor only to the strong. I imagine that 
 Leigh Hunt may have been more beautiful when I 
 met him, both in person and character, than in his ear- 
 lier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his 
 being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the 
 gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. I 
 rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with most 
 confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a 
 future life ; and there were abundant proofs, through- 
 out our interview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, 
 quiet relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were 
 denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had 
 to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the 
 dusk, — all of which gave a reverential cast to the 
 feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that 
 he could have had one full draught of prosperity be- 
 fore he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it 
 
UP THE THAMES. 
 
 325 
 
 would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a 
 beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with 
 all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegances 
 about him, and a succession of tender and lovely wo- 
 men to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night, 
 I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of 
 a weakness in Leigh Hunt’s chara^cter, that I should 
 be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the 
 same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an 
 infinity of better things in the world whither he has 
 gone. 
 
 At our leave-taking he grasped me warmly by both 
 hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole 
 party as if he had known us for years. All this was 
 genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his 
 heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and 
 rare varieties, not acorns, but a true heart, neverthe- 
 less. Several years afterwards I met him for the last 
 time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken 
 down by infirmities ; and my final recollection of the 
 beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, 
 if I mistake not, partly embraced and supported by, 
 another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel- 
 name, since he has a week-day one for his personal oc- 
 casions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Corn- 
 wall, whose kind introduction had first made me known 
 to Leigh Hunt. 
 
OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OP ENGLISH POVEPTY, 
 
 Becoming an inhabitant of a great English town, 
 I often turned aside from the prosperous thorough- 
 fares (where the edifices, the shops, and the bustling 
 crowd differed not so much from scenes with which I 
 was familiar in my own country), and went design- 
 edly astray among precincts that reminded me of some 
 of Dickens’s grimiest pages. There I caught glimpses 
 of a people and a mode of life that were comparatively 
 new to my observation, a sort of sombre phantasma- 
 goric spectacle, exceedingly undelightful to behold, 
 yet involving a singular interest and even fascination 
 in its ugliness. 
 
 Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the 
 world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul 
 incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all 
 earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ; 
 ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have 
 chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing 
 struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty- 
 stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on 
 our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its 
 own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond 
 them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the bright- 
 ness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything 
 clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger 
 portion of our impurities into transitory dust which 
 the next wind can sweep away, in contrast with the 
 damp, adhesive grime that incorporates itself with all 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 327 
 
 surfaces (unless continually and painfully cleansed) 
 in the chill moisture of the English air. Then the all- 
 pervading smoke of the city, abundantly intermingled 
 with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal, hover- 
 ing overhead, descending, and alighting on pavements 
 and rich architectural fronts, on the snowy muslin of 
 the ladies, and the gentlemen’s starched collars and 
 shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in a half- 
 mourning garb. It is beyond the resources of Wealth 
 to keep the smut away from its premises or its own 
 fingers’ ends ; and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself 
 to the dark influence without a struggle. Along with 
 disastrous circumstances, pinching need, adversity so 
 lengthened out as to constitute the rule of life, there 
 lomes a certain chill depression of the spirits which 
 seems especially to shudder at cold water. In view of 
 so wretched a state of things, we accept the ancient 
 Deluge not merely as an insulated phenomenon, but 
 as a periodical necessity, and acknowledge that noth- 
 ing less than such a general washing-day could suffice 
 to cleanse the slovenly old world of its moral and ma- 
 terial dirt. 
 
 Gin-shops, or what the English call spirit-vaults, are 
 numerous in the vicinity of these poor streets, and are 
 set off with the magnificence of gilded door-posts, tar- 
 nished by contact with the unclean customers who 
 haunt there. Ragged children come thither with old 
 shaving-mugs, or broken-nosed teapots, or any such 
 makeshift receptacle, to get a little poison or madness 
 for their parents, who deserve no better requital at 
 their hands for having engendered them. Inconceiv- 
 ably sluttish women enter at noonday and stand at the 
 counter among boon-companions of both sexes, stirring 
 up misery and jollity in a bumper together, and quaff- 
 
328 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 ing ofif the mixture with a relish. As for the men, 
 they lounge there continually, drinking till they are 
 drunken, — drinking as long as they have a half- 
 penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for 
 a sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets so 
 as to enable them to be drunken again. Most of these 
 establishments have a significant advertisement of 
 “^Beds,” doubtless for the accommodation of their 
 customers in the interval between one intoxication and 
 the next. I never could find it in my heart, however, 
 utterly to condemn these sad revellers, and should cer- 
 tainly wait till I had some better consolation to offer 
 before depriving them of their dram of gin, though 
 death itself were in the glass ; for methought their 
 poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift them a 
 little way out of the smothering squalor of both their 
 outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and 
 suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual ex- 
 istence that limited their present misery. The temper- 
 ance-reformers unquestionably derive their commission 
 from the Divine Beneficence, but have never been 
 taken fully into its counsels. All may not be lost, 
 though those good men fail. 
 
 Pawnbrokers’ establishments, distinguished by the 
 mystic symbol of the three golden balls, were conven- 
 iently accessible ; though what personal property these 
 wretched people could possess, capable of being esti- 
 mated in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for 
 a loan, was a problem that still perplexes me. Old 
 clothesmen, likewise, dwelt hard by, and hung out an- 
 cient garments to dangle in the wind. There were 
 butchers’ shops, too, of a class adapted to the neigh- 
 borhood, presenting no such generously fattened car- 
 casses as Englishmen love to gaze at in the market, 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 329 
 
 no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, no dead hogs, 
 or muttons ornamented with carved bas-reliefs of fat 
 on their ribs and shoulders, in a peculiarly British 
 style of art, — not these, but bits and gobbets of lean 
 meat, selvages snipt off from steaks, tough and stringy 
 morsels, bare bones smitten away from joints by the 
 cleaver ; tripe, liver, bullocks’ feet, or whatever else 
 was cheapest and divisible into the smallest lots. I am 
 afraid that even such delicacies came to many of their 
 tables hardly oftener than Christmas. In the windows 
 of other little shops you saw half a dozen wizened her- 
 rings ; some eggs in a basket, looking so dingily an- 
 tique that your imagination smelt them ; fly-speckled 
 biscuits, segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and papers 
 of tobacco. Now and then a sturdy milk-woman passed 
 by with a wooden yoke over her shoulders, supporting 
 a pail on either side, filled with a whitish fluid, the 
 composition of which was water and chalk and the 
 milk of a sickly cow, who gave the best she had, poor 
 thing ! but could scarcely make it rich or wholesome, 
 spending her life in some close city-nook and pastur- 
 ing on strange food. I have seen, once or twice, a 
 donkey coming into one of these streets with panniers 
 full of vegetables, and departing with a return cargo 
 of what looked like rubbish and street-sweepings. No 
 other commerce seemed to exist, except, possibly, a girl 
 might offer you a pair of stockings or a worked collar, 
 or a man whisper something mysterious about won- 
 derfully cheap cigars. And yet I remember seeing 
 female hucksters in those regions, with their wares 
 on the edge of the sidewalk and their own seats right 
 in the carriage-way, pretending to sell half-decayed 
 oranges and apples, toffy, Ormskirk cakes, combs, and 
 cheap jewelry, the coarsest kind of crockery, and little 
 
330 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 plates of oysters, — knitting patiently all day long, and 
 removing their undiminished stock in trade at night- 
 fall. All indispensable importations from other quar- 
 ters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive 
 scale : for example, the wealthier inhabitants pur- 
 chased their eoal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the 
 poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious 
 and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart 
 happened to pass through the street and drop a hand- 
 ful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen 
 women and ehildren scrambling for the treasure-trove, 
 like a flock of hens and chickens gobbling up some 
 spilt corn. In this connection I may as well mention 
 a commodity of boiled snails (for such they appeared 
 to me, though probably a marine production) which 
 used to be peddled from door to door, piping hot, as 
 an article of cheap nutriment. 
 
 The population of these dismal abodes appeared to 
 consider the sidewalks and middle of the street as 
 their eommon hall. In a drama of low life, the unity 
 of place might be arranged rigidly according to the 
 classic rule, and the street be the one locality in which 
 every scene and incident should occur. Courtship, 
 quarrels, plot and counterplot, conspiracies for rob- 
 bery and murder, family difficulties or agreements, — 
 all such matters, I doubt not, are constantly discussed 
 or transacted in this sky-roofed saloon, so regally hung 
 with its sombre eanopy of coal-smoke. Whatever the 
 disadvantages of the English climate, the only com- 
 fortable or wholesome part of life, for the city poor, 
 must be spent in the open air. The stifled and 
 squalid rooms where they lie down at night, whole 
 families and neighborhoods together, or sulkily elbow 
 one another in the daytime, when a settled rain drives 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 331 
 
 them within doors, are worse horrors than it is worth 
 while (without a practical object in view) to admit 
 into one’s imagination. No wonder that they creep 
 forth from the foul mystery of their interiors, stumble 
 down from their garrets, or scramble up out of their 
 cellars, on the upper step of which you may see the 
 grimy housewife, before the shower is ended, letting 
 the raindrops gutter down her visage ; while her chil- 
 dren (an impish progeny of cavernous recesses below 
 the common sphere of humanity) swarm into the day- 
 light and attain all that they know of personal purifi- 
 cation in the nearest mud-puddle. It might almost 
 make a man doubt the existence of his own soul, to 
 observe how Nature has flung these little wretches 
 into the street and left them there, so evidently re- 
 garding them as nothing worth, and how all mankind 
 acquiesce in the great mother’s estimate of her off- 
 spring. For, if they are to have no immortality, what 
 superior claim can I assert for mine ? And how diffi- 
 cult to believe that anything so precious as a germ of 
 immortal growth can have been buried under this dirt- 
 heap, plunged into this cesspool of misery and vice I 
 As often as I beheld the scene, it affected me with sur- 
 prise and loathsome interest, much resembling, though 
 in a far intenser degree, the feeling with which, when 
 a boy, I used to turn over a plank or an old log that 
 had long lain on the damp ground, and found a viva- 
 cious multitude of unclean and devilish - looking in- 
 sects scampering to and fro beneath it. Without an 
 infinite faith, there seemed as much prospect of a 
 blessed futurity for those hideous bugs and many- 
 footed worms as for these brethren of our humanity 
 and co-heirs of all our heavenly inheritance. Ah, 
 what a mystery ! Slowly, slowly, as after groping at 
 
332 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope 
 struggles upward to the surface, bearing the half- 
 drowned body of a child along with it, and heaving it 
 aloft for its life, and my own life, and all our lives. 
 Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can be made capa- 
 ble of inhaling celestial air, I know not how the purest 
 and most intellectual of us can reasonably expect ever 
 to taste a breath of it. The whole question of eternity 
 is staked there. If a single one of those helpless little 
 ones be lost, the world is lost ! 
 
 The women and children greatly preponderate in 
 such places ; the men probably wandering abroad in 
 quest of that daily miracle, a dinner and a drink, or 
 perhaps slumbering in the daylight that they may the 
 better follow out their cat-like rambles through the 
 dark. Here are women with young figures, but old, 
 wrinkled, yellow faces, tanned and blear-eyed with the 
 smoke which they cannot spare from .their scanty fires, 
 — it being too precious for its warmth to be swallowed 
 by the chimney. Some of them sit on the doorsteps, 
 nursing their unwashed babies at bosoms which we will 
 glance aside from, for the sake of our mothers and all 
 womanhood, because the fairest spectacle is here the 
 foulest. Yet motherhood, in these dark abodes, is 
 strangely identical with what we have all known it to 
 be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I remember, 
 smote me with more grief and pity (all the more poign 
 ant because perplexingly entangled with an inclina- 
 tion to smile) than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother 
 priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and 
 skinny infant, just as a young matron might, when she 
 invites her lady friends to admire her plump, white- 
 robed darling in the nursery. Indeed, no womanly 
 characteristic seemed to have altogether perished out 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 833 
 
 of these poor souls. It was the very same creature 
 whose tender torments make the rapture of our young 
 days, whom we love, cherish, and protect, and rely 
 upon in life and death, and whom we delight to see 
 beautify her beauty with rich robes and set it off with 
 jewels, though now fantastically masquerading in a 
 garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I rec- 
 ognized her, over and over again, in the groups round 
 a doorstep or in the descent of a cellar, chatting with 
 prodigious earnestness about intangible trifles, laugh- 
 ing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost the same 
 instant with one neighbor’s sunshine and another’s 
 shadow ; wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet easily per- 
 turbed, and breaking into small feminine ebullitions 
 of spite, wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, 
 such as vary the social atmosphere of her silken- skirted 
 sisters, though smothered into propriety by dint of a 
 well-bred habit. Not that there was an absolute de- 
 ficiency of good-breeding, even here. It often sur- 
 prised me to witness a courtesy and deference among 
 these ragged folks, which, having seen it, I did not 
 thoroughly believe in, wondering whence it should 
 have come. I am persuaded, however, that there 
 were laws of intercourse which they never violated, 
 — a code of the cellar, the garret, the common stair- 
 case, the doorstep, and the pavement, which perhaj^s 
 had as deep a foundation in natural fitness as the code 
 of the drawing-room. 
 
 Yet again I doubt whether I may not have been ut- 
 tering folly in the last two sentences, when I reflect 
 how rude and rough these specimens of feminine char- 
 acter generally were. They had a readiness with their 
 hands that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and other 
 heroines in Fielding’s novels. For example, I have 
 
334 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 seen a woman meet a man in the street, and, for no 
 reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the 
 hair and cuff his ears, — an infliction which he bore 
 with exemjDlary patience, only snatching the very ear- 
 liest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp 
 tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the 
 sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a whole 
 vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap, 
 or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English 
 people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater de- 
 gree than ourselves by this simple and honest ten- 
 dency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another’s 
 persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd of English 
 ladies (for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, 
 in Holy Week) will be satisfied that their belligerent 
 propensities are kept in abeyance ojily by a merciless 
 rigor on the part of society. It requires a vast deal of 
 refinement to spiritualize their large physical endow- 
 ments. Such being the case with the delicate orna- 
 ments of the drawing-room, it is less to be wondered at 
 that women who live mostly in the open air, amid the 
 coarsest kind of companionship and occupation, should 
 carry on the intercourse of life with a freedom un- 
 known to any class of American females, though still, 
 1 am resolved to think, compatible with a generous 
 breadth of natural propriety. It shocked me, at first, 
 to see them (of all ages, even elderly, as well as in- 
 fants that could just toddle across the street alone) go- 
 ing about in the mud and mire, or through the dusky 
 snow and slosh of a severe week in winter, with petti- 
 coats high uplifted above bare, red feet and legs ; but 
 I was comforted by observing that both shoes and 
 stockings generally reappeared with better weather, 
 having been thriftily kept out of the damp for the con- 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 335 
 
 venience of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood 
 was wonderful, and their strength greater than could 
 have been expected from such spare diet as they prob- 
 ably lived upon. I have seen them carrying on their 
 heads great burdens under which they walked as freely 
 as if they were fashionable bonnets ; or sometimes the 
 burden was huge enough almost to cover the whole 
 person, looked at from behind, — as in Tuscan villages 
 you may see the girls coming in from the country with 
 great bundles of green twigs upon their backs, so that 
 they resemble locomotive masses of verdure and fra- 
 grance. But these poor English women seemed to be 
 laden with rubbish, incongruous and indescribable, 
 such as bones and rags, the sweepings of the house and 
 of the street, a merchandise gathered up from what 
 poverty itself had thrown away, a heap of filthy stuff 
 analogous to Christian’s bundle of sin. 
 
 Sometimes, though very seldom, I detected a certain 
 gracefulness among the younger women that was alto- 
 gether new to my observation. It was a charm proper 
 to the lowest class. One girl I particularly remem- 
 ber, in a garb none of the cleanest and nowise smart, 
 and herself exceedingly coarse in all respects, but yet 
 endowed with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a 
 robe of simple beauty and suitable behavior that she 
 was born in and had never been tempted to throw off, 
 because she had really nothing else to put on. Eve 
 herself could not have been more natural. Nothing 
 was affected, nothing imitated ; no proper grace was 
 vulgarized by an effort to assume the manners or 
 adornments of another sphere, This kind of beauty, 
 arrayed in a fitness of its ov n, is probably vanishing 
 out of the world, and will certainly never be found in 
 America, where all the girls, whether daughters of the 
 
336 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 upper-tendom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the ken- 
 nel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, sel- 
 dom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit or an 
 utterly absurd failure. Those words, “ genteel ” and 
 ladylike,” are terrible ones, and do us infinite mis- 
 chief, but it is because (at least, I hope so) we are in 
 a transition state, and shall emerge into a higher mode 
 of simplicity than has ever been known to past ages. 
 
 In such disastrous circumstances as I have been at- 
 tempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what 
 a mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. 
 A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neigh- 
 bors, would be knitting or sewing on the doorstep, just 
 as fifty other women were ; but round about her skirts 
 (though wofully patched) you would be sensible of 
 a certain sphere of decency, which, it seemed to me, 
 could not have been kept more impregnable in the 
 cosiest little sitting-room, where the teakettle on the 
 hob was humming its good old song of domestic peace. 
 Maidenhood had a similar power. The evil habit that 
 grows upon us in this harsh world makes me faithless 
 to my own better perceptions ; and yet I have seen 
 girls in these wretched streets, on whose virgin purity, 
 judging merely from their impression on my instincts 
 as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe, at 
 the moment, to stake my life. The next moment, how- 
 ever, as the surrounding flood of moral uncleanness 
 surged over their footsteps, I would not have staked a 
 spike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the 
 miracle was within the scope of Providence, which is 
 equally wise and equally beneficent (even to those poor 
 girls, though I acknowledge the fact without the re^ 
 motest comprehension of the mode of it), whether they 
 were pure or what we fellow-sinners call vile. Unless 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 337 
 
 your faith be deep-rooted and of most vigorous growth^ 
 it is the safer way not to turn aside into this region so 
 suggestive of miserable doubt. It was a place “ with 
 dreadful faces thronged,” wrinkled and grim with vice 
 and wretchedness ; and, thinking over the line of Mik 
 ton here quoted, I come to the conclusion that those 
 ugly lineaments which startled Adam and Eve, as they 
 looked backward to the closed gate of Paradise, were 
 no fiends from the pit, but the more terrible foreshad^ 
 owings of what so many of their descendants were to 
 be. God help them, and us likewise, their brethren 
 and sisters ! Let me add, that, forlorn, ragged, care- 
 worn, hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry, as they were, 
 the most pitiful thing of all was to see the sort of pa- 
 tience with which they accepted their lot, as if they had 
 been born into the world for that and nothing else. 
 Even the little children had this characteristic in as 
 perfect development as their grandmothers. 
 
 The children, in truth, were the ill-omened blossoms 
 from which another harvest of precisely such dark 
 fruitage as I saw ripened around me was to be pro- 
 duced. Of course you would imagine these to be 
 lumps of crude iniquity, tiny vessels as full as they 
 could hold of naughtiness ; nor can I say a great deal 
 to the contrary. Small proof of parental discipline 
 could I discern, save when a mother (drunken, I sin- 
 cerely hope) snatched her own imp out of a group 
 of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions that were 
 playing and squabbling together in the mud, turned up 
 its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its poor 
 little tenderest part, and let it go again with a shake. 
 If the child knew what the punishment was for, it was 
 wiser than I pretend to be. It yelled and went back 
 to its playmates in the mud. Yet let me bear testi- 
 
 VOL. VII. 22 
 
338 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 mony to what was beautiful, and more touching than 
 anything that I ever witnessed before in the inter- 
 course of happier children. I allude to the superin- 
 tendence which some of these small people (too small, 
 one would think, to be sent into the street alone, 
 had there been any other nursery for them) exercised 
 over still smaller ones. Whence they derived such a 
 sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot 
 tell ; but it was wonderful to observe the expression 
 of responsibility in their deportment, the anxious fidel- 
 ity with which they discharged their unfit office, the 
 tender patience with which they linked their less pliable 
 impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, and 
 let it guide them whithersoever it liked. In the hol- 
 low-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving 
 a cheerless oversight to her baby - brother, I did not 
 so much marvel at it. She had merely come a little 
 earlier than usual to the perception of what was to 
 be her business in life. But I admired the sickly- 
 looking little boy, who did violence to his boyish na- 
 ture by making himself the servant of his little sister, 
 — she too small to walk, and he too small to take her 
 in his arms, — and therefore working a kind of mir- 
 acle to transport her from one dirt-heap to another. 
 Beholding such works of love and duty, I took heart 
 again, and deemed it not so impossible, after all, for 
 these neglected children to find a path through the 
 squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate 
 of heaven. Perhaps there was this latent good in all 
 of them, though generally they looked brutish, and dull 
 even in their sports ; there was little mirth among 
 them, nor even a fully awakened spirit of blackguard^ 
 ism. Yet sometimes, again, I saw, with surprise and 
 a sense as if I had been asleep and dreaming, the 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 339 
 
 bright, intelligent, merry face of a child whose dark 
 eyes gleamed with vivacious expression through the 
 dirt that incrusted its skin, like sunshine struggling 
 through a very dusty window-pane. 
 
 In these streets the belted and blue-coated police- 
 man appears seldom in comparison with the frequency 
 of his occurrence in more reputable thoroughfares. I 
 used to think that the inhabitants would have ample 
 time to murder one another, or any stranger, like my- 
 self, who might violate the filthy sanctities of the 
 place, before the law could bring up its lumbering as- 
 sistance. Nevertheless, there is a supervision ; nor 
 does the watchfulness of authority permit the populace 
 to be tempted to any outbreak. Once, in a time of 
 dearth, I noticed a ballad - singer going through the 
 street hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a 
 provincial dialect, of which I could only make out 
 that it addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the 
 score of starvation ; but by his side stalked the police- 
 man, offering no interference, but watchful to hear 
 what this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him, 
 if his effusion threatened to prove too soul-stirring. 
 In my judgment, however, there is little or no danger 
 of that kind : they starve patiently, sicken patiently, 
 die patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased 
 flaccidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to 
 those above them, it will probably be by the communi- 
 cation of some destructive pestilence ; for, so the med- 
 ical men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases 
 with a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and 
 keep among themselves traditionary plagues that have 
 long ceased to afflict more fortunate societies. Char- 
 ity herself gathers her robe about her to avoid their 
 contact. It would be a dire revenge, indeed, if they 
 
340 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 were to prove their claims to be reckoned of one blood 
 and nature with the noblest and wealthiest by compel- 
 ling them to inhale death through the diffusion of 
 their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere. 
 
 A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has 
 an unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. 
 Beggars have heretofore been so strange to an Ameri- 
 can that he is apt to become their prey, being recog- 
 nized through his national peculiarities, and beset by 
 them in the streets. The English smile at him, and 
 say that there are ample public arrangements for 
 every pauper’s possible need, that street charity pro- 
 motes idleness and vice, and that yonder personifica- 
 tion of misery on the pavement will lay up a good 
 day’s profit, besides supping more luxuriously than 
 the dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by the 
 stranger adopts their theory and begins to practise 
 upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from 
 annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment 
 or sometimes a too late contrition. Years afterwards, 
 it may be, his memory is still haunted by some vin- 
 dictive wretch . whose cheeks were pale and hunger- 
 pinched, whose rags fluttered in the east-wind, whose 
 right arm was paralyzed and his left leg shrivelled 
 into a mere nerveless stick, but whom he passed by re- 
 morselessly because an Englishman chose to say that 
 the fellow’s misery looked too perfect, was too artist- 
 ically got up, to be genuine. Even allowing this to be 
 true (as, a hundred chances to one, it was), it would 
 still have been a clear case of economy to buy him off 
 with a little loose silver, so that his lamentable figure 
 should not limp at the heels of your conscience all 
 over the world. To own the truth, I provided myself 
 with several such imaginary persecutors in England, 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 341 
 
 and recruited their number with at least one sickly- 
 looking wretch whose acquaintance I first made at As- 
 sisi, in Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sinis- 
 ter in his aspect, permitted him to beg early and late, 
 and all day long, without getting a single baiocco. At 
 my latest glimpse of him, the villain avenged himself, 
 not by a volley of horrible curses as any other Italian 
 beggar would, but by taking an expression so- grief- 
 stricken, want-wrung, hopeless, and withal resigned, 
 that I could paint his lifelike portrait at this moment. 
 Were I to go over the same ground again, I would lis- 
 ten to no man’s theories, but buy the little luxury of 
 beneficence at a cheap rate, instead of doing myself a 
 moral mischief by exuding a stony incrustation over 
 whatever natural sensibility I might possess. 
 
 On the other hand, there were some mendicants 
 whose utmost efforts I even now felicitate myself on 
 having withstood. Such was a phenomenon abridged 
 of his lower half, who beset me for two or three years 
 together, and, in spite of his deficiency of locomotive 
 members, had some supernatural method of transport- 
 ing himself (simultaneously, I believe) to all quarters 
 of the city. He wore a sailor’s jacket (possibly, be- 
 cause skirts would have been a superfluity to his fig- 
 ure), and had a remarkably broad-shouldered and mus- 
 cular frame, surmounted by a large, fresh-colored face, 
 which was full of power and intelligence. His dress 
 and linen were the perfection of neatness. Once a 
 day, at least, wherever I went, I suddenly became 
 aware of this trunk of a man on the path before me, 
 resting on his base, and looking as if he had just 
 sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it 
 again and reappear at some other spot the instant you 
 left him behind. The expression of his eye was per- 
 
342 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 
 
 fectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding your own 
 as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering 
 from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you 
 were completely beyond the range of his battery of 
 one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of 
 soliciting alms ; and he reminded me of the old beg- 
 gar who appealed so touchingly to the charitable sym- 
 pathies of Gil Bias, taking aim at him from the road- 
 side with a long - barrelled musket. The intentness 
 and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unre- 
 lenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as 
 it seemed, was the very flower of insolence ; or, if you 
 give it a possibly truer interpretation, it was the ty- 
 rannical effort of a man endowed with great natural 
 force of character to constrain your reluctant will to 
 his purpose. Apparently, he had staked his salva- 
 tion upon the ultimate success of a daily struggle be- 
 tween himself and me, the triumph of which would 
 compel me to become a tributary to the hat that lay 
 on the pavement beside him. Man or fiend, however, 
 there was a stubbornness in his intended victim which 
 this massive fragment of a mighty personality had not 
 altogether reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled 
 to pass him at my customary pace hundreds of times 
 over, quietly meeting his terribly respectful eye, and 
 allowing him the fair chance which I felt to be his 
 due, to subjugate me, if he really had the strength for 
 it. He never succeeded, but, on the other hand, never 
 gave up the contest ; and should I ever walk those 
 streets again, I am certain that the truncated tyrant 
 will sprout up through the pavement and look me fix- 
 edly in the eye, and perhaps get the victory. 
 
 I should think all the more highly of myself, if I 
 had shown equal heroism in resisting another class of 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 343 
 
 beggarly depredators, who assailed me on my weaker 
 side and won an easy spoil. Such was the sanctimo« 
 nious clergyman, with his white cravat, who visited 
 me with a subscription-paper, which he himself had 
 drawn up, in a case of heart-rending distress ; — the 
 respectable and ruined tradesman, going from door to 
 door, shy and silent in his own person, but accompa- 
 nied by a sympathizing friend, who bore testimony to 
 his integrity, and stated the unavoidable misfortunes 
 that had crushed him down ; — or the delicate and 
 prettily dressed lady, who had been bred in affluence, 
 but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous charities 
 of the world by the death of an indulgent, but secretly 
 insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and 
 simultaneous suicide of the best of husbands ; — oi* 
 the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appealing to my 
 fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in some 
 small prosperities which he was kind enough to term 
 my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claiming 
 to have largely contributed to them by his unbought 
 notices in the public journals. England is full of 
 such people, and a hundred other varieties of peripa- 
 tetic tricksters, higher than these, and lower, who act 
 their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an abso- 
 lutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as 
 I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an ex- 
 ception, — rats that nibble at the honest bread and 
 cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty 
 pilferings, — yet often gave them what they asked, 
 and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a 
 decorum which restrains you (unless you happen to be 
 a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of 
 plausible respectability, even when you are certain 
 that there is a knave beneath it. 
 
344 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 After making myself as familiar as I decently could 
 with the poor streets, I became curious to see what 
 kind of a home was provided for the inhabitants at 
 the public expense, fearing that it must needs be a 
 most comfortless one, or else their choice (if choice it 
 were) of so miserable a life outside was truly difficult 
 to account for. Accordingly, I visited a great alms- 
 house, and was glad to observe how unexceptionably 
 all the parts of the establishment were carried on, and 
 what an orderly life, full - fed, sufficiently reposeful, 
 and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of author- 
 ity, seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was 
 that very orderliness, and the cruel necessity of being 
 neat and clean, and even the comfort resulting from 
 these and other Christian-like restraints and regula- 
 tions, that constituted the principal grievance on the 
 part of the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to a life- 
 long luxury of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild 
 life of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a charm, 
 to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as the 
 life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather 
 that there must be insuperable difficulties, for the ma- 
 jority of the poor, in the way of getting admittance to 
 the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic preference 
 for the street would incline the pauper class to fare 
 scantily and precariously, and expose their raggedness 
 to the rain and snow, when such a hospitable door 
 stood wide open for their entrance. It might be that 
 the roughest and darkest side of the matter was not 
 shown me, there being persons of eminent station and 
 of both sexes in the party which I accompanied ; and, 
 of course, a properly trained public functionary would 
 have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as well as a 
 great shame, to exhibit anything to people of rank 
 that might too painfully shock their sensibilities. 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 345 
 
 The women’s ward was the portion of the establish- 
 ment which we especially examined. It could not be 
 questioned that they were treated with kindness as 
 well as care. No doubt, as has been already sug- 
 gested, some of them felt the irksomeness of submis- 
 sion to general rules of orderly behavior, after being 
 accustomed to that perfect freedom from the minor 
 proprieties, at least, which is one of the compensations 
 of absolutely hopeless poverty, or of any circumstances 
 that set us fairly below the decencies of life. I asked 
 the governor of the house whether he met with any 
 difficulty in keeping peace and order among his in- 
 mates ; and he informed me that his troubles among 
 the women were incomparably greater than witli the 
 men. They were freakish, and apt to be quarrelsome, 
 inclined to plague and pester one another in ways that 
 it was impossible to lay hold of, and to thwart his 
 own authority by the like intangible methods. He 
 said this with the utmost good-nature, and quite won 
 my regard by so placidly resigning himself to the in- 
 evitable necessity of letting the women throw dust 
 into his eyes. They certainly looked peaceable and 
 sisterly enough as I saw them, though still it might be 
 faintly perceptible that some of them were consciously 
 playing their parts before the governor and his distin- 
 guished visitors. 
 
 This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit 
 for his position. An American, in an office of similar 
 responsibility, would doubtless be a much superior 
 person, better educated, possessing a far wider range 
 of thought, more naturally acute, with a quicker tact 
 of external observation and a readier faculty of deal- 
 ing with difficult cases. The women would not suc- 
 ceed in throwing half so much dust into his eyes. 
 
346 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 
 
 Moreover, his black coat, and thin, sallow visage, 
 would make him look like a scholar, and his manners 
 would indefinitely approximate to those of a gentle- 
 man. But I cannot help questioning whether, on the 
 whole, these higher endowments would produce de- 
 cidedly better results. The Englishman was thor- 
 oughly plebeian both in aspect and behavior, a bluif, 
 ruddy -faced, hearty, kindly, yeoman -like personage, 
 with no refinement whatever, nor any superfluous sen- 
 sibility, but gifted with a native wholesomeness of 
 character which must have been a very beneficial ele- 
 ment in the atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke 
 to his pauper family in loud, good-humored, cheerful 
 tones, and treated them with a healthy freedom that 
 probably caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they 
 were free and healthy likewise. If he had under- 
 stood them a little better, he would not have treated 
 them half so wisely. We are apt to make sickly peo- 
 ple more morbid, and unfortunate people more miser- 
 able, by endeavoring to adapt our deportment to their 
 especial and individual needs. They eagerly accept 
 our well-meant efforts ; but it is like returning their 
 own sick breath back upon themselves, to be breathed 
 over and over again, intensifying the inward mischief 
 at every reception. The sympathy that would really 
 do them good is of a kind that recognizes their sound 
 and healthy parts, and ignores the part affected by 
 disease, which will thrive under the eye of a too close 
 observer like a poisonous weed in the sunshine. My 
 good friend the governor had no tendencies in the lat- 
 ter direction, and abundance of them in the former, 
 and was consequently as wholesome and invigorating 
 as the west-wind with a little spice of the north in it, 
 brightening the dreary visages that encountered us as 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 347 
 
 if he had carried a sunbeam in his hand. He ex- 
 pressed himself by his whole being and personality, 
 and by works more than words, and had the not un- 
 usual English merit of knowing what to do much bet- 
 ter than how to talk about it. 
 
 The women, I imagine, must have felt one imper- 
 fection in their state, however comfortable otherwise. 
 They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the 
 means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning 
 themselves ; all were well dressed in one homely uni- 
 form of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their 
 lieads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they 
 had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of 
 features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to 
 constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these abso- 
 lutely unilluminated faces among our native American 
 population, individuals of whom must be singularly 
 unfortunate, if, mixing as we do, no drop of gentle 
 blood has contributed to refine the turbid element, no 
 gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the 
 stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought from the 
 Old Country. Even in this English almshouse, how- 
 ever, there was at least one person who claimed to be 
 intimately connected with rank and wealth. The gov- 
 ernor, after suggesting that this person would probably 
 be gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small par- 
 lor, which was furnished a little more like a room in a 
 private dwelling than others that we entered, and had 
 a’ row of religious books and fashionable novels on the 
 mantel - piece. An old lady sat at a bright coal-fire, 
 reading a romance, and rose to receive us with a cer- 
 tain pomp of manner and elaborate display of cere- 
 monious courtesy, which, in spite of myself, made me 
 inwardly question the genuineness of her aristocratic 
 
348 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 
 
 pretensions. But, at any rate, she looked like a re^ 
 spectable old soul, and was evidently gladdened to the 
 very core of her frost-bitten heart by the awful punc- 
 tiliousness with which we responded to her gracious 
 and hospitable, though unfamiliar welcome. After a 
 little polite conversation, we retired ; and the governor^ 
 with a lowered voice and an air of deference, told us 
 that she had been a lady of quality, and had ridden in 
 her own equipage, not many years before, and now 
 lived in continual expectation that some of her rich 
 relatives would drive up in their carriages to take her 
 away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated with 
 great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not help 
 thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in her 
 talk and manner, that there might have been a mistake 
 on the governor’s part, and perhaps a venial exaggera- 
 tion on the old lady’s, concerning her former position 
 in society; but what struck me was the forcible in- 
 stance of that most prevalent of English vanities, the 
 pretension to aristocratic connection, on one side, and 
 the submission and reverence with which it was ac- 
 cepted by the governor and his household, on the 
 other. Among ourselves, I think, when wealth and 
 eminent position have taken their departure, they sel- 
 dom leave a pallid ghost behind them, — or, if it 
 sometimes stalks abroad, few recognize it. 
 
 We went into several other rooms, at the doors of 
 which, pausing on the outside, we could hear the voh 
 ubility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female 
 inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and 
 peace when we stepped over the threshold. The 
 women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, 
 sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, 
 classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 849 
 
 and all busied, so far as I can remember, with the one 
 occupation of knitting coarse yarn stockings. Hardly 
 any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheer- 
 ful air, though it often stirred them up to a momen- 
 tary vivacity to be accosted by the governor, and they 
 seemed to like being noticed, however slightly, by the 
 visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there (and 
 running hastily through my experiences, I hardly rec- 
 ollect to have seen a happier one in my life, if you 
 take a careless flow of spirits as happiness) was an old 
 woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy- 
 looking females, who plied their knitting-work round 
 about her. She laughed, when we entered, and imme- 
 diately began to talk to us, in a thin, little, spirited 
 quaver, claiming to be more than a century old ; and 
 the governor (in whatever way he happened to be cog- 
 nizant of the fact) confirmed her age to be a hundred 
 and four. Her jauntiness and cackling merriment 
 were really wonderful. It was as if she had got 
 through with all her actual business in life two or 
 three generations ago, and now, freed from every re- 
 sponsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up 
 a mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long 
 time (and, happy as she was, she appeared not to care 
 whether it were long or short), before Death, who had 
 misplaced her name in his list, might remember to 
 take her away. She had gone quite round the circle 
 of human existence, and come back to the play-ground 
 again. And so she had grown to be a kind of mi- 
 raculous old pet, the plaything of people seventy or 
 eighty years younger than herself, who talked and 
 laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great 
 delight in her wayward and strangely playful re- 
 sponses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed 
 
350 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 a gibe that caused their ears to tingle a little. She 
 had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay 
 there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby. 
 
 In the same room sat a pauper who had once been 
 an actress of considerable repute, but was compelled 
 to give up her profession by a softening of the brainc 
 The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out 
 of her life, and disturbed all healthy relationship be- 
 tween the thoughts within her and the world without. 
 On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and 
 showed herself ready to engage in conversation ; but 
 suddenly, while we were talking with the century-old 
 crone, the poor actress began to weep, contorting her 
 face with extravagant stage - grimaces, and wringing 
 her hands for some inscrutable sorrow. It might have 
 been a reminiscence of actual calamity in her past life, 
 or, quite as probably, it was but a dramatic woe, be- 
 neath which she had staggered and shrieked and 
 wrung her hands with hundreds of repetitions in the 
 sight of crowded theatres, and been as often comforted 
 by thunders of applause. But my idea of the mystery 
 was, that she had a sense of wrong in seeing the aged 
 woman (whose empty vivacity was like the rattling of 
 dry peas in a bladder) chosen as the central object of 
 interest to the visitors, while she herself, who had agi- 
 tated thousands of hearts with a breath, sat starving 
 for the admiration that was her natural food. I ap- 
 peal to the whole society of artists of the Beautiful 
 and the Imaginative, — poets, romancers, painters, 
 sculptors, actors, — whether or no this is a grief that 
 may be felt even amid the torpor of a dissolving 
 brain ! 
 
 We looked into a good many sleeping-chambers, 
 where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two oc- 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 351 
 
 cupants, and provided with sheets and pillow-cases 
 that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the 
 sense of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the 
 arrangements of the almshouse ; a little cheap luxury 
 for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a sub- 
 stantial good. But, at all events, there was the beauty 
 of perfect neatness and orderliness, which, being here- 
 tofore known to few of them, was perhaps as much as 
 they could well digest in the remnant of their lives. 
 We were invited into the laundry, where a great 
 washing and drying were in process, the whole atmos- 
 phere being hot and vaporous with the steam of wet 
 garments and bedclothes. This atmosphere was the 
 pauper-life of the past week or fortnight resolved into 
 a gaseous state, and breathing it, however fastidiously, 
 we were forced to inhale the strange element into our 
 inmost being. Had the Queen been there, I know not 
 how she could have escaped the necessity. What an 
 intimate brotherhood is this in which we dwell, do 
 what we may to put an artificial remoteness between 
 the high creature and the low one ! A poor man’s 
 breath, borne on the vehicle of tobacco-smoke, floats 
 into a palace-window and reaches the nostrils of a 
 monarch. It is but an example, obvious to the sense, 
 of the innumerable and secret channels by which, at 
 every moment of our lives, the flow and reflux of a 
 common humanity pervade us all. How superficial 
 are the niceties of such as pretend to keep aloof ! 
 Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or 
 woman of us all can be clean. 
 
 By and by we came to the ward where the children 
 were kept, on entering which, we saw, in the first 
 place, several unlovely and unwholesome little people 
 lazily playing together in a court-yard. And here a 
 
352 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 singular incommodity befell one member of our party. 
 Among the children was a wretched, pale, half-torpid 
 little thing (about six years old, perhaps, but I know 
 not whether a girl or a boy), with a humor in its eyes- 
 and face, which the governor said was the scurvy, and 
 which appeared to bedim its powers of vision, so that 
 it toddled about gropingly, as if in quest of it did 
 not precisely know what. This child — this sickly, 
 wretched, humor-eaten infant, the offspring of un^ 
 speakable sin and sorrow, whom it must have required 
 several generations of guilty progenitors to render so 
 pitiable an object as we beheld it — immediately took 
 an unaccountable fancy to the gentleman just hinted 
 at. It prowled about him like a pet kitten, rubbing 
 against his legs, following everywhere at his heels, 
 pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the 
 speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly 
 before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting 
 on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps 
 under-witted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled 
 up in his face, — a sort of woful gleam was that smile, 
 through the sickly blotches that covered its features, 
 — and found means to express such a perfect confi- 
 dence that it was going to be fondled and made much 
 of, that there was no possibility in a human heart of 
 balking its expectation. It was as if God had prom- 
 ised the poor child this favor on behalf of that individ- 
 ual, and he was bound to fulfil the contract, or else no 
 longer call himself a man among men. Nevertheless, 
 it could be no easy thing for him to do, he being a 
 person burdened with more than an Englishman’s cus- 
 tomary reserve, shy of actual contact with human be^ 
 ings, afflicted with a peculiar distaste for whatever was 
 ugly, and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit of 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH - T ^^3 ^ 
 
 /■^ ' ' 
 
 observation from an insulated st^d-pOint which is - 
 said (but, I hope, erroneously) tq have tlfe tendency I 
 of putting ice into the blood. \ 
 
 So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good 
 deal of interest, and am seriously of opinion tha^ he 
 did an heroic act, and effected more than he dreamed 
 of towards his final salvation, when he took up the 
 loathsome child and caressed it as tenderly as if he 
 had been its father. To be sure, we all smiled at him, 
 at the time, but doubtless would have acted pretty 
 much the same in a similar stress of circumstances. 
 The child, at any rate, appeared to be satisfied with 
 his behavior ; for when he had held it a considerable 
 time, and set it down, it still favored him with its 
 company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger till we 
 reached the confines of the place. And on our return 
 through the court-yard, after visiting another part of 
 the establishment, here again was this same little 
 Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of 
 joyful, and yet dull recognition about its scabby mouth 
 and in its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the child’s mission 
 in reference to our friend was to remind him that he 
 was responsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings 
 and misdemeanors of the world in which he lived, and 
 was not entitled to look upon a particle of its dark ca- 
 lamity as if it were none of his concern : the offspring 
 of a brother’s iniquity being his own blood-relation, 
 and the guilt, likewise, a burden on him, unless he ex- 
 piated it by better deeds. 
 
 All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, 
 and, going up stairs, we found more of them in the 
 same or a worse condition than the little creature just 
 described, with their mothers (or more probably other 
 women, for the infants were mostly foundlings) in at^ 
 
 vou VII. 23 
 
354 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 tendance as nurses. The matron of the ward, a mid- 
 dle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly in as- 
 pect, was walking to and fro across the chamber — 
 on that weary journey in which careful mothers and 
 nurses travel so continually and so far, and gain never 
 a step of progress — with an unquiet baby in her 
 arms. She assured us that she enjoyed her occupa* 
 tion, being exceedingly fond of children ; and, in fact, 
 the absence of timidity in all the little people was a 
 sufficient proof that they could have had no experience 
 of harsh treatment, though, on the other hand, none 
 of them appeared to be attracted to one individual 
 more than another. In this point they differed widely 
 from the poor child below stairs. They seemed to rec- 
 ognize a universal motherhood in womankind, and 
 cared not which individual might be the mother of the 
 moment. I found their tameness as shocking as did 
 Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else 
 solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, 
 a perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, 
 such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted 
 for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, 
 incapable of the quick thrills of delight and fear which 
 play upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy child’s 
 nature, and partly by their woful lack of acquaintance 
 with a private home, and their being therefore desti- 
 tute of the sweet home-bred shyness, which is like the 
 sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted child. Their 
 condition was like that of chickens hatched in an oven, 
 and growing up without the especial guardianship of 
 a matron hen : both the chicken and the child, me- 
 thinks, must needs want something that is essential to 
 their respective characters. 
 
 In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a 
 
GTAMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 355 
 
 large number of beds) there was a clear fire burning 
 on the hearth, as in all the other occupied rooms ; and 
 directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a 
 baby, which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the 
 most horrible object that ever afflicted my sight. Days 
 afterwards — nay, even now, when I bring it up viv^ 
 idly before my mind’s eye — it seemed to lie upon the 
 floor of my heart, polluting my moral being with the 
 sense of something grievously amiss in the entire con- 
 ditions of humanity. The holiest man could not be 
 otherwise than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin 
 seemed impure, in a world where such a babe was pos^ 
 sible. The governor whispered me, apart, that, like 
 nearly all the rest of them, it was the child of un- 
 healthy parents. Ah, yes ! There was the mischief. 
 This spectral infant, a hideous mockery of the visible 
 link which Love creates between man and woman, was 
 born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin was its father, 
 and Sinful Disease its mother, and their offspring lay 
 in the woman’s arms like a nursing Pestilence, which, 
 could it live and grow up, would make the world a 
 more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank 
 Heaven, it could not live ! This baby, if we must give 
 it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months 
 old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might 
 have been considerably older. It was all covered with 
 blotches, and preternaturally dark and discolored ; it 
 was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless ; it 
 breathed only amid pan tings and gaspings, and moaned 
 painfully at every gasp. The only comfort in refer- 
 ence to it was the evident impossibility of its surviv- 
 ing to draw many more of those miserable, moaning 
 breaths ; and it would have been infinitely less heart- 
 depressing to see it die, right before my eyes, than to 
 
356 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 
 
 depart and carry it alive in my remembrance, still suf- 
 fering the incalculable torture of its little life. I can 
 by no means express how horrible this infant was, 
 neither ought I to attempt it. And yet I must add 
 one final touch. Young as the poor little creature 
 was, its pain and misery had endowed it with a pre^ 
 mature intelligence, insomuch that its eyes seemed to 
 stare at the by-standers out of their sunken sockets 
 knowingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one 
 and all to witness the deadly wrong of its existence. 
 At least, I so interpreted its look, when it positively 
 met and responded to my own awe-stricken gaze, and 
 therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before 
 mankind, on whom God has imposed the necessity to 
 suffer in soul and body till this dark and dreadful 
 wrong be righted. 
 
 Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were un- 
 derneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children 
 whom we had just seen, were, in large proportion, 
 foundlings. Almost without exception, they looked 
 sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in their doltish 
 faces, and a general tendency to diseases of the eye. 
 Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be un- 
 easy within their skins, and screwed themselves about 
 on the benches in a disagreeably suggestive way, as if 
 they had inherited the evil habits of their parents as 
 an innermost garment of the same texture and mate- 
 rial as the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with un- 
 speakable discomfort as long as they lived. I saw only 
 a single child that looked healthy ; and on my point- 
 ing him out, the governor informed me that this little 
 boy, the sole exception to the miserable aspect of his 
 Bchool-fellows, was not a foundling, nor properly a 
 work-house child, being born of respectable parentage, 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 357 
 
 and his father one of the officers of the institution. 
 As for the remainder, — the hundred pale abortions 
 to be counted against one rosy-cheeked boy, — what 
 shall we say or do? Depressed by the sight of so 
 much misery, and uninventive of remedies for the evils 
 that force themselves on my perception, I can do little 
 more than recur to the idea already hinted at in the 
 early part of this article, regarding the speedy neces- 
 sity of a new deluge. So far as these children are 
 concerned, at any rate, it would be a blessing to the 
 human race, which they will contribute to enervate 
 and corrupt, — a greater blessing to themselves, who 
 inherit no patrimony but disease and vice, and in 
 whose souls, if there be a spark of God’s life, this 
 seems the only possible mode of keeping it aglow, — 
 if every one of them could be drowned to-night, by 
 their best friends, instead of being put tenderly to bed. 
 This heroic method of treating human maladies, moral 
 and material, is certainly beyond the scope of man’s 
 discretionary rights, and probably will not be adopted 
 by Divine Providence until the opportunity of milder 
 reformation shall have been offered us again and 
 again, through a series of future ages. 
 
 It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and 
 excellent governor, as well as other persons better ac- 
 quainted with the subject than myself, took a less 
 gloomy view of it, though still so dark a one as to in- 
 volve scanty consolation. They remarked that indi- 
 viduals of the male sex, picked up in the streets and 
 nurtured in the work-house, sometimes succeed toler- 
 ably well in life, because they are taught trades before 
 being turned into the world, and, by dint of immacu- 
 late behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get 
 employment and earn a livelihood. The case is differ- 
 
358 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 
 
 ent with the girls. They can only go to service, and 
 are invariably rejected by families of respectability 
 on account of their origin, and for the better reason 
 of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the meanest 
 situations in a well-ordered English household. Their 
 resource is to take service with people only a step or 
 two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scam 
 tily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and preca- 
 rious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, 
 through which, in their best estate, they do but pick 
 their slimy way on stepping-stones. 
 
 From the schools we went to the bake-house, and 
 the brew-house (for such cruelty is not harbored in 
 the heart of a true Englishman as to deny a pauper 
 his daily allowance of beer), and through the kitchens, 
 where we beheld an immense pot over the fire, surg- 
 ing and walloping with some kind of a savory stew 
 that filled it up to its brim. W e also visited a tailor’s 
 shop, and a shoemaker’s shop, in both of which a num- 
 ber of men, and pale, diminutive apprentices, were at 
 work, diligently enough, though seemingly with small 
 heart in the business. Finally, the governor ushered 
 us into a shed, inside of which was piled up an im- 
 mense quantity of new coffins. They were of the 
 plainest description, made of pine boards, probably 
 of American growth, not very nicely smoothed by the 
 plane, neither painted nor stained with black, but pro- 
 vided with a loop of rope at either end for the conven- 
 ience of lifting the rude box and its inmate into the 
 cart that shall carry them to the burial-ground. There, 
 in holes ten feet deep, the paupers are buried one 
 above another, mingling their relics indistinguishably. 
 In another world may they resume their individuality, 
 and find it a happier one than here ! 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 359 
 
 As we departed, a character came under our notice 
 which I have met with in all almshouses, whether of 
 the city or village, or in England or America, It was 
 the familiar simpleton, who shuffled across the court 
 yard, clattering his wooden-soled shoes, to greet us 
 with a howl or a laugh, I hardly know which, holding 
 out his hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly when 
 it was given him. All under-witted persons, so far as 
 my experience goes, have this craving for copper coin, 
 and appear to estimate its value by a miraculous in- 
 stinct, which is one of the earliest gleams of human 
 intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in abey- 
 ance. There may come a time, even in this world, 
 when we shall all understand that our tendency to the 
 individual appropriation of gold and broad acres, fine 
 houses, and such good and beautiful things as are 
 equally enjoyable by a multitude, is but a trait of im- 
 perfectly developed intelligence, like the simpleton’s 
 cupidity of a penny. When that day dawns, — and 
 probably not till then, — I imagine that there will be 
 no more poor streets nor need of almshouses. 
 
 I was once present at the wedding of some poor 
 English people, and was deeply impressed by the spec- 
 tacle, though by no means with such proud and de- 
 lightful emotions as seem to have affected all Eng- 
 land on the recent occasion of the marriage of its 
 Prince. It was in the Cathedral at Manchester, a 
 particularly black and grim old structure, into which 
 I had stepped to examine some ancient and curious 
 wood-carvings within the choir. The woman in attend- 
 ance greeted me with a smile (which always glimmers 
 forth on the feminine visage, I know not why, when 
 a wedding is in question), and asked me to take a 
 seat in the nave till some poor parties were married. 
 
360 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 
 
 it being the Easter holidays, and a good time for them 
 to marry, because no fees would be demanded by the 
 clergyman. I sat down accordingly, and soon the 
 parson and his clerk appeared at the altar, and a con- 
 siderable crowd of people made their entrance at a 
 side-door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled 
 line across the chancel. They were my acquaintances 
 of the poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar 
 condition of life, and were now come to their marriage 
 ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them 
 wear : the men in their loafer’s coats, out at elbows, 
 or their laborers’ jackets, defaced with grimy toil ; the 
 women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about 
 their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath ; all 
 of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, 
 and wrinkled with penury and care ; nothing virgin- 
 like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the 
 bridegrooms ; — they were, in short, the mere rags 
 and tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind 
 of evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced 
 to sweep together into an unfragrant heap. Each and 
 all of them, conscious of his or her individual misery, 
 had blundered into the strange miscalculation of sup- 
 posing that they could lessen the sum of it by multi- 
 plying it into the misery of another person. All the 
 couples (and it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, 
 to compute exactly their number) stood up at once, 
 and had execution done upon them in the lump, the 
 clergyman addressing only small parts of the service 
 to each individual pair, but so managing the larger 
 portion as to include the whole company without the 
 trouble of repetition. By this compendious contrivance, 
 one would apprehend, he came dangerously near mak- 
 ing every man and woman the husband or wife of 
 
GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 361 
 
 every other ; nor, perhaps, would he have perpetrated 
 much additional mischief by the mistake ; but, after re- 
 ceiving a benediction in common, they assorted them- 
 selves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, 
 and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the un- 
 sheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and 
 subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled 
 decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly^ 
 the female attendant tittered almost aloud, and even 
 the married parties seemed to see something exceed- 
 ingly funny in the affair ; but for my part, though 
 generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid 
 it away in my memory as one of the saddest sights I 
 ever looked upon. 
 
 Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing 
 the same venerable Cathedral, and heard a clang of 
 joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down 
 the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a 
 portly coachman and two postilions, that waited at the 
 gate. One parson and one service had amalgamated 
 the wretchedness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and 
 three or four clergymen had combined their spiritual 
 might to forge the golden links of this other marriage- 
 bond. The bridegroom’s mien had a sort of careless 
 and kindly English pride ; the bride floated along in 
 her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate 
 that it was a luxury to see her, and a pity that her 
 silk slippers should touch anything so grimy as the old 
 stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of ragged 
 people, who always cluster to witness what they may 
 of an aristocratic wedding, broke into audible admira- 
 tion of the bride’s beauty and the bridegroom’s man- 
 liness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possibly 
 paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the 
 
362 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY, 
 
 most favorable of earthly conditions could make them 
 happy, they had every prospect of it. They were go- 
 ing to live on their abundance in one of those stately 
 and delightful English homes, such as no other people 
 ever created or inherited, a hall set far and safe within 
 its own private grounds, and surrounded with venen 
 able trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trimmest 
 pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended 
 that summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter 
 would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ; and all this 
 fair property seemed more exclusively and inalienably 
 their own, because of its descent through many fore- 
 fathers, each of whom had added an improvement or 
 a charm, and thus transmitted it with a stronger 
 stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it 
 possible, after all, that there may be a flaw in the title- 
 deeds? Is, or is not, the system wrong that gives one 
 married pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious 
 home, and shuts out a million others from any home 
 whatever? One day or another, safe as they deem 
 themselves, and safe as the hereditary temper of the 
 people really tends to make them, the gentlemen of 
 England will be compelled to face this question. 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Eng- 
 lishman will be able to reconcile himself to any future 
 state of existence from which the earthly institution of 
 dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take his 
 appetite along with him (which it seems to me hardly 
 possible to believe, since this endowment is so essential 
 to his composition), the immortal day must still admit 
 an interim of two or three hours during which he will 
 be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not 
 an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. 
 The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself among his 
 highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated it- 
 self with intellect and softened itself with the kindest 
 emotions of his heart, so linked itself with Church and 
 State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary cus- 
 toms and ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, 
 Death, instead of putting the final touch to his per- 
 fection, would leave him infinitely less complete than 
 we have already known him. He could not be roundly 
 happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would 
 lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island 
 possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture 
 that a provision may have been made, in this partic- 
 ular, for the Englishman’s exceptional necessities. It 
 strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here sug- 
 gested, and may have intended to throw out a delight- 
 ful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he 
 represents the genial archangel as playing his part 
 
364 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 with such excellent appetite at Adam’s dinner-table, 
 and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only be- 
 cause, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve 
 had no more acceptable viands to set before him. 
 Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for the pleas- 
 ures of the table, though refined by the lofty and 
 poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. 
 It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, 
 and more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed 
 in the sonnet proposing to “ Laurence, of virtuous fa- 
 ther virtuous son,” a series of nice little dinners in 
 midwinter ; and it blazes fully out in that untasted 
 banquet which, elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in 
 a trice from the kitchen-ranges of Tartarus. 
 
 Among this people, indeed, so wise in their genera- 
 tion, dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent 
 of the dishes that may be set upon the table ; so that, 
 if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due rev- 
 erence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment 
 which such reckless devourers as ourselves do not 
 often find in our richest abundance. It is good to see 
 how stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of heroic 
 eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and 
 indulging a vigorous appetite ; whereas an American 
 has generally lost the one and learned to distrust the 
 other long before reaching the earliest decline of life ; 
 and thenceforward he makes little account of his din- 
 ner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not 
 whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them, 
 though I think it scarcely too much to affirm, that on 
 this side of the water, people never dine. At any 
 rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most 
 of the material requisites, the highest possible dinnei 
 has never yet been eaten in America. It is the con- 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 365 
 
 summate flower of civilization and refinement ; and 
 our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admi- 
 rable beauty if a happy inspiration should bring it into 
 bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we 
 have attained. 
 
 It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of 
 cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this ele- 
 vated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the 
 national character is still an impediment to them, 
 even in that particular line where they are best qual- 
 ified to excel. Though often present at good men’s 
 feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, while 
 lamentably conscious that many of its higher excel- 
 lences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to 
 be a perfect work of art. It could not, without un- 
 pardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal 
 enjoyment, because, out of the very perfection of that 
 lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like development 
 of spiritual happiness. As in the masterpieces of 
 painting and poetry, there was a something intan- 
 gible, a final deliciousness that only fluttered about 
 your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to 
 detain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith 
 rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of 
 senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, 
 for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the 
 guests around the table (only eight in number) were 
 becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the 
 delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to 
 be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And 
 there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we 
 find in the very summit of our most exquisite enjoy- 
 ments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety 
 through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In 
 
366 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 the present case, it was worth a heavier sigh to reflect 
 that such a festal achievement — the production of so 
 much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste, — 
 the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have 
 been ripening for this hour, since man first began to 
 eat and to moisten his food with wine — must lavish 
 its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other 
 beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a 
 dinner like this is no better than we can get, any day, 
 at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless the 
 whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready 
 to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a 
 harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments, 
 and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, 
 that nothing shall jar rudely against the guest’s thor- 
 oughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and espe- 
 cially our part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted, and 
 tumultuous place we find it, a beefsteak is about as 
 good as any other dinner. 
 
 The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me 
 aside from the main object of my sketch, in which 
 I purposed to give a slight idea of those public, or 
 partially public banquets, the custom of which so 
 thoroughly prevails among the English people, that 
 nothing is ever decided upon, in matters of peace and 
 war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of 
 roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor 
 are these festivities merely occasional, but of stated 
 recurrence in all considerable municipalities and as- 
 sociated bodies. The most ancient times appear to 
 have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen 
 of to-day. In many of the old English towns, you 
 find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which the 
 Mayor and other authorities of the place have long 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 867 
 
 held their sessions ; and always, in convenient conti- 
 guity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fire- 
 place where an ox might lie roasting at his ease, though 
 the less gigantic scale of modern cookery may now have 
 permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St, 
 Mary’s Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an 
 ancient banqueting-room, that perhaps I may profita° 
 bly devote a page or two to the description of it. 
 
 In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael’s Churchy 
 one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold 
 a mediseval edifice, in the basement of which is such a 
 venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above 
 alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low 
 stone pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of 
 a cathedral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the 
 oaken balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you 
 enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and 
 broad and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six 
 windows of modern stained glass, on one side, and by 
 the immense and magnificent arch of another window 
 at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient 
 panes constituting a genuine historical piece, in which 
 are represented some of the kingly personages of old 
 times, with their heraldic blazonries. Notwithstand- 
 ing the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and 
 though it was noonday when I last saw it, the panel- 
 ling of black-oak, and some faded tapestry that hung 
 round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the 
 roof above, made a gloom, which the richness only 
 illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tap- 
 estry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry 
 VI. ’s time (which is the date of the hall), and is re- 
 garded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for 
 the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the act- 
 
368 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 ual portraiture of men known in history. They are 
 as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily 
 into the old stitch-work of their substance when you 
 try to make them out. Coats of arms were formerly 
 emblazoned all roimd the hall, but have been almost 
 rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against 
 them, or by women with dishclouts and scrubbing- 
 brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind 
 hostility to dust and spiders’ webs. Full-length por- 
 traits of several English kings, Charles II. being the 
 earliest, hang on the walls ; and on the dais, or ele- 
 vated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of 
 state, which several royal characters are traditionally 
 said to havo occupied while feasting here with their 
 loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a 
 person of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular 
 and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles 
 which used to be seen in old-fashioned New England 
 kitchens. 
 
 Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, 
 without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceil- 
 ing of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a 
 barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. 
 At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern 
 that they are carved with figures of angels, and doubt- 
 less many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic 
 art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been 
 brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall, oppo- 
 site the great arched window, the party-colored radi- 
 ance of which glimmers faintly through the interval, 
 is a gallery for minstrels ; and a row of ancient suits 
 of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It im^ 
 presses me, too (for, having gone so far, I woidd fain 
 leave nothing untouched upon), that I remember, 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 369 
 
 somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture 
 of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the 
 artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady’s 
 hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was 
 certainly much need for the good people of Coventry 
 to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I 
 have made but a poor hand at the description, as re- 
 gards a transference of the scene from my own mind 
 to the reader’s. It gave me a most vivid idea of an- 
 tiquity that had been very little tampered with ; inso- 
 much that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come 
 clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and 
 beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, 
 rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, 
 unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the 
 mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of 
 harp and viol from the minstrels’ gallery, while the 
 rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound 
 beneath, — why, I should have felt that these shadows, 
 once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in 
 St. Mary’s Hall than I, a stranger from a far country 
 which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing 
 description is to show how tenaciously this love of 
 pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred 
 institution, has caught hold of the English character ; 
 since, from the earliest recognizable period, we find 
 them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnifi- 
 cently as their palaces or cathedrals. 
 
 I know not whether the hall just described is now 
 used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiq- 
 uity and splendor still are. For example, there is 
 Barber-Surgeons’ Hall, in London, a very fine old 
 room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on 
 the ceiling and walls. It is also enriched with Hoi- 
 
 VOL. VII. 24 
 
370 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 bein’s masterpiece, representing a grave assemblage of 
 barbers and surgeons, all portraits (with such exten- 
 sive beards that methinks one half of the company 
 might have been profitably occupied in trimming the 
 other), kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Rob- 
 ert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for 
 the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this 
 picture, he conditioning to have a perfect facsimile 
 painted in. The room has many other pictures of dis- 
 tinguished members of the company in long-past times, 
 and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of Eng- 
 land, all darkened with age, but darkened into such 
 ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not 
 my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient 
 hall-painting on the reader ; but it may be worth while 
 to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still sur- 
 vive in these time-honored civic feasts, where there 
 appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and 
 solemn pomp by respectable citizens who would never 
 dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of 
 their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for 
 the warden and junior warden of the company, caps 
 of silver (real coronets or crowns, indeed, for these 
 city-grandees) wrought in open-work and lined with 
 crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the 
 hall, there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish 
 forth the banquet-table, comprising hundreds of forks 
 and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some 
 jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude cf less 
 noticeable vessels, two loving-cups, very elaborately 
 wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., 
 the other by Charles H. These cups, including the 
 covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, al- 
 though the bowl-part would hardly contain more than 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 371 
 
 fialf a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first 
 established, each guest was probably expected to drink 
 off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand 
 adown a long table of compotators, there is a peculiar 
 ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to de° 
 scribe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty.^ 
 I should be glad to invite the reader to the official 
 dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large 
 English seaport where I spent several years. 
 
 The Mayor’s dinner-parties occur as often as once a 
 fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at 
 a time, his Worship probably assembles at his board 
 most of the eminent citizens and distinguished person- 
 ages of the town and neighborhood more than once 
 during his year’s incumbency, and very much, no 
 doubt, to the promotion of good feeling among indi- 
 viduals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. 
 A miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find 
 more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many 
 Americans, their differences of opinion being incom- 
 parably less radical than ours, and it being the sincer- 
 est*wish of all their hearts, whether they call them- 
 selves Liberals or what not, that nothing in this world 
 shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been 
 and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of 
 political hostility that it may not be dissolved in a 
 glass or two of wine, without making the good liquor 
 any more dry or bitter than accords with English 
 taste. 
 
 The first dinner of this kind at which I had the 
 honor to be present took place during assize-time, and 
 included among the guests the judges and the promi- 
 nent members of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall 
 at seven o’clock, I communicated my name to one of 
 
372 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 several splendidly dressed footmen, and he repeated it 
 to another on the first staircase, by whom it was passed 
 to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the 
 reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original 
 sound in the course of these transmissions ; so that 1 
 had the advantage of making my entrance in the char« 
 acter of a stranger, not only to the whole company, 
 but to myself as well. ^ His W orship, however, kindly 
 recognized me, and put me on speaking-terms with 
 two or three gentlemen, whom I found very affable, 
 and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of 
 my nationality. It is very singular how kind an Eng- 
 lishman will almost invariably be to an individual 
 American, without ever bating a jot of his prejudice 
 against the American character in the lump. My 
 new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my 
 ease ; and, in requital of their good-nature, I soon be- 
 gan to look round at the general company in a critical 
 spirit, making my crude observations apart, and draw- 
 ing silent inferences, of the correctness of which I 
 should not have been half so well satisfied a year 
 afterwards as at that moment. 
 
 There were two judges present, a good many law- 
 yers, and a few officers of the army in uniform. The 
 other guests seemed to be principally of the mercan- 
 tile class, and among them was a ship-owner from 
 Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch 
 as we were born with the same sky over our heads, 
 and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode 
 and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose char- 
 acter I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in 
 black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a ra- 
 pier at his side ; otherwise, with the exception of the 
 military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 373 
 
 official costume. It being the first considerable as- 
 semblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest 
 impression about them was, that they were a heavy 
 and homely set of people, with a remarkable rough- 
 ness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath 
 which it required more familiarity with the national 
 character than I then possessed always to detect the 
 good breeding of a gentleman. Being generally mid- 
 dle-aged, or still further advanced, they were by no 
 means graceful in figure ; for the comeliness of the 
 youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, 
 his body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbre- 
 viate themselves, and his stomach to assume the digni- 
 fied prominence which justly belongs to that metrop- 
 olis of his system. His face (what with the acridity 
 of the atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a 
 well-digested abundance of succulent food) gets red 
 and mottled, and develops at least one additional chin, 
 with a promise of more ; so that, finally, a stranger 
 recognizes his animal part at the most superficial 
 glance, but must take time and a little pains to dis- 
 cover the intellectual. Comparing him with an Amer- 
 ican, I really thought that our national paleness and 
 lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in 
 an aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, more- 
 over, that the English tailor had not done so much as 
 he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had 
 gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by 
 the roominess of their garments ; he had evidently no 
 idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out 
 of his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I 
 afterwards learned to think that this aforesaid tailor 
 has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, 
 knowing how to dress his customers with such individ- 
 
374 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 ual propriety that they look as if they were born in 
 their clothes, the fit being to the character rather than 
 the form. If you make an Englishman smart (unless 
 he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen 
 a few), you make him a monster ; his best aspect is 
 that of ponderous respectability. 
 
 To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied 
 that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any 
 inland county in New England, might show a set of 
 thin -visaged men looking wretchedly worn, sallow, 
 deeply wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly fur- 
 rowed about the mouth, with whom these heavy- 
 cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as 
 they must needs be, would stand very little chance in a 
 professional contest. How that matter might turn out, 
 I am; unqualified to decide. But I state these results 
 of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not for what 
 they are worth, but because I ultimately gave them up 
 as worth little or nothing. In course of time, I came 
 to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages are a 
 rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste 
 from their own point of view, and, under a surface 
 never silken to the touch, have a refinement of man- 
 ners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a 
 separate endowment, — that is to say, if the individual 
 himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen 
 for his father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo- 
 Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third 
 generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, 
 have their own proprieties. The only value of my crit- 
 icisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying the prone- 
 ness of a traveller to measure one people by the dis- 
 tinctive characteristics of another, — as English writ- 
 ers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 375 
 
 to be disgusted accordingly, instead of trying to find 
 out some principle of beauty with which we may be 
 in conformity. 
 
 In due time we were summoned to the table, and 
 went thither in no solemn procession, but with a good 
 deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for 
 places when we reached our destination. The legal 
 gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indeco- 
 rous zea], which I never afterwards remarked in a 
 , similar party. The dining-hall was of noble size, and, 
 like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously 
 painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There 
 was a splendid table-service, and a noble array of foot- 
 men, some of them in plain clothes, and others wear- 
 ing the town-livery, richly decorated with gold-lace, 
 and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming 
 young manhood of Britain. When we were fairly 
 seated, it was certainly an agreeable spectacle to look 
 up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and be- 
 hold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an 
 important business in hand, and so determined to be 
 equal to the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I 
 hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white 
 table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decora- 
 tion, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decan- 
 ters of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an 
 artistically folded napkin at each plate, all that airy 
 portion of a banquet, in short, that comes before the 
 first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of ar- 
 tificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes 
 looks spectral, and the simplest viands are the best. 
 Printed bills-of-fare were distributed, representing an 
 abundant feast, no part of which appeared on the ta- 
 ble imtil called for in separate plates. I have entirely 
 
876 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, 
 inasmuch as there is a pervading commonplace and 
 identicalness in the composition of extensive dinners, 
 on account of the impossibility of supplying a hun- 
 dred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. 
 It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gentle- 
 men had a private understanding what to call for, and 
 that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in 
 their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to 
 do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza’s dip out 
 of Camacho’s caldron, any sort of potluck at such a 
 table would be sure to suit my purpose ; so I chose a 
 dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting through 
 my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the 
 Englishmen toil onward to the end. 
 
 They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely ; 
 for I observed that they seldom took Hock, and let 
 the Champagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, 
 solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily 
 before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste 
 in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and cer- 
 tainly was not so various, as that to which many 
 Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate ac- 
 quaintance with rare vintages does not suit a sensible 
 Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his 
 wines, and adopts one or two as his lifelong friends, 
 seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a mo- 
 ment, and reaping the reward of his constancy in an 
 unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout as he 
 deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the 
 measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass 
 too often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate ha- 
 bitual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opin- 
 ion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 877 
 
 off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as 
 any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since 
 the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. 
 It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) 
 that there was an occult sympathy between our tem- 
 perance reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the 
 almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking 
 among the respectable classes in England. I remem- 
 ber a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustra- 
 tion of the very slight importance attached to breaches 
 of temperance within the memory of men not yet old) 
 that he had seen a certain magistrate. Sir John Link- 
 water, or Drinkwater, — but I think the jolly old 
 knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse 
 a misnomer as this last, — while sitting on the magis- 
 terial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the 
 clerk. “Mr. Clerk,” said Sir John, as if it were the 
 most indifferent fact in the world, “ I was drunk last 
 night. There are my five shillings.” 
 
 During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant 
 conversation with the gentlemen on either side of me. 
 One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great unction 
 on the social standing of the judges. Representing 
 the dignity and authority of the Crown, they take pre- 
 cedence, during assize -time, of the highest military 
 men in the kingdom, of the Lord Lieutenant of the 
 county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes, and 
 even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they 
 are the greatest men in England. With a glow of 
 professional complacency that amounted to enthusi- 
 asm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal 
 dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would 
 be expected to offer his arm and take the Queen her- 
 self to the table. Happening to be in company with 
 
878 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occa- 
 sions, it appeared to me that the judges are fully con- 
 scious of their paramount claims to respect, and take 
 rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial 
 inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to 
 do. Bishops, if it be not irreverent to say so, are 
 sometimes marked by a similar characteristic. Dig- 
 nified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he 
 needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incor- 
 porated with his nature from its original germ, in or- 
 der to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively in the 
 faces of innocent by-standers. 
 
 My companion on the other side was a thick-set, 
 middle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where 
 none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn vis- 
 age, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold 
 within itself the machinery of a very terrific frown. 
 He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few oppor- 
 tunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be 
 passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly 
 featured table-fellow might most safely be accosted, 
 when he turned to me with a surly sort of kindness, 
 and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then be- 
 gan a conversation that abounded, on his part, with 
 sturdy sense, and, somehow or other, brought me 
 closer to him than I had yet stood to an Englishman. 
 I should hardly have taken him to be an educated 
 man, certainly not a scholar of accurate training ; and 
 yet he seemed to have all the resources of education 
 and trained intellectual power at command. My fresh 
 Americanism, and watchful observation of English 
 characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse 
 him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying influ- 
 ences of abundance of meat and drink, he grew very 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 379 
 
 gracious (not that I ought to use such a phrase to 
 describe his evidently genuine good-will), and by and 
 by expressed a wish for further acquaintance, asking 
 me to call at his rooms in London and inquire for 
 Sergeant Wilkins, — throwing out the name forcibly, 
 as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it. 1 
 remembered Dean Swift’s retort to Sergeant Bet 
 tesworth on a similar announcement, — Of what 
 regiment, pray, sir ? ” — and fancied that the same 
 question might not have been quite amiss, if applied 
 to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of 
 him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the 
 English bar, a rough customer, and a terribly strong 
 champion in criminal cases ; and it caused me more 
 regret than might have been expected, on so slight an 
 acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw 
 his death announced in the newspapers. Not rich in 
 attractive qualities, he possessed, I think, the most 
 attractive one of all, — thorough manhood. 
 
 After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of de- 
 canters were set before the Mayor, who sent them 
 forth on their outward voyage, full freighted with 
 Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent 
 liquors, methought, the latter found least acceptance 
 among the guests. When every man had filled his 
 glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a toast. It 
 was, of course, Our gracious Sovereign,” or words to 
 that effect; and immediately a band of musicians, 
 whose preliminary footings and thrummings I had 
 already heard behind me, struck up God save the 
 Queen ! ” and the whole company rose with one im- 
 pulse to assist in singing that famous national anthem. 
 It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a 
 body of men, or even a single man, under the active 
 
380 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 influence of the sentiment of Loyalty ; for, though we 
 call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, 
 and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sac- 
 rifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold 
 and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring 
 that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the 
 Englishman’s system, a force similar to that of our 
 steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of 
 human hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in 
 flesh and blood, — at present, in the flesh and blood 
 of a woman, — and manages to combine love, awe, 
 and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to 
 embody his mother, his wife, his children, the whole 
 idea of kindred, in a single person, and make her the 
 representative of his country and its laws. We Amer- 
 icans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor’s table ; 
 and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titilla- 
 tions of the heart in consequence of our proud prerog- 
 ative of caring no more about our President than for 
 a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in 
 a cornfield. 
 
 But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me 
 rather ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle- 
 aged and elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat 
 and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening 
 with wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out 
 those strange old stanzas from the very bottom of 
 their hearts and stomachs, which two organs, in the 
 English interior arrangement, lie closer together than 
 in ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty 
 in the world ; but I could not wonder at its universal 
 acceptance and indestructible popularity, considering 
 how inimitably it expresses the national faith and feel- 
 ing as regards the inevitable righteousness of Eng- 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 381 
 
 land, the Almighty’s consequent respect and partial- 
 ity for that redoubtable little island, and his presumed 
 readiness to strengthen its defence against the con- 
 tumacious wickedness and knavery of all other princi- 
 palities or republics. Tennyson himself, though evi- 
 dently English to the very last prejudice, could not 
 write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding 
 that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of 
 every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak of 
 a cart-wheel, and that the strain was not of such deli- 
 cacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of them, I 
 determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the 
 triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to 
 the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the largest 
 sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my first 
 tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose 
 not to sing any more, unless it be Hail Columbia ” 
 on the restoration of the Union) were poured freely 
 forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant 
 smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, 
 and the other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods 
 and gestures, evinced grave approbation of so suitable 
 a tribute to English superiority ; and we finished our 
 stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of 
 mind. 
 
 Other toasts followed in honor of the great institu- 
 tions and interests of the country, and speeches in re- 
 sponse to each were made by individuals whom the 
 Mayor designated or the company called for. None 
 of them impressed me with a very high idea of Eng- 
 lish postprandial oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, 
 what ragged and shapeless utterances most English- 
 men are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting 
 anything like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch 
 
382 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 here and another there, and ultimately getting out 
 what they want to say, and generally with a result of 
 sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized 
 mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken 
 it. It seemed tb me that this was almost as much 
 by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of 
 public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator 
 is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike 
 smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, 
 the better, provided there be an element of common- 
 place running through them ; and any rough, yet 
 never vulgar force of expression, such as would knock 
 an opponent down if it hit him, only it must not be 
 fcoo personal, is altogether to their taste ; but a studied 
 neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, 
 they cannot abide. They do not often permit a man 
 to make himself a fine orator of malice aforethought, 
 that is, unless he be a nobleman (as, for example, 
 Lord Stanley, of the Derby family), who, as an hered- 
 itary legislator and necessarily a public speaker, is 
 bound to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best 
 way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, 
 and, if I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as 
 likely to applaud theirs as our own. When an Eng- 
 lish speaker sits down, you feel that you have been 
 listening to a real man, and not to an actor ; his senti- 
 ments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, 
 very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much an 
 art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or elab- 
 orating a peroration. 
 
 It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that 
 nobody in England seems to feel any shyness about 
 shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out 
 of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 388 
 
 nobody did on the occasion now in hand, except a 
 poor little Major of Artillery, who responded for the 
 Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesi* 
 tating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question 
 not, would rather have been bayoneted in front of his 
 batteries than to have said a word. Not his own 
 mouth, but the cannon’s, was this poor Major’s proper 
 organ of utterance. 
 
 While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my 
 fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another 
 toast; and listening rather inattentively to the first 
 sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in 
 his Worship’s remarks that made me glance apprehen- 
 sively towards Sergeant Wilkins. ‘‘Yes,” grumbled 
 that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port to- 
 wards me, “ it is your turn next ” ; and seeing in my 
 face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unprac- 
 tised orator, he kindly added, “ It is nothing. A 
 mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The 
 less you say, the better they will like it.” That being 
 the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it 
 best if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook 
 his head. Now, on first receiving the Mayor’s invita- 
 tion to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might pos- 
 sibly be brought into my present predicament ; but 1 
 had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagree- 
 able to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from 
 my disposition and character that Fate surely could 
 not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If noth- 
 ing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom 
 would certainly interfere before I need rise to speak. 
 Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably, — and, 
 indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on 
 forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end. 
 
384 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest 
 confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my 
 own experience as a public speaker quite as indiffer- 
 ently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it 
 does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, 
 for it was not I, in my proper and natural self, that 
 sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. At 
 the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me 
 whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head 
 or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the lat- 
 ter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an 
 idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, 
 any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which 
 to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning- 
 aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor va- 
 cuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed ; 
 the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogis- 
 tic of the United States and highly complimentary to 
 their distinguished representative at that table, to a 
 close, amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band 
 struck up “ Hail Columbia,” I believe, though it might 
 have been Old Hundred,” or God save the Queen” 
 over again, for anything that I should have known or 
 cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely 
 disagreeable instant, during which I seemed to rend 
 away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, 
 still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, 
 to make a speech. The guests rattled on the table, 
 and cried, Hear ! ” most vociferously, as if now, at 
 length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had 
 come the long-expected moment when one golden word 
 was to be spoken ; and in that imminent crisis, I 
 caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of inter- 
 national sentiment, which it might, and must, and 
 should do to utter. 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 385 
 
 Well ; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. 
 What surprised me most was the sound of my own 
 voice, which I had never before heard at declamatory 
 pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some 
 other person, who, and not myself, would be responsi- 
 ble for the speech : a prodigious consolation and en- 
 couragement under the circumstances ! I went on 
 without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down 
 amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything 
 that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, me- 
 thought, by the new development of pluck that alone 
 had enabled me to speak at all. “ It was handsomely 
 done ! ” quoth Sergeant W ilkins ; and I felt like a re- 
 cruit who had been for the first time under fire. 
 
 I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then 
 and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or 
 worse position, and compelled to meet it as I best 
 might ; for this was one of the necessities of an office 
 which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and 
 beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delin- 
 quency on my own part, but could not shirk without 
 cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was va- 
 rious. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of impos- 
 ture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might 
 have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every sylla- 
 ble at the moment of need, and had to improvise an- 
 other as well as I could. I found it a better method 
 to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to 
 the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Provi- 
 dence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The 
 presence of any considerable proportion of personal 
 friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather 
 have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, 
 too, I was much embarrassed by a small audience, and 
 
 VOL. VII. 25 
 
386 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 succeeded better with a large one, — the sympathy of 
 a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the 
 speaker a little way out of his individuality, and tosses 
 him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than 
 his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and con< 
 fidently, with an expectation of going through the busi 
 ness entirely at my ease, I often found that I had lit- 
 tle or nothing to say ; whereas, if I came to the charge 
 in perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would 
 have been horrible, it once or twice happened that the 
 frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, 
 and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expres- 
 sion to sentiments which an instant before looked as 
 vague and far off as the clouds in the atmosphere. 
 On the whole, poor as my own success may have 
 been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a 
 tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical pow- 
 er, and may develop many of the others, if he deems it 
 worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and 
 pains on an object which the most accomplished ora- 
 tors, I suspect, have not found altogether satisfactory 
 to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must be a 
 remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated 
 conception of truth when the lower feeling of a multi- 
 tude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can 
 speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when 
 by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows 
 that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the au- 
 dience. 
 
 This slight article on the civic banquets of England 
 would be too wretchedly imperfect without an at- 
 tempted description of a Lord Mayor’s dinner at the 
 Mansion House in London. I should have preferred 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 387 
 
 tlie annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good 
 fortune to witness it. Once, however, I was honored 
 with an invitation to one of the regular dinners, and 
 gladly accepted it, — taking the precaution, neverthe- 
 less, though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the 
 City-King, through a mutual friend, that I was no fit 
 representative of American eloquence, and must hum= 
 bly make it a condition that I should not be expected 
 to open my mouth, except for the reception of his 
 Lordship’s bountiful hospitality. The reply was gra- 
 cious and acquiescent ; so that I presented myself in 
 the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, at half- 
 past six o’clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom 
 from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tor- 
 mented me at such times. The Mansion House was 
 built in Queen Anne’s days, in the very heart of old 
 London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were 
 he really as great a man as his traditionary state and 
 pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed, 
 however, since the days of Whittington, or even of 
 Hogarth’s Industrious Apprentice, to whom the high- 
 est imaginable reward of lifelong integrity was a seat 
 in the Lord Mayor’s chair. People nowadays say that 
 the real dignity and importance have perished out of 
 the office, as they do, sooner or later, out of all earthly 
 institutions, leaving only a painted and gilded shell 
 like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second- 
 rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be am- 
 bitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at 
 this ; for the original emigrants of New England had 
 strong sympathies with the people of London, who 
 'were mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians 
 in politics, in the early days of our country ; so that 
 the Lord Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions 
 
888 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be 
 hardly second to the prime minister of the throne. 
 The true great men of the city now appear to have 
 aims beyond city greatness, connecting themselves 
 with national politics, and seeking to be identified 
 with the aristocracy of the country. 
 
 In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of 
 footmen dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff 
 breeches, in which they looked wonderfully like Amer- 
 ican Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far 
 more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand 
 old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were like- 
 wise two very imposing figures, whom I should have 
 taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in 
 scarlet coats and large silver epaulets ; but they turned 
 out to be officers of the Lord Mayor’s household, and 
 were now employed in assigning to the guests the 
 places which they were respectively to occupy at the 
 dinner-table. Our names (for I had included myself 
 in a little group of friends) were announced ; and as- 
 cending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door- 
 way of the first reception-room, where, also, we had the 
 advantage of a presentation to the Lady Mayoress. 
 As this distinguished couple retired into private life 
 at the termination of their year of office, it is inad- 
 missible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, 
 on the manners and bearing of two personages sud- 
 denly emerging from a position of respectable medioc- 
 rity into one of preeminent dignity within their own 
 sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow 
 nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If it 
 were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude 
 of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exempli 
 fication in our own country, and on a scale incompara- 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 889 
 
 bly greater than that of the Mayoralty, though in- 
 vested with nothing like the outward magnificence that 
 gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been cor- 
 rectly informed, the Lord Mayor’s salary is exactly 
 double that of the President of the United States, and 
 yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expen- 
 diture. 
 
 There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by 
 the opening of wide folding-doors ; and though in an 
 old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they 
 are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as 
 spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either 
 end a splendid fireplace of white marble, ornamented 
 with sculptured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The 
 company were about three hundred, many of them ce- 
 lebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though 
 I recollect none preeminently distinguished in either 
 department. But it is certainly a pleasant mode of 
 doing honor to men of literature, for example, who de- 
 serve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face 
 to face, thus to bring them together under genial au- 
 spices, in connection with persons of note in other lines. 
 I know not what may be the Lord Mayor’s mode or 
 principle of selecting his guests, nor whether, during 
 his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every 
 man of noticeable talent in the wide world of London, 
 \ior, in fine, whether his Lordship’s invitation is much 
 sought for or valued ; but it seemed to me that this 
 periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods 
 which the English have contrived for keeping up a 
 good understanding among different sorts of people. 
 Like most other distinctions of society, however, I pre- 
 sume that the Lord Mayor’s card does not often seek 
 out modest merit, but comes at last when the recip- 
 
390 CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 ient is conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the 
 honor. 
 
 One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met 
 with at any other public or partially public dinner, 
 was the presence of ladies. No doubt, they were prin- 
 cipally the wives and daughters of city magnates ; and 
 if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old 
 plays and satirical poems, the city of London has al- 
 ways been famous for the beauty of its women and the 
 reciprocal attractions between them and the men of 
 quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither 
 and thither through those crowded apartments, I saw 
 much reason for modifying certain heterodox opinions 
 which I had imbibed, in my Transatlantic newness 
 and rawness, as regarded the delicate character and 
 frequent occurrence of English beauty. To state the 
 entire truth (being, at this period, some years old in 
 English life), my taste, I fear, had long since begun 
 to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other models 
 of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to 
 know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, 
 if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of 
 my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a 
 certain meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call 
 it scrawniness !) a deficiency of physical development, 
 a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their ma- 
 terial make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of 
 voice, — all of which characteristics, nevertheless, only 
 made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold 
 these fair creatures as angels, because I was some- 
 times driven to a half -acknowledgment that the Eng- 
 lish ladies, looked at from a lower point of view, were 
 perhaps a little finer animals than they. The advan- 
 tages of the latter, if any they could really be said to 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 391 
 
 have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of 
 clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. 
 It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal 
 charm of American beauty in exchange for half a hun- 
 dred-weight of human clay ! 
 
 At a given signal we all found our way into an im- 
 mense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not 
 why, except that the architecture was classic, and as 
 different as possible from the ponderous style of Mem- 
 phis and the Pyramids. A powerful band played in- 
 spiringly as we entered, and a brilliant profusion of 
 light shone down on two long tables, extending the 
 whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between 
 them, occupying nearly its entire breadth. Glass 
 gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of 
 snowy damask, over which were set out all the accom- 
 paniments of a stately feast. We found our places 
 without much difficulty, and the Lord Mayor’s chap- 
 lain implored a blessing on the food, — a ceremony 
 which the English never omit, at a great dinner or a 
 small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much a religious 
 rite as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup. 
 
 The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of 
 which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each 
 guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the other- 
 wise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judg- 
 ing from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I 
 surmised that there was no practical limit, except the 
 appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup- 
 tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I par- 
 took of it but once, and then only in accordance with 
 the wise maxim, always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a 
 celebrated dish, at its indigenous site ; and the very 
 fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the Lord 
 
892 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 Mayor’s dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox cus- 
 toms which people follow for half a century without 
 knowing why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very 
 small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently well- 
 brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to 
 sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The 
 rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill -of -fare 
 printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque 
 border of green and gold. It looked very good, not 
 only in the English and French names of the numer- 
 ous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes 
 themselves, which were all set on the table to be 
 carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient 
 and honest method is attended with a good deal of 
 trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy, yet by no 
 means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you 
 have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet ac- 
 tually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy promise 
 in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as a sin- 
 gle guest can contrive to got upon his individual plate. 
 I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of looking 
 at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher’s-meat, do not 
 generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of 
 devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight, before 
 proceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels 
 which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest 
 stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even 
 an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three 
 delectable things enough, which I take pains to re- 
 member, that the reader may not go away wholly un- 
 satisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have 
 bidden him, — a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, 
 exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmigan, a bird of 
 the same family as the grouse, but feeding high up 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 393 
 
 towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence 
 it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that 
 of the artificially nurtured English game-fowl. All 
 the other dainties have vanished from my memory as 
 completely as those of Prospero’s banquet after Ariel 
 had clapped his wings over it. The band played at 
 intervals inspiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise 
 the sparkling wines which the footmen supplied from 
 an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed 
 with little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact 
 that there comes a to-morrow morning after every 
 feast. As long as that shall be the case, a prudent 
 man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner. 
 
 Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the 
 table, sat a young lady in white, whom I am sorely 
 tempted to describe, but dare not, because not only 
 the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar char- 
 acter, would cause the sketch to be recognized, how- 
 ever rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought 
 that there existed such a woman outside of a picture- 
 frame, or the covers of a romance : not that I had 
 ever met with her resemblance even there, but, being 
 so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed like- 
 lier to find her sisterhood in poetry and picture than 
 in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch 
 too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft 
 and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with 
 a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very 
 spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and famil- 
 iarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I re- 
 member only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, 
 and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you 
 could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when 
 he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. 
 
S94 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave 
 hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrub- 
 bery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman 
 and lady were. Any child would have recognized 
 them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife 
 (the loveliest of the series, but with already a myste- 
 rious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) trav- 
 elling in their honeymoon, and dining, among other 
 distinguished strangers, at the Lord Mayor’s table. 
 
 After an hour or two of valiant achievement with 
 knife and fork came the dessert ; and at the point of 
 the festival where finger - glasses are usually intro- 
 duced, a large silver basin was carried round to the 
 guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped 
 the ends of our napkins and were conscious of a de- 
 lightful fragrance, instead of that heavy and weary 
 odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This 
 seems to be an ancient custom of the city, not con- 
 fined to the Lord Mayor’s table, but never met with 
 westward of Temple Bar. 
 
 During all the feast, in accordance with another an- 
 cient custom, the origin or purport of which I do not 
 remember to have heard, there stood a man in armor, 
 with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship’s chair. 
 When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, 
 still another official personage appeared behind the 
 chair, and proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous 
 proclamation (in which he enumerated the principal 
 guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several bar- 
 onets, and plenty of generals, members of Parliament, 
 aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of 
 which sounded strangely familiar to my ears), ending 
 in some such style as this : and other gentlemen and 
 ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 395 
 
 in a loving-cup,” — giving a sort of sentimental twang 
 to the two words, — and sends it round among 
 you!” And forthwith the loving-cup — several of 
 them, indeed, on each side of the tables — came slowly 
 down with all the antique ceremony. 
 
 The fashion of it is thus. The Lord Mayor, stand- 
 ing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, pre- 
 sents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, 
 and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which 
 being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the 
 cover and receives the cup into his own hands. He 
 then presents it to his next neighbor, that the cover 
 may be again removed for himself to take a draught, 
 after which the third person goes through a similar 
 manoeuvre with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the 
 whole company find themselves inextricably inter- 
 twisted and entangled in one complicated chain of love. 
 When the cup came to my hands, I examined it crit- 
 ically, both inside and out, and perceived it to be an 
 antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, capable 
 of holding about a quart of wine. Considering how 
 much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to 
 our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves 
 with wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly 
 or quite the original quart of wine being still in the 
 goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the com- 
 pany had more than barely touched the silver rim be- 
 fore passing it to their neighbors, — a degree of ab- 
 stinence that might be accounted for by a fastidious 
 repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or 
 possibly by a disapprobation of the liquor. Being cu- 
 rious to know all about these important matters, with 
 a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever 
 they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from 
 
396 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 the loving-cup, and had no occasion for another, — . 
 ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor original quality, 
 largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened. 
 It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or 
 ceremonial drink, and could never have been intended 
 for any better purpose. 
 
 The toasts now began in the customary order, at- 
 tended with speeches neither more nor less witty and 
 ingenious than the specimens of table eloquence which 
 had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to each 
 new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind 
 the chair of state, gave awful notice that the Right 
 Honorable the Lord Mayor was about to propose a 
 toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof, 
 together with some accompanying remarks, the band 
 played an appropriate tune, and the herald again is- 
 sued proclamation to the effect that such or such a no- 
 bleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or 
 what not, was going to respond to the Right Honor- 
 able the Lord Mayor’s toast ; then, if I mistake not, 
 there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and 
 twanging of stringed instruments ; and, finally, the 
 doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapi- 
 tated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. 
 A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the 
 good citizens of London, and, having evidently got 
 every word by heart (even including, however he 
 managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations 
 of the moment), he really spoke like a book, and made 
 incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in 
 England. 
 
 The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on 
 this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed 
 me as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS, 
 
 397 
 
 should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits 
 into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mel- 
 low themselves into a most enjoyable state of quietude 
 with copious libations of Sherry and old Port, and 
 then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to 
 speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no 
 degree so refreshing ? If the Champagne had thrown 
 its sparkle over the surface of these effusions, or if 
 the generous Port had shone through their substance 
 with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might 
 have seen a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in 
 their cups, and should undoubtedly have been glad to 
 be a listener. But there was no attempt nor impulse 
 of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent 
 expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the au- 
 dience. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best 
 pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the 
 figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any 
 hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden 
 bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad se- 
 verity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, 
 have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am 
 afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic 
 banquets. People used to come to them, a few hun- 
 dred years ago, for the sake of being jolly ; they come 
 now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into 
 their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make 
 such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom recipro- 
 cally spoil one another. 
 
 Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a 
 spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened 
 about this stage of the feast, and very much inter- 
 rupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this 
 time, my condition had been exceedingly felicitous, 
 
898 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 both on account of the brilliancy of the scene, and be 
 cause I was in close proximity with three very pleas- 
 ant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose 
 honored name my readers would recognize as a house- 
 hold word, if I dared write it ; another, a gentleman, 
 likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, kind 
 heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed 
 in such happy proportion as in him. The third was 
 the man to whom I owed most in England, the warm 
 benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing 
 me good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, 
 camp, and country, which I never could have found 
 out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of help a 
 stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not 
 had a thousand more important things to live for. 
 Thus I never felt safer or cosier at anybody’s fireside, 
 even my own, than at the dinner - table of the Lord 
 Mayor. 
 
 Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His 
 Lordship got up and proceeded to make some very eu- 
 logistic remarks upon the literary and commercial ” 
 — I question whether those two adjectives were ever 
 before married by a copulative conjunction, and they 
 certainly would not live together in illicit intercourse, 
 of their own accord — ‘‘ the literary and commercial 
 attainments of an eminent gentleman there present,” 
 and then went on to speak of the relations of blood 
 and interest between Great Britain and the aforesaid 
 eminent gentleman’s native country. , Those bonds 
 were more intimate than had ever before existed be- 
 tween two great nations, throughout all history, and 
 his Lordship felt assured that that whole honorable 
 company would join him in the expression of a fervent 
 wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 399 
 
 Bides of the Atlantic, now and forever. Then came 
 the same wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew 
 upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text 
 of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The 
 herald sonorously announced that Mr. So-and-so would 
 now respond to his Right Honorable Lordship’s toast 
 and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flour- 
 ish for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of 
 anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence sank 
 upon the festive hall. 
 
 All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the 
 Lord Mayor’s part, after beguiling me yvithin his lines 
 on a pledge of safe - conduct ; and it seemed very 
 strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual 
 eat his dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the 
 Mansion House wine, and go away grateful at heart 
 for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship had 
 sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I 
 should have taken it much more kindly at his hands. 
 But I suppose the secret of the matter to have been 
 somewhat as follows. 
 
 All England, just then, was in one of those singular 
 fits of panic excitement (not fear, though as sensitive 
 and tremulous as that emotion), which, in consequence 
 of the homogeneous character of the people, their in- 
 tense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas 
 in public affairs on other sources than their own ex- 
 amination and individual thought, are more sudden, 
 pervasive, and unreasoning than any similar mood of 
 our own public. In truth, I have never seen the 
 American public in a state at all similar, and believe 
 that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not 
 impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong, are moral 
 and intellectual. For example, the grand rising of 
 
400 
 
 CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 the North, at the commencement of this war, bore the 
 aspect of impulse and passion only because it was so 
 universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just as 
 the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand 
 people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that 
 might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, 
 and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool 
 to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it 
 may be. There is nothing which the English find it 
 so difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. 
 They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind of 
 wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and 
 are always looking for the moment when we shall 
 break through the slender barriers of international 
 law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the 
 w^orld, with themselves at the head, to combine for the 
 purpose of putting us into a stronger cage. At times 
 this apprehension becomes so powerful (and when one 
 man feels it, a million do), that it resembles the pas- 
 sage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you 
 see the whole crop bending and swaying beneath one 
 impulse, and each separate stalk tossing with the self- 
 same disturbance as its myriad companions. At such 
 periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of 
 sentiment and expression. You have the whole coun- 
 try in each man ; and not one of them all, if you put 
 him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable 
 ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in 
 the world — our own country and France — that can 
 put England into this singular state. It is the united 
 sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful 
 of their country’s honor, most anxious for the preser- 
 vation of the cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity 
 which they have been so long in consolidating, and in- 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 401 
 
 competent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and 
 their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their 
 public opinion) to judge when that prosperity is really 
 threatened. 
 
 If the English were accustomed to look at the for- 
 eign side of any international dispute, they might 
 easily have satisfied themselves that there was very 
 little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from 
 the simple circumstance that their own Government 
 had positively not an inch of honest ground to stand 
 upon, and could not fail to be aware of the fact. 
 Neither could they have met Parliament with any 
 show of a justification for incurring war. It was no 
 such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and 
 right are really controverted on sustainable or plausi- 
 ble grounds, and a naval commander may at any mo- 
 ment fire off the first cannon bf a terrible contest. If 
 I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic 
 squabble, in which the British ministers, with the 
 politic generosity which they are in the habit of show- 
 ing towards their official subordinates, had tried to 
 browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambas- 
 sador in an indefensible proceeding ; and the Ameri- 
 ican Government (for God had not denied us an ad- 
 ministration of statesmen then) had retaliated with 
 stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably 
 a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulg- 
 ing them with no pretence whatever for active resent- 
 ment. 
 
 Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishman, 
 probably fancied that W ar was on the western gale, 
 and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an 
 American as myself, who might be made to harp on 
 the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity 
 
 VOL. VII. 26 
 
402 
 
 CIVIC BANCtUETS. 
 
 of blood and Interest, and community of language and 
 literature, and whisper peace where there was no 
 peace, in however weak an utterance. And possibly 
 his Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good 
 feeling which was sure to be expressed by a company 
 of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and far-famed 
 dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on 
 the grand result. Thus, when the Lord Mayor in- 
 vited me to his feast, it was a piece of strategy. He 
 wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser Cur- 
 tins, with a larger object of self - sacrifice, into the 
 chasm of discord between England and America, and, 
 on my ignominious demur, had resolved to shove me 
 in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope of 
 closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I 
 forgive his Lordship. He meant well by all parties, 
 — himself, who would share the glory, and me, who 
 ought to have desired nothing better than such an he- 
 roic opportunity, — his own country, which would 
 continue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, 
 which would get everything that men work with and 
 wear. 
 
 As soon as the Lord Mayor began to speak, 1 
 rapped upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow 
 sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. 
 I never thought of listening to the speech, because I 
 knew it all beforehand in twenty repetitions from 
 other lips, and was aware that it would not offer a 
 single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned 
 to one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew 
 to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and ob- 
 tested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me 
 at least an available thought or two to start with, and, 
 once afloat, I would trust my guardian-angel for ena^ 
 
CIVIC BANQUETS. 
 
 403 
 
 bling me to flounder ashore again. He advised me 
 to begin with some remarks complimentary to the 
 Lord Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary rev- 
 erence in which his office was held, — at least, my 
 friend thought that there would be no harm in giving 
 his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the 
 fact or no, — was held by the descendants of the Pu= 
 ritan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting flexible 
 with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily slide 
 off into the momentous subject of the relations be- 
 tween England and America, to which his Lordship 
 had made such weighty allusion. 
 
 Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and 
 bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got 
 upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the 
 attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, 
 and suddenly were silent again. But, as I have never 
 happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and 
 peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to 
 close these Sketches, leaving myself still erect in xso 
 heroic an attitude. 
 
PASSAGES 
 
 FROM 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS 
 
 OF 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 
 
To 
 
 FRANCIS BENNOCH, Esq., 
 
 The dear and valued friend, who, by his generous and genial hospitality 
 and unfailing sympatliy, contributed so largely (as is attested by the 
 book itself) to render Mr. Hawthorne’s residence in England agreeable 
 and homelike, these English Notes are dedicated, with sincere respect 
 and regard, by 
 
 THE EDITOR. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 THE ENGLISH NOTE~BOOKS. 
 
 Little comment is needed in reference to the 
 ‘‘ English Note-Books,” besides that which Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne made on first introducing them to the public. 
 They wei’e the result of Hawthorne’s residence abroad, 
 on being appointed Consul at Liverpool, by President 
 Pierce. In 1857, just before leaving England for 
 the Continent, Hawthorne, in writing to Mr. Fields, 
 spoke of them as follows : — 
 
 ‘‘ I made up a huge package the other day, consist- 
 ing of seven closely written volumes of journal, kept 
 by me since my arrival in England, and filled with 
 sketches of places and men and manners, many of 
 which would doubtless be very delightful to the pub- 
 lic. I think I shall seal them up, with directions in 
 my will to have them opened and published a century 
 hence ; and your firm shall have the refusal of them 
 then.” 
 
 The jesting tone of these sentences shows clearly 
 enough that he really had no intention of arranging 
 for the publication of the Notes after his death ; and, 
 in fact, he left no instructions concerning them. But 
 Mrs. Hawthorne, in the Preface which follows the 
 present editor’s brief paragraphs, has explained the 
 motives which led her to place her husband’s journals 
 
408 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE, 
 
 before the reading public. His object in writing them 
 was to preserve for his own use, and the freshening 
 of his recollection, those keen but fleeting impressions 
 which are caused by the first contact with new scenes 
 and persons, and never can be set forth with their 
 original vividness unless promptly embodied in writ= 
 ing. Portions of the current record which Hawthorne 
 so carefully preserved were afterwards recast and utih 
 ized in the chapters of “ Our Old Home ” ; and, had he 
 lived longer, further material from them would very 
 likely have been introduced into his finished work. 
 Among the papers left by him bearing on Septimius 
 Felton,” was a list of references, with the dates, to 
 passages in his English journals, containing matter 
 which he probably thought would prove suggestive 
 and useful when he should come to that part of the 
 contemplated romance which was to enact itself amid 
 English surroundings. 
 
 Although the English Note-Books ” are not so 
 abundant in imaginative hints as the American, their 
 range of topic and observation is wider, and they 
 show how readily the author, who had lived as a 
 recluse at home, adapted himself to society, to the 
 obligations which his public position and his fame 
 brought upon him. The larger intercourse with the 
 world which he enjoyed in England was, indeed, much 
 to his taste, notwithstanding the resolute devotion to 
 solitude that he maintained in America, where the 
 conditions seem to have been less well suited for 
 bringing him into association with others, and left 
 him to follow the dictates of an inborn reserve and 
 shyness. Mrs. Hawthorne has expressed the hope 
 that her husband’s Note-Books might dispel the often- 
 expressed opinion that he was gloomy or morbid ; and 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 409 
 
 doubtless they have had, in a measure, this effect. 
 The cheerful tone, blending with or rising above his 
 natural pensiveness, is very noticeable in the pres- 
 ent volumes ; and Mrs. Hawthorne, observing how it 
 gained in strength instead of diminishing with age, 
 once expressed to the writer of these lines the belief 
 that, had Hawthorne survived in full health to a 
 riper age, he would have written more than he did 
 in the genial strain of Our Old Home,” which had 
 long before voiced itself in the Introduction to the 
 Mosses.” 
 
 G. P. L. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It seems justly due to Mr. Hawthorne that the oo 
 casion of any portion of his private journals being 
 brought before the Public should be made known, 
 since they were originally designed for his own refer- 
 ence only. 
 
 There had been a constant and an urgent demand 
 for a life or memoir of Mr. Hawthorne ; yet, from 
 the extreme delicacy and difficulty of the subject, the 
 Editor felt obliged to refuse compliance with this de- 
 mand. Moreover, Mr. Hawthorne had frequently and 
 emphatically expressed the hope that no one would at- 
 tempt to write his Biography; and the Editor per- 
 ceived that it would be impossible for any person, out- 
 side of his own domestic circle, to succeed in doing it, 
 on account of his extreme reserve. But it was ungra- 
 cious to do nothing, and therefore the Editor, believ- 
 ing that Mr. Hawthorne himself was alone capable of 
 satisfactorily answering the affectionate call for some 
 sketch of his life, concluded to publish as much au 
 possible of his private records, and even extracts from 
 his private letters, in order to gratify the desire of 
 his friends and of literary artists to become more in- 
 timately acquainted with him. The Editor has been 
 severely blamed and wondered at, in some instances, 
 for allowing many things now published to see the 
 
412 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 light ; but it has been a matter both of conscience 
 and courtesy to withhold nothing that could be given 
 up. Many of the journals were doubtless destroyed ; 
 for the earliest date found in his American papers 
 was that of 1835. 
 
 The Editor has transcribed the manuscripts just as 
 they were left, without making any new arrangement 
 or altering any sequence, — merely omitting some pas* 
 sages, and being especially careful to preserve what* 
 ever could throw any light upon his character. To 
 persons on a quest for characteristics, however, each 
 of his books reveals a great many, and it is believed 
 that with the aid of the Notes (both American and 
 English) the Tales and Romances will make out a 
 very complete and true picture of his individuality ; 
 and the Notes are often an open sesame to the artistic 
 works. 
 
 Several thickly written pages of observations — fine 
 and accurate etchings — have been omitted, sometimes 
 because too personal with regard to himself or others, 
 and sometimes because they were afterwards absorbed 
 into one or another of the Romances or papers in 
 ‘‘ Our Old Home.” It seemed a pity not to give these 
 original cartoons fresh from his mind, because they 
 are so carefully finished at the first stroke. Yet, as 
 Mr. Hawthorne chose his own way of presenting them 
 to the public, it was thought better not to exhibit 
 what he himself withheld. Besides, to any other than 
 a fellow-artist, they might seem mere repetitions. 
 
 It is very earnestly hoped that these volumes of 
 Notes — American, English, and presently Italian — 
 will dispel an often-expressed opinion that Mr. Haw- 
 thorne was gloomy and morbid. He had the inevita* 
 ble pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 413 
 
 what a friend of his called ‘‘ the awful power of in* 
 sight ” ; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, 
 and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splen- 
 dor of his wit and humor was the light of his homOo 
 He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sym- 
 pathies and shaping imagination often made him sad 
 in behalf of others. He also perceived morbidness, 
 wherever it existed, instantly, as if by the illumina- 
 tion of his own steady cheer ; and he had the plastic 
 power of putting himself into each person’s situation, 
 and of looking from every point of view, which made 
 his charity most comprehensive. From this cause he 
 necessarily attracted confidences, and became con- 
 fessor to very many sinning and suffering souls, to 
 whom he gave tender sympathy and help, while re- 
 signing judgment to the Omniscient and All-wise. 
 
 Throughout his journals it will be seen that Mr. 
 Hawthorne is entertaining,, and not asserting,, opin- 
 ions and ideas. He questions, doubts, and refiects 
 with his pen, and, as it were, instructs himself. So 
 that these Note-Books should be read, not as definitive 
 conclusions of his mind, but merely as passing impres- 
 sions often. Whatever conclusions he arrived at are 
 condensed in the works given to the world by his own 
 hand, in which will never be found a careless word. 
 He was so extremely scrupulous about the value and 
 effect of every expression, that the Editor has felt 
 great compunction in allowing a single sentence to 
 be printed unrevised by himself ; but, with the con- 
 sideration of the above remarks always kept in mind, 
 these volumes are intrusted to the generous interpre- 
 tation of the reader. If any one must be harshly critk 
 cised, it ought certainly to be the Editor. 
 
414 
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 When a person breaks in, unannounced, upon the 
 morning hours of an artist, and finds him not in full 
 dress, the intruder, and not the surprised artist, is 
 doubtless at fault. 
 
 Dresden, Aprils 1870. 
 
 s, a 
 
PASSAGES FROM 
 
 HAWTHORNE’S ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 Liverpool, August 1853. — A month lacking 
 two days since we left America, — a fortnight and 
 some odd days since we arrived in England. I began 
 my services, such as they are, on Monday last, August 
 1st, and here I sit in my private room at the Consu- 
 late, while the Vice-Consul and clerk are carrying on 
 affairs in the outer office. 
 
 • •••••••• 
 
 The pleasantest incident of the morning is when 
 Mr. Pearce (the Vice-Consul) makes his appearance 
 with the account-books, containing the receipts and 
 expenditures of the preceding day, and deposits on my 
 desk a little rouleau of the Queen’s coin, wrapped up 
 in a piece of paper. This morning there were eight 
 sovereigns, four half-crowns, and a shilling, — a pretty 
 fair day’s work, though not more than the average 
 ought to be. This forenoon, thus far, I have had two 
 calls, not of business, — one from an American cap- 
 tain and his son, another from Mr. H B , 
 
 whom I met in America, and who has showed us great 
 attention here. He has arranged for us to go to the 
 theatre with some of his family this evening. 
 
 Since I have been in Liverpool we have hardly had 
 
416 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 a day, until yesterday, without more or less of rain, 
 and so cold and shivery that life was miserable. I am 
 not warm enough even now, but am gradually getting 
 acclimated in that respect. 
 
 J ust now 1 have been fooled out of half a crown by 
 a young woman, who represents herself as an Amerb 
 can and destitute, having come over to see an uncle 
 whom she found dead, and she has no means of get- 
 ting back again. Her accent is not that of an Ameri- 
 can, and her appearance is not particularly preposses- 
 sing, though not decidedly otherwise. She is decently 
 dressed and modest in deportment, but I do not quite 
 trust her face. She has been separated from her hus- 
 band, as I understand her, by course of law ; has had 
 two children, both now dead. What she wants is to 
 get back to America, and perhaps arrangements may 
 be made with some shipmaster to take her as steward- 
 ess, or in some subordinate capacity. My judgment, 
 on the whole, is that she is an English woman, married 
 to and separated from an American husband, — of no 
 very decided virtue. I might as well have kept my 
 half-crown, and yet I might have bestowed it worse. 
 She is very decent in manner, cheerful, at least not 
 despondent. 
 
 At two o’clock I went over to the Royal Rock 
 Hotel, about fifteen or twenty minutes’ steaming from 
 this side of the river. We are going there on Satur- 
 day to reside for a while. Returning I found that 
 Mr. B., from the American Chamber of Commerce, 
 had called to arrange the time and place of a visit to 
 the Consul from a delegation of that body. Settled 
 for to-morrow at quarter past one at Mr. Blodgett’s. 
 
 August bth. — An invitation this morning fronj 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 417 
 
 the Mayor to dine at the Town Hall on Friday next. 
 Heaven knows I had rather dine at the humblest inn 
 in the city, inasmuch as a speech will doubtless be ex- 
 pected from me. However, things must be as they 
 may. 
 
 At quarter past one I was duly on hand at Mr. 
 Blodgett’s to receive the deputation from the Chamber 
 of Commerce. They arrived pretty seasonably, in two 
 or three carriages, and were ushered into the drawing- 
 room, — seven or eight gentlemen, some of whom I 
 had met before. Hereupon ensued a speech from Mr. 
 B., the Chairman of the delegation, short and sweet, 
 alluding to my literary reputation and other laudatory 
 matters, and occupying only a minute or two.' The 
 speaker was rather embarrassed, which encouraged me 
 a little, and yet I felt more diffidence on this occasion 
 than in my effort at Mr. Crittenden’s lunch, where, in- 
 deed, I was perfectly self-possessed. But here, there 
 being less formality, and more of a conversational 
 character in what was said, my usual diffidence could 
 not so well be kept in abeyance. However, I did not 
 break down to an intolerable extent, and, winding up 
 my eloquence as briefly as possible, we had a social 
 talk. Their whole stay could not have been much 
 more than a quarter of an hour. 
 
 A call, this morning, at the Consulate, from Dr. 
 Bowring, who is British minister, or something of the 
 kind, in China, and now absent on a twelvemonth’s 
 leave. The Doctor is a brisk person, with the address 
 of a man of the world, — free, quick to smile, and of 
 agreeable manners. He has a good face, rather Amer- 
 ican than English in aspect, and does not look much 
 above fifty, though he says he is between sixty and 
 
 VOL. VII. 27 
 
418 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1853 . 
 
 seventy. I should take him rather for an active law- 
 yer or a man of business than for a scholar and a lit- 
 erary man. He talked in a lively way for ten or fif- 
 teen minutes, and then took his leave, offering me any 
 service in his power in London, — as, for instance, to 
 introduce me to the Athenaeum Club. 
 
 August 8th, — Day before yesterday I escorted my 
 family to Rock Ferry, two miles either up or down the 
 Mersey (and I really don’t know which) by steamer, 
 which runs every half-hour. There are steamers go- 
 ing continually to Birkenhead and other landings, and 
 almost always a great many passengers on the transit. 
 At this time the boat was crowded so as to afford 
 scanty standing-room ; it being Saturday, and there- 
 fore a kind of gala-day. I think I have never seen a 
 populace before coming to England; but this crowd 
 afforded a specimen of one, both male and female. 
 The women were the most remarkable ; though they 
 seemed not disreputable, there was in them a coarse- 
 ness, a freedom, an — I don’t know what, that was 
 purely English. In fact, men and women here do 
 things that would at least make them ridiculous in 
 America. They are not afraid to enjoy themselves 
 in their own way, and have no pseudo-gentility to 
 support. Some girls danced upon the crowded deck, 
 to the miserable music of a little fragment of a 
 band which goes up and down the river on each trip 
 of the boat. Just before the termination of the voy- 
 age a man goes round with a bugle turned upwards to 
 receive the eleemosynary pence and half-pence of the 
 passengers. I gave one of them, the other day, a siL 
 ver fourpence, which fell into the vitals of the instru 
 ment, and compelled the man to take it to pieces. 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 419 
 
 At Rock Ferry there was a great throng, forming a 
 scene not unlike one of our muster-days or a Fourth 
 of July, and there were bands of music and banners, 
 and small processions after them, and a school of char- 
 ity children, I believe, enjoying a festival. And there 
 was a club of respectable persons, playing at bowls on 
 the bowling-green of the hotel, and there were chil- 
 dren, infants, riding on donkeys at a penny a ride, 
 while their mothers walked alongside to prevent a fall. 
 Yesterday, while we were at dinner, Mr. B. came in 
 his carriage to take us to his residence, Poulton Hall. 
 He had invited us to dine ; but I misunderstood him, 
 and thought he only intended to give us a drive. 
 Poulton Hall is about three miles from Rock Ferry, 
 the road passing through some pleasant rural scenery, 
 and one or two villages, with houses standing close to- 
 gether, and old stone or brick cottages, with thatched 
 roofs, and now and then a better mansion, apart 
 among trees. We passed an old church, with a tower 
 and spire, and, half-way up, a patch of ivy, dark 
 green, and some yellow wall-flowers, in full bloom, 
 growing out of the crevices of the stone. Mr. B. told 
 us that the tower was formerly quite clothed with ivy 
 from bottom to top, but that it had fallen away for 
 lack of the nourishment that it used to find in the 
 lime between the stones. This old church answered 
 to my Transatlantic fancies of England better than 
 anything I have yet seen. Not far from it was the 
 Rectory, behind a deep grove of ancient trees ; and 
 there lives the Rector, enjoying a thousand pounds a 
 year and his iiothing-to-do, while a curate performs 
 the real duty on a stipend of eighty pounds. 
 
 We passed through a considerable extent of private 
 road, and finally drove over a lawn, studded with trees 
 
420 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 and closely shaven, till we reached the door of Poulton 
 
 Hall. Part of the mansion is three or four hundred 
 
 • 
 
 years old ; another portion is about a hundred and 
 fifty, and still another has been built during* the pres- 
 ent generation. The house is two stories high, with a 
 sort of beetle-browed roof in front. It is not very 
 striking, and does not look older than many wooden 
 houses which I have seen in America. There is a 
 curious stately staircase, with a twisted balustrade, 
 much like that of the old Province House in Boston. 
 The drawing-room is a handsome modern apartment, 
 being beautifully painted and gilded and paper-hung, 
 with a white marble fireplace and rich furniture, so 
 that the impression is that of newness, not of age. It 
 is the same with the dining-room, and all the rest of 
 the interior so far as I saw it. 
 
 Mr. B. did not inherit this old hall, nor, indeed, is 
 he the owner, but only the tenant of it. He is a mer- 
 chant of Liverpool, a bachelor, with two sisters resid- 
 ing with him. In the entrance-hall, there was a 
 stuffed fox with glass eyes, which I never should have 
 doubted to be an actual live fox except for his keeping 
 so quiet ; also some grouse and other game. Mr. B. 
 seems to be a sportsman, and is setting out this week 
 on an excursion to Scotland, moor-fowl shooting. 
 
 While the family and two or three guests went to 
 dinner, we walked out to see the place. The gardener, 
 an Irishman, showed us through the garden, which is 
 large and well cared for. They certainly get every- 
 thing from Nature which she can possibly be per- 
 suaded to give them, here in England. There were 
 peaches and pears growing against the high brick 
 southern walls, — the trunk and branches of the trees 
 being spread out perfectly flat against the wall, very 
 
1858 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 421 
 
 much like the skin of a dead animal nailed up to dry, 
 and not a single branch protruding. Figs were grow- 
 ing in the same way. The brick wall, very probably, 
 was heated within, by means of pipes, in order to re- 
 enforce the insufficient heat of the sun. It seems as 
 if there must be something unreal and unsatisfactory 
 in fruit that owes its existence to such artificial meth- 
 ods. Squashes were growing under glass, poor things ! 
 There were immensely large gooseberries in the gar- 
 den ; and in this particular berry, the English, I be- 
 lieve, have decidedly the advantage over ourselves. 
 The raspberries, too, were large and good. I espied 
 one gigantic hog-weed in the garden ; and, really, my 
 heart warmed to it, being strongly reminded of the 
 principal product of my own garden at Concord. Af- 
 ter viewing the garden sufficiently, the gardener led us 
 to other parts of the estate, and we had glimpses of a 
 delightful valley, its sides shady with beautiful trees, 
 and a rich, grassy meadow at the bottom. By means 
 of a steam - engine and subterranean pipes and hy- 
 drants, the liquid manure from the barn-yard is dis- 
 tributed wherever it is wanted over the estate, being 
 spouted in rich showers from the hydrants. Under 
 this influence, the meadow at the bottom of the val- 
 ley had already been made to produce three crops of 
 grass during the present season, and would produce 
 another. 
 
 The lawn around Poulton Hall, like thousands of 
 other lawns in England, is very beautiful, but requires 
 great care to keep it so, being shorn every three or 
 four days. No other country will ever have this 
 charm, nor the charm of lovely verdure, which almost 
 makes up for the absence of sunshine. Without the 
 
422 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1853 . 
 
 constant rain and shadow which strikes us as so dis- 
 mal, these lawns would be as brown as an autumn 
 leaf. I have not, thus far, found any such magnifi- 
 cent trees as I expected. Mr. B. told me that three 
 oaks, standing in a row on his lawn, were the largest 
 in the county. They were very good trees, to be sure, 
 and perhaps four feet in diameter near the ground, 
 but with no very noble spread of foliage. In Concord 
 there are, if not oaks, yet certainly elms, a great deal 
 more stately and beautiful. But, on the whole, this 
 lawn, and the old Hall in the midst of it, went a good 
 way towards realizing some of my fancies of English 
 life. 
 
 By and by a footman, looking very quaint and 
 queer in his livery coat, drab breeches, and white 
 stockings, came to invite me to the table, where I 
 found Mr. B. and his sisters and guests sitting at the 
 fruit and wine. There were port, sherry, madeira, 
 and one bottle of claret, all very good ; but they take 
 here much heavier wines than we drink now in Amer- 
 ica. After a tolerably long session we went to the tea- 
 room, where I drank some coffee, and at about the 
 edge of dusk the carriage drew up to the door to take 
 us home. Mr. B. and his sisters have shown us genu- 
 ine kindness, and they gave us a hearty invitation to 
 come and ramble over the house whenever we pleased, 
 during their absence in Scotland. They say that 
 there are many legends and ghost-stories connected 
 with the house ; and there is an attic chamber, with 
 a skylight, which is called the Martyr’s chamber, from 
 the fact of its having, in old times, been tenanted by 
 a lady, who was imprisoned there, and persecuted to 
 death for her religion. There is an old black letter 
 library, but the room containing it is shut, barred, and 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 423 
 
 1853 .] 
 
 padlocked, — the owner of the house refusing to let it 
 be opened, lest some of the books should be stolen. 
 Meanwhile the rats are devouring them, and the 
 damps destroying them. 
 
 August — A pretty comfortable day, as to 
 warmth, and I believe there is sunshine overhead ; but 
 a sea-cloud, composed of fog and coal-smoke, envelops 
 Liverpool. At Rock Ferry, when I left it at half past 
 nine, there was promise of a cheerful day. A good 
 many gentlemen (or, rather, respectable business peo- 
 ple) came in the boat, and it is not unpleasant, on these 
 fine mornings, to take the breezy atmosphere of the 
 river. The huge steamer. Great Britain, bound for 
 Australia, lies right off the Rock Ferry landing ; and 
 at a little distance are two old hulks of ships of war, 
 dismantled, roofed over, and anchored in the river, 
 formerly for quarantine purposes, but now used chiefly 
 or solely as homes for old seamen, whose light labor it 
 is to take care of these condemned ships. There are 
 a great many steamers plying up and down the river 
 to various landings in the vicinity ; and a good many 
 steam-tugs ; also, many boats, most of which have 
 dark-red or tan-colored sails, being oiled to resist the 
 wet ; also, here and there, a yacht, or pleasure-boat, 
 and a few ships riding stately at their anchors, prob- 
 ably on the point of sailing. The river, however, is 
 by no means crowded ; because the immense multitude 
 of ships are ensconced in the docks, where their masts 
 make an intricate forest for miles up and down the 
 Liverpool shore. The small, black steamers, whizzing 
 industriously along, many of them crowded with pas- 
 sengers, make up the chief life of the scene. The Mer- 
 sey has the color of a mud-puddle, and no atmospheric 
 
424 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 effect, as far as I have seen, ever gives it a more agree- 
 able tinge. 
 
 Visitors to-day, thus far, have been H. A. B., with 
 whom I have arranged to dine with us at Rock Ferry, 
 and then he is to take us on board the Great Britain, 
 of which his father is owner (in great part). Sec- 
 ondly, Monsieur H., the French Consul, who can speak 
 hardly any English, and who was more powerfully 
 scented with cigar-smoke than any man I ever encoun- 
 tered ; a polite, gray-haired, red-nosed gentleman, very 
 courteous and formal. Heaven keep him from me ! 
 
 At one o’clock, or thereabouts, I walked into the 
 city, down through Lord Street, Church Street, and 
 back to the Consulate, through various untraceable 
 crookednesses. Coming to Chapel Street, I crossed 
 the graveyard of the old Church of St. Nicholas. This 
 is, I suppose, the oldest sacred site in Liverpool, a 
 church having stood here ever since the Conquest, 
 though, probably, there is little or nothing of the old 
 edifice in the present one, either the whole of the edi- 
 fice or else the steeple, being thereto shaken by a 
 chime of bells, — or perhaps both, at different times, 
 - — has tumbled down ; but the present church is what 
 we Americans should call venerable. When the first 
 church was built, and long afterwards, it must have 
 stood on the grassy verge of the Mersey ; but now 
 there are pavements and warehouses, and the thronged 
 Prince’s and George’s Docks, between it and the river; 
 and all around it is the very busiest bustle of com- 
 merce, rumbling wheels, hurrying men, porter-shops, 
 everything that pertains to the grossest and most prac- 
 tical life. And, notwithstanding, there is the broad 
 churchyard extending on three sides of it, just as it 
 used to be a thousand years ago. It is absolutely 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 425 
 
 paved from border to border with flat tombstones, on 
 a level with the soil and with each other, so that it is 
 one floor of stone over the whole space, with grass here 
 and there sprouting between the crevices. Ail these 
 stones, no doubt, formerly had inscriptions ; but, as 
 many people continually pass, in various directions, 
 across the churchyard, and as the tombstones are not 
 of a very hard material, the records on many of them 
 are effaced. T saw none very old. A quarter of a 
 century is sufficient to obliterate the letters, and make 
 all smooth, where the direct pathway from gate to gate 
 lies over the stones. The climate and casual footsteps 
 rub out any inscription in less than a hundred years. 
 Some of the monuments are cracked. On many is 
 merely cut The burial-place of ” so and so ; on oth- 
 ers there is a long list of half-readable names ; on 
 some few a laudatory epitaph, out of which, however, 
 it were far too tedious to pick the meaning. But it 
 really is interesting and suggestive to think of this old 
 church, first built when Liverpool was a small village, 
 and remaining, with its successive dead of ten centuries 
 around it, now that the greatest commercial city in the 
 world has its busiest centre there. I suppose people 
 still continue to be buried in the cemetery. The great- 
 est upholders of burials in cities are those whose pro- 
 genitors have been deposited around or within the city 
 churches. If this spacious churchyard stood in a sim- 
 ilar position in one of our American cities, I rather 
 suspect that long ere now it would have run the risk 
 of being laid out in building-lots, and covered with 
 warehouses ; even if the church itself escaped, — but it 
 would not escape longer than till its disrepair afforded 
 excuse for tearing it down> And why should it, when 
 Its purposes might be better served in another spot ? 
 
426 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1858 . 
 
 We went on board the Great Britain before dinner, 
 between five and six o’clock, — a great structure, as 
 to convenient arrangement and adaptation, but giving 
 me a strong impression of the tedium and misery of 
 the long voyage to Australia. By way of amusement, 
 she takes over fifty pounds’ worth of playing-cards, at 
 two shillings per pack, for the use of passengers ; also, 
 a small, well - selected library. After a considerable 
 time spent on board, we returned to the hotel and 
 dined, and Mr. B. took his leave at nine o’clock. 
 
 August 10th. — I left Eock Ferry for the city at 
 half past nine. In the boat which arrived thence, there 
 were several men and women with baskets on their 
 heads, for this is a favorite way of carrying burdens ; 
 and they trudge onward beneath them, without any 
 apparent fear of an overturn, and seldom putting up 
 a hand to steady them. One woman, this morning, 
 had a heavy load of crockery ; another, an immense 
 basket of turnips, freshly gathered, that seemed to me 
 as much as a man could well carry on his back. These 
 must be a stiff-necked people. The women step stur- 
 dily and freely, and with not ungraceful strength. The 
 trip over to town was pleasant, it being a fair morn- 
 ing, only with a low-hanging fog. Had it been in 
 America, I should have anticipated a day of burning 
 heat. 
 
 Visitors this morning. Mr. Ogden, of Chicago, or 
 somewhere in the Western States, who arrived in Eng- 
 land a fortnight ago, and who called on me at fha.t 
 time. He has since been in Scotland, and is now going 
 to London and the Continent ; secondly, the Captain 
 of the Collins’s steamer Pacific, which sails to-day \ 
 thirdly, an American shipmaster, who complained that 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 1853 .] 
 
 427 
 
 he had never, in his heretofore voyages, been able to 
 get sight of the American Consul. 
 
 Mr. Pearce’s customary matutinal visit was unusu- 
 ally agreeable to-day, inasmuch as he laid on my desk 
 nineteen golden sovereigns and thirteen shillings. It 
 being the day of the steamer’s departure, an unusual 
 number of invoice certificates had been required, — 
 my signature to each of which brings me two dollars. 
 
 The autograph of a living author has seldom been so 
 much in request at so respectable a price. Colonel 
 Crittenden told me that he had received as much as 
 fifty pounds on a single day. Heaven prosper the 
 trade between America and Liverpool ! 
 
 August \htli. — Many scenes which I should have 
 liked to record have occurred ; but the pressure of 
 business has prevented me from recording them from 
 day to day. 
 
 On Thursday I went, on invitation from Mr. B., to 
 the prodigious steamer Great Britain, down the har- 
 bor, and some miles into the sea, to escort her off a 
 little way on her voyage to Australia. There is an 
 immense enthusiasm among the English people about 
 this ship, on account of its being the largest in the 
 world. The shores were lined with people to see her 
 sail, and there were innumerable small steamers, 
 crowded with men, all the way out into the ocean. 
 Nothing seems to touch the English nearer than this 
 question of nautical superiority ; and if we wish to hit 
 them to the quick, we must hit them there. 
 
 On Friday, at 7 p. m., I went to dine with the 
 Mayor, It was a dinner given to the Judges and the 
 Grand Jury. The Judges of England, during the 
 time of holding an Assize, are the persons first in 
 
428 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 rank in the kingdom. They take precedence of every- 
 body else, — of the highest military officers, of the 
 Lord Lieutenants, of the Archbishops, — of the Prince 
 of W ales, — of all except the Sovereign, whose author- 
 ity and dignity they represent. In case of a royal 
 dinner, the Judge would lead the Queen to the table. 
 
 The dinner was at the Town Hall, and the rooms 
 and the whole affair were all in the most splendid 
 style. Nothing struck me more than the footmen in 
 the city livery. They really looked more magnificent 
 in their gold-lace and breeches and white silk stock- 
 ings than any officers of state. The rooms were beau- 
 tiful ; gorgeously painted and gilded, gorgeously 
 lighted, gorgeously hung with paintings, — the plhte 
 was gorgeous, and the dinner gorgeous in the English 
 fashion. 
 
 After the removal of the cloth the Mayor gave vari- 
 ous toasts, prefacing each with some remarks, — the 
 first, of course, the Sovereign, after which ‘‘God save 
 the Queen ” was sung, the company standing up and 
 joining in the chorus, their ample faces glowing with 
 wine, enthusiasm, and loyalty. Afterwards the Bar, 
 and various other dignities and institutions, were 
 toasted ; and by and by came the toast to the United 
 States, and to me, as their Representative. Here- 
 upon either “ Hail Columbia,” or “ Yankee Doodle,” 
 or some other of our national tunes (but Heaven 
 knows which), was played ; and at the conclusion, 
 being at bay, and with no alternative, I got upon my 
 legs, and made a response. They received me and 
 iistened to my nonsense with a good deal of rapping, 
 and my speech seemed to give great satisfaction ; my 
 chief difficulty being in not knowing how to pitch my 
 voice to the size of the room. As for the matter, it is 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 429 
 
 not of the slightest consequence. Anybody may make 
 an after-dinner speech who will be content to talk on- 
 ward without saying anything. My speech was not 
 more than two or three inches long ; and, considering 
 that I did not know a soul there, except the Mayor 
 himself, and that I am wholly unpractised in all sorts 
 of oratory, and that I had nothing to say, it was quite 
 successful. I hardly thought it was in me, but, be- 
 ing once started, I felt no embarrassment, and went 
 through it as coolly as if I were going to be hanged. 
 
 Yesterday, after dinner, 1 took a walk with my 
 family. W e went through by-ways and private roads, 
 and saw more of rural England, with its hedge-rows, 
 its grassy fields, and its whitewashed old stone cot- 
 tages, than we have before seen since our arrival. 
 
 August 20th, — This being Saturday, there early 
 commenced a throng of visitants to Rock Ferry. The 
 boat in which I came over brought from the city a 
 multitude of factory - people. They had bands of 
 music, and banners inscribed with the names of the 
 mills they belong to, and other devices : pale-looking 
 people, but not looking exactly as if they were under- 
 fed. They are brought on reduced terms by the rail- 
 ways and steamers, and come from great distances in 
 the interior. These, I believe, were from Preston. I 
 have not yet had an opportunity of observing how they 
 amuse themselves during these excursions. 
 
 At the dock, the other day, the steamer arrived 
 from Rock Ferry with a countless multitude of little 
 girls, in coarse blue gowns, who, as they landed, 
 formed in procession, and walked up the dock. These 
 girls had been taken from the workhouses and edu- 
 cated at a charity-school, and would by and by be ap- 
 
430 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 prenticed as servants. I should not have conceived it 
 possible that so many children could have been col- 
 lected together, without a single trace of beauty or 
 scarcely of intelligence in so much as one individual ; 
 such mean, coarse, vulgar features and figures betray- 
 ing unmistakably a low origin, and ignorant and bru- 
 tal parents. They did not appear wicked, but only 
 stupid, animal, and soulless. It must require many 
 generations of better life to wake the soul in theme 
 All America could not show the like. 
 
 August 22c7. — A Captain Auld, an American, hav- 
 ing died here yesterday, I went with my clerk and an 
 American shipmaster to take the inventory of his ef- 
 fects. His boarding-house was in a mean street, an 
 old dingy house, with narrow entrance, — the class of 
 boarding-house frequented by mates of vessels, and in- 
 ferior to those generally patronized by masters. A fat 
 elderly landlady, of respectable and honest aspect, and 
 her daughter, a pleasing young woman enough, re- 
 ceived us, and ushered us into the deceased’s bed- 
 chamber. It was a dusky backroom, plastered and 
 painted yellow ; its one window looking into the very 
 narrowest of backyards or courts, and out on a con- 
 fused multitude of back buildings, appertaining to 
 other houses, most of them old, with rude chimneys 
 of wash-rooms and kitchens, the bricks of which 
 seemed half loose. 
 
 The chattels of the dead man were contained in two 
 trunks, a chest, a sail-cloth bag, and a barrel, and con- 
 sisted of clothing, suggesting a thickset, middle-sized 
 man ; papers relative to ships and business, a spyglass, 
 a loaded iron pistol, some books of navigation, some 
 charts, several great pieces of tobacco, and a few 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 431 
 
 cigars ; some little plaster images, that he had prob- 
 ably bought for his children, a cotton umbrella, and 
 other trumpery of no great value. In one of the 
 trunks we found about twenty pounds’ worth of Eng- 
 lish and American gold and silver, and some notes of 
 hand, due in America. Of all these things the clerk 
 made an inventory ; after which we took possession of 
 the money, and affixed the consular seal to the trunks, 
 bag, and chest. 
 
 While this was going on, we heard a great noise 
 of men quarrelling in an adjoining court ; and, alto- 
 gether, it seemed a squalid and ugly place to live in, 
 and a most undesirable one to die in. At the conclu- 
 sion of our labors, the young woman asked us if we 
 would not go into another chamber, and look at the 
 corpse, and appeared to think that we should be rather 
 glad than otherwise of the privilege. But, never hav- 
 ing seen the man during his lifetime, I declined to 
 commence his acquaintance now. 
 
 His bills for board and nursing amount to about 
 the sum which we found in his trunk ; his funeral ex- 
 penses will be ten pounds more ; the surgeon has sent 
 in a bill of eight pounds, odd shillings ; and the ac- 
 count of another medical man is still to be rendered. 
 As his executor, I shall pay his landlady and nurse ; 
 and for the rest of the expenses, a subscription must 
 be made (according to the custom in such cases) 
 among the shipmasters, headed by myself. The fu- 
 neral pomp will consist of a hearse, one coach, four 
 men, with crape hatbands, and a few other items, to- 
 gether with a grave at five pounds, over which his 
 friends will be entitled to place a stone, if they choose 
 to do so, within twelve months. 
 
 As we left the house, we looked into the dark and 
 
432 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 squalid dining-room, where a lunch of cold meat was 
 set out ; but having no associations with the house ex- 
 cept through this one dead man, it seemed as if his 
 presence and attributes pervaded it wholly. He ap- 
 pears to have been a man of reprehensible habits, 
 though well advanced in years. 1 ought not to forget 
 a brandy-flask (empty) among his other effects. The 
 landlady and daughter made a good impression on me, 
 as honest and respectable persons. 
 
 August 24^4. — Yesterday, in the forenoon, I re- 
 ceived a note, and shortly afterwards a call at the 
 
 Consulate, from Miss H , whom I apprehend to 
 
 be a lady of literary tendencies. She said that Miss 
 L. had promised her an introduction, but that, hap- 
 pening to pass through Liverpool, she had snatched the 
 opportunity to make my acquaintance. She seems to 
 be a mature lady, rather plain, but with an honest and 
 intelligent face. It was rather a singular freedom, me- 
 thinks, to come down upon a perfect stranger in this 
 way, — to sit with him in his private office an hour 
 Dr two, and then walk about the streets with him as 
 she did ; for I did the honors of Liverpool, and showed 
 her the public buildings. Her talk was sensible, but 
 not particularly brilliant nor interesting ; a good, solid 
 personage, physically and intellectually. She is an 
 English woman. 
 
 In the afternoon, at three o’clock, I attended the fu- 
 neral of Captain Auld. Being ushered into the din- 
 ing-room of his boarding-house, I found brandy, gin, 
 and wine set out on a tray, together with some little 
 spice-cakes. By and by came in a woman, who asked 
 if I were going to the funeral ; and then proceeded to 
 put a mourning-band on my hat, — a black-silk band, 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 433 
 
 covering the whole hat, and streaming nearly a yard 
 behind. After waiting the better part of an hour, no- 
 body else appeared, although several shipmasters had 
 promised to attend. Hereupon, the undertaker was 
 anxious to set forth ; but the landlady, who was ar«= 
 rayed in shining black silk, thought it a shame that 
 the poor man should be buried with such small at- 
 tendance. So we waited a little longer, during which 
 interval I heard the landlady’s daughter sobbing and 
 wailing in the entry ; and but for this tender-hearted- 
 ness there would have been no tears at all. Finally 
 we set forth, — the undertaker, a friend of his, and 
 a young man, perhaps the landlady’s son, and my- 
 self, in the black-plumed coach, and the landlady, her 
 daughter, and a female friend, in the coach behind. 
 Previous to this, however, everybody had taken some 
 wine or spirits ; for it seemed to be considered disre- 
 spectful not to do so. 
 
 Before us went the plumed hearse, a stately affair, 
 with a bas-relief of funereal figures upon its sides. We 
 proceeded quite across the city to the Necropolis, where 
 the coffin was carried into a chapel, in which we found 
 already another coffin, and another set of mourners, 
 awaiting the clergyman. Anon he appeared, — a stern, 
 broad-framed, large, and bald-headed man, in a black- 
 silk gown. He mounted his desk, and read the service 
 in quite a feeble and unimpressive way, though with 
 no lack of solemnity. This done, our four bearers took 
 up the coffin, and carried it out of the chapel ; but de- 
 scending the steps, and, perhaps, having taken a little 
 too much brandy, one of them stumbled, and down 
 came the coffin, — not quite to the ground, however ; 
 for they gra^ppled with it, and contrived, with a great 
 struggle, to prevent the misadventure. But I really 
 
 VOL. VII. 28 
 
434 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 
 
 expected to see poor Captain Auld burst forth among 
 us in his grave-clothes. 
 
 The Necropolis is quite a handsome burial-place, 
 shut in by high walls, so overrun with shrubbery that 
 no part of the brick or stone is visible. Part of the 
 space within is an ornamental garden, with flowers 
 and green turf ; the rest is strewn with flat grave- 
 stones, and a few raised monuments; and straight 
 avenues run to and fro between. Captain Auld’s grave 
 was dug nine feet deep. It is his own for twelve 
 months ; but, if his friends do not choose to give him 
 a stone, it will become a common grave at the end of 
 that time ; and four or five more bodies may then be 
 piled upon his. Every one seemed greatly to admire 
 the grave ; the undertaker praised it, and also the dry- 
 ness of its site, which he took credit to himself for 
 having chosen. The grave-digger, too, was very proud 
 of its depth, and the neatness of his handiwork. The 
 clergyman, who had marched in advance of us from 
 the chapel, now took his stand at the head of the 
 grave, and, lifting his hat, proceeded with what re- 
 mained of the service, while we stood bareheaded 
 around. When he came to a particular part, ‘‘ ashes 
 to ashes, dust to dust,” the undertaker lifted a hand- 
 ful of earth, and threw it rattling on the coffin, — so 
 did the landlady’s son, and so did I. After the fu- 
 neral the undertaker’s friend, an elderly, coarse-look- 
 ing man, looked round him, and remarked that the 
 grass had never grown on the parties who died in the 
 cholera year ” ; but at this the undertaker laughed in 
 scorn. 
 
 As we returned to the gate of the cemetery, the sex- 
 ton met us, and pointed to a small office, on entering 
 which we found the clergyman, who was waiting for 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 435 
 
 his burial-fees. There was now a dispute between the 
 clergyman and the undertaker ; the former wishing to 
 receive the whole amount for the gravestone, which 
 the undertaker, of course, refused to pay. I explained 
 how the matter stood ; on which the clergyman ac- 
 quiesced, civilly enough ; but it was very strange to 
 see the worldly, business-like way in which he entered 
 into this squabble, so soon after burying poor Captain 
 Auld. 
 
 During our drive back in the mourning-coach, the 
 undertaker, his friend, and the landlady’s son still 
 kept descanting on the excellence of the grave, — 
 “ Such a fine grave,” — Such a nice grave,” — 
 “ Such a splendid grave,” — and, really, they seemed 
 almost to think it worth while to die, for the sake of 
 being buried there. They deemed it an especial pity 
 that such a grave should ever become a common 
 grave. Why,” said they to me, by paying the ex- 
 tra price you may have it for your own grave, or for 
 your family ! ” meaning that we should have a right 
 to pile ourselves over the defunct Captain. I wonder 
 how the English ever attain to any conception of a 
 future existence, since they so overburden themselves 
 with earth and mortality in their ideas of funerals. A 
 drive with an undertaker, in a sable-plumed coach ! — 
 talking about graves ! — and yet he was a jolly old 
 fellow, wonderfully corpulent, with a smile breaking 
 out easily all over his face, — although, once in a 
 while, he looked professionally lugubrious. 
 
 All the time the scent of that horrible mourning- 
 coach is in my nostrils, and I breathe nothing but a 
 funeral atmosphere. 
 
436 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1853 , 
 
 Saturday.^ August 21th. — This being the gala-day 
 of the manufacturing people about Liverpool, the 
 steamboats to Rock Ferry were seasonably crowded 
 with large parties of both sexes. They were aecom* 
 panied with two bands of music, in uniform ; and 
 these bands, before I left the hotel, were playing, in 
 competition and rivalry with each other in the coach 
 yard, loud martial strains from shining brass instrm 
 ments. A prize is to be assigned to one or to the 
 other of these bands, and I suppose this was a part of 
 the competition. Meanwhile the merry-making people 
 who thronged the court-yard were quaffing coffee from 
 blue earthen mugs, which they brought with them, — 
 as likewise they brought the coffee, and had it made 
 in the hotel. 
 
 It had poured with rain about the time of their ar- 
 rival, notwithstanding which they did not seem dis- 
 heartened ; for, of course, in this climate, it enters 
 into all their calculations to be drenched through and 
 through. By and by the sun shone out, and it has 
 continued to shine and shade every ten minutes ever 
 since. All these people were decently dressed ; the 
 men generally in dark clothes, not so smartly as Amer- 
 icans on a festal day, but so as not to be greatly dif- 
 ferent as regards dress. They were paler, smaller, less 
 wholesome -looking and less intelligent, and, I think, 
 less noisy, than so many Yankees would have been. 
 The women and girls differed much more from what 
 American girls and women would be on a pleasure- 
 excursion, being so shabbily dressed, with no kind of 
 smartness, no silks, nothing but cotton gowns, I be- 
 lieve, and ill-looking bonnets, — which, however, was 
 the only part of their attire that they seemed to care 
 about guarding from the rain. As to their persons, 
 
1853 .] 
 
 A WALK TO BEBBINGTON. 
 
 437 
 
 they generally looked better developed and healthier 
 than the men ; but there was a woful lack of beauty 
 and grace, not a pretty girl among them, all coarse 
 and vulgar. Their bodies, it seems to me, are apt to 
 be very long in proportion to their limbs, — in truth, 
 this kind of make is rather characteristic of both sexes 
 in England. The speech of these folks, in some in- 
 stances, was so broad Lancashire that I could not well 
 understand it. 
 
 A WALK TO BEBBINGTON. 
 
 Sock Ferry ^ August 2^th, — Yesterday we all took 
 a walk into the country. It was a fine afternoon, with 
 clouds, of course, in different parts of the sky, but 
 a clear atmosphere, bright sunshine, and altogether a 
 Septembrish feeling. The ramble was very pleasant 
 along the hedge-lined roads, in which there were fiow- 
 ers blooming, and the varnished holly, certainly one of 
 the most beautiful shrubs in the world, so far as foli- 
 age goes. We saw one cottage which I suppose was 
 several hundred years old. It was of stone, filled into 
 a wooden frame, the black-oak of which was visible 
 like an external skeleton ; it had a thatched roof, and 
 was whitewashed. We passed though a village, — 
 Higher Bebbington, I believe, — with narrow streets 
 and mean houses, all of brick or stone, and not stand- 
 ing wide apart from each other as in American coun- 
 try villages, but conjoined. There was an immense 
 almshouse in the midst ; at least, I took it to be so. 
 In the centre of the village, too, we saw a moderate- 
 sized brick house, built in imitation of a castle with a 
 tower and turret, in which an upper and an under row 
 of small cannon were mounted, — now green with 
 moss. ‘ There were also battlements along the roof of 
 
438 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1853 . 
 
 the house, which looked as if it might have been built 
 eighty or a hundred years ago. In the centre of it 
 there was the dial of a clock, but the inner machinery 
 had been removed, and the hands, hanging listlessly, 
 moved to and fro in the wind. It was quite a novel 
 symbol of decay and neglect. On the wall, close to 
 the street, there were certain eccentric inscriptions cut 
 into slabs of stone, but I could make no sense of them. 
 At the end of the house opposite the turret, we peeped 
 through the bars of an iron gate and beheld a little 
 paved court-yard, and at the farther side of it a small 
 piazza, beneath which seemed to stand the figure of a 
 man. He appeared well advanced in years, and was 
 dressed in a blue coat and buff breeches, with a white 
 or straw hat on his head. Behold, too, in a kennel be- 
 side the porch, a large dog sitting on his hind legs, 
 chained ! Also, close beside the gateway, another man, 
 seated in a kind of arbor ! All these were wooden 
 images ; and the whole castellated, small, village 
 dwelling, with the inscriptions and the queer statuary, 
 was probably the whim of some half -crazy person, who 
 has now, no doubt, been long asleep in Bebbington 
 churchyard. 
 
 The bell of the old church was ringing as we 
 went along, and many respectable-looking people and 
 cleanly dressed children were moving towards the 
 sound. Soon we reached the church, and I have seen 
 nothing yet in England that so completely answered 
 my idea of what such a thing was, as this old village 
 church of Bebbington. 
 
 It is quite a large edifice, built in the form of a 
 cross, a low peaked porch in the side, over which, 
 rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and something. 
 1 he steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old ; so 
 
1853 .] A WALK TO BEBBINGTON. 439 
 
 does the whole church, though portions of it have been 
 renewed, but not so as to impair the aspect of heavy, 
 substantial endurance, and long, long decay, which 
 may go on hundreds of years longer before the church 
 is a ruin. There it stands, among the surrounding 
 graves, looking just the same as it did in Bloody 
 Mary’s days ; just as it did in Cromwell’s time. A 
 bird (and perhaps many birds) had its nest in the 
 steeple, and flew in and out of the loopholes that were 
 opened into it. The stone framework of the windows 
 looked particularly old. 
 
 There were monuments about the church, some lying 
 flat on the ground, others elevated on low pillars, or on 
 cross slabs of stone, and almost all looking dark, moss- 
 grown, and very antique. But on reading some of the 
 inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent ; 
 for, in fact, twenty years of this climate suffices to 
 give as much or more antiquity of aspect, whether to 
 gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our own, 
 — so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon 
 does it blacken, so soon do the edges lose their sharp- 
 ness, so soon does Time gnaw away the records. The 
 only really old monuments (and those not very old) 
 were two, standing close together, and raised on low 
 rude arches, the dates on which were 1684 and 1686. 
 On one a cross was rudely cut into the stone. But 
 there may have been hundreds older than this, the 
 records on which had been quite obliterated, and the 
 stones removed, and the graves dug over anew. None 
 of the monuments commemorate people of rank ; on 
 only one the buried person was recorded as “ Gent.” 
 
 While we sat on the flat slabs resting ourselves, 
 several little girls, healtky-looking and prettily dressed 
 enough, came into the churchyard, and began to talk 
 
440 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 and laugh, and to skip merrily from one tombstone to 
 another. They stared very broadly at us, and one of 
 them, by and by, ran up to U. and J., and gave each 
 of them a green apple, then they skipped upon the 
 tombstones again, while, within the church, we heard 
 the singing, — sounding pretty much as I have heard 
 it in our pine-built New England meeting-houses. 
 Meantime the rector had detected the voices of these 
 naughty little girls, and perhaps had caught glimpses 
 of them through the windows ; for, anon, out came the 
 sexton, and, addressing himself to us, asked whether 
 there had been any noise or disturbance in the church- 
 yard. I should not have borne testimony against 
 these little villagers, but S. was so anxious to exoner- 
 ate our own children that she pointed out these poor 
 little sinners to the sexton, who forthwith turned them 
 out. He would have done the same to us, no doubt, 
 had my coat been worse than it was ; but, as the mat- 
 ter stood, his demeanor was rather apologetic than 
 menacing, when he informed us that the rector had 
 sent him. 
 
 We stayed a little longer, looking at the graves, 
 some of which were between the buttresses of the 
 church and quite close to the wall, as if the sleepers 
 anticipated greater comfort and security the nearer 
 they could get to the sacred edifice. 
 
 As we went out of the churchyard, we passed the 
 aforesaid little girls, who were sitting behind the 
 mound of a tomb, and busily babbling together. They 
 called after us, expressing their discontent that we had 
 betrayed them to the sexton, and saying that it was 
 not they who made the noise. Going homeward, we 
 went astray in a green lane, that terminated in the 
 
1853 .] 
 
 THE MERSEY. 
 
 441 
 
 midst of a field, without outlet, so that we had to re- 
 trace a good many of our footsteps. 
 
 Close to the wall of the church, beside the door, 
 there was an ancient baptismal font of stone. In fact, 
 it was a pile of roughly hewn stone steps, five or six 
 feet high, with a block of stone at the summit, in which 
 was a hollow about as big as a wash-bowl. It was full 
 of rain-water. 
 
 The church seems to be St. Andrew’s Church, Lower 
 Bebbington, built in 1100. 
 
 Septeinber 1st. — To-day we leave the Rock Ferry 
 Hotel, where we have spent nearly four weeks. It is 
 a comfortable place, and we have had a good table and 
 have been kindly treated. We occupied a large par- 
 lor, extending through the whole breadth of the house, 
 with a bow-window, looking towards Liverpool, and 
 adown the intervening river, and to Birkenhead, on 
 the hither side. The river would be a pleasanter ob- 
 ject, if it were blue and transparent, instead of such 
 a mud - puddly hue ; also, if it were always full to its 
 brim ; whereas it generally presents a margin, and 
 sometimes a very broad one, of glistening mud, with 
 here and there a small vessel aground on it. 
 
 Nevertheless, the parlor-window has given us a pretty 
 good idea of the nautical business of Liverpool ; the 
 constant objects being the little black steamers puff- 
 ing unquietly along, sometimes to our own ferry, some- 
 times beyond it to Eastham, and sometimes towing a 
 ]ong string of boats from Runcorn or otherwhere up 
 the river, laden with goods, and sometimes gallanting 
 a tall ship in or out. Some of these ships lie for days 
 together in the river, very majestic and stately ob- 
 jects, often with the flag of the Stars and Stripes 
 
442 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 waving over them. Now and then, after a gale at sea, 
 a vessel comes in with her masts broken short off in 
 the midst, and with marks of rough handling about 
 the hull. Once a week comes a Cunard steamer, with 
 its red funnel pipe whitened by the salt spray ; and, 
 firing off cannon to announce her arrival, she moors 
 to a large iron buoy in the middle of the river, and a 
 few hundred yards from the stone pier of our ferry. 
 Immediately comes puffing towards her a little mail- 
 steamer, to take away her mail-bags and such of the 
 passengers as choose to land ; and for several hours 
 afterwards the Cunard lies with the smoke and steam 
 coming out of her, as if she were smoking her pipe 
 after her toilsome passage across the Atlantic. Once 
 a fortnight comes an American steamer of the Collins 
 line ; and then the Cunard salutes her with cannon, 
 to which the Collins responds, and moors herself to 
 another iron buoy, not far from the Cunard. When 
 they go to sea, it is with similar salutes ; the two ves- 
 sels paying each other the more ceremonious respect, 
 because they are inimical and jealous of each other. 
 
 Besides these, there are other steamers of all sorts 
 and sizes, for pleasure-excursions, for regular trips to 
 Dublin, the Isle of Man, and elsewhither ; and ves- 
 sels which are stationary, as floating lights, but which 
 seem to relieve one another at intervals ; and small 
 vessels, with sails looking as if made of tanned leather ; 
 and schooners, and yachts, and all manner of odd- 
 looking craft, but none so odd as the Chinese junk. 
 This junk lies by our own pier, and looks as if it were 
 copied from some picture on an old teacup. Beyond 
 all these objects we see the other side of the Mersey, 
 with the delectably green fields opposite to us, while 
 the shore becomes more and more thickly populated, 
 
1853 .] 
 
 ROCK PARK. 
 
 443 
 
 until about two miles off we see the dense centre of the 
 city, with the dome of the Custom House, and steeples 
 and towbrs ; and, close to the water, the spire of St, 
 Nicholas ; and above, and intermingled with the whole 
 city scene, the duskiness of the coal-smoke gushing up- 
 ward. Along the bank we perceive the warehouses of 
 the Albert Dock, and the Queen’s tobacco warehouses, 
 and other docks, and, nigher to us, a shipyard or two. 
 In the evening all this sombre picture gradually dark- 
 ens out of sight, and in its place appear only the lights 
 of the city, kindling into a galaxy of earthly stars, for 
 a long distance, up and down the shore ; and, in one or 
 two spots, the bright red gleam of a furnace, like the 
 red planet Mars ” ; and once in a while a bright, 
 wandering beam gliding along the river, as a steamer 
 comes or goes between us and Liverpool. 
 
 ROCK PARK. 
 
 September 2d. — We got into our new house in 
 Rock Park yesterday. It is quite a good house, with 
 three apartments, beside kitchen and pantry on the 
 lower floor ; and it is three stories high, with four 
 good chambers in each story. It is a stone edifice, 
 like almost all the English houses, and handsome in 
 its design. The rent, without furniture, would prob- 
 ably have been one hundred pounds ; furnished, it is 
 one hundred and sixty pounds. Rock Park, as the 
 locality is called, is private property, and is now 
 nearly covered with residences for professional people, 
 merchants, and others of the upper middling class ; 
 the houses being mostly built, I suppose, on specula- 
 tion, and let to those who occupy them. It is the 
 quietest place imaginable, there being a police station 
 at the entrance, and the officer on duty allows no 
 
444 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 
 
 ragged or ill-looking person to pass. There being a 
 toll, it precludes all unnecessary passage of carriages ; 
 and never were there more noiseless streets thta those 
 that give access to these pretty residences. On either 
 side there is thick shrubbery, with glimpses through 
 it of the ornamented portals, or into the trim gardens 
 with smooth-shaven lawns, of no large extent, but 
 still affording reasonable breathing-space. They are 
 really an improvement on anything, save what the 
 very rich can enjoy, in America. The former occu- 
 pants of our house (Mrs. Campbell and family) hav- 
 ing been fond of flowers, there are many rare varie- 
 ties in the garden, and we are told that there is 
 scarcely a month in the year when a flower will not 
 be found there. 
 
 The house is respectably, though not very elegantly, 
 furnished. It was a dismal, rainy day yesterday, and 
 we had a coal-fire in the sitting-room, beside which I 
 sat last evening as twilight came on, and thought, 
 rather sadly, how many times we have changed our 
 home since we were married. In the first place, our 
 three years at the Old Manse ; then a brief residence 
 at Salem, then at Boston, then two or three years at 
 Salem again ; then at Lenox, then at West Newton, 
 and then again at Concord, where we imagined that 
 we were fixed for life, but spent only a year. Then 
 this farther flight to England, where we expect to 
 spend four years, and afterwards another year or two 
 in Italy, during all which time we shall have no real 
 home. For, as I sat in this English house, with the 
 chill, rainy English twilight brooding over the lawn, 
 and a coal-fire to keep me comfortable on the first 
 evening of September, and the picture of a stranger 
 — the dead husband of Mrs. Campbell — gazing down 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 445 
 
 1853 .] 
 
 at me from above the mantel-piece, — I felt that I 
 never should be quite at home here. Nevertheless, 
 the fire was very comfortable to look at, and the 
 shape of the fireplace — an arch, with a deep cavity 
 — was an improvement on the square, shallow open- 
 ing of an American coal-grate. 
 
 September ItJi. — It appears by the annals of Liver- 
 pool, contained in Gore’s Directory, that in 1076 there 
 was a baronial castle built by Roger de Poictiers on 
 the site of the present St. George’s Church. It was 
 taken down in 1721. The church now stands at one 
 of the busiest points of the principal street of the 
 city. The old Church of St. Nicholas, founded about 
 the time of the Conquest, and more recently rebuilt, 
 stood within a quarter of a mile of the castle. 
 
 In 1150, Birkenhead Priory was founded on the 
 Cheshire side of the Mersey. The monks used to ferry 
 passengers across to Liverpool until 1282, when 
 Woodside Ferry was established, — twopence for a 
 horseman, and a farthing for a foot-passenger. Steam 
 ferry-boats now cross to Birkenhead, Monk’s Ferry, 
 and Woodside every ten minutes ; and I believe there 
 are large hotels at all these places, and many of the 
 business men of Liverpool have residences in them. 
 
 In 1252 a tower was built by Sir John Stanley, 
 which continued to be a castle of defence to the Stan- 
 ley family for many hundred years, and was not finally 
 taken down till 1820, when its site had become the 
 present Water Street, in the densest commercial cen- 
 tre of the city. 
 
 There appear to have been other baronial castles 
 and residences in different parts of the city, as a hall 
 in old Hall Street, built by Sir John de la More, on 
 
446 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 the site of which a counting-house now stands. This 
 knightly family of De la More sometimes supplied 
 mayors to the city, as did the family of the Earls of 
 Derby. 
 
 About 1582, Edward, Earl of Derby, maintained 
 two hundred and fifty citizens of Liverpool, fed sixty 
 aged persons twice a day, and provided twenty seven 
 hundred persons with meat, drink, and money every 
 Good Friday. 
 
 In 1644, Prince Rupert besieged the town for 
 twenty-four days, and finally took it by storm. This 
 was June 26th, and the Parliamentarians, under Sir 
 John Meldrum, repossessed it the following October. 
 
 In 1669, the Mayor of Liverpool kept an inn. 
 
 In 1730, there was only one carriage in town, and 
 no stage-coach came nearer than W arrington, the 
 roads being impassable. 
 
 In 1734, the Earl of Derby gave a great entertain- 
 ment in the tower. 
 
 In 1737, the Mayor was George Norton, a saddler, 
 who frequently took the chair with his leather apron 
 on. His immediate predecessor seems to have been 
 the Earl of Derby, who gave the above-mentioned 
 entertainment during his mayoralty. Where George’s 
 Dock now is, there used to be a battery of fourteen 
 eighteen-pounders for the defence of the town, and the 
 old sport of bull-baiting was carried on in that vicin- 
 ity, close to the Church of St. Nicholas. 
 
 September — On Saturday a young man was 
 found wandering about in West Derby, a suburb of 
 Liverpool, in a state of insanity, and, being taken be- 
 fore a magistrate, he proved to be an American. As 
 he seemed to be in a respectable station of life, the 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 447 
 
 magistrate sent the master of the workhouse to me in 
 order to find out whether I would take the responsi- 
 bility of his expenses, rather than have him put in the 
 workhouse. My clerk went to investigate the mat- 
 ter, and brought me his papers. His name proves 
 
 to be , belonging to , twenty-five years 
 
 of age. One of the papers was a passport from our 
 legation in Naples ; likewise there was a power of at- 
 torney from his mother (who seems to have been mar- 
 ried a second time) to dispose of some property of 
 hers abroad ; a hotel bill, also, of some length, in 
 which were various charges for wine ; and, among 
 other evidences of low funds, a pawnbroker’s receipt 
 for a watch, which he had pledged at five pounds. 
 There was also a ticket for his passage to America, by 
 the screw steamer Andes, which sailed on Wednesday 
 last. The clerk found him to the last degree incom- 
 municative ; and nothing could be discovered from 
 him but what the papers disclosed. There were about 
 a dozen utterly unintelligible notes among the papers, 
 written by himself since his derangement. 
 
 I decided to put him into the insane hospital, where 
 he now accordingly is, and to-morrow (by which time 
 he may be in a more conversable mood) I mean to 
 pay him a visit. 
 
 The clerk tells me that there is now, and has been 
 for three years, an American lady in the Liverpool 
 almshouse, in a state of insanity. She is very accom- 
 plished, especially in music ; but in all this time it has 
 been impossible to find out who she is, or anything 
 about her connections or previous life. She calls her- 
 self Jenny Lind, and as for any other name or idem 
 tity she keeps her own secret. 
 
448 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 September — It appears that Mr. (the 
 
 insane young gentleman) being unable to pay his bill 
 at the inn where he was latterly staying, the landlord 
 had taken possession of his luggage, and satisfied him- 
 self in that way. My clerk, at my request, has taken 
 his watch out of pawn. It proves to be not a very 
 good one, though doubtless worth more than five 
 pounds, for which it was pledged. The Governor of 
 the Lunatic Asylum wrote me yesterday, stating that 
 the patient was in want of a change of clothes, and 
 that, according to his own account, he had left his lug- 
 gage at the American Hotel. After office - hours, I 
 took a cab, and set out, with my clerk, to pay a visit to 
 the Asylum, taking the American Hotel in our way. 
 
 The American Hotel is a small house, not at all 
 such a one as American travellers of any pretension 
 would think of stopping at, but still very respectable, 
 cleanly, and with a neat sitting-room, where the guests 
 might assemble after the American fashion. We 
 asked for the landlady, and anon down she came, a 
 round, rosy, comfortable-looking English dame of fifty 
 or thereabouts. On being asked whether she knew a 
 
 Mr. , she readily responded that he had been 
 
 there, but had left no luggage, having taken it away 
 before paying his bill ; and that she had suspected 
 him of meaning to take his departure without paying 
 her at all. Hereupon she had traced him to the hotel 
 before mentioned, where she had found that he had 
 stayed two nights, — but was then, I think, gone from 
 thence. Afterwards she encountered him again, and, 
 demanding her due, went with him to a pawnbroker’s, 
 where he pledged his watch and paid her. This was 
 about the extent of the landlady’s knowledge of the 
 matter. I liked the woman very well, with her shrewd, 
 good-humored, worldly, kindly disposition. 
 
1853.] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 449 
 
 Then we proceeded to the Lunatic Asylum, to which 
 we were admitted by a porter at the gate. Within 
 doors we found some neat and comely servant-women, 
 one of whom showed us into a handsome parlor, and 
 took my card to the Governor. There was a large 
 bookcase, with a glass front, containing handsomely 
 bound books, many of which, I observed, were of a 
 religious character. In a few minutes the Governor 
 came in, a middle-aged man, tall, and thin for an 
 Englishman, kindly and agreeable enough in aspect, 
 but not with the marked look of a man of force and 
 ability. I should not judge from his conversation that 
 he was an educated man, or that he had any scientific 
 acquaintance with the subject of insanity. 
 
 He said that Mr. was still quite incommuni- 
 
 cative, and not in a very promising state ; that I had 
 perhaps better defer seeing him for a few days ; that 
 it would not be safe, at present, to send him home to 
 America without an attendant, and this was about all. 
 But on returning home I learned from my wife, who 
 had had a call from Mrs. Blodgett, that Mrs. Blodgett 
 
 knew Mr. and his mother, who has recently been 
 
 remarried to a young husband, and is now somewhere 
 in Italy. They seemed to have boarded at Mrs. 
 Blodgett’s house on their way to the Continent, and 
 within a week or two, an acquaintance and pastor of 
 
 Mr. , the Eev. Dr. , had sailed for America. 
 
 If I could only have caught him, I could have trans- 
 ferred the care, expense, and responsibility of the pa- 
 tient to him. The Governor of the Asylum men- 
 tioned, by the way, that Mr. describes himself 
 
 as having been formerly a midshipman in the navy. 
 
 I walked through the St. James’s cemetery yester- 
 
 VOL. VII. 29 
 
450 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 day. It is a very pretty place, dug out of the rock, 
 having formerly, I believe, been a stone - quarry. It 
 is now a deep and spacious valley, with graves and 
 monuments on its level and grassy floor, through 
 which run gravel-paths, and where grows luxuriant 
 shrubbery. On one of the steep sides of the valley, 
 hewn out of the rock, are tombs, rising in tiers, to the 
 height of fifty feet or more; some of them cut di- 
 rectly into the rock with arched portals, and others 
 built with stone. On the other side the bank is of 
 earth, and rises abruptly, quite covered with trees, 
 and looking very pleasant with their green shades. 
 It was a warm and sunny day, and the cemetery really 
 had a most agreeable aspect. I saw several gravestones 
 of Americans ; but what struck me most was one line 
 of an epitaph on an English woman, ‘‘ Here rests in 
 pease a virtuous wife.” The statue of Huskisson 
 stands in the midst of the valley, in a kind of mau- 
 soleum, with a door of plate-glass, through which you 
 look at the dead statesman’s effigy. 
 
 September 22c?. — . . . Some days ago an Ameri- 
 can captain came to the office, and said he had shot 
 one of his men, shortly after sailing from New Or- 
 leans, and while the ship was still in the river. As 
 he described the event, he was in peril of his life from 
 this man, who was an Irishman ; and he fired his pis- 
 tol only when the man was coming upon him, with a 
 knife in one hand, and some other weapon of offence 
 in the other, while he himself was struggling with one 
 or two more of the crew. He was weak at the time, 
 having just recovered from the yellow fever. The 
 shots struck the man in the pit of the stomach, and 
 he lived only about a quarter of an hour. No magis^ 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 451 
 
 / 853 .] 
 
 trate in England has a right to arrest or examine the 
 captain, unless by a warrant from the Secretary of 
 State, on the charge of murder. After his statement 
 to me, the mother of the slain man went to the police 
 officer, and accused him of killing her son. Two or 
 three days since, morever, two of the sailors came be- 
 fore me, and gave their account of the matter ; and it 
 looked very differently from that of the captain. Ao 
 cording to them, the man had no idea of attacking the 
 captain, and was so drunk that he could not keep him- 
 self upright without assistance. One of these two men 
 was actually holding him up when the captain fired 
 two barrels of his pistol, one immediately after the 
 other, and lodged two balls in the pit of his stomach. 
 The man sank down at once, saying, Jack, I am 
 killed,’’ — and died very shortly. Meanwhile the cap- 
 tain drove this man away, under threats of shooting 
 him likewise. Both the seamen described the cap- 
 tain’s conduct, both then and during the whole voy- 
 age, as outrageous, and I do not much doubt that it 
 was so. They gave their evidence like men who 
 wished to tell the truth, and were moved by no more 
 than a natural indignation at the captain’s wrong. 
 
 I did not much like the captain from the first, — a 
 hard, rough man, with little education, and nothing of 
 the gentleman about him, a red face and a loud voice. 
 He seemed a good deal excited, and talked fast and 
 much about the event, but yet not as if it had sunk 
 deeply into him. He observed that he ‘‘ would not 
 have had it happen for a thousand dollars,” that be- 
 ing the amount of detriment which he conceives him- 
 self to suffer by the ineffaceable blood-stain on his 
 hand. In my opinion it is little short of murder, if 
 at all ; but what would be murder on shore is almost 
 
452 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [ 1853 . 
 
 a natural occurrence when done in such a hell on 
 earth as one of these ships, in the first hours of the 
 voyage. The men are then all drunk, — some of them 
 often in delirium tremens ; and the captain feels no 
 safety for his life except in making himself as terri- 
 ble as a fiend. It is the universal testimony that 
 there is a worse set of sailors in these short voyages 
 between Liverpool and America than in any other 
 trade whatever. 
 
 There is no probability that the captain will ever be 
 called to account for this deed. He gave, at the time, 
 his own version of the affair in his log-book ; and this 
 was signed by the entire crew, with the exception of 
 one man, who had hidden himself in the hold in ter- 
 ror of the captain. His mates will sustain his. side of 
 the question ; and none of the sailors would be within 
 reach of the American courts, even should they be 
 sought for. 
 
 October Is^. — On Thursday I went with Mr. Tick- 
 nor to Chester by railway. It is quite an indescrib- 
 able old town, and I feel at last as if I had had a 
 glimpse of old England. The wall encloses a large 
 space within the town, but there are numerous houses 
 and streets not included within its precincts. Some 
 of the principal streets pass under the ancient gate- 
 ways ; and at the side there are flights of steps, giving 
 access to the summit. Around the top of the whole 
 wall, a circuit of about two miles, there runs a walk, 
 well paved with flagstones, and broad enough for three 
 persons to walk abreast. On one side — that tov/ards 
 the country — there is a parapet of red freestone three 
 or four feet high. On the other side there are houses, 
 rising up immediately from the wall, so that they seem 
 
1853 .] 
 
 CHESTER, 
 
 453 
 
 a part of it. The height of it, I suppose, may be 
 thirty or forty feet, and, in some parts, you look down 
 from the parapet into orchards, where there are tall 
 apple-trees, and men on the branches, gathering fruit, 
 and women and children among the grass, filling bags 
 or baskets. There are prospects of the surrounding 
 country among the buildings outside the wall ; at one 
 point, a view of the river Dee, with an old bridge of 
 arches. It is all very strange, very quaint, very curi- 
 ous to see how the town has overflowed its barrier, and 
 how, like many institutions here, the ancient wall still 
 exists, but is turned to quite another purpose than 
 what it was meant for, — so far as it serves any pur- 
 pose at all. There are three or four towers in the 
 course of the circuit ; the most interesting being one 
 from the top of which King Charles the First is said 
 to have seen the rout of his army by the Parliamenta- 
 rians. We ascended the short flight of steps that led 
 up into the tower, where an old man pointed out the 
 site of the battle-field, now thickly studded with build- 
 ings, and told us what we had already learned from the 
 guide-book. After this we went into the cathedral, 
 which I will perhaps describe on some other occasion, 
 when I shall have seen more of it, and to better advan- 
 tage. The cloisters gave us the strongest impression of 
 antiquity ; the stone arches being so worn and black- 
 ened by time. Still an American must always have 
 imagined a better cathedral than this. There were 
 some immense windows of painted glass, but all mod- 
 ern. In the chapter-house we found a coal-fire burn- 
 ing in a grate, and a large heap of old books — the li- 
 brary of the cathedral — in a discreditable state of 
 decay, ^ — mildewed, rotten, neglected for years. The 
 sexton told us that they were to be arranged and bet- 
 
454 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [ 1853 . 
 
 ter ordered. Over the door, inside, hung two faded 
 and tattered banners, being those of the Cheshire regi- 
 ment. 
 
 The most utterly indescribable feature of Chester is 
 the Rows, which every traveller has attempted to de- 
 scribe. At the height of several feet above some of 
 the oldest streets, a walk runs through the front of 
 the houses, which project over it. Back of the walk 
 there are shops ; on the outer side is a space of two 
 or three yards, where the shopmen place their tables, 
 and stands, and show-cases ; overhead, just high enough 
 for persons to stand erect, a ceiling. At frequent in- 
 tervals little narrow passages go winding in among 
 the houses, which all along are closely conjoined, and 
 seem to have no access or exit, except through the 
 shops, or into these narrow passages, where you can 
 touch each side with your elbows, and the top with 
 your hand. We penetrated into one or two of them, 
 and they smelt anciently and disagreeably. At one 
 of the doors stood a pale-looking, but cheerful and 
 good-natured woman, who told us that she had come 
 to that house when first married, twenty-one years be- 
 fore, and had lived there ever since ; and that she felt 
 as if she had been buried through the best years of 
 her life. She allowed us to peep into her kitchen and 
 parlor, — small, dingy, dismal, but yet not wholly des- 
 titute of a home look. She said that she had seen 
 two or three coffins in a day, during cholera times, 
 carried out of that narrow passage into which her 
 door opened. These avenues put me in mind of those 
 which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole 
 makes underground. This fashion of Rows does not 
 appear to be going out ; and, for aught I can see, it 
 may last hundreds of years longer. When a house 
 
1853 .] 
 
 CHESTER, 
 
 455 
 
 becomes so old as to be untenantable, it is rebuilt, and 
 the new one is fashioned like the old, so far as regards 
 the walk running through its front. Many of the 
 shops are very good, and even elegant, and these 
 Rows are the favorite places of business in Chester. 
 Indeed, they have many advantages, the passengers 
 being sheltered from the rain, and there being within 
 the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like 
 to exhibit their wares. 
 
 A large proportion of the edifices in the Rows must 
 be comparatively modern ; but there are some very an- 
 cient ones, with oaken frames visible on the exterior. 
 The Row, passing through these houses, is railed with 
 oak, so old that it has turned black, and grown to be 
 as hard as stone, which it might be mistaken for, if 
 one did not see where names and initials have been 
 cut into it with knives at some by-gone period. Over- 
 head, cross-beams project through the ceiling so low 
 as almost to hit the head. On the front of one of 
 these buildings was the inscription, ‘‘ GOD’S Peovi- 
 DENCE IS MINE INHERITANCE,” said to have been put 
 there by the occupant of the house two hundred years 
 ago, when the plague spared this one house only in 
 the whole city. Not improbably the inscription has 
 operated as a safeguard to prevent the demolition of 
 the house hitherto ; but a shopman of an adjacent 
 dwelling told us that it was soon to be taken down. 
 
 Here and there, about some of the streets through 
 which the Rows do ‘not run, we saw houses of very 
 aged aspect, with steep, peaked gables. The front 
 gable-end was supported on stone pillars, and the side- 
 walk passed beneath. Most of these old houses 
 seemed to be taverns, — the Black Bear, the Green 
 Dragon, and such names. We thought of dining at 
 
456 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 one of them, but, on inspection, they looked rather too 
 dingy and close, and of questionable neatness. So we 
 went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably fared just 
 as badly at much more expense, and where there was 
 a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I 
 suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness 
 because we arrived at the hotel on foot. For my part, 
 I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go 
 again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose 
 there is not a more curious place in the world. 
 
 Mr. Ticknor, who has been staying at Rock Park 
 with us since Tuesday, has steamed away in the Can- 
 ada this morning. His departure seems to make me 
 feel more abroad, more dissevered from my native 
 country, than before. 
 
 October 3c?. — Saturday evening, at six, I went to 
 dine with Mr. Aiken, a wealthy merchant here, to 
 meet two of the sons of Burns. There was a party 
 of ten or twelve, Mr. Aiken and his two daughters in- 
 cluded. The two sons of Burns have both been in the 
 Indian army, and have attained the ranks of Colonel 
 and Major; one having spent thirty, and the other 
 twenty-seven years, in India. They are now old gen- 
 tlemen of sixty and upwards, the elder with a gray 
 head, the younger with a perfectly white one, — rather 
 under than above the middle stature, and with a Brit- 
 ish roundness of figure, — plain, respectable, intelli- 
 gent-looking persons, with quiet banners. I saw no 
 resemblance in either of them to any portrait of their 
 father. After the ladies left the table, I sat next to 
 the Major, the younger of the two, and had a good 
 deal of talk with him. He seemed a very kindly and 
 social man, and was quite ready to speak about his 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LI VERPOOL. 
 
 457 
 
 father, nor was he at all reluctant to let it be seen how 
 much he valued the glory of being descended from the 
 poet. By and by, at Mr. Aiken’s instance, he sang 
 one of Burns’s songs, — the one about “ Annie ” and 
 the “ rigs of barley.” He sings in a perfectly simple 
 style, so that it is little more than a recitative, and yet 
 the effect is very good as to humor, sense, and pathos. 
 After rejoining the ladies, he sang another, ‘‘A posie 
 for my ain dear May,” and likewise A man ’s a man 
 for a’ that.” My admiration of his father, and partly, 
 perhaps, my being an American, gained me some 
 favor with him, and he promised to give me what he 
 considered the best engraving of Burns, and some 
 other remembrance of him. The Major is that son 
 of Burns who spent an evening at Abbotsford with 
 Sir Walter Scott, when, as Lockhart writes, “the 
 children sang the ballads of their sires.” He spoke 
 with vast indignation of a recent edition of his fa- 
 ther’s works by Robert Chambers, in which the latter 
 appears to have wronged the poet by some misstate- 
 ments. ... I liked them both and they liked me, 
 and asked me to go and see them at Cheltenham, 
 where they reside. We broke up at about midnight. 
 
 The members of this dinner-party were of the more 
 liberal tone of thinking here in Liverpool. The Col- 
 onel and Major seemed to be of similar principles; 
 and the eyes of the latter glowed when he sang his fa- 
 ther’s noble verse, “ The rank is but the guinea s^ 
 stamp,” etc. It would have been too pitiable if Burns 
 had left a son who could not feel the spirit of that 
 verse. 
 
 October 8th. — Coming to my office, two or three 
 mornings ago, I found Mrs. . the mother of Mr. 
 
468 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 — , the insane young man of whom I had taken 
 charge. She is a lady of fifty or thereabouts, and not 
 veiy remarkable anyway, nor particularly lady-like. 
 However, she was just come off a rapid journey, hav- 
 ing travelled from Naples, with three small children, 
 without taking rest, since my letter reached her. A 
 son^ of about twenty had come with her to the Con- 
 sulate. She was, of course, infinitely grieved about 
 the young man’s insanity, and had two or three bursts 
 of tears while we talked the matter over. She said 
 he was the hope of her life, — the best, purest, most 
 innocent child that ever was, and wholly free from 
 every kind of vice. . . . But it appears that he had 
 a previous attack of insanity, lasting three months, 
 about three years ago. 
 
 After I had told her all I knew about him, includ- 
 ing my personal observations at a visit a week or two 
 since, we drove in a cab to the Asylum. It must have 
 been a dismal moment to the poor lady, as we entered 
 the gateway through a tall, prison-like wall. Being 
 ushered into the parlor, the Governor soon apj)eared, 
 
 and informed us that Mr. had had a relapse 
 
 within a few days, and was not so well as when I saw 
 him. He complains of unjust confinement, and seems 
 to consider himself, if I rightly understand, under per- 
 secution for political reasons. The Governor, how- 
 ever, proposed to call him down, and I took my leave, 
 feeling that it would be indelicate to be present at his 
 first interview with his mother. So here ended my 
 guardianship of the poor young fellow. 
 
 In the afternoon I called at the Waterloo Hotel, 
 
 where Mrs. was staying, and found her in the 
 
 coffee-room with the children. She had determined 
 ^ This proved to be her new husband. 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 459 
 
 to take a lodging in the vicinity of the Asylum, and 
 was going to remove thither as soon as the children 
 had had something to eat. They seemed to he pleas- 
 ant and well-behaved children, and impressed me more 
 favorably than the mother, whom I suspect to be 
 rather a foolish woman, although her present grief 
 makes her appear in a more respectable light than at 
 other times. She seemed anxious to impress me with 
 the respectability and distinction of her connections in 
 America, and I had observed the same tendency in the 
 insane patient, at my interview with him. However, 
 she has undoubtedly a mother’s love for this poor shat- 
 terbrain, and this may weigh against the folly of her 
 marrying an incongruously youthful second husband, 
 and many other follies. 
 
 This was day before yesterday, and I have heard 
 nothing of her since. The same day I had applica- 
 tions for assistance in two other domestic affairs ; one 
 from an Irishman, naturalized in America, who wished 
 me to get him a passage thither, and to take charge of 
 his wife and family here, at my own private expense, 
 until he could remit funds to carry them across. An- 
 other was from an Irishman, who had a power of at- 
 torney from a countrywoman of his in America, to find 
 and take charge of an infant whom she had left in the 
 Li verpool workhouse, two years ago. I have a great 
 mind to keep a list of all the business I am consulted 
 about and employed in. It would be very curious^ 
 Among other things, all penniless Americans, or pre- 
 tenders to Americanism, look upon me as their banker ; 
 and I could ruin myself any week, if I had not laid 
 down a rule to consider every applicant for assistance 
 an impostor until he prove himself a true and respon- 
 sible man, — which it is very difficult to do. Tester- 
 
460 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 day there limped in a very respectable-looking old man, 
 who described himself as a citizen of Baltimore, who 
 had been on a trip to England and elsewhere, and, 
 being detained longer than he expected, and having 
 had an attack of rheumatism, was now short of funds 
 to pay his passage home, and hoped that I would sup= 
 ply the deficiency. He had quite a plain, homely, 
 though respectable manner, and, for aught I know, 
 was the very honestest man alive ; but as he could pro- 
 duce no kind of proof of his character and responsi- 
 bility, I very quietly explained the impossibility of my 
 helping him. I advised him to try to obtain a passage 
 on board of some Baltimore ship, the master of which 
 might be acquainted with him, or, at all events, take 
 his word for payment, after arrival. This he seemed 
 inclined to do, and took his leave. There was a de- 
 cided aspect of simplicity about this old man, and yet 
 I rather judge him to be an impostor. 
 
 It is easy enough to refuse money to strangers and 
 unknown people, or whenever there may be any ques- 
 tion about identity ; but it will not be so easy when I 
 am asked for money by persons whom I know, but do 
 not like to trust. They shall meet the eternal ‘‘No,” 
 however. 
 
 October 13^A. — In Ormerod’s history of Chester it 
 is mentioned that Randal, Earl of Chester, having 
 made an inroad into Wales about 1225, the Welsh- 
 men gathered in mass against him, and drove him into 
 the castle of Nothelert in Flintshire. The Earl sent 
 for succor to the Constable of Chester, Roger Lacy, 
 surnamed “Hell,” on account of his fierceness. It 
 was then fair-time at Chester, and the constable col- 
 lected a miscellaneous rabble of fiddlers, players, cob^ 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 461 
 
 biers, tailors, and all manner of debauched people, and 
 led them to the relief of the Earl. At sight of this 
 strange army the W elshmen fled ; and forever after 
 the Earl assigned to the constable of Chester power 
 over all fiddlers, shoemakers, etCo, within the bounds 
 of Cheshire. The constable retained for himself and 
 his heirs the control of the shoemakers ; and made 
 over to his own steward, Dutton, that of the fiddlers 
 and players, and for many hundreds of years after- 
 wards the Duttons of Dutton retained the power. On 
 midsummer-day, they used to ride through Chester, 
 attended by all the minstrels playing on their several 
 instruments, to the Church of St. John, and there re- 
 new their licenses. It is a good theme for a legend. 
 Sir Peter Leycester, writing in Charles the Second’s 
 time, copies the Latin deed from the constable to Dut- 
 ton ; rightly translated, it seems to mean “the mag- 
 isterial power over all the lewd people ... in the 
 whole of Cheshire,” but the custom grew into what is 
 above stated. In the time of Henry VII., the Dut- 
 tons claimed, by prescriptive right, that the Cheshire 
 minstrels should deliver them, at the feast of St. J ohn, 
 four bottles of wine and a lance, and that each sepa- 
 rate minstrel should pay fourpence halfpenny. . . . 
 
 Another account says Ralph Dutton was the consta- 
 ble’s son-in-law, and “ a lusty youth.” 
 
 October 19^4. — Coming to the ferry this morning 
 a few minutes before the boat arrived from town, I 
 went into the ferry-house, a small stone edifice, and 
 found there an Irishman, his wife and three children, 
 the oldest eight or nine years old, and all girls. There 
 was a good fire burning in the room, and the family 
 was clustered round it, apparently enjoying the warmth 
 
462 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-HOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 very much ; but when I went in both husband and 
 wife very hospitably asked me to come to the fire, al- 
 though there was not more than room at it for their 
 own party. I declined, on the plea that I was warm 
 enough, and then the woman said that they were very 
 cold, having been long on the road. The man was 
 gray-haired and gray-bearded, clad in an old drab 
 overcoat, and laden with a huge bag, which seemed 
 to contain bedclothing or something of the kind. The 
 woman was pale, with a thin, anxious, wrinkled face, 
 but with a good and kind expression. The children 
 were quite pretty, with delicate faces, and a look of 
 patience and endurance in them, but yet as if they had 
 suffered as little as they possibly could. The two elder 
 were cuddled up close to the father, the youngest, 
 about four years old, sat in its mother’s lap, and she 
 had taken off its small shoes and stockings, and was 
 warming its feet at the fire. Their little voices had a 
 sweet and kindly sound as they talked in low tones 
 to their parents and one another. They all looked 
 very shabby, and yet had a decency about them ; and 
 it was touching to see how they made themselves at 
 home at this casual fireside, and got all the comfort 
 they could out of the circumstances. By and by two 
 or three market-women came in and looked pleasantly 
 at them, and said a word or two to the children. 
 
 They did not beg of me, as I supposed they would ; 
 but after looking at them awhile, I pulled out a piece 
 of silver, and handed it to one of the little girls. She 
 took it very readily, as if she partly expected it, and 
 then the father and mother thanked me, and said they 
 had been travelling a long distance, and had nothing 
 to subsist upon, except what they picked up on the 
 road. They found it impossible to live in England, 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 463 
 
 and were now on their way to Liverpool, hoping to get 
 a passage back to Ireland, where, I suppose, extreme 
 poverty is rather better off than here. I heard the 
 little girl say that she should buy bread with the 
 money. There is not much that can be caught in the 
 description of this scene ; but it made me under= 
 stand, better than before, how poor people feel, wan- 
 dering about in such destitute circumstances, and how 
 they suffer, and yet how they have a life not quite 
 miserable, after all, and how family love goes along 
 with them. Soon the boat arrived at the pier, and we 
 all went on board ; and as I sat in the cabin, looking 
 up through a broken pane in the skylight, I saw the 
 woman’s thin face, with its anxious, motherly aspect ; 
 and the youngest child in her arms, shrinking from 
 the chill wind, but yet not impatiently ; and the eldest 
 of the girls standing close by with her expression of 
 childish endurance, but yet so bright and intelligent 
 that it would evidently take but a few days to make a 
 happy and playful child of her. I got into the inte- 
 rior of this poor family, and understand, through sym- 
 pathy, more of them than I can tell. I am getting to 
 possess some of the English indifference as to beggars 
 and poor people ; but still, whenever I come face to 
 face with them, and have any intercourse, it seems as 
 if they ought to be the better for me. I wish, instead 
 of sixpence, I had given the poor family ten shillings, 
 and denied it to a begging subscriptionist, who has 
 just fleeced me to that amount. How silly a man feels 
 in this latter predicament ! 
 
 I have had a good many visitors at the Consulate 
 from the United States within a short time, — among 
 others, Mr. D. D. Barnard, our late minister to Ber- 
 lin, returning homeward to-day by the Arctic ; and 
 
464 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1853 . 
 
 Mr. Sickles, Secretary of Legation to London, a 
 fine-looking, intelligent, gentlemanly young man. . . . 
 With him came Judge Douglas, the chosen man of 
 Young America. He is very short, extremely short, 
 but has an uncommonly good head, and uncommon 
 dignity without seeming to aim at it, being free and 
 simple in manners. I judge him to be a very able 
 man, with the Western sociability and free-fellowship. 
 Generally I see no reason to be ashamed of my coun- 
 trymen who come out here in public position, or other- 
 wise assuming the rank of gentlemen. 
 
 October 20^A. — One sees incidents in the streets 
 here, occasionally, which could not be seen in an Amer- 
 ican city. For instance, a week or two since, I was 
 passing a quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, when, all 
 of a sudden, without any apparent provocation, he up- 
 lifted his stick, and struck a black-gowned boy a smart 
 blow on the shoulders. The boy looked at him wofully 
 and resentfully, but said nothing, nor can I imagine 
 why the thing was done. In Tythebarne Street to-day 
 I saw a woman suddenly assault a man, clutch at his 
 hair, and cuff him about the ears. The man, who was 
 of decent aspect enough, immediately took to his heels, 
 full speed, and the woman ran after him, and, as far 
 as I could discern the pair, the chase continued. 
 
 October 22c?. — At a dinner-party at Mr. Holland’s 
 last evening, a gentleman, in instance of Charles Dick- 
 ens’s unweariability, said that during some theatrical 
 performances in Liverpool he acted in play and farce, 
 spent the rest of the night making speeches, feasting, 
 and drinking at table, and ended at seven o’clock in 
 the morning by jumping leap-frog over the backs of 
 the whole company. 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 465 
 
 In Moore’s diary he mentions a beautiful Guernsey 
 lily having been given to his wife, and says that the 
 flower was originally from Guernsey. A ship from 
 there had been wrecked on the coast of Japan, having 
 many of the lilies on board, and the next year the 
 flowers appeared, — springing up, I suppose, on the 
 wave-beaten strand. 
 
 Wishing to send a letter to a dead man, who may 
 be supposed to have gone to Tophet, — throw it into 
 the fire. 
 
 Sir Arthur Aston had his brains beaten out with 
 his own wooden leg, at the storming of Tredagh, in 
 Ireland, by Cromwell. 
 
 In the county of Cheshire, many centuries ago, 
 there lived a half-idiot, named Nixon, who had the 
 gift of prophecy, and made many predictions about 
 places, families, and important public events, since 
 fulfilled. He seems to have fallen into fits of insensh 
 bility previous to uttering his prophecies. 
 
 The family of Mainwaring (pronounced Manner- 
 ing), of Bromborough, had an ass’s head for a crest. 
 
 Richard Dawson, being sick of the plague, and 
 perceiving he must die, rose out of his bed and made 
 his grave, and caused his nephew to cast straw into the 
 grave, which was not far from the house, and went and 
 laid him down in the said grave, and caused clothes 
 to be laid upon him, and so departed out of this 
 world. This he did because he was a strong man, and 
 heavier than his said nephew and a serving- wench were 
 
 VOL. VII. 30 
 
466 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 able to bury. He died about the 24th of August. 
 Thus was I credibly told he did, 1625.” This was in 
 the township of Malpas, recorded in the parish register. 
 
 At Bickley Hall, taken down a few years ago, used 
 to be shown the room where the body of the Earl of 
 Leicester was laid for a whole twelvemonth, — 1659 
 to 1660, — he having been kept unburied all that 
 time, owing to a dispute which of his heirs should pay 
 his funeral expenses. 
 
 November bth. — We all, together with Mr. Squa- 
 rey, went to Chester last Sunday, and attended the 
 cathedral service. A great deal of ceremony, and not 
 unimposing, but rather tedious before it was finished, 
 — occupying two hours or more. The Bishop was 
 present, but did nothing except to pronounce the ben- 
 ediction. In America the sermon is the principal 
 thing ; but here all this magnificent ceremonial of 
 prayer and chanted responses and psalms and anthems 
 was the setting to a short, meagre discourse, which 
 would not have been considered of any account among 
 the elaborate intellectual efforts of New England min- 
 isters. While this was going on, the light came 
 through the stained glass windows and fell upon the 
 congregation, tingeing them with crimson. After ser- 
 vice we wandered about the aisles, and looked at the 
 tombs and monuments, — the oldest of which was that 
 of some nameless abbot, with a staff and mitre half 
 obliterated from his tomb, which was under a shallow 
 arch on one side of the cathedral. There were also 
 marbles on the walls, and lettered stones in the pave- 
 ment under our feet ; but chiefly, if not entirely, of 
 modern date. We lunched at the Royal Hotel, and 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 467 
 
 then walked round the city walls, also crossing the 
 bridge of one great arch over the Dee, and penetrating 
 as far into W ales as the entrance of the Marquis of 
 Westminster’s Park at Eaton. It was, I think, the 
 most lovely day as regards weather that I have seen in 
 England. 
 
 I passed, to-day, a man chanting a ballad in a street 
 about a recent murder, in a voice that had innumer- 
 able cracks in it, and was most lugubrious. The other 
 day I saw a man who was reading in a loud voice what 
 seemed to be an account of the late riots and loss of 
 life in Wigan. He walked slowly along the street as 
 he read, surrounded by a small crowd of men, women, 
 and children ; and close by his elbow stalked a police- 
 man, as if guarding against a disturbance. 
 
 November 14^A. — There is a heavy dun fog on the 
 river and over the city to-day, the very gloomiest at- 
 mosphere that ever I was acquainted with. On the 
 river the steamboats strike gongs or ring bells to give 
 warning of their approach. There are lamps burning 
 in the counting-rooms and lobbies of the warehouses, 
 and they gleam distinctly through the windows. 
 
 The other day, at the entrance of the market-house, 
 I saw a woman sitting in a small hand-wagon, appar- 
 ently for the purpose of receiving alms. There was 
 uo attendant at hand ; but 1 noticed that one or two 
 persons who passed by seemed to inquire whether she 
 wished her wagon to be moved. Perhaps this is her 
 mode of making progress about the city, by the volun- 
 tary aid of boys and other people who help to drag 
 her. There is something in this — I don’t yet well 
 know what — that has impressed me, as if I could 
 
468 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 make a romance out of the idea of a woman living in 
 this manner a public life, and moving about by such 
 means. 
 
 Novemher — Mr. H. A. B told me of his 
 
 friend Mr. (who was formerly attache to the 
 
 British Legation at Washington, and whom I saw at 
 Concord), that his father, a clergyman, married a 
 second wife. After the marriage, the noise of a cof- 
 fin being nightly carried down the stairs was heard 
 in the parsonage. It could be distinguished when the 
 coffin reached a certain broad landing and rested 
 on it. Finally, his father had to remove to another 
 
 residence. Besides this, Mr. had had another 
 
 ghostly experience, — having seen a dim apparition of 
 an uncle at the precise instant when the latter died in 
 a distant place. The attache is a credible and honor- 
 able fellow, and talks of these matters as if he posi- 
 tively believed them. But Ghostland lies beyond the 
 jurisdiction of veracity. 
 
 In a garden near Chester, in taking down a sum- 
 mer-house, a tomb was discovered beneath it, with a 
 Latin inscription to the memory of an old doctor of 
 medicine, William Bentley, who had owned the place 
 long ago, and died in 1680. And his dust and bones 
 had lain beneath all the merry times in the summer- 
 house. 
 
 Decemher — It is curious to observe how many 
 methods people put in practice here to pick up a half- 
 penny. Yesterday I saw a man standing bareheaded 
 and barelegged in the mud and misty weather, playing 
 on a fife, in hopes to get a circle of auditors. Nobody, 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 469 
 
 1853 .] 
 
 however, seemed to take any notice. Very often a 
 whole band of musicians will strike up, — passing a 
 hat round after playing a tune or two. On board the 
 ferry, until the coldest weather began, there were al- 
 ways some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an 
 old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle, per- 
 forming during the passage, and, as the boat neared 
 the shore, sending round one of their number to gather 
 contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They 
 were a very shabby set, and must have made a very 
 scanty living at best. Sometimes it was a boy with 
 an accordion, and his sister, a smart little girl, with a 
 timbrel, — which, being so shattered that she could 
 not play on it, she used only to collect halfpence in. 
 Ballad - singers, or rather chanters or croakers, are 
 often to be met with in the streets, but hand-organ 
 players are not more frequent than in our cities. 
 
 I still observe little girls and other children bare- 
 legged and barefooted on the wet sidewalks. There 
 certainly never was anything so dismal as the Novem- 
 ber weather has been ; never any real sunshine ; al- 
 most always a mist ; sometimes a dense fog, like 
 slightly rarefied wool, pervading the atmosphere. 
 
 An epitaph on a person buried on a hill -side in 
 Cheshire, together with some others, supposed to have 
 died of the plague, and therefore not admitted into 
 the churchyards : — 
 
 “ Think it not strange our bones ly here, 
 
 Thine may ly thou knowst not where.” 
 
 Elizabeth Hampson. 
 
 These graves were near the remains of two rude stone 
 crosses, the purpose of which was not certainly known, 
 although they were supposed to be boundary marks. 
 
470 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1853 . 
 
 Probably, as the plague-corpses were debarred from 
 sanctified ground, the vicinity of these crosses was 
 chosen as having a sort of sanctity. 
 
 Bang beggar,” — an old Cheshire term for a parish 
 beadle. 
 
 Hawthorne Hal], Cheshire, Macclesfield Hundred, 
 Parish of Wilmslow, and within the hamlet of Morley. 
 It was vested at an early period in the Lathoms of 
 Irlam, Lancaster County, and passed through the 
 Leighs to the Pages of Earlshaw. Thomas Leigh 
 Page sold it to Mr. Ralph Bower of Wilmslow, whose 
 children owned it in 1817. The Leighs built a chan- 
 cel in the church of Wilmslow, where some of them 
 are buried, their arms painted in the windows. The 
 hall is an ‘‘ ancient, respectable mansion of brick.” 
 
 December 2c?. — Yesterday, a chill, misty December 
 day, yet I saw a woman barefooted in the street, not to 
 speak of children. 
 
 Cold and uncertain as the weather is, there is still a 
 great deal of small trade carried on in the open air. 
 Women and men sit in the streets with a stock of 
 combs and such small things to sell, the women knit- 
 ting as if they sat by a fireside. Cheap crockery is 
 laid out in the street, so far out that without any great 
 deviation from the regular carriage - track a wheel 
 might pass straight through it. Stalls of apples are 
 innumerable, but the apples are not fit for a pig. In 
 some streets herrings are very abundant, laid out on 
 boards. Coals seem to be for sale by the wheelbar- 
 rowful. Here and there you see children with some 
 small article for sale, — as, for instance, a girl with 
 
1858 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 471 
 
 two linen caps. A somewhat overladen cart of coal 
 was passing along and some small quantity of the coal 
 fell off ; no sooner had the wheels passed than several 
 women and children gathered to the spot, like hens 
 and chickens round a handful of corn, and picked it 
 up in their aprons. We have nothing similar to these 
 street-women in our country. 
 
 December lOth. — I don’t know any place that 
 brings all classes into contiguity on equal ground so 
 completely as the waiting-room at Rock Ferry on 
 these frosty days. The room is not more than eight 
 feet square, with walls of stone, and wooden benches 
 ranged round them, and an open stove in one corner, 
 generally well furnished with coal. It is almost al- 
 ways crowded, and I rather suspect that many per- 
 sons who have no fireside elsewhere creep in here and 
 spend the most comfortable part of their day. 
 
 This morning, when I looked into the room, there 
 were one or two gentlemen and other respectable per- 
 sons ; but in the best place, close to the fire, and 
 crouching almost into it, was an elderly beggar, with 
 the raggedest of overcoats, two great rents in the 
 shoulders of it disclosing the dingy lining, all be- 
 patched with various stuff covered with dirt, and on 
 his shoes and trousers the mud of an interminable pil- 
 grimage. Owing to the posture in which he sat, I 
 could not see his face, but only the battered crown 
 and rim of the very shabbiest hat that ever was worn. 
 Regardless of the presence of women (which, indeed, 
 Englishmen seldom do regard when they wish to 
 smoke), he was smoking a pipe of vile tobacco; but, 
 after all, this was fortunate, because the man himself 
 was not personally fragrant. He was terribly squalid. 
 
472 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 — terribly ; and when I had a glimpse of his face, it 
 well befitted the rest of his development, — grizzled, 
 wrinkled, weather-beaten, yet sallow, and down-look- 
 ing, with a watchful kind of eye turning upon every- 
 body and everything, meeting the glances of other peo- 
 ple rather boldly, yet soon shrinking away ; a long 
 thin nose, a gray beard of a week’s growth ; hair not 
 much mixed with gray, but rusty and lifeless; — a 
 miserable object ; but it was curious to see how" he was 
 not ashamed of himself, but seemed to feel that he was 
 one of the estates of the kingdom, and had as much 
 right to live as other men. He did just as he pleased, 
 took the best place by the fire, nor would have cared 
 though a nobleman were forced to stand aside for him. 
 When the steamer’s bell rang, he shouldered a large 
 and heavy pack, like a pilgrim with his burden of sin, 
 but certainly journeying to hell instead of heaven. On 
 board he looked round for the best position, at first 
 stationing himself near the boiler-pipe; but, finding 
 the deck damp underfoot, he went to the cabin-door, 
 and took his stand on the stairs, protected from the 
 wind, but very incommodiously placed for those who 
 wished to pass. All this was done without any bra- 
 vado or forced impudence, but in the most quiet way, 
 merely because he was seeking his own comfort, and 
 considered that he had a right to seek it. It was an 
 Englishman’s spirit ; but in our country, I imagine, a 
 beggar considers himself a kind of outlaw, and would 
 hardly assume the privileges of a man in any place 
 of public resort. Here beggary is a system, and beg- 
 gars are a numerous class, and make themselves, in a 
 certain way, respected as such. Nobody evinced the 
 slightest disapprobation of the man’s proceedings. In 
 America, I think, we should see many aristocratic airs 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 473 
 
 on such provocation, and probably the ferry people 
 would there have rudely thrust the beggar aside ; giv- 
 ing him a shilling, however, which no Englishman 
 would ever think of doing. There would also have 
 been a great deal of fun made of his squalid and rag- 
 ged figure ; whereas nobody smiled at him this morn- 
 ing, nor in any way showed the slightest disrespect. 
 This is good ; but it is the result of a state of things 
 by no means good. For many days there has been a 
 great deal of fog on the river, and the boats have 
 groped their way along, continually striking their 
 bells, while, on all sides, there are responses of bell 
 and gong ; and the vessels at anchor look shadow-like 
 as we glide past them, and the master of one steamer 
 shouts a warning to the master of another which he 
 meets. The Englishmen, who hate to run any risk 
 without an equivalent object, show a good deal of cau- 
 tion and timidity on these foggy days. 
 
 December — Chill, frosty weather ; such an at- 
 mosphere as forebodes snow in New England, and 
 there has been a little here. Yet I saw a barefooted 
 young woman yesterday. The feet of these poor crea- 
 tures have exactly the red complexion of their hands, 
 acquired by constant exposure to the cold air. 
 
 At the ferry-room, this morning, was a small, thin, 
 anxious-looking woman, with a bundle, seeming in 
 rather poor circumstances, but decently dressed, and 
 eying other women, I thought, with an expression of 
 slight ill-will and distrust ; also an elderly, stout, gray- 
 haired woman, of respectable aspect, and two young 
 lady-like persons, quite pretty, one of whom was read- 
 ing a shilling volume of James’s ‘‘Arabella Stuart.” 
 They talked to one another with that up-and-down in- 
 
474 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1853 . 
 
 tonation which English ladies practise, and which 
 strikes an unaccustomed ear as rather affected, espe- 
 cially in women of size and mass. It is very differ- 
 ent from an American lady’s mode of talking : there 
 is the difference between color and no color ; the tone 
 variegates it. One of these young ladies spoke to me, 
 making some remark about the weather, — the first in- 
 stance I have met with of a gentlewoman’s speaking 
 to an unintroduced gentleman. Besides these, a mid- 
 dle-aged man of the lower class, and also a gentleman’s 
 out-door servant, clad in a drab great-coat, corduroy 
 breeches, and drab cloth gaiters buttoned from the 
 knee to the ankle. He complained to the other man 
 of the cold weather ; said that a glass of whiskey, every 
 half-hour, would keep a man comfortable; and, acci- 
 dentally hitting his coarse foot against one of the young 
 lady’s feet, said, ‘‘ Beg pardon, ma’am,” — which she 
 acknowledged with a slight movement of the head. 
 Somehow or other, different classes seem to encounter 
 one another in an easier manner than with us ; the 
 shock is less palpable. I suppose the reason is that 
 the distinctions are real, and therefore need not be 
 continually asserted. 
 
 Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great 
 deal, by way of letting off their steam. 
 
 On board the Rock Ferry steamer, a gentleman com- 
 ing into the cabin, a voice addresses him from a dark 
 corner, How do you do, sir ? ” — “ Speak again ! ” says 
 the gentleman. No answer from the dark corner ; and 
 the gentleman repeats, “ Speak again ! ” The speaker 
 now comes out of the dark corner, and sits down in a 
 place where he can be seen. Ah ! ” cries the gentle- 
 
1853.1 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 475 
 
 man, very well, I thank you. How do you do ? 1 
 
 did not recognize your voice.” Observable, the Eng« 
 lish caution, shown in the gentleman’s not vouchsafing 
 to say, ‘‘Very well, thank you!” till he knew his maiio 
 
 What was the after life of the young man, whom 
 Jesus, looking on, “ loved,” and bade him sell all that 
 he had, and give to the poor, and take up his cross and 
 follow him? Something very deep and beautiful might 
 be made out of this. 
 
 December 31s^. — Among the beggars of Liverpool, 
 the hardest to encounter is a man without any legs, 
 and, if I mistake not, likewise deficient in arms. You 
 see him before you all at once, as if he had sprouted 
 half-way out of the earth, and would sink down and 
 reappear in some other place the moment he has done 
 with you. His countenance is large, fresh, and very 
 intelligent ; but his great power lies in his fixed gaze, 
 which is inconceivably difficult to bear. He never once 
 removes his eye from you till you are quite past his 
 range ; and you feel it all the same, although you do 
 not meet his glance. He is perfectly respectful ; but 
 the intentness and directness of his silent appeal is far 
 worse than any impudence. In fact, it is the very 
 flower of impudence. I would rather go a mile about 
 than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by him, 
 and yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great 
 force in the man to produce such an effect. There is 
 nothing of the customary squalidness of beggary about 
 him, but remarkable trimness and cleanliness. A girl 
 of twenty or thereabouts, who vagabondizes about the 
 city on her hands and knees, possesses, to a consider* 
 able degree, the same characteristics. I think they hit 
 
476 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 their victims the more effectually from being below the 
 common level of vision. 
 
 January 3c?, 1854. — Night before last there was a 
 fall of snow, about three or four inches, and, following 
 it, a pretty hard frost. On the river, the vessels at 
 anchor showed the snow along their yards, and on 
 every ledge where it could lie. A blue sky and sun- 
 shine overhead, and apparently a clear atmosphere 
 close at hand ; but in the distance a mistiness became 
 perceptible, obscuring the shores of the river, and mak- 
 ing the vessels look dim and uncertain. The steamers 
 were ploughing along, smoking their pipes through the 
 frosty air. On the landing stage and in the streets, 
 hard-trodden snow, looking more like my New Eng- 
 land home than anything I have yet seen. Last night 
 the thermometer fell as low as 13°, nor probably is it 
 above 20° to-day. No such frost has been known in 
 England these forty years ! and Mr. Wilding tells me 
 that he never saw so much snow before. 
 
 January Qth. — I saw, yesterday, stopping at a cab- 
 inet-maker’s shop in Church Street, a coach with four 
 beautiful white horses, and a postilion on each near- 
 horse ; behind, in the dicky, a footman ; and on the 
 box a coachman, all dressed in livery. The coach-panel 
 bore a coat of arms with a coronet, and I presume it 
 must have been the equipage of the Earl of Derby, 
 A crowd of people stood round, gazing at the coach 
 and horses ; and when any of them spoke, it was in a 
 lower tone than usual. I doubt not they all had a kind 
 of enjoyment of the spectacle, for these English are 
 strangely proud of having a class above them. 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 477 
 
 Every Englishman runs to “ The Times ” with his 
 little grievance, as a child runs to his mother. 
 
 I was sent for to the police court the other morning, 
 in the case of an American sailor accused of robbing 
 a shipmate at sea. A large room, with a great coal- 
 fire burning on one side, and above it, the portrait of 
 Mr. Rushton, deceased, a magistrate of many years’ 
 continuance. A long table, with chairs, and a wit- 
 ness-box. One of the borough magistrates, a merchant 
 of the city, sat at the head of the table, with paper and 
 pen and ink before him ; but the real judge was the 
 clerk of the court, whose professional knowledge and 
 experience governed all the proceedings. In the short 
 time while I was waiting, two cases were tried, in the 
 first of which the prisoner was discharged. The sec- 
 ond case was of a woman, — a thin, sallow, hard-look- 
 ing, careworn, rather young woman, — for stealing a 
 pair of slippers out of a shop. The trial occupied five 
 minutes or less, and she was sentenced to twenty-one 
 days’ imprisonment, — whereupon, without speaking, 
 she looked up wildly first into one policeman’s face, 
 then into another’s, at the same time wringing her 
 hands with no theatric gesture, but because her tor- 
 ment took this outward shape, — and was led away. 
 The Yankee sailor was then brought up, — an intelli- 
 gent, but ruffian-like fellow, — and as the case was out 
 of the jurisdiction of the English magistrates, and as 
 it was not worth while to get him sent over to Amer- 
 ica for trial, he was forthwith discharged. He stole 
 a comforter. 
 
 If mankind were all intellect, they would be con- 
 tinually changing, so that one age would be entirely 
 
478 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, 
 which remains the same in all ages ; so that common- 
 places of a thousand years’ standing are as effective as 
 ever. 
 
 Monday.^ Fehricary 20^A. — At the police court on 
 Saturday, I attended the case of the second mate and 
 four seamen of the John and Albert, for assaulting, 
 beating, and stabbing the chief mate. The chief mate 
 has been in the hospital ever since the assault, and 
 was l^rought into the coirrt to-day to give evidence, — 
 a man of thirty, black hair, black eyes, a dark com- 
 plexion, disagreeable expression ; sallow, emaciated, 
 feeble, apparently in pain, one arm disabled. He sat 
 bent and drawn upward, and had evidently been se- 
 verely hurt, and was not yet fit to be out of bed. He 
 had some brandy-and-water to enable him to sustain 
 himself. He gave his evidence very clearly, beginning 
 (sailor-like) with telling in what quarter the wind was 
 at the time of the assault, and which sail was taken 
 in. His testimony bore on one man only, at whom he 
 cast a vindictive look ; but I think he told the truth 
 as far as he knew and remembered it. Of the prison- 
 ers the second mate was a mere youth, with long, 
 sandy hair, and an intelligent and not unprepossessing 
 face, dressed as neatly as a three or four weeks’ cap- 
 ture, with small or no means, could well allow, in a 
 frock-coat, and with clean linen, — the only linen or 
 cotton shirt in the company. The other four were 
 rude, brutish sailors, in flannel or red-baize shirts. 
 Three of them appeared to give themselves little con- 
 cern ; but the fourth, a red-haired and red-bearded 
 man, Paraman, by name, — evidently felt the press- 
 ure of the case upon himself. He was the one whom 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 479 
 
 the mate swore to have given him the first blow ; and 
 there was other evidence of his having been stabbed 
 with a knife. The captain of the ship, the pilot, the 
 cook, and the steward, all gave their evidence ; and the 
 general bearing of it was, that the chief mate had a 
 devilish temper, and had misused the second mate and 
 crew, — that the four seamen had attacked him, and 
 that Paraman had stabbed him ; while all but the stew- 
 ard concurred in saying that the second mate had taken 
 no part in the affray. The steward, however, swore to 
 having seen him strike the chief mate with a wooden 
 marline-spike, which was broken by the blow. The 
 magistrate dismissed all but Paraman, whom I am to 
 send to America for trial. In my opinion the chief 
 mate got pretty nearly what he deserved, under the 
 code of natural justice. While business was going for- 
 ward, the magistrate, Mr. Mansfield, talked about a 
 fancy ball at which he had been present the evening 
 before, and of other matters grave and gay. It was 
 very informal ; we sat at the table, or stood with our 
 backs to the fire ; policemen came and went ; wit- 
 nesses were sworn on the greasiest copy of the Gos- 
 pels I ever saw, polluted by hundreds and thousands 
 of perjured kisses ; and for hours the prisoners were 
 kept standing at the foot of the table, interested to the 
 full extent of their capacity, while all others were in- 
 different. At the close of the case, the police officers 
 and witnesses applied to me about their expenses. 
 
 Yesterday I took a walk with my wife and two chil- 
 dren to Bebbington Church. A beautifully sunny 
 morning. My wife and U. attended church, J. and I 
 continued our walk. When we were at a little dis- 
 tance from the church, the bells suddenly chimed out 
 ivith a most cheerful sound, and sunny as the morning. 
 
480 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 It is a pity we have no chimes of bells, to give the 
 churchward summons, at home. People were stand- 
 ing about the ancient church-porch and among the 
 tombstones. In the course of our walk, we passed 
 many old thatched cottages, built of stone, and with 
 what looked like a cow-house or pigsty at one end, 
 making part of the cottage ; also an old stone farm- 
 house, which may have been a residence of gentility 
 in its day. W e passed, too, a small Methodist chapel, 
 making one of a row of low brick edifices. There was 
 a sound of prayer within. I never saw a more unbeau- 
 tiful place of worship ; and it had not even a separate 
 existence for itself, the adjoining tenement being an 
 alehouse. 
 
 The grass along the wayside was green, with a few 
 daisies. There was green holly in the hedges, and we 
 passed through a wood, up some of the tree-trunks of 
 which ran clustering ivy. 
 
 February 23^?. — There came to see me the other 
 day a young gentleman with a mustache and a blue 
 cloak, who announced himself as William Allingham, 
 and handed me a copy of his poems, a thin volume, 
 with paper covers, published by Routledge. I thought 
 I remembered hearing his name, but had never seen 
 any of his works. His face was intelligent, dark, 
 pleasing, and not at all John-Bullish. He said that 
 he had been employed in the Customs in Ireland, and 
 was now going to London to live by literature, — to 
 be connected with some newspaper, I imagine. He 
 had been in London before, and was acquainted with 
 some of the principal literary people, — among others, 
 Tennyson and Carlyle. He seemed to have been on 
 tather intimate terms with Tennyson. . , . We talked 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 481 
 
 1854.] 
 
 awhile in my dingy and dusky Consulate^ and he then 
 took leav^e. His manners are good, and he appears to 
 possess independence of mind. . . . 
 
 Yesterday I saw a British regiment march down to 
 George’s Pier, to embark in the Niagara for Malta. 
 The troops had nothing very remarkable about them ; 
 but the thousands of ragged and squalid wretches, who 
 thronged the pier and streets to gaze on them, were 
 what I had not seen before in such masses. This was 
 the first populace I ever beheld ; for even the Irish, on 
 the other side of the water, acquire a respectability of 
 aspect. John Bull is going with his whole heart into 
 the Turkish war. He is very foolish. Whatever the 
 Czar may propose to himself, it is for the interesli of 
 democracy that he should not be easily put down. The 
 regiment, on its way to embark, carried the Queen’s 
 colors, and, side by side with them, the banner of the 
 28th, — - yellow, with the names of the Peninsular and 
 other battles in which it had been engaged inscribed 
 on it in a double column. It is a very distinguished 
 regiment ; and Mr. Henry Bright mentioned, as one 
 of its distinctions, that Washington had formerly been 
 an officer in it. I never heard of this. 
 
 February 21 th. — We walked to Woodside in the 
 pleasant forenoon, and thence crossed to Liverpool. 
 On our way to Woodside, we saw the remains of the 
 old Birkenhead Priory, built of the common red free- 
 stone, much time-worn, with ivy creeping over it, and 
 birds evidently at home in its old crevices. These 
 ruins are pretty extensive, and seem to be the remains 
 of a quadrangle. A handsome modern church, like- 
 wise of the same red freestone, has been built on part 
 
 VOL. VII. 31 
 
482 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 of the site occupied by the Priory ; and the organ was 
 sounding within while we walked about the premises. 
 On some of the ancient arches, there were grotesquely 
 carved stone faces. The old w^alls have been suffi- 
 ciently restored to make them secure, without destroy- 
 ing their venerable aspect. It is a very interesting 
 spot ; and so much the more so because a modern 
 town, with its brick and stone houses, its flags and 
 pavements, has sprung up about the ruins, which were 
 new a thousand years ago. The station of the Ches- 
 ter railway is within a hundred yards. Formerly the 
 Monks of this Priory kept the only ferry that then 
 existed on the Mersey. 
 
 % , . . . • . . • . 
 
 At a dinner at Mr. Bramley Moore’s a little while 
 ago, we had a prairie-hen from the West of America. 
 It was a very delicate bird, and a gentleman carved it 
 most skilfully to a dozen guests, and had still a second 
 slice to offer to them. 
 
 Aboard the ferry-boat, yesterday, there was a labor- 
 ing man eating oysters. He took them one by one 
 from his pocket in interminable succession, opened 
 them with his jack-knife, swallowed each one, threw 
 the shell overboard, and then sought for another. Hav- 
 ing concluded his meal, he took out a clay tobacco- 
 pipe, filled it, lighted it with a match, and smoked it, 
 — all this while the other passengers were looking at 
 him, and with a perfect coolness and independence, 
 such as no single man can ever feel in America. Here 
 a man does not seem to consider what other people 
 will think of his conduct, but only whether it suits his 
 own convenience to do so and so. It may be the better 
 way. 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 483 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 A French military man, a veteran of all Napoleon’s 
 wars, is now living, with a false leg and arm, both 
 movable by springs, false teeth, a false eye, a silver 
 nose with a flesh-colored covering, and a silver plate 
 replacing part of the skull. He has the cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. 
 
 March 13^A. — On Saturday I went with Mr. B 
 
 to the Dingle, a pleasant domain on the banks of the 
 Mersey almost opposite to Rock Ferry. Walking 
 home, we looked into Mr. Thom’s Unitarian Chapel, 
 
 Mr. B ’s family’s place of worship. There is a 
 
 little graveyard connected with the chapel, a most un- 
 inviting and unpicturesque square of ground, perhaps 
 thirty or forty yards across, in the midst of back 
 fronts of city buildings. About half the space was 
 occupied by flat tombstones, level with the ground, 
 the remainder being yet vacant. Nevertheless, there 
 were perhaps more names of men generally known to 
 the world on these few tombstones than in any other 
 churchyard in Liverpool, — Roscoe, Blanco White, 
 and the Rev. William Enfield, whose name has a 
 classical sound in my ears, because, when a little boy, 
 I used to read his ‘‘Speaker” at school. In the vestry 
 of the chapel there were many books, chiefly old theo- 
 logical works, in ancient print and binding, much mil- 
 dewed and injured by the damp. The body of the 
 chapel is neat, but plain, and, being not very large, 
 has a kind of social and family aspect, as if the cler- 
 gyman and his people must needs have intimate rela- 
 tions among themselves. The Unitarian sect in Liver- 
 pool have, as a body, great wealth and respectability. 
 
 Yesterday I walked with my wife and children to 
 the brow of a hill, overlooking Birkenhead and Tran- 
 
484 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOORS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 mere, and commanding a fine view of the river, and 
 Liverpool beyond. All round about new and neat res- 
 idences for city people are springing up, with fine 
 names, — Eldon Terrace, Rose Cottage, Belvoir Villa, 
 etc., etc., with little patches of ornamented garden or 
 lawn in front, and heaps of curious rock-work, with 
 which the English are ridiculously fond of adorning 
 their front yards. I rather think the middling classes 
 = — meaning shopkeepers, and other respectabilities of 
 that level — are better lodged here than in America ; 
 and, what I did not expect, the houses are a great 
 deal newer than in our new country. Of course, this 
 can only be the case in places circumstanced like Liv- 
 erpool and its suburbs. But, scattered among these 
 modern villas, there are old stone cottages of the rud- 
 est structure, and doubtless hundreds of years old, 
 with thatched roofs, into which the grass has rooted 
 itself, and now looks verdant. These cottages are in 
 themselves as ngly as possible, resembling a large kind 
 of pigsty; but often, by dint of the verdure on their 
 thatch and the shrubbery clustering about them, they 
 look picturesque. 
 
 The old - fashioned flowers in the gardens of New 
 England — blue - bells, crocuses, primroses, foxglove, 
 and many others — appear to be wild flowers here on 
 English soil. There is something very touching and 
 pretty in this fact, that the Puritans should have 
 carried their field and hedge flowers, and nurtured 
 them in their gardens, until, to us, they seem entirely 
 the product of cultivation. 
 
 March IQth, — Yesterday, at the coroner’s court, at- 
 tending the inquest on a black sailor who died on 
 board an American vessel, after her arrival at this 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 485 
 
 port. The court - room is capable of accommodating 
 perhaps fifty people, dingy, with a pyramidal skylight 
 above, and a single window on one side, opening into 
 a gloomy back court. A private room, also lighted 
 with a pyramidal skylight, is behind the court-room, 
 into which I was asked, and found the coroner, a gray- 
 headed, grave, intelligent, broad, red-faced man, with 
 an air of some authority, well mannered and dignified, 
 but not exactly a gentleman, — dressed in a blue coat, 
 with a black cravat, showing a shirt-collar above it. 
 Considering how many and what a variety of cases of 
 the ugliest death are constantly coming before him, he 
 was much more cheerful than could be expected, and 
 had a kind of formality and orderliness which I sup- 
 pose balances the exceptionalities with which he has 
 to deal. In the private room with him was likewise 
 the surgeon, who professionally attends the court. 
 We chatted about suicide and such matters, — the 
 surgeon, the coroner, and I, — until the American case 
 was ready, when we adjourned to the court-room, and 
 the coroner began the examination. The American 
 captain was a rude, uncouth Down-Easter, about thirty 
 years old, and sat on a bench, doubled and bent into 
 an indescribable attitude, out of which he occasionally * 
 straightened himself, all the time toying with a ruler, 
 or some such article. The case was one of no inter- 
 est ; the man had been frost-bitten, and died from nat- 
 ural causes, so that no censure was deserved or passed 
 upon the captain. The jury, who had been examining 
 the body, were at first inclined to think that the man 
 had not been frost-bitten, but that his feet had been 
 immersed in boiling water ; but, on explanation by the 
 surgeon, readily yielded their opinion, and gave the 
 verdict which the coroner put into their mouths, ex- 
 
486 
 
 ENGLISH NOTEBOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 -culpating the captain from all blame. In fact, it is 
 utterly impossible that a jury of chance individuals 
 should not be entirely governed by the judgment of so 
 experienced and weighty a man as the coroner. In 
 the court -room were two or three police officers in 
 uniform, and some other officials, a very few idle spec- 
 tators, and a few witnesses waiting to be examined. 
 And while the case was going forward, a poor-looking 
 woman came in, and I heard her, in an undertone, 
 telling an attendant of a death that had just occurred. 
 The attendant received the communication in a very 
 quiet and matter-of-course way, said that it should be 
 attended to, and the woman retired. 
 
 The Diary of a Coroner would be a work likely 
 to meet with large popular acceptance. A dark pas- 
 sageway, only a few yards in extent, leads from the 
 liveliest street in Liverpool to this coroner’s court- 
 room, where all the discussion is about murder and 
 suicide. It seems, that, after a verdict of suicide the 
 corpse can only be buried at midnight, without relig- 
 ious rites. 
 
 “ His lines are cast in pleasant places,” — applied 
 • to a successful angler. 
 
 A woman’s chastity consists, like an onion, of a 
 series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones 
 without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; 
 but you keep taking off one after another, in expecta- 
 tion of coming to the inner nucleus, including the 
 whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that 
 there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused 
 through the whole series of coats, is lessened with 
 the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 487 
 
 which you supposed would introduce you to the hid- 
 den pearl. 
 
 March 23c?. — Mr. B. and I took a cab Saturday 
 afternoon, and drove out of the city in the direction 
 of Knowsley. On our way we saw many gentlemen’s 
 or rich people’s places, some of them dignified with 
 the title of Halls, — with lodges at their gates, and 
 standing considerably removed from the road. The 
 greater part of them were built of brick, — a material 
 with which I have not been accustomed to associate 
 ideas of grandeur; but it was much in use here in 
 Lancashire, in the Elizabethan age, — more, I think, 
 than now. These suburban residences, however, are of 
 much later date than Elizabeth’s time. Among other 
 places, Mr. B. called at the Hazels, the residence of 
 Sir Thomas Birch, a kinsman of his. It is a large 
 brick mansion, and has old trees and shrubbery about 
 it, the latter very fine and verdant, — hazels, holly, 
 rhododendron, etc. Mr. B. went in, and shortly after- 
 wards Sir Thomas Birch came out, — a very frank 
 and hospitable gentleman, — and pressed me to enter 
 and take luncheon, which latter hospitality I declined. 
 
 His house is in very nice order. He had a good 
 many pictures, and, amongst them, a small portrait of 
 his mother, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, when a 
 youth. It is unfinished, and when the painter was at 
 the height of his fame, he was asked to finish it. But 
 Lawrence, after looking at the picture, refused to re- 
 touch it, saying that there was a merit in this early 
 sketch which he could no longer attain. It was really 
 a very beautiful picture of a lovely woman. 
 
 Sir Thomas Birch proposed to go with us and get 
 
488 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 US admittance into Knowsley Park, where we could 
 not possibly find entrance without his aid. So we 
 went to the stables, where the old groom had already 
 shown hospitality to our cabman, by giving his horse 
 some provender, and himself some beer. There seemed 
 to be a kindly and familiar sort of intercourse between 
 the old servant and the Baronet, — each of them, I 
 presume, looking on their connection as indissolublco 
 
 The gate-warden of Knowsley Park was an old wo- 
 man, who readily gave us admittance at Sir Thomas 
 Birch’s request. The family of the Earl of Derby is 
 not now at the Park. ... It was a very bad time of 
 year to see it ; the trees just showing the earliest 
 symptoms of vitality, while whole acres of ground 
 were covered with large, dry, brown ferns, — which I 
 suppose are very beautiful when green. Two or three 
 hares scampered out of these ferns, and sat on their 
 hind legs looking about them, as we drove by. A 
 sheet of water had been drawn off, in order to deepen 
 its bed. The oaks did not seem to me so magnificent 
 as they should be in an ancient noble property like 
 this. A century does not accomplish so much for a 
 tree, in this slow region, as it does in ours. I think, 
 however, that they were more individual and pictur- 
 esque, with more character in their contorted trunks ; 
 therein somewhat resembling apple-trees. Our forest- 
 trees have a great sameness of character, like our 
 people, — because one and the other grow too closely. 
 
 In one part of the Park we can>e to a small tower, 
 for what purpose I know not, unless as an observa- 
 tory; and near it was a marble statue on a high pedes- 
 tal The statue had been long exposed to the weather, 
 and was overgrown and ingrained with moss and li- 
 chens, so that its classic beauty was in some sort goth- 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 489 
 
 icized, A half-mile or so from this point, we savv^ the 
 mansion of Knowsley, in the midst of a very line pros- 
 pect, with a tolerably high ridge of hills in the dis- 
 tance. The house itself is exceedingly vast, a front 
 and two wings, with suites of rooms, I suppose, inter^ 
 minable. The oldest part. Sir Thomas Birch told us, 
 is a tower of the time of Henry VII. Nevertheless, 
 the effect is not overwhelming, because the edifice 
 looks low in proportion to its great extent over the 
 ground ; and, besides, a good deal of it is built of brick, 
 with white window-frames, so that, looking at separate 
 parts, I might think them American structures, with- 
 out the smart addition of green Venetian blinds, so uni- 
 versal with us. Portions, however, were built of red 
 freestone ; and if I had looked at it longer, no doubt I 
 should have admired it more. W e merely drove round 
 it from the rear to the front. It stands in my memory 
 rather like a college or a hospital, thrai as the ancestral 
 residence of a great English noble. 
 
 We left the Park in another direction, alid passed 
 through a part of Lord Sefton’s property, by a private 
 road. 
 
 By the by, we saw half a dozen policemen, in their 
 blue coats and embroidered collars, after entering 
 Knowsley Park; but the Earl’s own servants would 
 probably have supplied their place, had the family 
 been at home. The mansion of Croxteth, the seat of 
 Lord Sefton, stands near the public road, and, though 
 large, looked of rather narrow compass after Knows* 
 ley. 
 
 The rooks were talking together very loquaciously 
 in the high tops of the trees near Sir Thomas Birch’s 
 house, it being now their building-time. It was a very 
 
490 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854 
 
 pleasant sound, the noise being comfortably softened 
 by the remote height. Sir Thomas said that more than 
 half a century ago the rooks used to inhabit another 
 grove of lofty trees, close in front of the house ; but 
 being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their hab" 
 its, the ladies of the family grew weary of them and 
 wished to remove them. Accordingly, the colony was 
 driven away, and made their present settlement in a 
 grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a 
 rook has built in the ancient grove ; every year, how- 
 ever, one or another pair of young rooks attempt to 
 build among the deserted tree-tops, but the old rooks 
 tear the new nest to pieces as often as it is put to- 
 gether. Thus, either the memory of aged individual 
 rooks or an authenticated tradition in their society has 
 preserved the idea that the old grove is forbidden and 
 inauspicious to them. 
 
 A son of General Arnold, named William Fitch 
 Arnold, and born in 1794, now possesses the estate 
 of Little Messenden Abbey, Bucks County, and is a 
 magistrate for that county. He was formerly Captain 
 of the 19th Lancers. He has now two sons and four 
 daughters. The other three sons of General Arnold, 
 all older than this one, and all military men, do not 
 appear to have left children ; but a daughter married 
 to Colonel Phipps, of the Mulgrave family, has a son 
 and two daughters. I question whether any of our 
 true-hearted Revolutionary heroes have left a more 
 prosperous progeny than this arch-traitor. I should 
 like to know their feelings with respect to their am 
 eestor. 
 
 Ajml Sd. — I walked with J 
 
 two days ago, to 
 
1854. j 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 491 
 
 Eastham, a village on the road to Chester, and five or 
 six miles from Kock Ferry. On our way we passed 
 through a village, in the centre of which was a small 
 stone pillar, standing on a pedestal of several steps, cn 
 which children were sitting and playing. I take it to 
 have been an old Catholic cross ; at least, I know not 
 what else it is. It seemed very ancient. Eastham is 
 the finest old English village I have seen, with many 
 antique houses, and with altogether a rural and pic- 
 turesque aspect, unlike anything in America, and yet 
 possessing a familiar look, as if it were something I 
 had dreamed about. There were thatched stone cot- 
 tages intermixed with houses of a better kind, and 
 likewise a gateway and gravelled walk, that perhaps 
 gave admittance to the Squire’s mansion. It was not 
 merely one long, wide street, as in most New England 
 villages, but there were several crooked ways, gathering 
 the whole settlement into a pretty small compass. In 
 the midst of it stood a venerable church of the com- 
 mon red freestone, with a most reverend air, consider- 
 ably smaller than that of Bebbington, but more beau- 
 tiful and looking quite as old. There was ivy on its 
 spire and elsewhere. It looked very quiet and peace- 
 ful, and as if it had received the people into its low 
 arched door every Sabbath for many centuries. There 
 were many tombstones about it, some level with the 
 ground, some raised on blocks of stone, on low pillars, 
 moss - grown and weather-worn ; and probably these 
 were but the successors of other stones that had quite 
 crumbled away, or been buried by the accumulation 
 of dead men’s dust above them. In the centre of the 
 churchyard stood an old yew-tree, with immense trunk, 
 which was all decayed within, so that it is a wonder 
 how the tree retains any life, — which, nevertheless, it 
 
492 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [1854 
 
 does. It was called ‘‘the old Yew of Eastham,’’ six 
 hundred years ago ! 
 
 After passing through the churchyard, we saw the 
 village inn on the other side. The doors were fastened, 
 but a girl peeped out of the window at us, and let us 
 in, ushering us into a very neat parlor. There was a 
 cheerful fire in the grate, a straw carpet on the floor ^ 
 a mahogany sideboard, and a mahogany table in the 
 middle of the room ; and, on the walls, the portraits 
 of mine host (no doubt) and of his wife and daughters, 
 — a very nice parlor, and looking like what I might 
 have found in a country tavern at home, only this was 
 an ancient house, and there is nothing at home like 
 the glimpse, from the window, of the church, and its 
 red, ivy-grown tower. I ordered some lunch, being 
 waited on by the girl, who was very neat, intelligent, 
 and comely, — and more respectful than a New Eng- 
 land maid. As we came out of the inn, some village 
 urchins left their play, and ran to me begging, calling 
 me “ Master ! They turned at once from play to 
 begging, and, as I gave them nothing, they turned to 
 their play again. 
 
 This village is too far from Liverpool to have been 
 much injured as yet by the novelty of cockney resi- 
 dences, which have grown up almost everywhere else, 
 so far as I have visited. About a mile from it, how- 
 ever, is the landing-place of a steamer (which runs 
 regularly, except in the winter months), where a large, 
 new hotel is built. The grounds about it are extensive 
 and well wooded. We got some biscuits at the hotel, 
 and I gave the waiter (a splendid gentleman in black) 
 four halfpence, being the surplus of a shilling. He 
 bowed and thanked me very humbly. An American 
 does not easily bring his mind to the small measure 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 493 
 
 of English liberality to servants ; if anything is to be 
 given, we are ashamed not to give more, especially to 
 clerical-looking persons, in black suits and white neck- 
 cloths. 
 
 I stood on the Exchange at noon, to-day, to see the 
 88th Kegiment, the Connaught Kangers, marching 
 down to embark for the East. They were a body of 
 young, healthy, and cheerful-looking men, and looked 
 greatly better than the dirty crowd that thronged to 
 gaze at them. The royal banner of England, quarter- 
 ing the lion, the leopard, and the harp, waved on the 
 town-house, and looked gorgeous and venerable. Here 
 and there a woman exchanged greetings with an in- 
 dividual soldier, as he marched along, and gentlemen 
 shook hands with officers with whom tliey happened 
 to be acquainted. Being a stranger in the land, it 
 seemed as if I could see the future in the present bet- 
 ter than if I had been an Englishman ; so I questioned 
 with myself how many of these ruddy-cheeked young 
 fellows, marching so stoutly away, would ever tread 
 English ground again. The populace did not evince 
 any enthusiasm, yet there could not possibly be a war 
 to which the country could assent more fully than to 
 this. I somewhat doubt whether the English popu- 
 lace really feels a vital interest in the nation. 
 
 Some years ago, a piece of rude marble sculpture, 
 representing St. George and the Dragon, was found 
 over the fireplace of a cottage near Rock Ferry, on 
 the road to Chester. It was plastered over with pipe- 
 clay, and its existence was unknown to the cottagers, 
 until a lady noticed the projection and asked what it 
 was. It was supposed to have originally adorned the 
 
494 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 walls of the Priory at Birkenhead. It measured four- 
 teen and a half by nine inches, in which space were 
 the heads of a king and queen, with uplifted hands, 
 in prayer ; their daughters also in prayer, and looking 
 very* grim ; a lamb, the slain dragon, and St. George, 
 proudly prancing on what looks like a donkey, bran- 
 dishing a sword over his head. 
 
 The following is a legend inscribed on the inner 
 margin of a curious old box : — 
 
 “Frorh Birkenhead into Hilbree 
 A squirrel might leap from tree to tree/* 
 
 I do not know where Hilbree is ; but all round Bir- 
 kenhead a squirrel would scarcely find a single tree to 
 climb upon. All is pavement and brick buildings now. 
 
 Good Friday, — The English and Irish think it 
 good to plant on this day, because it was the day when 
 our Saviour’s body was laid in the grave. Seeds, 
 therefore, are certain to rise again. 
 
 At dinner the other day, Mrs. mentioned the 
 
 origin of Franklin’s adoption of the customary civil 
 dress, when going to court as a diplomatist. It was 
 simply that his tailor had disappointed him of his 
 court suit, and he wore his plain one with great reluc- 
 tance, because he had no other. Afterwards, gaining 
 great success and praise by his mishap, he continued 
 to wear it from policy. 
 
 The grandmother of Mrs. died fifty years ago, 
 
 at the age of twenty-eight. She had great personal 
 charms, and among them a head of beautiful chestnut 
 hair. After her burial in a family tomb, the coffin of 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 496 
 
 one of her children was laid on her own, so that the 
 lid seems to have decayed, or been broken from this 
 cause ; at any rate, this was the case when the tomb 
 was opened about a year ago. The grandmother’s 
 coffin was then found to be filled with beautiful^ 
 glossy, living chestnut ringlets, into which her whole 
 substance seems to have been transformed, for there 
 was nothing else but these shining curls, the growth 
 of half a century in the tomb. An old man, with a 
 ringlet of his youthful mistress treasured on his heart, 
 might be supposed to witness this wonderful thing. 
 
 Madam , who is now at my house, and very 
 
 infirm, though not old, was once carried to the grave, 
 and on the point of being buried. It was in Barbary, 
 where her husband was Consul-General. He was 
 greatly attached to her, and told the pall-bearers at 
 the grave that he must see her once more. When her 
 face was uncovered, he thought he discerned signs of 
 life, and felt a warmth. Finally she revived, and for 
 many years afterwards supposed the funeral proces- 
 sion to have been a dream ; she having been partially 
 conscious throughout, and having felt the wind blow- 
 ing on her, and lifting the shroud from her feet, — 
 for I presume she was to be buried in Oriental style, 
 without a coffin. Long after, in London, when she 
 was speaking of this dream, her husband told her the 
 facts, and she fainted away. Whenever it is now 
 
 mentioned, her face turns white. Mr. •, her son^ 
 
 was born on shipboard, on the coast of Spain, and 
 claims four nationalities, — those of Spain, England, 
 Ireland, and the United States ; his father being Irish, 
 his mother a native of England, himself a naturalized 
 citizen of the United States, and his father having 
 
496 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 registered his birth and baptism in a Catholic church 
 of Gibraltar, which gives him Spanish privileges. He 
 has hereditary claims to a Spanish countship. ' His 
 infancy was spent in Barbary, and his lips first lisped 
 in Arabic. There has been an unsettled and wander^ 
 ing character in his whole life. 
 
 The grandfather of Madam , who was a British 
 
 officer, once horsewhipped Paul Jones, — Jones being 
 a poltroon. How singular it is that the personal cour- 
 age of famous warriors should be so often called in 
 question ! 
 
 May 20^7i. — I went yesterday to a hospital to take 
 the oath of a mate to a protest. He had met with a 
 severe accident by a fall on shipboard. The hospital 
 is a large edifice of red freestone, with wide airy pas- 
 sages, resounding with footsteps passing through them. 
 A porter was waiting in the vestibule. Mr. Wilding 
 and myself were shown to the parlor, in the first in- 
 stance, — a neat, plainly furnished room, with news- 
 papers and pamphlets lying on the table and sofas. 
 Soon the surgeon of the house came, — a brisk, alac- 
 ritoLis, civil, cheerful young man, by whom we were 
 shown to the apartment where the mate was lying. 
 As we went through the principal passage, a man was 
 borne along in a chair looking very pale, rather wild, 
 and altogether as if he had just been through great 
 tribulation, and hardly knew as yet whereabouts he 
 was. I noticed that his left arm was but a stump, 
 and seemed done up in red baize, — at all events it was 
 of a scarlet hue. The surgeon shook his right hand 
 cheerily, and he was carried on. This was a patient 
 who had just had his arm cut off. He had been a 
 rough person apparently, but now there was a kind of 
 tenderness about him, through pain and helplessness. 
 
1854.] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 497 
 
 In the chamber where the mate lay, there were 
 seven beds, all of them occupied by persons who had 
 met with accidents. In the centre of the room was a 
 stationary pine table, about the length of a man, in- 
 tended, I suppose, to stretch patients upon for nec- 
 essary operations. The furniture of the beds was plain 
 and homely. I thought that the faces of the patients 
 all looked remarkably intelligent, though they were 
 evidently men of the lower classes. Suffering had 
 educated them morally and intellectually. They gazed 
 curiously at Mr. Wilding and me, but nobody said a 
 word. In the bed next to the mate lay a little boy 
 with a broken thigh. The surgeon observed that chil- 
 dren generally did well with accidents ; and this boy 
 certainly looked very bright and cheerful. There was 
 nothing particularly interesting about the mate. 
 
 After finishing our business, the surgeon showed us 
 into another room of the surgical ward, likewise de- 
 voted to cases of accident and injury. All the beds 
 were occupied, and in two of them lay two American 
 sailors who had recently been stabbed. They had been 
 severely hurt, but were doing very well. The surgeon 
 thought that it was a good arrangement to have sev- 
 eral cases together, and that the patients kept up 
 one another’s spirits, — being often merry together. 
 Smiles and laughter may operate favorably enough 
 from bed to bed ; but dying groans, I should think, 
 must be somewhat of a discouragement. Neverthe- 
 less, the previous habits and modes of life of such 
 people as compose the more numerous class of patients 
 in a hospital must be considered before deciding this 
 matter. It is very possible that their misery likes 
 such bedfellows as it here finds. 
 
 As we were taking our leave, the surgeon asked us 
 
 VOL. VII. 32 
 
498 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 if we should not like to see the operating-room ; and 
 before we could reply he threw open the door, and 
 behold, there was a roll of linen “ garments rolled in 
 blood,” — and a bloody fragment of a human arm ! 
 The surgeon glanced at me, and smiled kindly, but as 
 if pitying my discomposure. 
 
 Gervase Elwes, son of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet, 
 of Stoke, Suffolk, married Isabella, daughter of Sir 
 Thomas Hervey, Knight, and sister of the first Earl 
 of Bristol. This Gervase died before his father, but 
 left a son, Henry, who succeeded to the Baronetcy. 
 Sir Henry died without issue, and was succeeded by 
 his sister’s son, John Maggott Twining, who assumed 
 the name of Elwes. He was the famous miser, and 
 must have had Hawthorne blood in him, through his 
 grandfather, Gervase, whose mother was a Hawthorne. 
 It was to this Gervase that my ancestor, William Haw- 
 thorne, devised some land in Massachusetts, ‘‘ if he 
 would come over, and enjoy it.” My ancestor calls 
 him his nephew. 
 
 June Vlth, — Barry Cornwall, Mr. Procter, called 
 on me a week or more ago, but I happened not to be 
 in the office. Saturday last he called again, and as I 
 had crossed to Rock Park he followed me thither. A 
 plain, middle-sized, English - looking gentleman, el- 
 derly, with short white hair, and particularly quiet in 
 his manners. He talks in a somewhat low tone with- 
 out emphasis, scarcely distinct. . . . His head has a 
 good outline, and would look well in marble. I liked 
 him very well. He talked unaffectedly, showing an 
 author’s regard to his reputation, and was evidently 
 pleased to hear of his American celebrity. He said 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 499 
 
 that in his younger days he was a scientific pugilist, 
 and once took a journey to have a sparring encounter 
 with the Game-Chicken. Certainly, no one would have 
 looked for a pugilist in this subdued old gentleman* 
 He is now Commissioner of Lunacy, and makes pe- 
 riodical circuits through the country, attending to the 
 business of his office. He is slightly deaf, and this 
 may be the cause of his unaccented utterance, — ow- 
 ing to his not being able to regulate his voice exactly 
 by his own ear. . . . He is a good man, and much 
 better expressed by his real name, Procter, than by 
 his poetical one, Barry Cornwall. . . . He took my 
 hand in both of his at parting. . . . 
 
 June 11 th , — At eleven, at this season (and how 
 much longer I know not), there is still a twilight. If 
 we could only have such dry, deliciously warm even- 
 ings as we used to have in our own land, what enjoy- 
 ment there might be in these interminable twilights ! 
 But here we close the window-shutters, and make our- 
 selves cosey by a coal-fire. 
 
 All three of the children, and, I think, my wife and 
 myself, are going through the hooping-cough. The 
 east-wind of this season and region is most horrible. 
 There have been no really warm days ; for though the 
 sunshine is sometimes hot, there is never any diffused 
 heat throughout the air. On passing from the sun- 
 shine into the shade, we immediately feel too cool. 
 
 June 2S)tJi. — The vagabond musicians about town 
 are very numerous. On board the steam ferry-boats, 
 I have heretofore spoken of them. They infest them 
 from May to November, for very little gain appar- 
 ently. A shilling a day per man must be the utmost 
 
500 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 of their emolument. It is rather sad to see somewhat 
 respectable old men engaged in this way, with two 
 or three younger associates. Their instruments look 
 much the worse for wear, and even my unmusical ear 
 can distinguish more discord than harmony. They 
 appear to be a very quiet and harmless people. Some- 
 times there is a woman playing on a fiddle, while her 
 husband blows a wind instrument. In the streets it 
 is not unusual to find a band of half a dozen perform- 
 ers, who, without any provocation or reason whatever, 
 sound their brazen instruments till the houses reecho. 
 Sometimes one passes a man who stands whistling 
 a tune most unweariably, though I never saw any- 
 body give him anything. The ballad-singers are the 
 strangest, from the total lack of any music in their 
 cracked voices. Sometimes you see a space cleared in 
 the street, and a foreigner playing, while a girl — 
 weather-beaten, tanned, and wholly uncomely in face 
 and shabby in attire — dances ballets. The common 
 people look on, and never criticise or treat any of 
 these poor devils unkindly or uncivilly ; but I do not 
 observe that they give them anything. 
 
 A crowd — or, at all events, a moderate-sized group 
 — is much more easily drawn together here than with 
 us. The people have a good deal of idle and momen- 
 tary curiosity, and are always ready to stop when an- 
 other person has stopped, so as to see what has at- 
 tracted his attention. I hardly ever pause to look at a 
 shop - window without being immediately incommoded 
 by boys and men, who stop likewise, and would forth- 
 with throng the pavement if I did not move on. 
 
 June 30^A. — If it is not known how and when a 
 man dies, it makes a ghost of him for many years 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 501 
 
 thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an 
 example ; also the Emperor Frederick, and other fa- 
 mous men, who were thought to be alive ages after 
 their disappearance. So with private individuals. I 
 had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about 
 the beginning of the War of 1812, and has never 
 returned to this hour. But as long as his mother 
 lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up the 
 hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories 
 of persons whose description answered to his. Some 
 people actually affirmed that they had seen him in 
 various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her belief 
 was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even 
 to this day I never see his name, which is no very un- 
 common one, without thinking that this may be the 
 lost uncle. 
 
 Thus, too, the French Dauphin still exists, or a kind 
 of ghost of him ; the three Tells, too, in the cavern of 
 Uri. 
 
 July Qth. — Mr. Cecil, the other day, was saying 
 that England could produce as fine peaches as any 
 other country. I asked what was the particular ex- 
 cellence of a peach, and he answered, “Its cooling 
 and refreshing quality, like that of a melon! ” Just 
 think of this idea of the richest, most luscious, of all 
 fruits ! But the untravelled Englishman has no more 
 idea of what fruit is than of what sunshine is; he 
 thinks he has tasted the first and felt the last, but 
 they are both alike watery. I heard a lady in Lord 
 Street talking about the “ broiling sun,” when I was 
 almost in a shiver^ They keep up their animal heat 
 by means of wine and ale, else they could not bear 
 this climate. 
 
602 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 JulyV^th. — A week ago I made a little tour in 
 North Wales with Mr. Bright. We left Birkenhead 
 by railway for Chester at two o’clock; thence for 
 Bangor ; thence by carriage over the Menai Bridge to 
 Beaumaris. At Beaumaris, a fine old castle, — quite 
 coming up to my idea of what an old castle should be. 
 A gray, ivy-hung exterior wall, with large round 
 towers at intervals ; within this another wall, the 
 place of the portcullis between ; and again, within the 
 second wall the castle itself, with a spacious green 
 court-yard in front. The outer wall is so thick that a 
 passage runs in it all round the castle, which covers a 
 space of three acres. This passage gives aceess to a 
 chapel, still very perfect, and to various apartments in 
 the towers, — all exceedingly dismal, and giving very 
 unpleasant impressions of the way in which the garri- 
 son of the castle lived. The main castle is entirely 
 roofless, but the hall and other rooms are pointed out 
 by the guide, and the whole is tapestried with abun- 
 dant ivy, so that my impression is of gray walls, with 
 here and there a vast green curtain ; a carpet of green 
 over the floors of halls and apartments ; and festoons 
 around all the outer battlement, with an uneven and 
 rather perilous foot-path running along the top. There 
 is a fine vista through the castle itself, and the two 
 gateways of the two encompassing walls. The pas- 
 sage within the wall is very rude, both underfoot 
 and on each side, with various ascents and descents of 
 rough steps, — sometimes so low that your head is in 
 danger; and dark, except where a little light comes 
 through a loophole or window in the thickness of the 
 wall. In front of the castle a tennis-eourt was fitted 
 up, by laying a smooth pavement on the ground, and 
 casing the walls with tin or zinc, if 1 recollect aright. 
 
1854 .] 
 
 NORTH WALES, 
 
 503 
 
 All this was open to the sky ; and when we were 
 there, some young men of the town were playing at 
 the game. There are but very few of these tennis- 
 courts in England ; and this old castle was a very 
 strange place for one. 
 
 The castle is the property of Sir Richard Bulkely, 
 whose seat is in the vicinity, and who owns a great 
 part of the island of Anglesea, on which Beaumaris 
 lies. The hotel where we stopped was the Bulkely 
 Arms, and Sir Richard has a kind of feudal influence 
 in the town. 
 
 In the morning we walked along a delightful road, 
 bordering on the Menai Straits, to Bangor Ferry. It 
 was really a very pleasant road, overhung by a growth 
 of young wood, exceedingly green and fresh. English 
 trees are green all about their stems, owing to the 
 creeping plants that overrun them. There were some 
 flowers in the hedges, such as we cultivate in gardens. 
 At the ferry, there was a whitewashed cottage ; a 
 woman or two, some children, and a fisherman-like 
 personage, walking to and fro before the door. The 
 scenery of the strait is veiy beautiful and picturesque, 
 and directly opposite to us lay Bangor, — the strait 
 being here almost a mile across. An American ship 
 from Boston lay in the middle of it. The ferry-boat 
 was just putting off from the Bangor side, and, by the 
 aid of a sail, soon neared the shore. 
 
 At Bangor we went to a handsome hotel, and hired 
 a carriage and two horses for some Welsh place, the 
 name of which I forget; neither can I remember a 
 single name of the places through which we posted 
 that day, nor could I spell them if I heard them pro^ 
 nounced, nor pronounce them if I saw them spelt. It 
 was a circuit of about forty miles, bringing us to Com 
 
604 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 way at last. I remember a great slate-quarry; and 
 also that many of the cottages, in the first part of 
 our drive, were built of blocks of slate. The moun- 
 tains were very bold, thrusting themselves up abruptly 
 in peaks, — not of the dumpling formation, which is 
 somewhat too prevalent among the New England 
 mountains. At one point we saw Snowdon, with its 
 bifold summit. We also visited the smaller waterfall 
 (this is a translation of an unpronounceable Welsh 
 name), which is the largest in Wales. It was a very 
 beautiful rapid, and the guide-book considers it equal 
 in sublimity to Niagara. Likewise there were one or 
 two lakes which the guide-book greatly admired, but 
 which to me, who remembered a hundred sheets of 
 blue water in New England, seemed nothing more 
 than sullen and dreary puddles, with bare banks, and 
 wholly destitute of beauty. I think they were no- 
 where more than a hundred yards across. But the 
 hills were certainly very good, and, though generally 
 bare of trees, their outlines thereby were rendered the 
 stronger and more striking. 
 
 Many of the Welsh women, particularly the elder 
 ones, wear black beaver hats, high-crowned, and al- 
 most precisely like men’s. It makes them look ugly 
 and witch-like. W elsh is still the prevalent language, 
 and the only one spoken by a great many of the in- 
 habitants. I have had W elsh people in my office, on 
 official business, with whom I could not communicate 
 except through an interpreter. 
 
 At some unutterable village we went into a little 
 church, where we saw an old stone image of a warrior, 
 lying on his back, with his hands clasped. It was the 
 natural son (if I remember rightly) of David, Prince 
 of Wales, and was doubtless the better part of a thou- 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 505 
 
 sand years old. There was likewise a stone coffin of 
 still greater age ; some person of rank and renown 
 had mouldered to dust within it, but it was now open 
 and empty. Also, there were monumental brasses on 
 the walls, engraved with portraits of a gentleman and 
 lady in the costumes of Elizabeth’s time. Also, on 
 one of the pews, a brass record of some persons who 
 slept in the vault beneath ; so that, every Sunday, the 
 survivors and descendants kneel and worship directly 
 over their dead ancestors. In the churchyard, on a 
 flat tombstone, there was the representation of a harp. 
 I supposed that it must be the resting-place of a bard ; 
 but the inscription was in memory of a merchant, and 
 a skilful manufacturer of harps. 
 
 This was a very delightful town. We saw a great 
 many things which it is now too late to describe, the 
 sharpness of the first impression being gone ; but I 
 think I can produce something of the sentiment of it 
 hereafter. 
 
 W e arrived at Conway late in the afternoon, to take 
 the rail for Chester. I must see Conway, with its old 
 gray wall and its unrivalled castle, again. It was bet- 
 ter than Beaumaris, and I never saw anything more 
 picturesque than the prospect from the castle-wall to- 
 wards the sea. We reached Chester at 10 p. m. The 
 next morning, Mr. Bright left for Liverpool before I 
 was awake. I visited the Cathedral, where the organ 
 was sounding, sauntered through the Rows, bought 
 some playthings for the children, and left for home 
 soon after twelve. 
 
 Liverpool., August %th, — Visiting the Zoological 
 
 Gardens the other day with J , it occurred to me 
 
 what a fantastic kind of life a person connected with 
 
506 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 them might be depicted as leading, — a child, for in- 
 stance. The grounds are very extensive, and include 
 arrangements for all kinds of exhibitions calculated to 
 attract the idle people of a great city. In one enclos- 
 ure is a bear, who climbs a pole to get cake and gin- 
 gerbread from the spectators. Elsewhere, a circular 
 building, with compartments for lions, wolves, and 
 tigers. In another part of the garden is a colony of 
 monkeys, the skeleton of an elephant, birds of all 
 kinds. Swans and various rare water-fowl were swim- 
 ming on a piece of water, which was green, by the by, 
 and when the fowls dived they stirred up black mud. 
 A stork was parading along the margin, with melan- 
 choly strides of its long legs, and came slowly towards 
 us, as if for companionship. In one apartment was an 
 obstreperously noisy society of parrots and macaws, 
 most gorgeous and diversified of hue. These different 
 colonies of birds and beasts were scattered about in 
 various parts of the grounds, so that you came upon 
 them unexpectedly. Also, there were archery and 
 shooting-grounds, and a swing. A theatre, also, at 
 which a rehearsal was going on, — we standing at one 
 of the doors, and looking in towards the dusky stage 
 where the company in their ordinary dresses were re- 
 hearsing something that had a good deal of dance and 
 action in it. In the open air there was an arrange- 
 ment of painted scenery representing a wide expanse 
 of mountains, with a city at their feet, and before it 
 the sea, with actual water, and large vessels upon it, 
 the vessels having only the side that would be pre- 
 sented to the spectator. But the scenery was so good 
 that at a first casual glance I almost mistook it for 
 reality. There was a refreshment-room, with drinks 
 and cakes and pastry, but, so far as I saw, no substan- 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 507 
 
 tial victual. About in the centre of the garden there 
 was an actual, honiely-looking, small dwelling-house, 
 where perhaps the overlookers of the place live. Now 
 this might be wrought, in an imaginative description, 
 into a pleasant sort of a fool’s paradise, where all sorts 
 of unreal delights should cluster round some suitable 
 personage ; and it would relieve, in a very odd and ef= 
 fective way, the stern realities of life on the outside of 
 the garden-walls. I saw a little girl, simply dressed, 
 who seemed to have her habitat within the grounds. 
 There was also a daguerreotypist, with his wife and 
 family, carrying on his business in a shanty, and per- 
 haps having his home in its inner room. He seemed 
 to be an honest, intelligent, pleasant young man, and 
 his wife a pleasant woman; and I had J ’s da- 
 
 guerreotype taken for three shillings, in a little gilded 
 frame. In the description of the garden, the velvet 
 turf, of a charming verdure, and the shrubbery and 
 shadowy walks and large trees, and the slopes and in- 
 equalities of ground, must not be forgotten. In one 
 place there was a maze and labyrinth, where a person 
 might wander a long while in the vain endeavor to get 
 out, although all the time looking at the exterior gar- 
 den, over the low hedges that border the walks of the 
 maze. And this is like the inappreciable difficulties 
 that often beset us in life. 
 
 I will see it again before long, and get some addi- 
 tional record of it. 
 
 August 10th. — We went to the Isle of Man, a few 
 weeks ago, where S and the children spent a fort- 
 
 night. I spent two Sundays with them. 
 
 I never saw anything prettier than the little church 
 of Kirk Madden there. It stands in a perfect seclu- 
 
508 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 sion of shadowy trees, — a plain little church, that 
 would not he at all remarkable in another situation, 
 but is most picturesque in its solitude and bowery en- 
 vironment. The churchyard is quite full and overflow- 
 ing with graves, and extends down the gentle slope of 
 a hill, with a dark mass of shadow above it. Some of 
 the tombstones are flat on the ground, some erect, or 
 laid horizontally on low pillars or masonry. There 
 were no very old dates on any of these stones ; for the 
 climate soon effaces inscriptions, and makes a stone of 
 fifty years look as old as one of five hundred, — unless 
 it be slate, or something harder than the usual red 
 freestone. There was an old Runic monument, how- 
 ever, near the centre of the churchyard, that had some 
 strange sculpture on it, and an inscription still legible 
 by persons learned in such matters. Against the tower 
 of the church, too, there is a circular stone, with carv- 
 ing on it, said to be of immemorial antiquity. There 
 is likewise a tall marble monument, as much as fifty 
 feet high, erected some years ago to the memory of one 
 of the Athol family by his brother-officers of a local 
 regiment of which he was colonel. At one of the side- 
 entrances of the church, and forming the threshold 
 within the thickness of the wall, so that the feet of all 
 who enter must tread on it, is a flat tombstone of some- 
 body who felt himself a sinner, no doubt, and desired 
 to be thus trampled upon. The stone is much worn. 
 
 The structure is extremely plain inside and very 
 small. On the walls, over the pews, are several monu- 
 mental sculptures, — a quite elaborate one to a Colonel 
 Murray, of the Coldstream Guards ; his military pro- 
 fession being designated by banners and swords in 
 marble. Another was to a farmer. 
 
 On one side of the church-tower there was a little 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 509 
 
 penthouse, or lean-to, — merely a stone roof, about 
 three or four feet high, and supported by a single 
 pillar, — beneath which was once deposited the bier. 
 
 I have let too much time pass before attempting to 
 record my impressions of the Isle of Man ; but, as re- 
 gards this church, no description can come up to its 
 quiet beauty, its seclusion, and its every requisite for 
 an English country church. 
 
 Last Sunday I went to Eastham, and, entering the 
 churchyard, sat down on a tombstone under the yew- 
 tree which has been known for centuries as the Great 
 Tree of Eastham. Some of the village people were 
 sitting on the graves near the door ; and an old wo- 
 man came towards me, and said, in a low, kindly, ad- 
 monishing tone, that I must not let the sexton see me, 
 because he would not allow any one to be there in 
 sacrament-time. I inquired why she and her compan- 
 ions were there, and she said they were waiting for 
 the sacrament. So I thanked her, gave her a six- 
 pence, and departed. Close under the eaves, I saw 
 two upright stones, in memory of two old servants of 
 the Stanley family, — one over ninety, and the other 
 over eighty years of age. 
 
 August Vlth, — J and I went to Birkenhead 
 
 Park yesterday. There is a large ornamental gate- 
 way to the Park, and the grounds within are neatly 
 laid out, with borders of shrubbery. There is a sheet 
 of water, with swans and other aquatic fowl, which 
 swim about, and are fed with dainties by the visitors. 
 Nothing can be more beautiful than a swan. It is the 
 ideal of a goose, — a goose beautified and beatified. 
 There were not a great many visitors, but some chil- 
 
510 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 dren were dancing on the green, and a few lover-like 
 people straying about. I think the English behave 
 better than the Americans at similar places. 
 
 There was a earner a-ohscura.^ very wretchedly indis-= 
 tinct. At the refreshment-room were ginger-beer and 
 British wines. 
 
 August 21st, — I was in the Crown Court on Satur- 
 day, sitting in the sheriff’s seat. The judge was Baron 
 
 , an old gentleman of sixty, with very large, long 
 
 features. His wig helped him to look like some 
 strange kind of animal, — very queer, but yet with a 
 sagacious, and, on the whole, beneficent aspect. Dur- 
 ing the session some mischievous young barrister oc- 
 cupied himself with sketching the judge in pencil ; and, 
 being handed about, it found its way to me. It was 
 very like and very laughable, but hardly caricatured. 
 The judicial wig is an exceedingly odd affair ; and as 
 it covers both ears, it would seem intended to prevent 
 his Lordship, and justice in his person, from hearing 
 any of the case on either side, that thereby he may 
 decide the better. It is like the old idea of blindfold- 
 ing the statue of Justice. 
 
 It seems to me there is less formality, less distance 
 between the judge, jury, witnesses, and bar, in the 
 English courts than in our own. The judge takes a 
 very active part in the trial, constantly asking a ques- 
 tion of the witness on the stand, making remarks on 
 the conduct of the trial, putting in his word on all 
 occasions, and allowing his own sense of the matter 
 in hand to be pretty plainly seen ; so that, before the 
 trial is over, and long before his own charge is deliv- 
 ered, he must have exercised a very powerful infiuence 
 over the minds of the jury. All this is done, not with- 
 
1854 .] 
 
 EATON HALL, 
 
 511 
 
 out dignity, yet in a familiar kind of way. It is a 
 sort of paternal supervision of the whole matter, quite 
 unlike the cold awfulness of an American judge. But 
 all this may be owing partly to the personal charac- 
 teristics of Baron . It appeared to me, however, 
 
 that, from the closer relations of all parties, truth was 
 likely to be arrived at and justice to be done. As an 
 innocent man, I should not be afraid to be tried by 
 Baron . 
 
 EATON HALL. 
 
 August 24ifA. — I went to Eaton Hall yesterday with 
 my wife and Mr. G. P. Bradford, via Chester. On 
 our way, at the latter place, we visited St. John’s 
 Church. It is built of the same red freestone as the 
 cathedral, and looked exceedingly antique, and vener- 
 able ; this kind of stone, from its softness, and its lia- 
 bility to be acted upon by the weather, being liable to 
 an early decay. Nevertheless, I believe the church 
 was built above a thousand years ago, — some parts 
 of it, at least, — and the surface of the tower and 
 walls is worn away and hollowed in shallow sweeps by 
 the hand of Time. There were broken niches in sev- 
 eral places, where statues had formerly stood. All, 
 except two or three, had fallen or crumbled away, and 
 those which remained were much damaged. The face 
 and details of the figure were almost obliterated. 
 There were many gravestones round the church, but 
 none of them of any antiquity. Probably, as the 
 names become indistinguishable on the older stones, 
 the graves are dug over again, and filled with new 
 occupants and covered with new stones, or perhaps 
 with the old ones newly inscribed. 
 
 Closely connected with the church was the clergy* 
 
512 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 man’s house, a comfortable-looking residence ; and 
 likewise in the churchyard, with tombstones all about 
 it, even almost at the threshold, so that the doorstep 
 itself might have been a tombstone, was another house, 
 of respectable size and aspect. We surmised that this 
 might be the sexton’s dwelling, but it proved not to 
 be so ; and a woman, answering our knock, directed 
 us to the place where he might be found. So Mr. 
 
 Bradford and I went in search of him, leaving S 
 
 seated on a tombstone. The sexton was a jolly-look- 
 ing, ruddy-faced man, a mechanic of some sort, appar- 
 ently, and he followed us to the churchyard with much 
 
 alacrity. We found S standing at a gateway, 
 
 which opened into the most ancient, and now quite 
 ruinous, part of the church, the present edifice cover- 
 ing much less ground than it did some centuries ago. 
 We went through this gateway, and found ourselves 
 in an enclosure of venerable walls, open to the sky, 
 with old Norman arches standing about, beneath the 
 loftiest of which the sexton told us the high altar used 
 to stand. Of course, there were weeds and ivy grow- 
 ing in the crevices, but not so abundantly as I have 
 seen them elsewhere. The sexton pointed out a piece 
 of a statue that had once stood in one of the niches, 
 and which he himself, I think, had dug up from sev- 
 eral feet below the earth ; also, in a niche of the walls, 
 high above our heads, he showed us an ancient wooden 
 coffin, hewn out of a solid log of oak, the hollow be- 
 ing made rudely in the shape of a human figure. This 
 too had been dug up, and nobody knew how old it 
 was. While we looked at all this solemn old trum- 
 pery, the curate, quite a young man, stood at the back 
 door of his house, elevated considerably above the 
 ruins, with his young wife (I presume) and a friend 
 
1854.] 
 
 EATON HALL, 
 
 513 
 
 or two, chatting cheerfully among themselves. It was 
 pleasant to see them there. After examining the ruins, 
 we went inside of the church, and found it a dim and 
 dusky old place, quite paved over with tombstones, 
 not an inch of space being left in the aisles or near 
 the altar, or in any nook or corner, uncovered by a 
 tombstone. There were also mural monuments and 
 escutcheons, and close against the wall lay the muti- 
 lated statue of a Crusader, with his legs crossed, in 
 the style which one has so often read about. The 
 old fellow seemed to have been represented in chain 
 armor ; but he had been more battered and bruised 
 since death than even during his pugnacious life, and 
 his nose was almost knocked away. This figure had 
 been dug up many years ago, and nobody knows whom 
 it was meant to commemorate. 
 
 The nave of the church is supported by two rows of 
 Saxon pillars, not very lofty, but six feet six inches 
 (so the sexton says) in diameter. They are covered 
 with plaster, which was laid on ages ago, and is now 
 so hard and smooth that I took the pillars to be really 
 composed of solid shafts of gray stone. But, at one 
 end of the church, the plaster had been removed from 
 two of the pillars, in order to discover whether they 
 were still sound enough to support the building ; and 
 they prove to be made of blocks of red freestone, just 
 as sound as when it came from the quarry ; for though 
 this stone soon crumbles in the open air, it is as good 
 as indestructible when sheltered from the weather. It 
 looked very strange to see the fresh hue of these two 
 pillars amidst the dingy antiquity of the rest of the 
 structure. 
 
 The body of the church is covered with pews, the 
 wooden enclosures of which seemed of antique fashion. 
 
 VOL. VII. 33 
 
514 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 There were also modern stoves ; but the sexton said 
 it was very cold there in spite of the stoves. It had, I 
 must say, a disagreeable odor pervading it, in which 
 the dead people of long ago had doubtless some share, 
 — a musty odor, by no means amounting to a stench, 
 but unpleasant, and, I should think, unwholesome. 
 Old wood-work, and old stones, and antiquity of all 
 kinds, moral and physical, go to make up this smell. 
 I observed it in the cathedral, and Chester generally 
 has it, especially under the Rows. After all, the nec- 
 essary damp and lack of sunshine, in such a shadowy 
 old church as this, have probably more to do with it 
 than the dead people have ; although I did think the 
 odor was particularly strong over some of the tomb- 
 stones. Not having shillings to give the sexton, we 
 were forced to give him half a crown. 
 
 The Church of St. J ohn is outside of the city walls. 
 Entering the East gate, we walked awhile under the 
 Rows, bought our tickets for Eaton Hall and its gar- 
 dens, and likewise some playthings for the children ; 
 for this old city of Chester seems to me to possess an 
 unusual number of toy-shops. Finally we took a cab, 
 and drove to the Hall, about four miles distant, nearly 
 the whole of the way lying through the wooded Park. 
 There are many sorts of trees, making up a wilderness, 
 which looked not unlike the woods of our own Con- 
 cord, only less wild. The English oak is not a hand- 
 some tree, being short and sturdy, with a round, thick 
 mass of foliage, lying all within its own bounds. It 
 was a showery day. Had there been any sunshine, 
 there might doubtless have been many beautiful effects 
 of light and shadow in these woods. We saw one or 
 two herds of deer, quietly feeding, a hundred yards or 
 so distant. They appeared to be somewhat wilder 
 
EATON HALL. 
 
 615 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 than cattle, but, I think, not much wilder than sheep. 
 Their ancestors have probably been in a half-domes- 
 ticated state, receiving food at the hands of man, in 
 winter, for centuries. There is a kind of poetry in 
 this, quite as much as if they were really wild deer, 
 such as their forefathers were, when Hugh Lupus used 
 to hunt them. 
 
 Our miserable cab drew up at the steps of Eaton 
 Hall, and, ascending under the portico, the door swung 
 silently open, and we were received very civilly by two 
 old men, — one, a tall footman in livery ; the other, of 
 higher grade, in plain clothes. The entrance-hall is 
 very spacious, and the floor is tessellated or somehow 
 inlaid with marble. There was statuary in marble on 
 the floor, and in niches stood several figures in antique 
 armor, of various dates ; some with lances, and others 
 with battle-axes and swords. There was a two-handed 
 sword, as much as six feet long ; but not nearly so pon- 
 derous as I have supposed this kind of weapon to be, 
 from reading of it. I could easily have brandished it. 
 
 I don’t think I am a good sight-seer ; at least, I 
 soon get satisfied with looking at set sights, and wish 
 to go on to the next. 
 
 The plainly dressed old man now led us into a long 
 corridor, which goes, I think, the whole length of the 
 house, about five hundred feet, arched all the way, 
 and lengthened interminably by a looking-glass at the 
 end, in which I saw our own party approaching like a 
 party of strangers. But I have so often seen this effect 
 produced in dry-goods stores and elsewhere that I was 
 not much impressed. There were family portraits and 
 other pictures, and likewise pieces of statuary, along 
 this arched corridor ; and it communicated with a 
 chapel with a scriptural altar-piece, copied from Ru- 
 
516 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 bens, and a picture of St. Michael and the Dragon, and 
 two, or perhaps three, richly painted windows. Every- 
 thing here is entirely new and fresh, this part having 
 been repaired, and never yet inhabited by the family. 
 This brand-newness makes it much less effective than 
 if it had been lived in ; and I felt pretty much as if I 
 were strolling through any other renewed house. Af- 
 ter all, the utmost force of man can do positively very 
 little towards making grand things or beautiful things. 
 The imagination can do so much more, merely on shut- 
 ting one’s eyes, that the actual effect seems meagre ; 
 so that a new house, unassociated with the past, is ex- 
 ceedingly unsatisfactory, especially when you have 
 heard that the wealth and skill of man has here done 
 its best. Besides, the rooms, as we saw them, did not 
 look by any means their best, the carpets not being 
 down, and the furniture being covered with protective 
 envelopes. However, rooms cannot be seen to advan- 
 tage by daylight ; it being altogether essential to the 
 effect, that they should be illuminated by artificial 
 light, which takes them somewhat out of the region of 
 bare reality. Nevertheless, there was undoubtedly 
 great splendor, — for the details of which I refer to 
 the guide-book. Among the family portraits, there 
 was one of a lady famous for her beautiful hand ; and 
 she was holding it up to notice in the funniest way, 
 — and very beautiful it certainly was. The private 
 apartments of the family were not shown us. I should 
 think it impossible for the owner of this house to im= 
 bue it with his personality to such a degree as to feel 
 it to be his home. It must be like a small lobster in 
 a shell much too large for him. 
 
 After seeing what was to be seen of the rooms, we 
 visited the gardens, in which are noble conservatories 
 
1851 .] 
 
 EATON HALE 
 
 617 
 
 and hot-houses, containing all manner of rare and 
 beautiful flowers, and tropical fruits. I noticed some 
 large pines, looking as if they were really made of 
 gold. The gardener (under-gardener I suppose he 
 was) who showed this part of the spectacle was very 
 intelligent as well as kindly, and seemed to take an in- 
 terest in his business. He gave S a purple ever- 
 
 lasting flower, which will endure a great many years, 
 as a memento of our visit to Eaton Hall. Finally, we 
 took a view of the front of the edifice, which is very 
 fine, and much more satisfactory than the interior, — 
 and returned to Chester. 
 
 We strolled about under the unsavory Rows, some- 
 times scudding from side to side of the street, through 
 the shower ; took lunch in a confectioner’s shop, and 
 drove to the railway station in time for the three-o’clock 
 train. It looked picturesque to see two little girls, 
 hand in hand, racing along the ancient passages of 
 the Rows ; but Chester has a very evil smell. 
 
 At the railroad station, S saw a small edition 
 
 of “ Twice-Told Tales,” forming a volume of the Cot- 
 tage Library ; and, opening it, there was the queerest 
 imaginable portrait of myself, — so very queer that we 
 could not but buy it. The shilling edition of “ The 
 Scarlet Letter ” and “ Seven Gables ” are at all the 
 book-stalls and shop-windows ; but so is The Lamp- 
 lighter,” and still more trashy books. 
 
 August 26^A. — All past affairs, all home conclu- 
 sions, all people whom I have known in America and 
 meet again here, are strangely compelled to undergo a 
 new trial. It is not that they suffer by comparison 
 with circumstances of English life and forms of Eng- 
 
518 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 lish manhood or womanhood; but, being free from my 
 old surroundings, and the inevitable prejudices of 
 home, I decide upon them absolutely. 
 
 I think I neglected to record that I saw Miss Mar- 
 tineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, el- 
 derly woman, and plainly dressed ; but withal she has 
 so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face that she is 
 pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is 
 of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from call- 
 ing herself old. She is the most continual talker I 
 ever heard ; it is really like the babbling of a brook, 
 and very lively and sensible too ; and all the while she 
 talks, she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one 
 auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ 
 of intelligence and sympathy between her and your- 
 self. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, 
 like the antennse of some insects. If you have any lit- 
 tle remark to make, you drop it in ; and she helps you 
 to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the 
 trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you ; and if 
 you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong 
 enough to embarrass you. All her talk was about 
 herself and her affairs ; but it did not seem like ego- 
 tism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbid- 
 ness. And this woman is an Atheist, and thinks that 
 the principle of life will become extinct when her body 
 is laid in the grave ! I will not think so, were it only 
 for her sake. What ! only a few weeds to spring out 
 of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympa- 
 thies flowering and fruiting forever ! 
 
 September IZtJi. — My family went to Rhyl last 
 Thursday, and on Saturday I joined them there, in 
 
1854 .] 
 
 RHYL. 
 
 519 
 
 company with O’Sullivan, who arrived in the Behama 
 from Lisbon that morning. We went by way of 
 
 Chester, and found S waiting for us at the Rhyl 
 
 station. Rhyl is a most uninteresting place, — a col- 
 lection of new lodging-houses and hotels, on a long 
 sand-beach, which the tide leaves bare almost to the 
 horizon. The sand is by no means a marble pavement, 
 but sinks under the foot, and makes very heavy walk- 
 ing ; but there is a promenade in front of the principal 
 range of houses, looking on the sea, whereon we have 
 rather better footing. Almost all the houses were full, 
 
 and S had taken a parlor and two bedrooms, and 
 
 is living after the English fashion, providing her own 
 table, lights, fuel, and everything. It is very awkward 
 to our American notions ; but there is an independence 
 about it, which I think must make it agreeable on bet- 
 ter acquaintance. But the place is certainly destitute 
 of attraction, and life seems to pass very heavily. 
 The English do not appear to have a turn for amus- 
 ing themselves. 
 
 Sunday was a bright and hot day, and in the fore- 
 noon I set out on a walk, not well knowing whither, 
 over a very dusty road, with not a particle of shade 
 along its dead level. The Welsh mountains were be- 
 fore me, at the distance of three or four miles, — long 
 ridgy hills, descending pretty abruptly upon the plain ; 
 on either side of the road, here and there, an old white- 
 washed, thatched stone cottage, or a stone farm-house, 
 with an aspect of some antiquity. I never suffered so 
 much before, on this side of the water, from heat and 
 dust, and should probably have turned back had I not 
 espied the round towers and walls of an old castle at 
 some distance before me. Having looked at a guide- 
 book, previously to setting out, I knew that this must 
 
520 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE^BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 be Rhyddlan Castle, about three miles from Rhyl ; so 
 I plodded on, and by and by entered an antiquated 
 village, on one side of which the castle stood. This 
 Welsh village is very much like the English villages, 
 with narrow streets and mean houses or cottages, built 
 in blocks, and here and there a larger house standing 
 alone ; everything far more compact than in our rural 
 villages, and with no grassy street- margin nor trees ; 
 aged and dirty also, with dirty children staring at the 
 passenger, and an undue supply of mean inns ; most, 
 or many of the men in breeches, and some of the 
 women, especially the elder ones, in black beaver hats. 
 The streets were paved with round pebbles, and looked 
 squalid and ugly. 
 
 The children and grown people stared lazily at me 
 as I passed, but showed no such alert and vivacious 
 curiosity as a community of Yankees would have done. 
 I turned up a street that led me to the castle, which 
 looked very picturesque close at hand, — more so than 
 at a distance, because the towers and walls have not a 
 sufficiently broken outline against the sky. There are 
 several round towers at the angles of the wall very 
 large in their circles, built of gray stone, crumbling, 
 ivy-grown, everything that one thinks of in an old ruin. 
 I could not get into the inner space of the castle with- 
 out climbing over a fence, or clambering down into 
 the moat ; so I contented myself with walking round 
 it, and viewing it from the outside. Through the gate- 
 way I saw a cow feeding on the green grass in the 
 inner court of the castle. In one of the walls there 
 was a large triangular gap, where perhaps the assail- 
 ants had made a breach. Of course there were weeds 
 on the ruinous top of the towers, and along the sum- 
 mit of the wall. This was the first castle built by Ed- 
 
1854 .] 
 
 RHYL. 
 
 521 
 
 ward I. in Wales, and he resided here during the erec- 
 tion of Conway Castle, and here Queen Eleanor gave 
 birth to a princess. Some few years since a meeting 
 of Welsh bards was held within it. 
 
 After viewing it awhile, and listening to the babble 
 of some children who lay on the grass near by, I re- 
 sumed my walk, and, meeting a Welshman in the vil- 
 lage street, I asked him my nearest way back to RhyL 
 Dim Sassenach,” said he, after a pause. How odd 
 that an hour or two on the railway should have 
 brought me amongst a people who speak no English ! 
 Just below the castle, there is an arched stone bridge 
 over the river Clwyd, and the best view of the edifice 
 is from hence. It stands on a gentle eminence, com- 
 manding the passage of the river, and two twin round 
 towers rise close beside one another, whence, I sup- 
 pose, archers have often drawn their bows against the 
 wild Welshmen, on the river-banks. Behind was the 
 line of mountains ; and this was the point of defence 
 between the hill country and the lowlands. On the 
 bridge stood a good many idle Welshmen, leaning 
 over the parapet, and looking at some small vessels 
 that had come up the river from the sea. There was 
 the frame of a new vessel on the stocks near by. 
 
 As I returned, on my way home, I again inquired 
 my way of a man in breeches, who, I found, could 
 speak English very well. He was kind, and took pains 
 to direct me, giving me the choice of three ways, viz, 
 the one by which I came, another across the fields, 
 and a third by the embankment along the river-side. 
 I chose the latter, and so followed the course of the 
 Clwyd, which is very ugly, with a tidal flow and wide 
 marshy banks. On its farther side was Rhyddlan 
 marsh, where a battle was fought between the Welsh 
 
522 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 and Saxons a thousand years ago. I have forgotten 
 to mention that the castle and its vicinity was the 
 scene of the famous battle of the fiddlers, between De 
 Blandeville, Earl of Chester, and the Welsh, about the 
 time of the Conqueror. 
 
 CONWAY CASTLE. 
 
 Septemher IZth. — On Monday we went with 
 O’Sullivan to Conway by rail. Certainly this must 
 be the most perfect specimen of a ruinous old castle 
 in the whole world ; it quite fills up one’s idea. We 
 first walked round the exterior of the wall, at the base 
 of which are hovels, with dirty children playing about 
 them, and pigs rambling along, and squalid women 
 visible in the doorways ; but all these things melt into 
 the picturesqueness of the scene, and do not harm it. 
 The whole town of Conway is built in what was once 
 the castle-yard, and the whole circuit of the wall is 
 still standing in a delightful state of decay. At the 
 angles, and at regular intervals, there are round tow- 
 ers, having half their circle on the outside of the walls 
 and half within. Most of these towers have a great 
 crack pervading them irregularly from top to bottom ; 
 the ivy hangs upon them, — the weeds grow on the 
 tops. Gateways, three or four of them, open through 
 the walls, and streets proceed from them into the 
 town. At some points, very old cottages or small 
 houses are close against the sides, and, old as they are, 
 they must have been built after the whole structure 
 was a ruin. In one place I saw the sign of an ale- 
 house painted on the gray stones of one of the old 
 round towers. As we entered one of the gates, after 
 making the entire circuit, we saw an omnibus coming 
 down the street towards us, with its horn sounding. 
 
1854 .] 
 
 CONWAY CASTLE. 
 
 623 
 
 Llandudno was its place of destination ; and, knowing 
 no more about it than that it was four miles off, we 
 took our seats. Llandudno is a watering-village at the 
 base of the Great Orme’s Head, at the mouth of the 
 Conway River. In this omnibus there were two pleas- 
 ant - looking girls, who talked W elsh together, — a 
 guttural, childish kind of a babble. Afterwards we 
 got into conversation with them, and found them very 
 agreeable. One of them was -reading Tupper’s Pro- 
 verbial Philosophy.” On reaching Llandudno, S 
 
 waited at the hotel, while O’Sullivan, U , and I 
 
 ascended the Great Orme’s Head. There are copper- 
 mines here, and we heard of a large cave, with stalac- 
 tites, but did not go so far as that. We found the old 
 shaft of a mine, however, and threw stones down it, 
 and counted twenty before we heard them strike the 
 bottom. At the base of the Head, on the side oppo- 
 site the village, we saw a small -church with a broken 
 roof, and horizontal gravestones of slate within the 
 stone enclosure around it. The view from the hill 
 was most beautiful, — a blue summer sea, with the 
 distant trail of smoke from a steamer, and many 
 snowy sails ; in another direction the mountains, near 
 and distant, some of them with clouds below their 
 peaks. 
 
 We went to one of the mines which are still worked, 
 and boys came running to meet us with specimens of 
 the copper ore for sale. The miners were not now 
 hoisting ore from the shaft, but were washing and 
 selecting the valuable fragments from great heaps of 
 crumbled stone and earth. All about this spot there 
 are shafts and well-holes, looking fearfully deep and 
 black, and without the slightest protection, so that we 
 might just as easily have walked into them as not. 
 
524 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 Having examined these matters sufficiently, we de- 
 scended the hill towards the village, meeting parties of 
 visitors, mounted on donkeys, which is a much more 
 sensible way of ascending in a hot day than to walk. 
 On the sides and summit of the hill we found yellow 
 gorse, — heath of two colors, I think, and very beauti- 
 ful, — and here and there a harebell. Owing to the 
 long-continued dry weather, the grass was getting with- 
 ered and brown, though not so much so as on Amer- 
 ican hill-pastures at this season. Eeturning to the 
 village, we all went into a confectioner’s shop, and 
 made a good luncheon. The two prettiest young ladies 
 whom I have seen in England came into the shop and 
 ate cakes while we were there. They appeared to be 
 living together in a lodging-house, and ordered some 
 of their housekeeping articles from the confectioner. 
 Next we went into the village bazaar, — a sort of tent 
 or open shop, full of knick-knacks and gewgaws, and 
 bought some playthings for the children. At half 
 past one we took our seats in the omnibus, to return 
 to Conway. 
 
 We had as yet only seen the castle wall and the 
 exterior of the castle ; now we were to see the inside. 
 Right at the foot of it an old woman has her stand for 
 the sale of lithographic views of Conway and other 
 places ; but these views are ridiculously inadequate, 
 so that we did not buy any of them. The admittance 
 into the castle is by a wooden door of modern con- 
 struction, and the present seneschal is, I believe, the 
 sexton of a church. He remembered me as having 
 been there a month or two ago ; and probably, con- 
 sidering that I was already initiated, or else because 
 he had many other visitors, he left us to wander about 
 the castle at will. It is altogether impossible to de- 
 
CONWAY CASTLE. 
 
 525 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 scribe Conway Castle. Nothing ever can have been 
 so perfect in its own style, and for its own purposes, 
 when it was first built ; and now nothing else can be 
 so perfect as a picture of ivy-grown, peaceful ruin,. 
 The banqueting-hall, all ojien to the sky, and with 
 thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass 
 and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is 
 indescribably beautiful. The hearthstones of the great 
 old fireplaces, all about the castle, seem to be favorite 
 spots for weeds to grow. There are eight large round 
 towers, and out of four of them, I think, rise smaller 
 towers, ascending to a much greater height, and once 
 containing winding staircases, all of which are now 
 broken, and inaccessible from below, though, in at 
 least one of the towers, the stairs seemed perfect, high 
 aloft. It must have been the rudest violence that 
 broke down these stairs ; for each step was a thick 
 and heavy slab of stone, built into the wall of the 
 tower. There is no such thing as a roof in any part ; 
 towers, hall, kitchen, all are open to the sky. One 
 round tower, directly overhanging the railway, is so 
 shattered by the falling away of the lower part, that 
 you can look quite up into it and through it, while 
 sitting in the cars ; and yet it has stood thus, without 
 falling into complete ruin, for more than two hundred 
 years. I think that it was in this tower that we found 
 the castle oven, an immense cavern, big enough to bake 
 bread for an army. The railway passes exactly at the 
 base of the high rock, on which this part of the castle 
 is situated, and goes into the town through a great 
 arch that has been opened in the castle wall. The 
 tubular bridge across the Conway has been built in a 
 style that accords with the old architecture, and I ob“ 
 served that one little sprig of ivy had rooted itseK in 
 the new structure. 
 
526 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOORS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 There are numberless intricate passages in the thick- 
 ness of the castle walls, forming communications be- 
 tween tower and tower, — damp, chill passages, with 
 rough stone on either hand, darksome, and very likely 
 leading to dark pitfalls. The thickness of the walls 
 is amazing ; and the people of those days must have 
 been content with very scanty light, so small were the 
 apertures, — sometimes merely slits and loopholes, 
 glimmering through many feet of thickness of stone. 
 One of the towers was said to have been the residence 
 of Queen Eleanor ; and this was better lighted than 
 the others, containing an oriel-window, looking out of 
 a little oratory, as it seemed to be, with groined arches 
 and traces of ornamental sculpture, so that we could 
 dress up some imperfect image of a queenly chamber, 
 though the tower was roofless and floorless. There 
 was another pleasant little windowed nook, close be- 
 side the oratory, where the Queen might have sat sew- 
 ing or looking down the river Conway at the pictur- 
 esque headlands towards the sea. We imagined her 
 stately figure in antique robes, standing beneath the 
 groined arches of the oratory. There seem to have 
 been three chambers, one above another, in these tow- 
 ers, and the one in which was the embowed window 
 was the middle one. I suppose the diameter of each 
 of these circular rooms could not have been more than 
 twenty feet on the inside. All traces of wood-work 
 and iron-work are quite gone from the whole castle. 
 These are said to have been taken away by a Lord 
 Conway in the reign of Charles II. There is a grassy 
 space under the windows of Queen Eleanor’s tower, — 
 a sort of outwork of the castle, where probably, when 
 no enemy was near, the Queen used to take the open 
 air in summer afternoons like this. Here we sat down 
 
1854 .] 
 
 CONWAY CASTLE. 
 
 527 
 
 on the grass of the ruined wall, and agreed that noth- 
 ing in the world could be so beautiful and picturesque 
 as Conway Castle, and that never could there have 
 been so fit a time to see it as this sunny, quiet, lovely 
 afternoon. Sunshine adapts itself to the character of 
 a ruin in a wonderful way ; it does not “ flout the 
 ruins gray,” as Scott says, but sympathizes with their 
 decay, and saddens itself for their sake. It beautifies 
 the ivy too. 
 
 We saw, at the corner of this grass-plot around 
 Queen Eleanor’s tower, a real trunk of a tree of ivy, 
 with so stalwart a stem, and such a vigorous grasp of 
 its strong branches, that it would be a very efficient 
 support to the wall, were it otherwise inclined to fall. 
 Oh that we could have ivy in America ! What is there 
 to beautify us when our time of ruin comes ? 
 
 Before departing, we made the entire circuit of the 
 castle on its walls, and O'Sullivan and I climbed by a 
 ladder to the top of one of the towers. While there, 
 we looked down into the street beneath, and saw a 
 photographist preparing to take a view of the castle, 
 and calling out to some little girl in some niche or on 
 some pinnacle of the walls to stand still that he might 
 catch her figure and face. I think it added to the 
 impressiveness of the old castle, to see the streets and 
 the kitchen-gardens and the homely dwellings that 
 had grown up within the precincts of this feudal for- 
 tress, and the people of to-day follovdng their little 
 businesses about it. This does not destroy the charm ; 
 but tourists and idle visitors do impair it. The ear- 
 nest life of to-day, however, petty and homely as it 
 may be, has a right to its place alongside of what is 
 left of the life of other days ; and if it be vulgar it- 
 self, it does not vulgarize the scene. But tourists do 
 vulgarize it ; and I suppose we did so, just like others. 
 
528 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1854 . 
 
 We took the train back to Rhyl, where we arrived 
 at about four o’clock, and, having dined, we again 
 took the rail for Chester, and thence to Eock Park 
 (that is, O’Sullivan and I), and reached home at 
 about eleven o’clock. 
 
 Yesterday, September 13th, I began to wear a watch 
 from Bennet’s, 65 Cheapside, London. W. C. Bennet 
 warrants it as the best watch which they can produce. 
 If it prove as good and as durable as he prophesies, 
 
 J will find it a perfect time-keeper long after his 
 
 father has done with Time. If I had not thought of 
 his wearing it hereafter, I should have been content 
 with a much inferior one. No. 39,620. 
 
 September — I went back to Rhyl last Friday 
 in the steamer. We arrived at the landing-place at 
 nearly four o’clock, having started at twelve, and I 
 walked thence to our lodgings, 18 West Parade. The 
 children and their mother were all gone out, and I sat 
 some time in our parlor before anybody came. The 
 next morning I made an excursion in the omnibus as 
 far as Ruthin, passing through Rhyddlan, St. Asaph, 
 Denbigh, and reaching Ruthin at one o’clock. All 
 these are very ancient places. St. Asaph has a cathe- 
 dral which is not quite worthy of that name, but is a 
 very large and stately church in excellent repair. Its 
 square battlemented tower has a very fine appearance, 
 crowning the clump of village houses on the hill-top, 
 as you approach from Rhyddlan. The ascent of the 
 hill is very steep ; so it is at Denbigh and at Ruthin, 
 — the steepest streets, indeed, that I ever climbed. 
 Denbigh is a place of still more antique aspect than 
 Sto Asaph ; it looks, I think, even older than Chester, 
 
1854.] 
 
 RUTHIN. 
 
 529 
 
 with its gabled houses, many of their windows open- 
 ing on hinges, and their fronts resting on pillars, with 
 an open porch beneath. The castle makes an admira- 
 bly ruinous figure on the hill, higher than the village. 
 I had come hither with the purpose of inspecting it, 
 but as it began to rain just then, I concluded to get 
 into the omnibus and go to Ruthin. There was an- 
 other steep ascent from the commencement of the long 
 street of Ruthin, till I reached the market-place, which 
 is of nearly triangular shape, and an exceedingly old- 
 looking place. Houses of stone or plastered brick ; 
 one or two with timber frames ; the roofs of an uneven 
 line, and bulging out or sinking in ; the slates moss- 
 grown. Some of them have two peaks and even three 
 in a row, fronting on the streets, and there is a stone 
 market -house with a table of regulations. In this 
 market-place there is said to be a stone on which 
 King Arthur beheaded one of his enemies ; but this I 
 did not see. All these villages were very lively, as 
 the omnibus drove in ; and I rather imagine it was 
 market-day in each of them, — there being quite a 
 bustle of Welsh people. The old women came round 
 the omnibus courtesying and intimating their willing- 
 ness to receive alms, — witch-like women, such as one 
 sees in pictures or reads of in romances, and very un- 
 like anything feminine in America. Their style of 
 dress cannot have changed for centuries. It was quite 
 unexpected to me to hear Welsh so universally and 
 familiarly spoken. Everybody spoke it. The omni- 
 bus-driver could speak but imperfect English ; there 
 was a jabber of Welsh all through the streets and 
 market-places ; and it flowed out with a freedom quite 
 different from the way in which they expressed them- 
 selves in English. I had had an idea that W elsh was 
 
 VOL. VII. 34 
 
530 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 spoken rather as a freak and in fun than as a native 
 language ; it was so strange to find another language 
 the people’s actual and earnest medium of thought 
 within so short a distance of England. But English 
 is scarcely more known to the body of the Welsh 
 people than to the peasantry of France. Moreover, 
 they sometimes pretend to ignorance, when they might 
 speak it fairly enough. 
 
 I took luncheon at the hotel where the omnibus 
 stopped, and then went to search out the castle. It 
 appears to have been once extensive, but the remains 
 of it are now very few, except a part of the external 
 wall. Whatever other portion may still exist, has 
 been built into a modern castellated mansion, which 
 has risen within the wide circuit of the fortress, — a 
 handsome and spacious edifice of red freestone, with 
 a high tower, on which a flag was flying. The grounds 
 were well laid out in walks, and really I think the 
 site of the castle could not have been turned to better 
 account. I am getting tired of antiquity. It is cer- 
 tainly less interesting in the long run than novelty ; 
 and so I was well content with the fresh, warm, red 
 hue of the modern house, and the unworn outline of 
 its walls, and its cheerful, large windows; and was 
 willing that the old ivy-grown ruins should exist now 
 only to contrast with the modernisms. These ancient 
 walls, by the by, are of immense thickness. There 
 is a passage through the interior of a portion of them, 
 the width from this interior passage to the outer one 
 being fifteen feet on one side, and I know not how 
 much on the other. 
 
 It continued showery all day ; and the omnibus was 
 crowded. I had chosen the outside from Rhyl to Den- 
 bigh, but, all the rest of the journey, imprisoned my- 
 
RHYDDLAN. 
 
 531 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 self within. On our way home, an old lady got into 
 the omnibus, — a lady of tremendous rotundity ; and 
 as she tumbled from the door to the farthest part of 
 the carriage, she kept advising all the rest of the pas- 
 sengers to get out. I don’t think there will be much 
 rain, gentlemen,” quoth she ; you ’ll be much more 
 comfortable on the outside.” As none of us complied, 
 she glanced along the seats. What ! are you all 
 Saas’nach?” she inquired. As we drove along, she 
 talked W elsh with great fluency to one of the passen- 
 gers, a young woman with a baby, and to as many 
 others as could understand her. It has a strange, wild 
 sound, like a language half blown away by the wind. 
 The lady’s English was very good ; but she probably 
 prided herself on her proficiency in Welsh. My ex- 
 cursion to-day had been along the valley of the Clwyd, 
 a very rich and fertile tract of country. 
 
 The next day we all took a long walk on the beach, 
 picking up shells. 
 
 On Monday we took an open carriage and drove to 
 Rhyddlan ; whence we sent back the carriage, mean- 
 ing to walk home along the embankment of the river 
 Clwyd, after inspecting the castle. The fortress is 
 very ruinous, having been dismantled by the Parlia- 
 mentarians. There are great gaps, — two, at least, 
 in the walls that connect the round towers, of which 
 there were six, one on each side of a gateway in 
 front, and the same at a gateway towards the river, 
 where there is a steep descent to a wall and square 
 tower, at the water -side. Great pains and a great 
 deal of gunpowder must have been used in converting 
 this castle into a ruin. There were one or two frag- 
 ments lying where they had fallen more than two hun- 
 dred years ago, which, though merely a conglomerar 
 
532 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 tion of small stones and mortar, were just as hard as 
 if they had been solid masses of granite. The sub- 
 stantial thickness of the walls is composed of these 
 agglomerated small stones and mortar, the casing be- 
 ing hewn blocks of red freestone. This is much worn 
 away by the weather, wherever it has been exposed to 
 the air ; but, under shelter, it looks as if it might have 
 been hewn only a year or two ago. Each of the round 
 towers had formerly a small staircase turret rising 
 beside and ascending above it, in which a warder 
 might be posted, but they have all been so battered 
 and shattered that it is impossible for an uninstructed 
 observer to make out a satisfactory plan of them. The 
 interior of each tower was a small room, not more 
 than twelve or fifteen feet across ; and of these there 
 seem to have been three stories, with loop-holes for 
 archery, and not much other light than what came 
 through themo Then there are various passages and 
 nooks and corners and square recesses in the stone, 
 some of which must have been intended for dungeons, 
 and the ugliest and gloomiest dungeons imaginable, 
 for they could not have had any light or air. There 
 is not the least splinter of wood-work remaining in 
 any part of the castle, — nothing but bare stone, and 
 a little plaster, in one or two places, on the wall. In 
 the front gateway we looked at the groove on each 
 side, in which the portcullis used to rise and fall ; and 
 in each of the contiguous round towers there was a 
 loop-hole, whence an enemy on the outer side of the 
 portcullis might be shot through with an arrow. 
 
 The inner court-yard is a parallelogram, nearly a 
 square, and is about forty-five of my paces across. It 
 is entirely grass-grown, and vacant, except for two or 
 three trees that have been recently set out, and which 
 
RHYDDLAN. 
 
 533 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 are surrounded with palings to keep away the cows 
 that pasture in and about the place. No window 
 looks from the walls or towers into this court-yard ; 
 nor are there any traces of buildings having stood 
 within the enclosure, unless it be what looks some- 
 thing like the flue of a chimney within one of the 
 walls. I should suppose, however, that there must 
 have been, when the castle was in its perfect state, a 
 hall, a kitchen, and other commodious apartments and 
 offices for the King and his train, such as there were 
 at Conway and Beaumaris. But if so, all fragments 
 have been carried away, and all hollows of the old 
 foundations scrupulously filled up. The round tow- 
 ers could not have comprised all the accommodation 
 of the castle. There is nothing more striking in these 
 ruins than to look upward from the crumbling base, 
 and see flights of stairs, still comparatively perfect, by 
 which you might securely ascend to the upper heights 
 of the tower, although all traces of a staircase have 
 disappeared below, and the upper portion cannot be 
 attained. On three sides of the fortress is a moat, 
 about sixty feet wide, and cased with stone. It was 
 probably of great depth in its day, but it is now partly 
 filled up with earth, and is quite dry and grassy 
 throughout its whole extent. On the inner side of the 
 moat was the outer wall of the castle, portions of 
 which still remain. Between the outer wall and the 
 castle itself the space is also about sixty feet. 
 
 The day was cloudy and lov/ering, and there were 
 several little spatterings of rain, while we rambled 
 about. The two children ran shouting hither and 
 thither, and were continually clambering into danger- 
 ous places, racing along ledges of broken wall. At 
 last they altogether disappeared for a good while; 
 
534 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 their voices, which had heretofore been plainly audi- 
 ble, were hushed, nor was there any answer when we 
 began to call them, while making ready for our de- 
 parture. But they finally appeared, coming out of the 
 moat, where they had been picking and eating black- 
 berries, — which, they said, grew very plentifully there, 
 and which they were very reluctant to leave. Before 
 quitting the castle, I must not forget the ivy, which 
 makes a perfect tapestry over a large portion of the 
 walls. 
 
 We walked about the village, which is old and ugly; 
 small, irregular streets, contriving to be intricate, 
 though there are few of them ; mean houses, joining 
 to each other. We saw, in the principal one, the par* 
 liament house in which Edward I. gave a Charter, or 
 allowed rights of some kind to his Welsh subjects. 
 The ancient part of its wall is entirely distinguishable 
 from what has since been built upon it. 
 
 Thence we set out to walk along the embankment, 
 although the sky looked very threatening. The wind, 
 however, was so strong, and had such a full sweep at 
 us, on the top of the bank, that we decided on taking 
 a path that led from it across the moor. But we soon 
 had cause to repent of this ; for, which way soever we 
 turned, we found ourselves cut off by a ditch or a 
 little stream ; so that here we were fairly astray on 
 Ehyddlan moor, the old battle-field of the Saxons and 
 Britons, and across which, I suppose, the fiddlers and 
 mountebanks had marched to the relief of the Earl of 
 Chester. Anon, too, it began to shower ; and it was 
 only after various leaps and scramblings that we made 
 our way to a large farm-house, and took shelter under 
 a cart -shed. The back of the house to which we 
 gained access was very dirty and ill-kept ; some dirty 
 
RHYDDLAN. 
 
 635 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 ehildren peeped at us as we approached, and nobody 
 had the civility to ask us in ; so we took advantage of 
 the first cessation of the shower to resume our way. 
 We were shortly overtaken by a very intelligent-look* 
 ing and civil man, who seemed to have come from 
 Rhyddlan, and said he was going to Rhyl. We fol- 
 lowed his guidance over stiles and along hedge-row 
 paths which we never could have threaded rightly by 
 ourselves. 
 
 By and by our kind guide had to stop at an inter- 
 mediate farm; but he gave us full directions how to 
 proceed, and we went on till it began to shower again 
 pretty briskly, and we took refuge in a little bit of old 
 stone cottage, which, small as it was, had a greater an- 
 tiquity than any mansion in America. The door was 
 open, and as we approached, we saw several children 
 gazing at us; and their mother, a pleasant-looking 
 woman, who seemed rather astounded at the visit that 
 was about to befall her, tried to draw a tattered cur. 
 tain over a part of her interior, which she fancied even 
 less fit to be seen fhan the rest. To say the truth, the 
 house was not at all better than a pigsty ; and while 
 we sat there, a pig came familiarly to the door, thrust 
 in his snout, and seemed surprised that he should be 
 driven away, instead of being admitted as one of the 
 family. The floor was of brick ; there was no ceiling, 
 but only the peaked gable overhead. The room was 
 kitchen, parlor, and, I suppose, bedroom for the whole 
 family ; at all events, there was only the tattered cur- 
 tain between us and the sleeping accommodationso 
 The good woman either could not or would not speak 
 a word of English, only laughing when S said. 
 
 Dim Sassenach ? ” but she was kind* and hospitable, 
 and found a chair for each of us. She had been mak- 
 
586 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [ 1854 , 
 
 ing some bread, and the dough was on the dresser. 
 Life with these people is reduced to its simplest ele- 
 ments. It is only a pity that they cannot or do not 
 choose to keep themselves cleaner. Poverty, except 
 in cities, need not be squalid. When the shower 
 abated a little, we gave all the pennies we had to the 
 children, and set forth again. By the by, there were 
 several colored prints stuck up against the walls, and 
 there was a clock ticking in a corner, and some paper- 
 hangings pinned upon the slanting roof. 
 
 It began to rain again before we arrived at Rhyl, 
 and we were driven into a small tavern. After stay- 
 ing there awhile, we set forth between the drops ; 
 but the rain fell still heavier, so that we were pretty 
 well damped before we got to our lodgings. After 
 dinner, I took the rail for Chester and Rock Park, 
 
 and S and the children and maid followed the 
 
 next day. 
 
 September 22c?. — I dined on Wednesday evening 
 at Mr. John Hey wood’s, Norris Green. Mr. Monck- 
 ton Milnes and lady were of the company. Mr. 
 Milnes is a very agreeable, kindly man, resembling 
 Longfellow a good deal in personal appearance ; and 
 he promotes, by his genial manners, the same pleasant 
 intercourse which is so easily established with Long- 
 fellow. He is said to be a very kind patron of lit- 
 erary men, and to do a great deal of good among 
 young and neglected people of that class. He is con- 
 sidered one of the best conversationists at present in 
 society s it may very well be so ; his style of talking 
 being very simple and natural, anything but obtru- 
 sive, so that you might enjoy its agreeableness without 
 suspecting it. He introduced me to his wife (a daugh* 
 
LI VERPOOL, 
 
 687 
 
 1854 .] 
 
 ter of Lord Crewe), with whom and himself I had a 
 good deal of talk. . . . Mr. Milnes told me that he 
 owns the land in Yorkshire, whence some of the pil- 
 grims of the Mayflower emigrated to Plymouth, and 
 that Elder Brewster was the Postmaster of the village,, 
 . . . He also said that in the next voyage of the May^ 
 flower, after she carried the Pilgrims, she was em- 
 ployed in transporting a cargo of slaves from Africa, 
 — to the West Indies, I suppose. This is a queer 
 fact, and would be nuts for the Southerners. 
 
 Mem. — An American would never understand the 
 passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going 
 astray along a, by-path into the grounds of Giant De- 
 spair, — from there being no stiles and by-paths in our 
 country. 
 
 September — On Saturday evening my wife 
 and I went to a soiree given by the Mayor and Mrs. 
 Lloyd at the Town Hall to receive the Earl of Har- 
 rowby. It was quite brilliant, the public rooms being 
 really magnificent, and adorned for the occasion with 
 a large collection of pictures, belonging to Mr. Naylor. 
 They were mostly, if not entirely, of modern artists, 
 — of Turner, Wilkie, Landseer, and others of the best 
 English painters. Turner’s seemed too ethereal to 
 have been done by mortal hands. 
 
 The British Scientific Association being now in ses- 
 sion here, many distinguished strangers were present. 
 
 September 29^A. — Mr. Monckton Milnes called on 
 me at the Consulate day before yesterday. He is 
 pleasant and sensible. . . . Speaking of American pot 
 
538 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 iticians, I remarked that they were seldom anything 
 but politicians, and had no literary or other culture 
 beyond their own calling. He said the case was the 
 
 same in England, and instanced Sir , who 
 
 once called on him for information when an appeal 
 had been made to him respecting two literary gentle° 
 
 men. Sir had never heard the names of 
 
 either of these gentlemen, and applied to Mr. Milnes, 
 as being somewhat conversant with the literary class, 
 to know whether they were distinguished and what 
 were their claims. The names of the two literary men 
 were James Sheridan Knowles and Alfred Tennyson. 
 
 October 5th. — Yesterday I was present at a dejeu^ 
 ner on board the James Barnes, on occasion of her 
 coming under the British flag, having been built for 
 the Messrs. Barnes by Donald McKay of Boston. She 
 is a splendid vessel, and magnificently fitted up, though 
 not with consummate taste. It would be worth while 
 that ornamental architects and upholsterers should 
 study this branch of art, since the ship-builders seem 
 willing to expend a good deal of money on it. In 
 fact, I do not see that there is anywhere else so much 
 encouragement to the exercise of ornamental art. I 
 saw nothing to criticise in the solid and useful details 
 of the ship ; the ventilation, in particular, being free 
 and abundant, so that the hundreds of passengers who 
 will have their berths between decks, and at a still 
 lower depth, will have good air and enough of it. 
 
 There were four or five hundred persons, princi- 
 pally Liverpool merchants and their wives*, invited to 
 the dejeuner; and the tables were spread between 
 decks, the berths for passengers not being yet put in. 
 There was not quite light enough to make the scene 
 
1853 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 639 
 
 cheerful, it being an overcast day ; and, indeed, there 
 v/as an English plainness in the arrangement of the 
 festal room, which might have been better exchanged 
 for the flowery American taste, which I have just been 
 criticising. With flowers, and the arrangement of 
 flags, we should have made something very pretty of 
 the space between decks ; but there was nothing to 
 hide the fact, that in a few days hence there would be 
 crowded berths and sea-sick steerage passengers where 
 we were now feasting. The cheer was very good, — 
 cold fowl and meats ; cold pies of foreign manufacture, 
 very rich, and of mysterious composition ; and cham- 
 pagne in plenty, with other wines for those who liked 
 them. 
 
 I sat between two ladies, one of them Mrs. , a 
 
 pleasant young woman, who, I believe, is of American 
 provincial nativity, and whom I therefore regarded as 
 half a countrywoman. We talked a good deal to- 
 gether, and I confided to her my annoyance at the 
 prospect of being called up to answer a toast ; but she 
 did not pity me at all, though she felt much alarm 
 about her husband. Captain — ^ — , who was in the 
 same predicament. Seriously, it is the most awful 
 part of my ofiicial duty, — this necessity of making 
 dinner-speeches at the Mayor’s, and other public or 
 semi-public tables. However, my neighborhood to 
 
 Mrs. was good for me, inasmuch as by laughing 
 
 over file matter with her I came to regard it in a light 
 and ludicrous way ; and so, when the time actually 
 came, I stood up with a careless dare-devil feelings 
 The chairman toasted the President immediately after 
 the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of myself 
 in a most flattering manner, something like this : 
 
 Great by his position under the Republic, — greater 
 
540 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 still, I am bold to say, in the Kepublic of letters ! ” 
 I made no reply at all to this ; in truth, I forgot all 
 about it when I began to speak, and merely thanked 
 the company in behalf of the President and my coum 
 trymen, and made a few remarks with no very de^ 
 cided point to them. However, they cheered and ap- 
 plauded, and I took advantage of the applause to sit 
 
 down, and Mrs. informed me that I had suc= 
 
 ceeded admirably. It was no success at all, to be 
 sure ; neither was it a failure, for I had aimed at noth- 
 ing, and I had exactly hit it. But after sitting down, 
 I was conscious of an enjoyment in speaking to a pub- 
 lic assembly, and felt as if I should like to rise again. 
 It is something like being under fire, — a sort of ex- 
 citement, not exactly pleasure, but more piquant than 
 most pleasures. I have felt this before, in the same 
 circumstances ; but, while on my legs, my impulse is to 
 get through with my remarks and sit down again as 
 quickly as possible. The next speech, I think, was by 
 Rev. Dr. , the celebrated Arctic gentleman, in re- 
 
 ply to a toast complimentary to the clergy. He turned 
 aside from the matter in hand to express his kind feel- 
 ings towards America, where he said he had been most 
 hospitably received, especially at Cambridge Univer- 
 sity. He also made allusions to me, and I suppose it 
 wotdd have been no more than civil in me to have an- 
 swered with a speech in acknowledgment, but I did not 
 choose to make another venture, so merely thanked 
 him across the corner of the table, for he sat near me. 
 He is a venerable - looking, white-haired gentleman, 
 tall and slender, with a pale, intelligent, kindly face. 
 
 Other speeches were made ; but from beginning to 
 end there was not one breath of eloquence, nor even 
 one neat sentence ; and I rather think that English- 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 641 
 
 men would purposely avoid eloquence or neatness in 
 after-dinner speeches. It seems to be no part of their 
 object. Yet any Englishman almost, much more gen- 
 erally than Americans, will stand up and talk on in a 
 plain way, uttering one rough, ragged, and shapeless 
 sentence after another, and will have expressed him- 
 self sensibly, though in a very rude manner, before he 
 sits down. And this is quite satisfactory to his audi- 
 ence, who, indeed, are rathev prejudiced against the 
 man who speaks too glibly. 
 
 The guests began to depart shortly after three 
 o’clock. This morning I have seen two reports of my 
 little speech, — one exceedingly incorrect ; another 
 pretty exact, but not much to my taste, for I seem to 
 have left out everything that would have been fittest 
 to say. 
 
 October Qth, — The people, for several days, have 
 been in the utmost anxiety, and latterly, in the highest 
 exultation, about Sebastopol, — and all England, and 
 Europe to boot, have been fooled by the belief that it 
 had fallen. This, however, now turns out to be incor- 
 rect ; and the public visage is somewhat grim in con- 
 sequence^ I am glad of it. In spite of his actual sym- 
 pathies, it is impossible for a true American to be 
 otherwise than glad. Success makes an Englishman 
 intolerable; and, already, on the mistaken idea that the 
 way was open to the prosperous conclusion of the war, 
 The “Times” had begun to throw out menaces against 
 America. I shall never love England till she sues to 
 us for help, and, in the mean time, the fewer triumphs 
 she obtains, the better for all parties. An English- 
 man in adversity is a very respectable character ; he 
 does not lose his dignity, but merely comes to a proper 
 
542 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 conception of himself. It is rather touching to an ob- 
 server, to see how much the universal heart is in this 
 matter, — to see the merchants gathering round the 
 telegraphic messages, posted on the pillars of the Ex- 
 change news-room, — the people in the street who can- 
 not afford to buy a paper clustering round the win- 
 dows of the news-offices, where a copy is pinned up, — 
 the groups of corporals and sergeants at the recruiting 
 rendezvous, with a newspaper in the midst of them, — 
 and all earnest and sombre, and feeling like one man 
 together, whatever their rank. I seem to myself like 
 a spy or a traitor, when I meet their eyes, and am con- 
 scious that I neither hope nor fear in sympathy with 
 them, although they look at me in full confidence of 
 sympathy. Their heart knoweth its own bitterness,” 
 and as for me, being a stranger and an alien, I ‘‘ inter- 
 meddle not with their joy.” 
 
 October ^th, — My ancestor left England in 1630. 
 I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had 
 been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, 
 leaving England emerging from the feudal system, and 
 finding it, on my return, on the verge of republican- 
 ism. It brings the two far-separated points of time 
 very closely together to view the matter thus. 
 
 October \Qth. — A day or two ago arrived the sad 
 news of the loss of the Arctic by collision with a 
 French steamer off Newfoundland, and the loss also 
 of three or four hundred people. I have seldom been 
 more affected by anything quite alien from my per- 
 sonal and friendly concerns, than by the death of Cap' 
 tain Luce and his son. The boy was a delicate lad, 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 643 
 
 and it is said that he had never been absent from his 
 mother till this time, when his father had taken him 
 to England to consult a physician about a complaint 
 in his hip. So his father, while the ship was sinking, 
 was obliged to decide whether he would put the poor, 
 weakly, timorous child on board the boat, to take his 
 hard chance of life there, or keep him to go down with 
 himself and the ship. He chose the latter; and within 
 half an hour, I suppose, the boy was among the child- 
 angels. Captain Luce could not do less than die, for 
 his own part, with the responsibility of all those lost 
 lives upon him. He may not have been in the least 
 to blame for the calamity, but it was certainly too 
 heavy a one for him to survive. He was a sensible 
 man, and a gentleman, courteous, quiet, with some- 
 thing almost melancholy in his address and aspect. 
 Oftentimes he has come into my inner office to say 
 good-by before his departures, but I cannot precisely 
 remember whether or no he took leave of me before 
 this latest voyage. I never exchanged a great many 
 words with him ; but those were kind ones. 
 
 October l^th, — It appears to be customary for peo- 
 ple of decent station, but in distressed circumstances, 
 to go round among their neighbors and the public, 
 accompanied by a friend, who explains the case. I 
 have been accosted in the street in regard to one of 
 these matters ; and to-day there came to my office a 
 grocer, who had become security for a friend, and who 
 was threatened with an execution, — with another gro- 
 cer for supporter and advocate. The beneficiary takes 
 very little active part in the affair, merely looking 
 careworn, distressed, and pitiable, and throwing in a 
 
544 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 word of corroboration, or a sigh, or an acknowledg- 
 ment, as the case may demand. In the present in- 
 stance, the friend, a young, respectable-looking trades- 
 man, with a Lancashire accent, spoke freely and sim- 
 ply of his client’s misfortunes, not pressing the case 
 unduly, but doing it full justice, and saying, at the 
 close of the interview, that it was no pleasant business 
 for himself. The broken grocer was an elderly man, 
 of somewhat sickly aspect. The whole matter is very 
 foreign to American habits. No respectable American 
 would think of retrieving his affairs by such means, 
 but would prefer ruin ten times over ; no friend would 
 take up his cause ; no public would think it worth 
 while to prevent the small catastrophe. And yet the 
 custom is not without its good side, as indicating a 
 closer feeling of brotherhood, a more efficient sense of 
 neighborhood, than exists among ourselves, although, 
 perhaps, we are more careless of a fellow -creature’s 
 ruin, because ruin with us is by no means the fatal and 
 irretrievable event that it is in England. 
 
 I am impressed with the ponderous and imposing 
 look of an English legal document, — an assignment 
 of real estate in England, for instance, — engrossed on 
 an immense sheet of thickest paper, in a formal hand, 
 beginning with “ This Indenture ” in German text, 
 and with occasional phrases of form, breaking out into 
 large script, — very long and repetitious, fortified with 
 the Mayor of Manchester’s seal, two or three inches in 
 diameter, which is certified by a notary-public, whose 
 signature, again, is to have my consular certificate and 
 official seal. 
 
 November 2d, — A young Frenchman enters, of gem 
 
1854 -.] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 645 
 
 tlemanly aspect, with a grayish cloak or paletot over- 
 spreading his upper person, and a handsome and well- 
 made pair of black trousers and well-fitting boots be- 
 low. On sitting down, he does not throw off nor at 
 all disturb the cloak. Eying him more closely, one 
 discerns that he has no shirt-collar, and that what little 
 is visible of his shirt-bosom seems not to be of to-day 
 nor of yesterday, — perhaps not even of the day bef ore. 
 His manners are very good ; nevertheless, he is a cox- 
 comb and a jackanapes. He avers himself a natural- 
 ized citizen of America, where he has been tutor in 
 several families of distinction, and has been treated 
 like a son. He left America on account of his health, 
 and came near being tutor in the Duke of Norfolk’s 
 family, but failed for lack of testimonials ; he is ex- 
 ceedingly capable and accomplished, but reduced in 
 funds, and wants employment here, or the means of 
 returning to America, where he intends to take a situ- 
 ation under government, which he is sure of obtaining. 
 He mentioned a quarrel which he had recently had 
 with an Englishman in behalf of America, and would 
 have fought a duel had such been the custom of the 
 country. He made the Englishman foam at the mouth, 
 and told him that he had been twelve years at a mili- 
 tary school, and could easily kill him. I say to him 
 that I see little or no prospect of his getting employ- 
 ment here, but offer to inquire whether any situation, 
 as clerk or otherwise, can be obtained for him in a 
 vessel returning to America, and ask his address. He 
 has no address. Much to my surprise, he takes his 
 leave without requesting pecuniary aid, but hints that 
 he shall call again. 
 
 He is a very disagreeable young fellow, like scores 
 of others who call on me in the like situation. His 
 35 
 
 VOL. VII. 
 
546 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 English is very good for a Frenchman, and he says he 
 speaks it the least well of five languages. He has 
 been three years in America, and obtained his natu- 
 ralization papers, he says, as a special favor, and by 
 means of strong interest. Nothing is so absolutely 
 odious as the sense of freedom and equality pertain- 
 ing to an American grafted on the mind of a native of 
 any other country in the world. A naturalized citizen 
 is HATEFUL. Nobody has a right to our ideas, unless 
 born to them. 
 
 November — I lent the above Frenchman a 
 small sum ; he advertised for employment as a teach- 
 er ; and he called this morning to thank me for my 
 aid, and says Mr. C has engaged him for his chil- 
 
 dren, at a guinea a week, and that he has also another 
 engagement. The poor fellow seems to have been 
 brought to a very low ebb. He has pawned every- 
 thing, even to his last shirt, save the one he had on, 
 and had been living at the rate of twopence a day. 
 I had procured him a chance to return to America, 
 but he was ashamed to go back in such poor circum- 
 stances, and so determined to seek better fortune here. 
 I like him better than I did, — partly, I suppose, be- 
 cause I have helped him. 
 
 November 14^A. — The other day I saw an elderly 
 gentleman walking in Dale Street, apparently in a 
 state of mania ; for as he limped along (being afflicted 
 with lameness) he kept talking to himself, and some- 
 times breaking out into a threat against some casual 
 passenger. He was a very respectable-looking man ; 
 and I remember to have seen him last summer, in the 
 steamer, returning from the Isle of Man, where he 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 547 
 
 had been staying at Castle Mona. What a strange 
 and ngly predicament it would be for a person of 
 quiet habits to be suddenly smitten with lunacy at 
 noonday in a crowded street, and to walk along 
 through a dim maze of extravagances, — partly con- 
 scious of them, but unable to resist the impulse to give 
 way to them ! A long- suppressed nature might be rep- 
 resented as bursting out in this way, for want of any 
 other safety-valve. 
 
 In America, people seem to consider the govern- 
 ment merely as a political administration ; and they 
 care nothing for the credit of it, unless it be the ad- 
 ministration of their own political party. In Eng- 
 land, all people, of whatever party, are anxious for 
 the credit of their rulers. Our government, as a knot 
 of persons, changes so entirely every four years, that 
 the institution has come to be considered a temporary 
 thing. 
 
 Looking at the moon the other evening, little R 
 
 said, It blooms out in the morning ! ” taking the 
 moon to be the bud of the sun. 
 
 The English are a most intolerant people. Nobody 
 is permitted, nowadays, to have any opinion but the 
 prevalent one. There seems to be very little differ- 
 ence between their educated and ignorant classes in 
 this respect; if any, it is to the credit of the latter, 
 who do not show tokens of such extreme interest in 
 the war. It is agreeable, however, to observe how all 
 Englishmen pull together, — how each man comes for- 
 ward with his little scheme for helping on the war, — 
 how they feel themselves members of one family, talk- 
 
548 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1854 . 
 
 ing together about their common interest, as if they 
 were gathered around one fireside ; and then what a 
 hearty meed of honor they award to their soldiers ! 
 It is worth facing death for. Whereas, in America, 
 when our soldiers fought as good battles, with as sfreat 
 proportionate loss, and far more valuable triumphs, 
 the country seemed rather ashamed than proud of 
 them. 
 
 Mrs. Heywood tells me that there are many Catho- 
 lics among the lower classes in Lancashire and Chesh- 
 ire, — probably the descendants of retainers of the old 
 Catholic nobility and gentry, who are more numerous 
 in the shires than in other parts of England. The 
 present Lord Sefton’s grandfather was the first of that 
 race who became Protestant. 
 
 December 2bth, — Commodore P called to see 
 
 me this morning, — a brisk, gentlemanly, offhand, but 
 not rough, unaffected, and sensible man, looking not 
 so elderly as he ought, on account of a very well made 
 wig. He is now on his return from a cruise in the 
 East Indian seas, and goes home by the Baltic, with a 
 prospect of being very well received on account of his 
 treaty with Japan. I seldom meet with a man who 
 puts himself more immediately on conversable terms 
 than the Commodore. He soon introduced his partic- 
 ular business with me, — it being to inquire whether 
 I would recommend some suitable person to prepare 
 his notes and materials for the publication of an ac- 
 count of his voyage. He was good enough to say that 
 he had fixed upon me, in his own mind, for this office ; 
 but that my public duties would of course prevent me 
 from engaging in it. I spoke of Herman Melville. 
 
1854 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 549 
 
 and one or two others ; but he seems to have some ac- 
 quaintance with the literature of the day, and did not 
 grasp very cordially at any name that I could think 
 of ; nor, indeed, could 1 recommend any one with full 
 confidence. It would be a very desirable task for a 
 young literary man, or, for that matter, for an old 
 one ; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less 
 hackneyed theme than Japan. 
 
 This is a most beautiful day of English winter ; 
 clear and bright, with the ground a little frozen, and 
 the green grass along the waysides at Rock Ferry 
 sprouting up through the frozen pools of yesterday’s 
 rain. England is forever green. On Christmas Day, 
 the children found wall-flowers, pansies, and pinks in 
 the garden ; and we had a beautiful rose from the gar- 
 den of the hotel grown in the open air. Yet one is 
 sensible of the cold here, as much as in the zero at- 
 mosphere of America. The chief advantage of the 
 English climate is that we are not tempted to heat 
 our rooms to so unhealthy a degree as in New Eng- 
 land. 
 
 I think I have been happier this Christmas than 
 ever before, — by my own fireside, and with my wife 
 and children about me, — more content to enjoy what 
 I have, — less anxious for anything beyond it in this 
 life. My early life was perhaps a good preparation 
 for the declining half of life ; it having been such a 
 blank that any thereafter would compare favorably 
 with it. For a long, long while, I have occasionally 
 been visited with a singular dream ; and I have an 
 impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have 
 been in England. It is, that I am still at college, — 
 or, sometimes, even at school, — and there is a sense 
 that I have been there unconscionably long, and have 
 
550 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 quite failed to make such progress as my contempo 
 raries have done ; and I seem to meet some of them 
 with a feeling of shame and depression that broods 
 over me as I think of it, even when awake. This 
 dream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty 
 years, must be one of the effects of that heavy se- 
 clusion in which I shut myself up for twelve years 
 after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, 
 and left me behind. How strange that it should come 
 now, when I may call myself famous and prosperous I 
 — when I am happy, too ! 
 
 January 3(i, 1855. — The progress of the age is 
 trampling over the aristocratic institutions of Eng- 
 land, and they crumble beneath it. This war has 
 given the country a vast impulse towards democracy. 
 The nobility will never hereafter, I think, assume or 
 be permitted to rule the nation in peace, or command 
 armies in war, on any ground except the individual 
 ability which may appertain to one of their number, 
 as well as to a commoner. And yet the nobles were 
 never positively more noble than now ; never, perhaps, 
 so chivalrous, so honorable, so highly cultivated ; but, 
 relatively to the rest of the world, they do not main- 
 tain their old place. The pressure of the war has 
 tested and proved this fact, at home and abroad. At 
 this moment it would be an absurdity in the nobles to 
 pretend to the position which was quietly conceded to 
 them a year ago. This one year has done the work 
 of fifty ordinary ones ; or, more accurately, it has 
 made apparent what has long been preparing itself. 
 
 January 6^A. — The American ambassador called 
 on me to-day and stayed a good while, — an hour oi 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 551 
 
 two. He is visiting at Mr. William Browne’s, at 
 Richmond Hill, having come to this region to bring 
 his niece, who is to be bride’s-maid at the wedding of 
 an American girl. I like Mr. . He cannot ex- 
 
 actly be called gentlemanly in his manners, there be- 
 ing a sort of rusticity about him ; moreover, he has a 
 habit of squinting one eye, and an awkward carriage 
 of his head ; but, withal, a dignity in his large person, 
 and a consciousness of high position and importance, 
 which gives him ease and freedom. Very simple and 
 frank in his address, he may be as crafty as other 
 diplomatists are said to be ; but I see only good sense 
 and plainness of speech, — appreciative, too, and 
 genial enough to make himself conversable. He 
 talked very freely of himself and of other public peo- 
 ple, and of American and English affairs. He re- 
 turns to America, he says, next October, and then 
 retires forever from public life, being sixty -four years 
 of age, and having now no desire except to write 
 memoirs of his times, and especially of the adminis- 
 tration of Mr. Polk. I suggested a doubt whether 
 the people would permit him to retire ; and he im- 
 mediately responded to my hint as regards his pros- 
 pects for the Presidency. He said that his mind was 
 fully made up, and that he would never be a candi- 
 date, and that he had expressed this decision to his 
 friends in such a way as to put it out of his own 
 power to change it. He acknowledged that he should 
 have been glad of the nomination for the Presidency 
 in 1852, but that it was now too late, and that he was 
 too old, — and, in short, he seemed to be quite sincere 
 in his nolo episcoimri ; although, really, he is the 
 only Democrat, at this moment, whom it would not 
 be absurd to talk of for the office. As he talked., his 
 
652 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 185 a 
 
 face flushed, and he seemed to feel inwardly excited. 
 Doubtless, it was the high vision of half his lifetime 
 which he here relinquished. I cannot question that 
 he is sincere ; but, of course, should the people insist 
 upon having him for President, he is too good a pa- 
 triot to refuse. I wonder whether he can have had 
 any object in saying all this to me. He might see 
 that it would be perfectly natural for me to tell it to 
 General Pierce. But it is a very vulgar idea, — this 
 of seeing craft and subtlety, when there is a plain and 
 honest aspect. 
 
 January ^th. — I dined at Mr. William Browne’s 
 (M. P.) last evening with a large party. The whole 
 table and dessert service was of silver. Speaking of 
 Shakespeare, Mr. said that the Duke of Somer- 
 
 set, who is now nearly fourscore, told him that the 
 father of John and Charles Kemble had made all 
 possible research into the events of Shakespeare’s life, 
 and that he had found reason to believe that Shake- 
 speare attended a certain revel at Stratford, and, in- 
 dulging too much in the conviviality of the occasion, 
 he tumbled into a ditch on his way home, and died 
 there ! The Kemble patriarch was an aged man when 
 he communicated this to the Duke ; and their ages, 
 linked to each other, would extend back a good way ; 
 scarcely to the beginning of the last century, however. 
 If I mistake not, it was from the traditions of Strat- 
 ford that Kemble had learned the above. I do not 
 remember ever to have seen it in print, — which is 
 most singular. 
 
 Miss L has an English rather than an Amer. 
 
 ican aspect, — being of stronger outline than most of 
 our young ladies, although handsomer than English 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 653 
 
 women generally, extremely self-possessed and well 
 poised, without affectation or assumption, but quietly 
 conscious of rank, as much so as if she were an Earl’s 
 daughter. In truth, she felt pretty much as an Earl’s 
 daughter would do towards the merchants’ wives and 
 daughters who made up the feminine portion of the 
 party. 
 
 I talked with her a little, and found her sensible, 
 vivacious, and firm-textured, rather than soft and sen- 
 timental. She paid me some compliments ; but I do 
 not remember paying her any. 
 
 Mr. J ’s daughters, two pale, handsome girls, 
 
 were present. One of them is to be married to a 
 
 grandson of Mr. , who was also at the dinner. 
 
 He is a small young man, with a thin and fair mus- 
 tache, . . . and a lady who sat next me whispered 
 that his expectations are <£6,000 per annum. It 
 struck me, that, being a country gentleman’s son, he 
 kept himself silent ‘and reserved, as feeling himself 
 too good for this commercial dinner-party; but per- 
 haps, and I rather think so, he was really shy and had 
 nothing to say, being only twenty -one, and therefore 
 quite a boy among Englishmen. The only man of 
 
 cognizable rank present, except Mr. and the 
 
 Mayor of Liverpool, was a Baronet, Sir Thomas 
 Birch. 
 
 January VI th . — S and I were invited to be 
 
 present at the wedding of Mr. J ’s daughter this 
 
 morning, but we were also bidden to the funeral ser- 
 vices of Mrs. G , a young American lady ; and we 
 
 went to the “ house of mourning,” rather than to the 
 
 house of feasting.” Her death was very sudden. I 
 
554 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1855 . 
 
 crossed to Rock Ferry on Saturday, and met her hus- 
 band in the boat. He said that his wife was rather un- 
 well, and that he had just been sent for to see her ; but 
 he did not seem at all alarmed. And yet, on reaching 
 home, he found her dead ! The body is to be con- 
 veyed to America, and the funeral service was read 
 over her in her house, only a few neighbors and friends 
 being present. W e were shown into a darkened room, 
 where there was a dim gas-light burning, and a fire 
 glimmering, and here and there a streak of sunshine 
 
 struggling through the drawn curtains. Mr. G 
 
 looked pale, and quite overcome with grief, — this, I 
 suppose, being his first sorrow, — and he has a young 
 baby on his hands, and no doubt feels altogether for- 
 lorn in this foreign land. The clergyman entered in 
 his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession 
 into another room, where the coffin was placed. Mr. 
 
 G sat down and rested his head on the coffin : the 
 
 clergyman read the service ; then knelt down, as did 
 most of the company, and prayed with great propriety 
 of manner, but with no earnestness, — and we sepa- 
 rated. Mr. G is a small, smooth, and pretty 
 
 young man, not emphasized in any way ; but grief 
 threw its awfulness about him to-day in a degree which 
 I should not have expected. 
 
 January 20^7i. — Mr. Steele, a gentleman of Rock 
 Ferry, showed me this morning a pencil-case formerly 
 belonging to Dr. Johnson. It is six or seven inches 
 long, of large calibre, and very clumsily manufactured 
 of iron, perhaps plated in its better days, but now 
 quite bare. Indeed, it looks as rough as to article of 
 kitchen furniture. The intaglio on the end is a lion 
 rampant. On the whole, it well became Dr. Johnson 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 555 
 
 to have used such a stalwart pencil-case. It had a 
 six-inch measure on a part of it, so that it must have 
 been at least eight inches long. Mr. Steele says he 
 has seen a cracked earthen teapot, of large size, in 
 which Miss Williams used to make tea for Dr. John- 
 son. 
 
 God himself cannot compensate us for being born 
 for any period short of eternity. All the misery en- 
 dured here constitutes a claim for another life, and, 
 still more, aZZ the happiness ; because all true happi- 
 ness involves something more than the earth owns, 
 and needs something more than a mortal capacity for 
 the enjoyment of it. 
 
 After receiving an injury on the head, a person fan- 
 cied all the rest of his life that he heard voices flout- 
 ing, jeering, and upbraiding him. 
 
 February Vdth, — I dined with the Mayor at the 
 Town Hall last Friday evening. I sat next to Mr. W. 
 
 J , an Irish- American merchant, who is in very 
 
 good standing here. He told me that he used to be 
 very well acquainted with General Jackson, and that 
 he was present at the street fight between him and the 
 Bentons, and helped to take General Jackson off the 
 ground. Colonel Benton shot at him from behind ; 
 but it was Jesse Benton’s ball that hit him and broke 
 his arm. I did not understand him to infer any 
 treachery or cowardice from the circumstance of Colo- 
 nel Benton’s shooting at Jackson tioni behind, but 
 suppose it occurred in the confusion and excitement 
 
 of the street fight. Mr. W. J seems to think that, 
 
 after all, the reconciliation between the old General 
 
556 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 and Benton was merely external, and that they really 
 hated one another as before. I do not think so. 
 
 These dinners of the Mayors are rather agreeable 
 than otherwise, except for the annoyance, in my case, 
 of being called up to speak to a toast, and that is less 
 disagreeable than at first. The suite of rooms at the 
 Town House is stately and splendid, and all the May- 
 ors, as far as I have seen, exercise hospitality in a 
 manner worthy of the chief magistrates of a great city. 
 They are supposed always to spend much more than 
 their salary (which is £2,000) in these entertainments. 
 The town provides the wines, I am told, and it might 
 be expected that they should be particularly good, — - 
 at least, those which improve by age, for a quarter 
 of a century should be only a moderate age for wine 
 from the cellars of centuries-long institutions, like a 
 corporate borough. Each Mayor might lay in a sup- 
 ply of the best vintage he could find, and trust his 
 good name to posterity to the credit of that wine ; 
 and so he would be kindly and warmly remembered 
 long after his own nose had lost its rubicundity. In 
 point of fact, the wines seem to be good, but not re- 
 markable. The dinner was good, and very handsomely 
 served, with attendance enough, both in the hall be- 
 low — where the door was wide open at the appointed 
 hour, notwithstanding the cold — and at table ; some 
 being in the rich livery of the borough, and some in 
 plain clothes. Servants, too, were stationed at various 
 points from the hall to the reception-room ; and the 
 last one shouted forth the name of the entering guest. 
 There were, I should think, about fifty guests at this 
 dinner. . . . Two bishops were present. The Bish- 
 ops of Chester and New South Wales, dressed in a 
 kind of long tunics, with black breeches and silk 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 557 
 
 stockings, insomuch that I first fancied they were 
 Catholics. Also Dr. McNeil, in a stiff-collared coat, 
 looking more like a general than a divine. There 
 were two officers in blue uniforms ; and all the rest 
 of us were in black, with only two white waistcoats, 
 — my own being one, — and a rare sprinkling of 
 white cravats. How hideously a man looks in them ! 
 I should like to have seen such assemblages as must 
 have gathered in that reception-room, and walked 
 with stately tread to the dining-hall, in times past, — 
 the Mayor and other civic dignities in their robes, 
 noblemen in their state dresses, the Consul in his olive- 
 leaf embroidery, everybody in some sort of bedizen- 
 nient, — and then the dinner would have been a mag- 
 nificent spectacle, worthy of the gilded hall, the rich 
 table-service, and the powdered and gold-laced servi- 
 tors. At a former dinner I remember seeing a gentle- 
 man in small-clothes, with a dress-sword ; but all for- 
 malities of the kind are passing away. The Mayor’s 
 dinners, too, will no doubt be extinct before many 
 years go by. I drove home from the Woodside Ferry 
 in a cab with Bishop Burke and two other gentlemen. 
 The Bishop is nearly seven feet high. 
 
 After writing the foregoing account of a civic ban- 
 quet, where I ate turtle-soup, salmon, woodcock, oys- 
 ter patties, and I know not what else, I have been to 
 the News-Room and found the Exchange pavement 
 densely thronged with people of all ages and of all 
 manner of dirt and rags. They were waiting for soup- 
 tickets, and waiting very patiently too, without outcry 
 or disturbance, or even sour looks, — only patience 
 and meekness in their faces. Well, I don’t know that 
 they have a right to be impatient of starvation ; but 
 still there does seem to be an insolence of riches and 
 
558 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [ 1855 . 
 
 prosperity, which one day or another will have a 
 downfall. And this will be a pity, too. 
 
 On Saturday I went with my friend Mr. Bright to 
 Otterpool and to Larkhill to see the skaters on the 
 private waters of those two seats of gentlemen ; and 
 it is a wonder to behold — and it is always a new 
 wonder to me — how comfortable Englishmen know 
 how to make themselves ; locating their dwellings far 
 within private grounds, with secure gateways and por- 
 ters’ lodges, and the smoothest roads, and trimmest 
 paths, and shaven lawns, and clumps of trees, and 
 every bit of the ground, every hill and dell, made the 
 most of for convenience and beauty, and so well kept 
 that even winter cannot cause disarray ; and all this 
 appropriated to the same family for generations, so 
 that I suppose they come to believe it created exclu- 
 sively and on purpose for them. And, really, the re- 
 sult is good and beautiful. It is a home, — an insti- 
 tution which we Americans have not ; but then I 
 doubt whether anybody is entitled to a home in this 
 world, in so full a sense. 
 
 The day was very cold, and the skaters seemed to 
 enjoy themselves exceedingly. They were, I suppose, 
 friends of the owners of the grounds, and Mr. Bright 
 said they were treated in a jolly way, with hot lunch- 
 eons. The skaters practise skating more as an art, 
 and can perform finer manoeuvres on the ice, than our 
 New England skaters usually can, though the English 
 have so much less opportunity for practice. A beg- 
 gar-woman was haunting the grounds at Otterpool, 
 but I saw nobody give her anything. I wonder how 
 she got inside of the gate. 
 
 Mr. W. J- spoke of General Jackson as having 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 559 
 
 1855 .] 
 
 come from the same part of Ireland as himself, and 
 perhaps of the same family. I wonder whether he 
 meant to say that the General was horn in Ireland, 
 — that having been suspected in America. 
 
 February 21st — Yesterday two companies of work- 
 people came to our house in Rock Park, asking as- 
 sistance, being out of work and with no resource other 
 than charity. There were a dozen or more in each 
 party. Their deportment was quiet and altogether un- 
 exceptionable, — no rudeness, no gruffness, nothing of 
 menace. Indeed, such demonstrations would not have 
 been safe, as they were followed about by two police- 
 men ; but they really seem to take their distress as 
 their own misfortune and God’s will, and impute it to 
 nobody as a fault. This meekness is very touching, 
 and makes one question the more whether they have 
 all their rights. There have been disturbances, within 
 a day or two, in Liverpool, and shops have been 
 broken open and robbed of bread and money ; but 
 this is said to have been done by idle vagabonds, and 
 not by the really hungry work-people. These last 
 submit to starvation gently and patiently, as if it were 
 an every-day matter with them, or, at least, nothing 
 but what lay fairly within their horoscope. I suppose, 
 in fact, their stomachs have the physical habit that 
 makes hunger not intolerable, because customary. If 
 they had been used to a full meat diet, their hunger 
 would be fierce, like that of ravenous beasts ; but now 
 they are trained to it. 
 
 I think that the feeling of an American, divided, as 
 I am, by the ocean from his country, has a continual 
 and immediate correspondence with the national feel- 
 
560 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 ing at home ; and it seems to be independent of any 
 external communication. Thus, my ideas about the 
 Russian war vary in accordance with the state of the 
 public mind at home, so that I am conscious where« 
 abouts public sympathy is. 
 
 March 1th. — J and I walked to Tranmere, 
 
 and passed an old house which I suppose to be Tran- 
 mere Hall. Our way to it was up a hollow lane, with 
 a bank and hedge on each side, and with a few thatched 
 stone cottages, centuries old, their ridge-poles crooked 
 and the stones time-worn, scattered along. At one 
 point, there was a wide, deep well, hewn out of the 
 solid red freestone, and with steps, also hewn in solid 
 rock, leading down to it. These steps were much hol- 
 lowed by the feet of those who had come to the well ; 
 and they reach beneath the water, which is very high. 
 The well probably supplied water to the old cotters and 
 retainers of Tranmere Hall five hundred years ago. 
 The Hall stands on the verge of a long hill which 
 stretches behind Tranmere and as far as Birkenhead. 
 
 It is an old gray stone edifice, with a good many 
 gables, and windows with mullions, and some of them 
 extending the whole breadth of the gable. In some 
 parts of the house, the windows seem to have been 
 built up ; probably in the days when daylight was 
 taxed. The form of the Hall is multiplex, the roofs 
 sloping down and intersecting one another, so as to 
 make the general result indescribable. There were 
 two sundials on different sides of the house, both the 
 dial-plates of which were of stone ; and on one the fig- 
 ures, so far as I could see, were quite worn off, but the 
 gnomon still cast a shadow over it in such a way that 
 I could judge that it was about noon. The other dial 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 561 
 
 had some half -worn hour-marks, but no gnomon. The 
 chinks of the stones of the house were very weedy, and 
 the building looked quaint and venerable ; but it is 
 now converted into a farm-house, with the farm-yard 
 and outbuildings closely appended. A village, too, 
 has grown up about it, so that it seems out of place 
 among modern stuccoed dwellings, such as are erected 
 for tradesmen and other moderate people who have 
 their residences in the neighborhood of a great city. 
 Among these there are a few thatched cottages, the 
 homeliest domiciles that ever mortals lived in, belong- 
 ing to the old estate. Directly across the street is a 
 Wayside Inn, “licensed to sell wine, spirits, ale, and 
 tobacco.” The street itself has been laid out since 
 the land grew valuable by the increase of Liverpool 
 and Birkenhead ; for the old Hall would never have 
 been built on the verge of a public way. 
 
 March 21th . — I attended court to-day, at St. 
 George’s Hall, with my wife, Mr. Bright, and Mr. 
 Channing, sitting in the High Sheriff’s seat. It was 
 the civil side, and Mr. Justice Cresswell presided. The 
 lawyers, as far as aspect goes, seemed to me inferior 
 to an American bar, judging from their countenances, 
 whether as intellectual men or gentlemen. Their wigs 
 and gowns do not impose on the spectator, though they 
 strike him as an imposition. Their date is past. Mr. 
 Warren, of the “Ten Thousand a Year,” was in 
 court, — a pale, thin, intelligent face, evidently a ner- 
 vous man, more unquiet than anybody else in court, — 
 always restless in his seat, whispering to his neighbors, 
 settling his wig, perhaps with an idea that people sin- 
 gle him out. St. George’s Hall — the interior hall it- 
 self, I mean — is a spacious, lofty, and most rich and 
 
 VOL. VII. 36 
 
562 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 noble apartment, and very satisfactory. The pave- 
 ment is made of mosaic tiles, and has a beautiful 
 effect. 
 
 April ItJi. — I dined at Mr. J. P. Hey wood’s on 
 
 Thursday, and met there Mr. and Mrs. of Smith- 
 
 ell’s Hall. The Hall is an old edifice of some five 
 
 hundred years, and Mrs. says there is a bloody 
 
 footstep at the foot of the great staircase. The tradi- 
 tion is that a certain martyr, in Bloody Mary’s time, 
 being examined before the occupant of the Hall, and 
 committed to prison, stamped his foot, in earnest pro- 
 test against the injustice with which he was treated. 
 Blood issued from his foot, which slid along the stone 
 pavement, leaving a long footmark, printed in blood. 
 And there it has remained ever since, in spite of the 
 
 scrubbings of all succeeding generations. Mrs. 
 
 spoke of it with much solemnity, real or affected. She 
 says that they now cover the bloody impress with a 
 carpet, being unable to remove it. In the History of 
 Lancashire, which I looked at last night, there is quite 
 a different account, — according to which the foot- 
 step is not a bloody one, but is a slight cavity or ine- 
 quality in the surface of the stone, somewhat in the 
 shape of a man’s foot with a peaked shoe. The mar- 
 tyr’s name was George Marsh. He was a curate, and 
 
 was afterwards burnt. Mrs. asked me to go and 
 
 see the Hall and the footmark ; and as it is in Lanca- 
 shire, and not a great way oft*, and a curious old place, 
 perhaps I may. 
 
 April \2tli, — The Earl of , whom I saw the 
 
 other day at St. George’s Hall, has a somewhat elderly 
 look, — a pale and rather thin face, which strikes one 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 663 
 
 as remarkably short, or compressed from top to bot- 
 tom. Nevertheless, it has great intelligence, and sen- 
 sitiveness too, I should think, but a cold, disagreeable 
 expression. I should take him to be a man of not 
 very pleasant temper, — not genial. He has no phys- 
 ical presence nor dignity, yet one sees him to be a per- 
 son of rank and consequence. But, after all, there is 
 nothing about him which it need have taken centu- 
 ries of illustrious nobility to produce, especially in a 
 
 man of remarkable ability, as Lord certainly is. 
 
 S , who attended court all through the Hapgood 
 
 trial, and saw Lord — ^ — for hours together every day, 
 has come to conclusions quite different from mine. 
 She thinks him a perfectly natural person, without 
 any assumption, any self-consciousness, any scorn of 
 the lower world. She was delighted with his ready 
 appreciation and feeling of what was passing around 
 him, — his quick enjoyment of a joke, — the simplicity 
 and unaffectedness of his emotion at whatever inci- 
 dents excited his interest, — the genial acknowledg- 
 ment of sympathy, causing him to look round and ex- 
 change glances with those near him, who were not his 
 individual friends, but barristers and other casual per- 
 sons. He seemed to her all that a nobleman ought to 
 be, entirely simple and free from pretence and self-as- 
 sertion, which persons of lower rank can hardly help 
 bedevilling themselves with. I saw him only a very 
 few moments, so cannot put my observation against 
 hers, especially as I was influenced by what I had 
 heard the Liverpool people say of him. 
 
 I do not know whether I have mentioned that the 
 handsomest man I have seen in England was a young 
 footman of Mr. Heywood’s. In his rich livery, he 
 was a perfect J oseph Andrews. 
 
664 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 In my Romance, the original emigrant to America 
 may have carried away with him a family secret, 
 whereby it was in his power, had he so chosen, to have 
 brought about the ruin of the family. This secret he 
 transmits to his American progeny, by whom it is in- 
 herited throughout all the intervening generationSc 
 At last, the hero of the Romance comes to England, 
 and finds, that, by means of this secret, he still has 
 it in his power to procure the downfall of the family. 
 It would be something similar to the story of Mele- 
 ager, whose fate depended on the firebrand that his 
 mother had snatched from the flames. 
 
 April — On Saturday I was present at a de- 
 jeuner on board the Donald McKay; the principal 
 guest being Mr. Layard, M. P. There were several 
 hundred people, quite filling the between decks of the 
 ship, which was converted into a saloon for the occa- 
 sion. I sat next to Mr. Layard, at the head of the 
 table, and so had a good opportunity of seeing and 
 getting acquainted with him. He is a man in early 
 middle age, — of middle stature, with an open, frank, 
 intelligent, kindly face. His forehead is not expan- 
 sive, but is prominent in the perceptive regions, and 
 retreats a good deal. His mouth is full, — I liked 
 him from the first. He was very kind and compli- 
 mentary to me, and made me promise to go and see 
 him in London. 
 
 It would have been a very pleasant entertainment, 
 only that my pleasure in it was much marred by hav- 
 ing to acknowledge a toast in honor of the President. 
 However, such things do not trouble me nearly so 
 much as they used to do, and I came through it toler- 
 ably enough. Mr. Layard’s speech was the great af* 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 565 
 
 fair of the day. He speaks with much fluency (though 
 he assured me that he had to put great force upon 
 himself to speak publicly), and, as he warms up, seems 
 to engage with his whole moral and physical man, — > 
 quite possessed with what he has to say. His evident 
 earnestness and good faith make him eloquent, and 
 stand him instead of oratorical graces. His views of 
 the position of England and the prospects of the war 
 were as dark as well could be ; and his speech was ex- 
 ceedingly to the purpose, full of common - sense, and 
 with not one word of clap-trap. Judging from its effect 
 upon the audience, he spoke the voice of the whole 
 English people, — although an English Baronet, who 
 sat next below me, seemed to dissent, or at least to 
 think that it was not exactly the thing for a stranger 
 to hear. It concluded amidst great cheering. Mr. 
 Layard appears to be a true Englishman, with a moral 
 force and strength of character, and earnestness of 
 purpose, and fulness of common-sense, such as have 
 always served England’s turn in her past successes ; 
 but rather fit for resistance than progress. No doubt, 
 he is a good and very able man ; but I question 
 whether he could get England out of the difficulties 
 which he sees so clearly, or could do much better than 
 Lord Palmerston, whom he so decries. 
 
 April — Taking the deposition of sailors yes- 
 terday, in a case of alleged ill-usage by the officers of 
 a vessel, one of the witnesses was an old seaman of 
 sixty. In reply to some testimony of his, the captain 
 said, You were the oldest man in the ship, and we 
 honored you as such.” The mate also said that he 
 never could have thought of striking an old man like 
 
566 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [ 1855 . 
 
 that. Indeed, the poor old fellow had a kind of dig- 
 nity and venerableness about him, though he confessed 
 to having been drunk, and seems to have been a mis- 
 chief-maker, — what they call a sea-preacher, — pro- 
 moting discontent and grumbling. He must have 
 been a very handsome man in his youth, having regu- 
 lar features of a noble and beautiful cast. His beard 
 was gray ; but his dark hair had hardly a streak of 
 white, and was abundant all over his head. He was 
 deaf, and seemed to sit in a kind of seclusion, unless 
 when loudly questioned or appealed to. Once he 
 broke forth from a deep silence thus, ‘‘ I defy any 
 man ! ” and then was silent again. It had a strange 
 effect, this general defiance, which he meant, I sup- 
 pose, in answer to some accusation that he thought 
 was made against him. His general behavior through- 
 out the examination was very decorous and proper ; 
 and he said he had never but once hitherto been be- 
 fore a consul, and that was in 1819, when a mate had 
 ill-used him, and, ‘‘ being a young man then, I gave 
 him a beating,” — whereupon his face gleamed with a 
 quiet smile, like faint sunshine on an old ruin. By 
 many a tempest has his beard been shook ” ; and I 
 suppose he must soon go into a workhouse, and 
 thence, shortly, to his grave. He is now in a hospital, 
 having, as the surgeon certifies, some ribs fractured ; 
 but there does not appear to have been any violence 
 used upon him aboard the ship of such a nature as to 
 cause this injury, though he swears it was a blow from 
 a rope, and nothing else. What struck me in the case 
 was the respect and rank that his age seemed to give 
 him, in the view of the officers ; and how, as the cap- 
 tain’s expression signified, it lifted him out of his low 
 position, and made him a person to be honored. The 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 567 
 
 1855 .] 
 
 dignity of his manner is perhaps partly owing to the 
 ancient mariner, with his long experience, being an 
 oracle among the forecastle men. 
 
 3fay 3(i. — It rains to-day, after a very long period 
 of east-wind and dry weather. The east-wind here, 
 blowing across the island, seems to be the least damp 
 of all the winds ; but it is full of malice and mischief, 
 of an indescribably evil temper, and stabs one like a 
 cold, poisoned dagger. I never spent so disagreeable 
 a spring as this, although almost every day for a 
 month has been bright. 
 
 Friday., May lltTi. — A few weeks ago, a sailor, a 
 most pitiable object, came to my office to complain of 
 cruelty from his captain and mate. They had beaten 
 him shamefully, of which he bore grievous marks 
 about his face and eyes, and bruises on his head and 
 other parts of his person ; and finally the ship had 
 sailed, leaving him behind. I never in my life saw so 
 forlorn a fellow, so ragged, so wretched ; and even his 
 wits seemed to have been beaten out of him, if per- 
 chance he ever had any. He got an order for the hos- 
 pital ; and there he has been, off and on, ever since, 
 till yesterday, when I received a message that he was 
 dying, and wished to see the Consul ; so I went with 
 Mr. Wilding to the hospital. We were ushered into 
 the waiting-room, — a kind of parlor, with a fire in 
 the grate, and a centre-table, whereon lay one or two 
 medical journals, with wood engravings; and there 
 was a young man, who seemed to be an official of the 
 house, reading. Shortly the surgeon appeared, — a 
 brisk, cheerful, kindly sort of person, whom I have 
 met there on previous visits. He told us that the man 
 
568 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 was dying, and probably would not be able to commu- 
 nicate anything, but, nevertheless, ushered us up to 
 the highest floor, and into the room where he lay. It 
 was a large, oblong room, with ten or twelve beds in 
 it, each occupied by a patient. The surgeon said that 
 the hospital was often so crowded that they were com- 
 pelled to lay some of the patients on the floor. The 
 man whom we came to see lay on his bed in a little 
 recess formed by a projecting window ; so that there 
 was a kind of seclusion for him to die in. He seemed 
 quite insensible to outward things, and took no notice 
 of our approach, nor responded to what was said to 
 him, — lying on his side, breathing with short gasps ; 
 his apparent disease being inflammation of the chest, 
 although the surgeon said that he might be found to 
 have sustained internal injury by bruises. He was 
 restless, tossing his head continually, mostly with his 
 eyes shut, and much compressed and screwed up, but 
 sometimes opening them ; and then they looked 
 brighter and darker than when I first saw them. I 
 think his face was not at any time so stupid as at his 
 first interview with me ; but whatever intelligence he 
 had was rather inward than outward, as if there might 
 be life and consciousness at a depth within, while as 
 to external matters he was in a mist. The surgeon 
 felt his wrist, and said that there was absolutely no 
 pulsation, and that he might die at any moment, or 
 might perhaps live an hour, but that there was no 
 prospect of his being able to communicate with me. 
 He was quite restless, nevertheless, and sometimes 
 half raised himself in bed, sometimes turned himself 
 quite over, and then lay gasping for an instant. His 
 woollen shirt being thrust up on his arm, there ap- 
 peared a tattooing of a ship and anchor, and othei 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 569 
 
 nautical emblems, on both of them, which another 
 sailor - patient, on examining them, said must have 
 been done years ago. This might be of some impor- 
 tance, because the dying man had told me, when I 
 first saw him, that he was no sailor, but a farmer, and 
 that, this being his first voyage, he had been beaten 
 by the captain for not doing a sailor’s duty, which he 
 had had no opportunity of learning. These sea-em- 
 blems indicated that he was probably a seaman of 
 some years’ service. 
 
 While we stood in the little recess, such of the other 
 patients as were convalescent gathered near the foot of 
 the bed ; and the nurse came and looked on, and hov^ 
 ered about us, — a sharp-eyed, intelligent woman of 
 middle age, with a careful and kind expression, neg- 
 lecting nothing that was for the patient’s good, yet 
 taking his death as coolly as any other incident in her 
 daily business. Certainly, it was a very forlorn death- 
 bed ; and I felt — what I have heretofore been inclined 
 to doubt — that it might be a comfort to have persons 
 whom one loves, to go with us to the threshold of the 
 other world, and leave us only when we are fairly 
 across it. This poor fellow had a wife and two chil- 
 dren on the other side of the water. 
 
 At first he did not utter any sound ; but by and by 
 he moaned a little, and gave tokens of being more 
 sensible to outward concerns, — not quite so misty 
 and dreamy as hitherto. We had been talking all the 
 while — myself in a whisper, but the surgeon in his 
 ordinary tones — about his state, without his paying 
 any attention. But now the surgeon put his mouth 
 down to the man’s face and said, Do you know that 
 you are dying ? ” At this the patient’s head began to 
 move upon the pillow ; and I thought at first that it 
 
570 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 was only the restlessness that he had shown all along ; 
 but soon it appeared to be an expression of emphatic 
 dissent, a negative shake of the head. He shook it 
 with all his might, and groaned and mumbled, so that 
 it was very evident how miserably reluctant he was to 
 die. Soon after this he absolutely spoke. Oh, I want 
 you to get me well ! I want to get away from here ! ” 
 in a groaning and moaning utterance. The surgeon’s 
 question had revived him, but to no purpose; for, being 
 told that the Consul had come to see him, and asked 
 whether he had anything to communicate, he said 
 only, “ Oh, I want him to get me well! ” and the whole 
 life that was left in him seemed to be unwillingness to 
 die. This did not last long ; for he soon relapsed into 
 his first state, only with his face a little more pinched 
 and screwed up, and his eyes strangely sunken and lost 
 in his head ; and the surgeon said that there would 
 be no use in my remaining. So I took my leave. 
 Mr. Wilding had brought a deposition of the man’s 
 evidence, which he had clearly made at the Consulate, 
 for him to sign, and this we left with the surgeon, in 
 case there should be such an interval of consciousness 
 and intelligence before death as to make it possible for 
 him to sign it. But of this there is no probability. 
 
 I have just received a note from the hospital, stat- 
 ing that the sailor, Daniel Smith, died about three 
 quarters of an hour after I saw him. 
 
 May 18^A. — The above-mentioned Daniel Smith 
 had about him a bundle of letters, which I have ex- 
 amined. They are all very yellow, stained with sea- 
 water, smelling of bad tobacco-smoke, and much worn 
 at the folds. Never were such ill-written letters, nor 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 671 
 
 such incredibly fantastic spelling. They seem to be 
 from various members of his family, — most of them 
 from a brother, who purports to have been a deck- 
 hand in the coasting and steamboat trade between 
 Charleston and other ports ; others from female rela- 
 tions ; one from his father, in which he inquires how 
 long his son has been in jail, and when the trial is to 
 come on, — the offence, however, of which he was ac- 
 cused not being indicated. But from the tenor of his 
 brother’s letters, it would appear that he was a small 
 farmer in the interior of South Carolina, sending but- 
 ter, eggs, and poultry to be sold in Charleston by his 
 brother, and receiving the returns in articles pur- 
 chased there. This was his own account of himself ; 
 and he affirmed, in his deposition before me, that he 
 had never had any purpose of shipping for Liverpool, 
 or anywhere else ; but that, going on board the ship 
 to bring a man’s trunk ashore, he was compelled to re- 
 main and serve as a sailor. This was a hard fate, cer- 
 tainly, and a strange thing to happen in the United 
 States at this day, — that a free citizen should be 
 absolutely kidnapped, carried to a foreign country, 
 treated with savage cruelty during the voyage, and 
 left to die on his arrival. Yet all this has unquestion- 
 ably been done, and will probably go unpunished. 
 
 The seed of the long-stapled cotton, now cultivated 
 in America, was sent there in 1786 from the Bahama 
 Islands, by some of the royalist refugees, who had set- 
 tled there. The inferior short-stapled cotton had been 
 previously cultivated for domestic purposes. The seeds 
 of every other variety have been tried without success. 
 The kind now grown was first introduced into Georgia. 
 Thus to the refugees America owes as much of her 
 prosperity as is due to the cotton-crops, and much of 
 whatever harm is to result from slavery. 
 
572 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 May 22c?. — Captain J says that he saw, in his 
 
 late voyage to Australia and India, a vessel commanded 
 by an Englishman, who had with him his wife and thir- 
 teen children. This ship was the home of the family, 
 and they had no other. The thirteen children had 
 all been born on board, and had been brought up on 
 board, and knew nothing of dry land, except by occa- 
 sionally setting foot on it. 
 
 Captain J is a very agreeable specimen of the 
 
 American shipmaster, — a pleasant, gentlemanly man, 
 not at all refined, and yet with fine and honorable 
 sensibilities. Very easy in his manners and conversa- 
 tion, yet gentle, — talking on freely, and not much 
 minding grammar ; but finding a sufficient and pic- 
 turesque expression for what he wishes to say ; very 
 cheerful and vivacious ; accessible to feeling, as yes- 
 terday, when talking about the recent death of his 
 mother. , His voice faltered, and the tears came into 
 his eyes, though before and afterwards he smiled mer- 
 rily, and made us smile ; fond of his wife, and carry- 
 ing her about the world with him, and blending her 
 with all his enjoyments; an excellent and sagacious 
 man of business ; liberal in his expenditure ; proud of 
 his ship and flag ; always well dressed, with some lit- 
 tle touch of sailor-like flashiness, but not a whit too 
 much ; slender in figure, with a handsome face, and 
 rather profuse brown beard and whiskers ; active and 
 alert; about thirty-two. A daguerreotype sketch of 
 any conversation of his would do him no justice, for 
 its slang, its grammatical mistakes, its mistaken words 
 (as ‘^portable” for “portly”), would represent a 
 vulgar man, whereas the impression he leaves is by no 
 means that of vulgarity ; but he is a character quite 
 perfect within itself, fit for the deck and the cabin^ 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 573 
 
 and agreeable in the drawing-room, though not amen- 
 able altogether to its rules. Being so perfectly nat- 
 ural, he is more of a gentleman for those little viola- 
 tions of rule, which most men, with his opportunities, 
 might escape. 
 
 The men whose appeals to the Consul’s charity are 
 the hardest to be denied are those who have no coun- 
 try, — Hungarians, Poles, Cubans, Spanish - Ameri- 
 cans, and French republicans. All exiles for liberty 
 come to me, as if the representative of America were 
 their representative. Yesterday, came an old French 
 soldier, and showed his wounds ; to-day, a Spaniard, 
 a friend of Lopez, — bringing his little daughter with 
 him. He said he was starving, and looked so. The 
 little girl was in good condition enough, and decently 
 dressed. — May 23 c?. 
 
 May 30^A. — The two past days have been Whit- 
 suntide holidays ; and they have been celebrated at 
 Tranmere in a manner very similar to that of the old 
 “ Election ” in Massachusetts, as I remember it a good 
 many years ago, though the festival has now almost or 
 quite died out. Whitsuntide was kept up on our side 
 of the water, I am convinced, under pretence of rejoic- 
 ings at the election of Governor. It occurred at pre- 
 cisely the same period of the year, — the same week ; 
 the only difference being, that Monday and Tuesday 
 are the Whitsun festival days, whereas, in Massachu- 
 setts, Wednesday was “Election Day,” and the acme 
 of the merrymaking. 
 
 I passed through Tranmere yesterday forenoon, and 
 lingered awhile to see the sports. The greatest pecul 
 
574 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 iarity of the crowd, to my eye, was that they seemed 
 not to have any best clothes, and therefore had put on 
 no holiday suits, — a grimy people, as at all times, 
 heavy, obtuse, with thick beer in their blood. Coarse, 
 rough-complexioned women and girls were intermim 
 gled, — the girls with no maiden trimness in their at- 
 tire, large and blowsy. Nobody seemed to have been 
 washed that day. All the enjoyment was of an ex- 
 ceedingly sombre character, so far as I saw it, though 
 there was a richer variety of sports than at similar 
 festivals in America. There were wooden horses, re- 
 volving in circles, to be ridden a certain number of 
 rounds for a penny ; also swinging cars gorgeously 
 painted, and the newest named after Lord Raglan ; 
 and four cars balancing one another, and turned by a 
 winch ; and people with targets and rifles, — the prin- 
 cipal aim being to hit an apple bobbing on a string 
 before the target ; other guns for shooting at the dis- 
 tance of a foot or two, for a prize of filberts ; and a 
 game much in fashion, of throwing heavy sticks at 
 earthen mugs suspended on lines, three throws for a 
 penny. Also, there was a posture-master, showing his 
 art in the centre of a ring of miscellaneous spectators, 
 and handing round his hat after going through all his 
 attitudes. The collection amounted to only one half- 
 penny, and, to eke it out, I threw in three more. 
 There were some large booths with tables placed the 
 whole length, at which sat men and women drinking 
 and smoking pipes ; orange-girls, a great many, sell- 
 ing the worst possible oranges, which had evidently 
 been boiled to give them a show of freshness. There 
 were likewise two very large structures, the walls made 
 of boards roughly patched together, and roofed with 
 canvas, which seemed to have withstood a thousand 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL, 
 
 675 
 
 storms. Theatres were there, and in front there were 
 pictures of scenes which were to be represented with- 
 in ; the price of admission being two - pence to one 
 theatre, and a penny to the other. But, small as the 
 price of tickets was, I could not see that anybody 
 bought them. Behind the theatres, close to the board 
 wall, and perhaps serving as the general dressing- 
 room, was a large windowed wagon, in which I sup- 
 pose the company travel and live together. Never, 
 to my imagination, was the mysterious glory that has 
 surrounded theatrical representation ever since my 
 childhood brought down into such dingy reality as 
 this. The tragedy queens were the same coarse and 
 homely women and girls that surrounded me on the 
 green. Some of the people had evidently been drink- 
 ing more than was good for them ; but their drunken- 
 ness was silent and stolid, with no madness in it. No 
 ebullition of any sort was apparent. 
 
 May — Last Sunday week, for the first time, I 
 heard the note of the cuckoo. Cuck-oo — cuck-oo ” 
 it says, repeating the word twice, not in a brilliant me- 
 tallic tone, but low and flute-like, without the excessive 
 sweetness of the flute, — without an excess of saccha- 
 rine juice in the sound. There are said to be always 
 two cuckoos seen together. The note is very soft and 
 pleasant. The larks I have not yet heard in the sky ; 
 though it is not infrequent to hear one singing in a 
 cage, in the streets of Liverpool. 
 
 Brewers’ draymen are allowed to drink as much of 
 their master’s beverage as they like, and they grow 
 very brawny and corpulent, resembling their own 
 horses in size, and presenting, one would suppose, 
 
676 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 perfect pictures of physical comfort and well-being. 
 But the least bruise, or even the hurt of a finger, is 
 liable to turn to gangrene or erysipelas, and become 
 fatal. 
 
 When the wind blows violently, however clear the 
 sky, the English say, It is a stormy day.” And, on 
 the other hand, when the air is still, and it does not 
 actually rain, however dark and lowering the sky may 
 be, they say, The weather is fine ! ” 
 
 June U. — The English women of the lower classes 
 have a grace of their own, not seen in each individual, 
 but nevertheless belonging to their order, which is not 
 to be found in American women of the corresponding 
 class. The other day, in the police court, a girl was 
 put into the witness-box, whose native gi*aces of this 
 sort impressed me a good deal. She was coarse, and 
 her dress was none of the cleanest, and nowise smart. 
 She appeared to have been up all night, too, drinking 
 at the Tranmere wake, and had since ridden in a cart, 
 covered up with a rug. She described herself as a 
 servant-girl, out of place ; and her charm lay in all 
 her manifestations, — her tones, her gestures, her look, 
 her way of speaking and what she said, being so ap- 
 propriate and natural in a girl of that class ; nothing 
 affected ; no proper grace thrown away by attempting 
 to appear lady-like, — which an American girl would 
 have attempted, — and she would also have succeeded 
 in a certain degree. If each class would but keep 
 within itself, and show its respect for itself by aiming 
 at nothing beyond, they would all be more respectable. 
 But this kind of fitness is evidently not to be expected 
 in the future ; and something else must be substituted 
 for it. 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LIVERPOOL. 
 
 577 
 
 These scenes at the police court are often well worth 
 witnessing. The controlling genius of the court, ex- 
 cept when the stipendiary magistrate presides, is the 
 clerk, who is a man learned in the law. Nominally 
 the cases are decided by the aldermen, who sit in rota- 
 tion, but at every important point there conies a nod 
 or a whisper from the clerk ; and it is that whisper 
 which sets the defendant free or sends nim to prison. 
 Nevertheless, I suppose the alderman’s common-sense 
 and native shrewdness are not without their efficacy in 
 producing a general tendency towards the right ; and, 
 no doubt, the decisions of the police court are quite 
 as often just as those of any other court whatever. 
 
 June Wth. — I walked with J yesterday to 
 
 Bebbington Church. When I first saw this church, 
 nearly two years since, it seemed to me the fulfilment 
 of my ideal of an old English country church. It is 
 not so satisfactory now, although certainly a venerable 
 edifice. There used some time ago to be ivy all over 
 the tower ; and at my first view of it, there was still a 
 little remaining on the upper parts of the spire. But 
 the main roots, I believe, were destroyed, and pains 
 were taken to clear away the whole of the ivy, so that 
 now it is quite bare, — nothing but homely gray stone, 
 with marks of age, but no beauty. The most curious 
 thing about the church is the font. It is a massive 
 pile, composed of five or six layers of freestone in an 
 octagon shape, placed in the angle formed by the pro- 
 jecting side porch and the wall of the church, and 
 standing under a stained-glass window. The base is 
 six or seven feet across, and it is built solidly up in 
 successive steps, to the height of about six feet, — an 
 
 VOL. VII. 37 
 
578 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [1855 
 
 octagonal pyramid, with the basin of the font crown- 
 ing the pile hewn out of the solid stone, and about a 
 foot in diameter and the same in depth. There was 
 water in it from the recent rains, — water just from 
 heaven, and therefore as holy as any water it ever held 
 in old Romish times. The aspect of this aged font 
 is extremely venerable, with moss in the basin and all 
 over the stones ; grass, and weeds of various kinds, 
 and little shrubs, rooted in the chinks of the stones 
 and between the successive steps. 
 
 At each entrance of Rock Park, where we live, there 
 is a small Gothic structure of stone, each inhabited by 
 a policeman and his family ; very small dwellings in- 
 deed, with the main apartment opening directly out-of- 
 doors ; and when the door is open, one can see the 
 household fire, the good wife at work, perhaps the 
 table set, and a throng of children clustering round, 
 and generally overflowing the threshold. The police- 
 man walks about the Park in stately fashion, with his 
 silver-laced blue uniform and snow-white gloves touch- 
 ing his hat to gentlemen who reside in the Park. In 
 his public capacity he has rather an awful aspect, but 
 privately he is a humble man enough, glad of any lit- 
 tle job, and of old clothes for his many children, or, I 
 believe, for himself. One of the two policemen is a 
 shoemaker and cobbler. His pay, officially, is some- 
 where about a guinea a week. 
 
 The Park, just now, is very agreeable to look at, 
 shadowy with trees and shrubs, and with glimpses of 
 green leaves and flower-gardens through the branches 
 and twigs that line the iron fences. After a shower 
 the hawthorn blossoms are delightfully fragrant 
 Golden tassels of the laburnum are abundant. 
 
LIVERPOOL. 
 
 579 
 
 1855 .] 
 
 I may have mentioned elsewhere the traditional 
 prophecy, that, when the ivy should reach the top of 
 Bebbington spire, the tower was doomed to fall. . It 
 )has still, therefore, a chance of standing for centuries. 
 Mr. Turner tells me that the font now used is inside 
 of the church, but the one outside is of unknown an- 
 tiquity, and that it was customary, in papistical times, 
 to have the font without the church. 
 
 There is a little boy often on board the Rock Ferry 
 steamer with an accordion, — an instrument I detest ; 
 but nevertheless it becomes tolerable in his hands, not 
 so much for its music, as for the earnestness and inter- 
 est with which he plays it. His body and the accor- 
 dion together become one musical instrument on which 
 his soul plays tunes, for he sways and vibrates with 
 the music from head to foot and throughout his frame, 
 half closing his eyes and uplifting his face, as painters 
 represent St. Cecilia and other famous musicians ; and 
 sometimes he swings his accordion in the air, as if in 
 a perfect rapture. After all, my ears, though not very 
 nice, are somewhat tortured by his melodies, especially 
 when confined within the cabin. The boy is ten years 
 old, perhaps, and rather pretty ; clean, too, and neatly 
 dressed, very unlike all other street and vagabond chil- 
 dren whom I have seen in Liverpool. People give 
 him their halfpence more readily than to any other 
 musicians who infest the boat. 
 
 J , the other day, was describing a soldier-crab 
 
 to his mother, he being much interested in natural his- 
 tory, and endeavoring to give as strong an idea as pos- 
 sible of its warlike characteristics, and power to harm 
 those who molest it. Little R sat by, quietly lis- 
 
 tening and sewing, and at last, lifting her head, she 
 
580 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 remarked, I hope God did not hurt hisself, when he 
 was making him ! ” 
 
 LEAMINGTON. 
 
 June 2\st. — We left Rock Ferry and Liverpool 
 on Monday, the 18th, by the rail for this place ; a 
 very dim and rainy day, so that we had no pleasant 
 prospects of the country ; neither would the scenery 
 along the Great Western Railway have been in any 
 case very striking, though sunshine would have made 
 the abundant verdure and foliage warm and genial. 
 But a railway naturally finds its way through all the 
 common places of a country, and is certainly a most 
 unsatisfactory mode of travelling, the only object be- 
 ing to arrive. However, we had a whole carriage to 
 ourselves, and the children enjoyed the earlier part of 
 the journey very much. We skirted Shrewsbury, and 
 I think I saw the old tower of a church near the sta- 
 tion, perhaps the same that struck Falstaff’s long 
 hour.” As we left the town, I saw the Wrekin, a 
 round, pointed hill of regular shape, and remembered 
 the old toast, ‘‘To all friends round the Wrekin!” 
 As we approached Birmingham, the country began to 
 look somewhat Brummagemish, with its manufacturing 
 chimneys, and pennons of flame quivering out of their 
 tops ; its forges, and great heaps of mineral refuse ; 
 its smokiness, and other ugly symptoms. Of Birming- 
 ham itself we saw little or nothing, except the mean 
 and new brick lodging-houses, on the outskirts of the 
 town. Passing through Warwick, we had a glimpse of 
 the castle, — an ivied wall and two turrets, rising out 
 of imbosoming foliage ; one’s very idea of an old cas- 
 tle. W e reached Leamington at a little past six, and 
 drove to the Clarendon Hotel, — a very spacious and 
 
1855 .] 
 
 LEAMINGTON, 
 
 581 
 
 stately house, by far the most splendid hotel I have 
 yet seen in England. The landlady, a courteous old 
 lady in black, showed my wife our rooms, and we es- 
 tablished ourselves in an immensely large and lofty 
 parlor, with red curtains and ponderous furniture, per- 
 haps a very little out of date. The waiter brought 
 me the book of arrivals, containing the names of all 
 visitors for from three to five years back. During two 
 years I estimated that there had been about three hun- 
 dred and fifty persons only, and while we were there, 
 I saw nobody but ourselves to support the great hotel. 
 Among the names were those of princes, earls, coun- 
 tesses, and baronets ; and when the people of the 
 
 house heard from R ’s nurse that I too was a man 
 
 of office, and held the title of Honorable in my own 
 country, they greatly regretted that I entered myself 
 as plain Mister ” in the book. We found this hotel 
 very comfortable, and might doubtless have made it 
 luxurious, had we chosen to go to five times the ex- 
 pense of similar luxuries in America ; but we merely 
 ordered comfortable things, and so came off at no 
 very extravagant rate, — and with great honor, at all 
 events, in the estimation of the waiter. 
 
 During the afternoon we found lodgings, and estab- 
 lished ourselves in them before dark. 
 
 This English custom of lodgings, of which we had 
 some experience at Rhyl last year, has its advantages ; 
 but is rather uncomfortable for strangers, who, in first 
 settling themselves down, find that they must under- 
 take all the responsibility of housekeeping at an in- 
 stant’s warning, and cannot get even a cup of tea till 
 they have made arrangements with the grocer. Soon, 
 however, there comes a sense of being at home, and 
 
582 
 
 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 
 
 [ 1855 . 
 
 by our exclusive selves, which never can be attained 
 at hotels nor boarding-houses. Our house is well sit- 
 uated and respectably furnished, with the dinginess, 
 however, which is inseparable from lodging-houses, — • 
 as if others had used these things before and would 
 use them again after we had gone, — a well-enough 
 adaptation, but a lack of peculiar appropriateness \ 
 and I think one puts off real enjoyment from a sense 
 of not being truly fitted. 
 
 July 1st. — On Friday I took the rail with J 
 
 for Coventry. It was a bright and very warm day, 
 oppressively so, indeed ; though I think that there is 
 never in this English climate the pervading warmth 
 of an American summer day. The sunshine may be 
 excessively hot, but an overshadowing cloud, or the 
 shade of a tree or of a building, at once affords relief ; 
 and if the slightest breeze stirs, you feel the latent 
 freshness of the air. 
 
 Coventry is some nine or ten miles from Leaming- 
 ton. The approach to it from the railway presents 
 nothing very striking, — a few church-towers, and one 
 or two tall steeples ; and the houses first seen are of 
 modern and unnoticeable aspect. Getting into the in- 
 terior of the town, however, you find the streets very 
 crooked, and some of them very narrow. I saw one 
 place where it seemed possible to shake hands from 
 one jutting storied old house to another. There were 
 whole streets of the same kind of houses, one story im- 
 pending over another, such as used to be familiar to 
 me in Salem, and in some streets of Boston. In fact, 
 the whole aspect of the town — its irregularity and 
 continual indirectness — reminded me very much of 
 
COVENTRY. 
 
 1855 .] 
 
 583 
 
 Boston, as I used to see it, in rare visits thither, when 
 a child. 
 
 These Coventry houses, however, many of them, are 
 much larger than any of similar style that I have seen 
 elsewhere, and they spread into greater bulk as they 
 ascend, by means of one story jutting over the other. 
 Probably the New-Englanders continued to follow this 
 fashion of architecture after it had been abandoned in 
 the mother country. The old house built by Philip 
 English, in Salem, dated about 1692 ; and it was in 
 this style, — many-gabled, and impending. Here the 
 edifices of such architecture seem to be Elizabethan, 
 and of earlier date. A woman in Stratford told us 
 that the rooms, very low on the ground-floor, grew lof- 
 tier from story to story to the attic. The fashion of 
 windows, in Coventry, is such as I have not hitherto 
 seen. In the highest story, a window of the ordinary 
 height extends along the whole breadth of the house, 
 ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty feet, just like any other 
 window of a commonplace house, except for this inor- 
 dinate width. One does not easily see what the inhab- 
 itants want of so much window-light ; but the fashion 
 is very general, and in modern houses, or houses that 
 have been modernized, this style of window is retained. 
 Thus young people who grow up amidst old people 
 contract quaint and old-fashioned manners and aspect. 
 
 I imagine that these ancient towns — such as Ches- 
 ter and Stratford, Warwick and Coventry — contain 
 even a great deal more antiquity than meets the eye. 
 You see many modern fronts ; but if you peep or pen- 
 etrate inside, you find an antique arrangement, — old 
 rafters, intricate passages, and ancient staircases, which 
 have put on merely a new outside, and are likely still 
 to prove good for the usual date of a new house. 
 
584 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 
 
 They put such an immense and stalwart ponderosity 
 into their frameworks, that I suppose a house of Eliz- 
 abeth’s time, if renewed, has at least an equal chance 
 of durability with one that is new in every part. All 
 the hotels in Coventry, so far as I noticed them, are 
 old, with new fronts ; and they have an archway for 
 the admission of vehicles into the court -yard, and 
 doors opening into the rooms of the building on each 
 side of the arch. Maids and waiters are seen darting 
 across the arched passage from door to door, and it re- 
 quires a guide (in my case, at least) to show you the 
 way to the coffee-room or the bar. I have never been 
 up stairs in any of them, but can conceive of infinite 
 bewilderment of zigzag corridors between staircase and 
 chamber. 
 
 It was fair-day in Coventry, and this gave what no 
 doubt is an unusual bustle to the streets. In fact, I 
 have not seen such crowded and busy streets in any 
 English town ; various kinds of merchandise being for 
 sale in the open air, and auctioneers disposing of mis- 
 cellaneous wares, pretty much as they do at musters 
 and other gatherings in the United States. The ora- 
 tory of the American auctioneer, however, greatly sur- 
 passes that of the Englishman in vivacity and fun. 
 But this movement and throng, together with the white 
 glow of the sun on the pavements, make the scene, in 
 my recollection, assume an American aspect, and this is 
 strange in so antique and quaint a town as Coventry. 
 
 We rambled about without any definite aim, but 
 found our way, I believe, to most of the objects that 
 are worth seeing. St. Michael’s Church was most 
 magnificent, — so old, yet enduring ; so huge, so rich ; 
 with such intricate minuteness in its finish, that, look 
 as long as you will at it, you can always discover 
 
COVENTRY. 
 
 585 
 
 1855 .] 
 
 something new directly before your eyes. I admire 
 this in Gothic architecture, — that you cannot mas- 
 ter it all at once, that it is not a naked outline ; 
 but, as deep and rich as human nature itself, always 
 revealing new ideas. It is as if the builder had built 
 himself and his age up into it, and as if the edifice 
 had life. Grecian temples are less interesting to me^ 
 being so cold and crystalline. I think this is the only 
 church I have seen where there are any statues still 
 left standing in the niches of the exterior walls. We 
 did not go inside. The steeple of St. Michael’s is 
 three hundred and three feet high, and no doubt the 
 clouds often envelop the tip of the spire. Trinity, 
 another church with a tall spire, stands near St. Mi- 
 chael’s, but did not attract me so much; though I, 
 perhaps, might have admired it equally, had I seen it 
 first or alone. We certainly know nothing of church- 
 building in America, and of all English things that I 
 have seen, methinks the churches disappoint me least. 
 I feel, too, that there is something much more wonder- 
 ful in them than I have yet had time to know and ex- 
 perience. 
 
 In the course of the forenoon, searching about 
 everywhere in quest of Gothic architecture, we found 
 our way into St. Mary’s Hall. The doors were wide 
 open ; it seemed to be public, — there was a notice on 
 the wall desiring visitors to give nothing to attendants 
 for showing it, and so we walked in. I observed, in 
 the guide-books, that we should have obtained an order 
 for admission from some member of the town council ; 
 but we had none, and found no need of it. An old 
 woman, and afterwards an old man, both of whom 
 seemed to be at home on the premises, told us that 
 we might enter, and troubled neither themselves nor 
 us any further. 
 
586 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS, [ 1855 . 
 
 St. Mary’s Hall is now the property of the Corpora^ 
 tion of Coventry, and seems to be the place where the 
 Mayor and Council hold their meetings. It was built 
 by one of the old guilds or fraternities of merchants 
 and tradesmen. ... The woman shut the kitchen 
 door when I approached, so that I did not see the 
 great fireplaces and huge cooking-utensils which are 
 said to be there. Whether these are ever used nowa- 
 days, and whether the Mayor of Coventry gives such 
 hospitable banquets as the Mayor of Liverpool, I do 
 not know. 
 
 We went to the Red Lion, and had a luncheon of 
 cold lamb and cold pigeon-pie. This is the best way 
 of dining at English hotels, — to call the meal a 
 luncheon, in which case you will get as good or bet- 
 ter a variety than if it were a dinner, and at less than 
 half the cost. Having lunched, we again wandered 
 about town, and entered a quadrangle of gabled 
 houses, with a church, and its churchyard on one side. 
 This proved to be St. John’s Church, and a part of 
 the houses were the locality of Bond’s Hospital, for 
 the reception of ten poor men, and the remainder was 
 devoted to the Bablake School. Into this latter I 
 peered, with a real American intrusiveness, which I 
 never found in myself before, but which I must now 
 assume, or miss a great many things which I am anx- 
 ious to see. Running along the front of the house, 
 under the jut of the impending story, there was a 
 cloistered walk, with windows opening on the quad- 
 rangle. An arched oaken door, with long iron hinges, 
 admitted us into a school -room about twenty feet 
 square, paved with brick tiles, blue and red. Adjoin- 
 ing this there is a larger school-room which we did not 
 
1855 .] 
 
 COVENTRY, 
 
 587 
 
 enter, but peeped at, through one of the inner win- 
 dows, from the cloistered walk. In the room which 
 we entered, there were seven scholars’ desks, and an 
 immense arched fireplace, with seats on each side, 
 under the chimney, on a stone slab resting on a brick 
 pedestal. The opening of the fireplace was at least 
 twelve feet in width. On one side of the room were 
 pegs for fifty-two boys’ hats and clothes, and there 
 was a boy’s coat, of peculiar cut, hanging on a peg, 
 with the number 60 ” in brass upon it. The coat 
 looked ragged and shabby. An old school-book was 
 lying on one of the desks, much tattered, and without 
 a title ; but it seemed to treat wholly of Saints’ days 
 and festivals of the Church. A flight of stairs, with 
 a heavy balustrade of carved oak, ascended to a gal- 
 lery, about eight or nine feet from the lower floor, 
 which runs along two sides of the room, looking down 
 upon it. The room is without a ceiling, and rises into 
 a peaked gable, about twenty feet high. There is a 
 large clock in it, and it is lighted by two windows, 
 each about ten feet wide, — one in the gallery, and 
 the other beneath it. Two benches or settles, with 
 backs, stood one on each side of the fireplace. An 
 old woman in black passed through the room while I 
 was making my observations, and looked at me, but 
 said nothing. The school was founded in 1563, by 
 Thomas Whealby, Mayor of Coventry ; the revenue 
 is about X900, and admits children of the working- 
 classes at eleven years old, clothes and provides for 
 them, and finally apprentices them for seven years. 
 We saw some of the boys playing in the quadrangle, 
 dressed in long blue coats or gowns, with cloth caps 
 on their heads. I know not how the atmosphere of 
 antiquity, and massive continuance from age to age, 
 
588 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [ 1855 . 
 
 which was' the charm to me in this scene of a charity- 
 school-room, can be thrown over it in description. 
 After noting down these matters, I looked into the 
 quiet precincts of Bond’s Hospital, which, no doubt, 
 was more than equally interesting ; but the old men 
 were lounging about or lolling at length, looking very 
 drowsy, and I had not the heart nor the face to in- 
 trude among them. There is something altogether 
 strange to an American in these charitable institu- 
 tions, — in the preservation of antique modes and 
 customs which is effected by them, insomuch that, 
 doubtless, without at all intending it, the founders 
 have succeeded in preserving a model of their own 
 long-past age down into the midst of ours, and how 
 much later nobody can know. 
 
 We were now rather tired, and went to the railroad, 
 intending to go home; but we got into the wrong 
 train, and were carried by express, with hurricane 
 speed, to Bradon, where we alighted, and waited a 
 good while for the return train to Coventry. At 
 Coventry again we had more than an hour to wait, 
 and therefore wandered wearily up into the city, and 
 took another look at its bustling streets, in which 
 there seems to be a good emblem of what England 
 itself really is, — with a great deal of antiquity in it, 
 and which is now chiefly a modification of the old. 
 The new things are based and supported on the sturdy 
 old things, and often limited and impeded by them ; 
 but this antiquity is so massive that there seems to be 
 no means of getting rid of it without tearing society 
 to pieces. 
 
 July 2c?. — To-day I shall set out on my return to 
 Liverpool, leaving my family here. 
 

 
 
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