Letters During His Second Visit to Europe, 1857
Liverpool, June, 11, 1857.
THROUGH God’s mercy we arrived here in safety on the 7th, after what seamen call a very favourable passage. We found valuable friends on board, and have also found numerous acquaintances of ourselves or our friends, in this town. I had really forgotten how cool the weather is here. We have been under the necessity of having fires every evening, and I shudder with cold most of the time. Though my cough is less, it has not left me. We have just returned from the Exhibition of the “Art Treasures” at Manchester — sixty miles going and returning since morning; so much for English railways. The structure itself is fine, and much resembling the Crystal Palace. The value of the paintings is reckoned by scores of millions of pounds. Every great public and private collection in England has given its gems. Without being a connoisseur I was ravished with the sight of the great works of the greatest masters. Twenty or thirty Eaphaels! English aristocracy owns more of Italian art than Italy itself. Among the moderns, I was not prepared to be so delighted as I am with Sir Joshua Reynolds. All his great works are here. You learn to recognize them at once, and their gracefulness is indescribable. The gallery of water-colours opens quite a new field of art to me. Few of the sculptures awaken me much. Canova’s all seem to be injured by mannerism. I more admire Chantrey, Marshall, and Gibson. Hogarth’s paintings added very little to my pleasure in his engravings. Gains borough’s best pieces are enchanting.
1 In making up this chapter I have followed the same course as in the letters of the visit of 1851, and for the reasons given in the prefatory note of Chapter XI.
LEAMINGTON, June 13, 1857.
We left Liverpool at 11, and came by Crewe, Wolvcrhampton, Birmingham, and Coventry. Haymaking is going on, and we saw and heard a lark ascend, and give his delicious song. Leamington is the cleanest and most brilliant place I ever saw. Every thing has a miniature look. The trim houses, neat shopfronts, white flags, and perfectly pure streets, affect me with a sense of being in a play-place. I can hardly think it real. English neatness here becomes almost Dutch. I forgot to say that the everlasting succession of beauties, in hedgerow, field, and meadow, with unvaried culture and perfect green, produces at length the effect of gazing on a pretty face without expression. One longs for a bare spot, a morsel of rude, brushy land, or a small piece of bad road.
June 14. — We have been to All Saints, the old parish-church, large and full. We were ushered in through the singing-boys to a seat in the choir immediately behind one of the readingpews. The service was given cathedral-fashion. Air. Bowen, the curate, preached an evangelical sermon from the Rich Man and Lazarus. Soldiers went home from church to martial music. The rooks were cawing in their nests among the tops of the trees as we came to our inn.
Such has been the popularity of the Springs here, that the place numbers 15,000 inhabitants. There are two Leamington seasons in the year; the chief one being in winter, as is true also of Brighton; the other is in the hunting-time. The Cheshire hounds have a famous meet in that county, but all this is a fox hunting district. Lord Lonsdale (as we guess it was) told us that railways have greatly facilitated hunting by carrying men and even horses to the meets. He said the lands on our way rented for about three pounds an acre, but some in better districts for five pounds.
I have formerly noted the practice of having a little hymn-book for the particular church. The one here was full of our most evangelical hymns, “Just as I am” and the like. In no New England town have I ever remarked a more exact and still observance of the Sabbath. Invalid persons are trundled to church in bath-chairs, as an everyday thing; most worthy of imitation among us. The throngs of people in the street are perfectly well-dressed, and all with brilliant red and white complexions. As with us the complexion runs often into pale and yellow, so here the faulty visages are red, crimson, scratchy, erysipelatic — there are many such. I am inclined to think that the purest English is spoken in these midland counties. I detect very little provincial in the guards or waiters. Nothing like
24:0 DUEING HIS SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE.
mendicity or even poverty has met my eye at Leamington Priors. A little to the north-west is Baxter’s Kidderminster, and a short journey eastward is Doddridge’s Northampton. Worcester and Edgehill are not far off, and if we took the old mail-route, we should go through the forest of Arden. In this town of so many thousands, there are doubtless many “brethren,” but how shall I find them out? Every thing in the church-way is set and petrified. I went into a shop for tracts, but the woman looked like a nun, and the books all smacked of Oxford.
LONDON, June 15, 1857.
We left Leamington about 10 for London, via Rugby. At R. we saw the church, but could not see the school. The whole country along our way was full of hay-making and sheep-shearing. As we neared Olney, I sang “Begone unbelief” in memory of John Newton, and much of the scenery on the Ouse was pleasant as of the very sort which prompted so many passages of the Task. These impressions were not the less strong, be cause I own my prevalent mood has been somewhat sombre, ever since I left America.
It is now 10 P. M., but the boys are in full caper in the street below, and there is still a lingering blush in the horizon. People here knock and ring. All servants ring, except the post man, who gives two knocks. Coals are brought to the door in a cart, but in sacks, and each of these is emptied down a hole in the sidewalk; it is a cleaner and even quicker operation than ours. The free-and-easy prevails all over England in regard to vehicles, pony-chaises, phaetons, flies, &c. You see two rosy girls drive up to a railway-station, and, perhaps, take a relative into their low-wheeled drag. Numerous cases have been observed by us of a pony drawing four adults in a sort of buggy, and two looking backwards. But then all the roads are as smooth as this paper.
4 BERNARD ST., RUSSELL SQUARE,
LONDON, June 18, 1857.
Last evening I attended an anniversary soiree of the Regent Square and Somerstown Sunday Schools, held in Somerstown, a neighbourhood much like .the Five Points. Lady and gentlemen teachers present for a tea-drinking. Then up stairs, where a meeting lasted two and a half hours. Dr. Hamilton in the chair, who received me with great warmth. Numerous speeches. Of course, I made an address. Hamilton’s gifted vocabulary flowed in my behalf. The cheers and “hears” were a little appalling to me; but good nature and a disposition to be pleased marked every thing. I thought the talent displayed by these teachers very remarkable. The heartiness and almost convivial glee of the meeting were unlike what we have at such times.
In our immediate vicinity is the vast but unfinished cathedral of the Irvingites. London is their Jerusalem, being the seat of their twelve apostles and seven churches. They have two daily services, and I have been to their even-song. The church is a sublime one. About sixty persons were present, of whom part were clergy in rich and varied robes. The chief one, who was forward and apart, near the altar, was wrapped in a heavy dark cloak over his alb, with a stole; he took the lead, and was either angel or bishop. The service was chanted cathedral-wise, and most delightfully. Altogether it was a very solemn affair. Much incense was used.
June £L Sunday. — Very warm. Dr. Hamilton’s church. The text was Proverbs viii. 1. It was an admirable sermon. He began it by comparing the choice of Hercules with the choice of Solomon. A shower having come up, I went in the afternoon to the neighbouring church of the Apostles (Irvingite) in Gordon Square. A sermon of an hour was first preached by Mr. John Wells, on the “procession of the Holy Ghost.” It was read, was well-delivered, and very theological and orthodox, until near the close he declared that the day of miracles and prophecy had returned. Then followed the regular even-song, which was altogether distinct. The big ones sat in common seats during the sermon with purplish cassocks and small capes — three having lace sleeves; but during the vespers, all were in the choir, which is of immense size. There were twenty, exclusive of the singing-boys in while. The Angel or Bishop (Mr. Heath) had a purple cloak over his alb, and performed his part to admiration. Of the rest, some had yellow and some red stoles, (or scarfs,) and all had albs or white dresses. I heard one pray in the spirit, one prophesy, and three give the word of exhortation. The organ and Gregorian chant were in perfection; all being in good training, and the congregation (about a thousand) generally joining. The sound rolled majestically through the Gothic vaults of the great edifice, which is quite a marvel of modern architecture. The incense, the intoning, and the bowing to the altar, are perfectly popish, but the service and ceremony are very fine and im pressive. I do not believe they have better music at St. Paul’s,
LONDON, June 23, 1857.
The new buildings of Lincoln’s Inn are noble. In the fine library I found numbers studying and compiling. A whole alcove and more is devoted to American works, [on Law.] Then VOL. IT. — 11 to the Middle and Inner Temples. How ancient and beautiful these gardens, walks, and green trees, opening on the river and full of associations from Shakspeare downward! Professor L., of King’s College, who accompanied me, greatly admires American jurisprudence, and amidst all his compilations says that American reports are most useful to him. He may be called a disciple of Story’s, whose entire works he showed me. In the four Inns there are lectures, Monday on Common Law, Tuesday on Civil Law, Wednesday on Constitutional Law, Thursday on Equity, Friday on Real Estate.
After all this, it was highly proper that I should go to Smithfield. I made my approach by Skinner Street and the Old Bailey, by Snow Hill and Giltspur Street, near St. Sepulchre’s and the Compter. This is one of the mustiest and most delicious parts of old London; for here enters Hosier Lane, (Swift speaks of the “veriest cockney of Hosier Lane,”) and Cock Lane, famous for Dr. Johnson’s and Wesley’s visit to the ghost. And here is Pye Corner, where the fire of 1666 stopped. The great area of Smithfield, vast indeed, remains, and the innumerable stalls are left, but the glory is departed. Not only are there no martyrs, like John Rogers, but there are no beasts. I saw a timid flock of sheep looking out of Cock Lane, like intruders, but the principal reminiscence of former days is hay and straw, and the advertisements of butcher-tools, cattle-medicine, &c; besides advertisements of two lost children. I took the pains to count the parish vagrants, posted as having deserted their families, and found the number thirty-one. All this end of town is old, black, and profoundly suggestive. The smell is peculiar, and was doubtless known to Shakspeare and Bunyan.
The strawberries are very plenty and very large, and the English way is to serve them in the hulls, and eat them out of hand, dipping in powdered sugar.
I heard Dean Trench read prayers at Westminster Abbey, and saw him preach in a surplice and scarlet hood. He is a robust, hale, good-looking Englishman, with much of that “holy-tone” which belongs to all readers here.
The funerals are solemn mockery. The hearse is surmounted with immense plumes or bunches, as big as a man, and I have seen a dozen persons in black, perched on the top, driving full tilt to act as mutes. I can’t get over the horse-flesh of Hyde Park. I never saw such blood, condition, and grooming. In the streets one sees the biggest and the least horses in the world.
LONDON, June 29, 1857. I have heard the wonderful Spurgeon. I am told the effort was feeble, for him. He has none of those captivating intonations which we remember in Summerfield and others; neither should I judge him to have any pathos. His voice is incomparable, and perfect for immense power, sweetness, and naturalness. His pronunciation is admirable, with the never-failing English eyther, knowledge, wroth, &c. Though very like his likenesses, he becomes almost handsome when animated. His gesture is sparing and gentlemanlike. I detect no affectation. The tremendous virtue of his elocution is in outcry, sarcasm, and menace, arid his voice improves as it grows louder. I seriously think his voice the great attraction. His prayers were concise and solemn; a shade too metaphoric. His short exposition was so-so in matter, but well-delivered. He preceded his sermon by a shot at Lord Lyndhurst’s late remarks on the obscene Print Bill, and said: “Holy well Street had at length found an advocate in Westminster Palace.” He requested the people in the gallery (there are three one over another,) not to lean forward. He said you could tell a Dissenter in church, by his sitting down before the hymn was over. During the sermon he described broken-down preachers, spitting blood, going to the continent and travelling at other people’s expense. This did not please me, for
“Who e’er felt the halter draw,
With good opinion of the law?”
He told a very funny story of a minister with a rich wife. He was very severe on the establishment, and rather intimated that the gospel was very little preached. In this part of the discourse, he preached himself. Notwithstanding all this and his dreadful onslaught on written sermons, I think his work here matter of the greatest thankfulness. He preaches a pure gospel, in the most uncompromising manner, with directness, power, and faithfulness; and he preaches it to hundreds of thousands, to beggars and princes. I am at a loss to say what they come for. They seem to be led of God. All strangers go. Some of the nobility are always there. Church ministers abound in every assembly. I ought to have said there is nothing that savours of the rude or illiterate. Such a building I would beg a year to have in New York, for some stentor. It is the beau-ideal, being the theatre of Surrey Gardens, where Jullien has his concerts. It will hold ten thousand seated. Every aisle and corner was filled by a dense mass of standing persons numbering perhaps a thousand. The attention was unbroken. What struck me, was the total absence of the ill-dressed classes. A person behind me pointed out actors, Waterloo officers, noble men, &c. Old Hundred by about ten thousand voices was really congregational singing. His sermon was fifty minutes, Ezek.
xxxvi. 37 — on the connexion of prayer with blessings. 1. Fact. 2. Reasons. The first head was admirable; as scriptural, simple, chaste, direct, winning, and full of Christ, as one could wish. Only I wondered all the while why it drew the masses so. Then he began to suffer with the terrible heat; said so; and evidently lost his strength of body and mind. The application was common-place, but his felicitous language and glorious voice will carry along any thing. I am persuaded he seeks to save souls, and believe that he is as much blessed to that end, as any man of our day. My childish recollections of Larned, represent him as much such a speaker. Spurgeon is a blended likeness of Prof. Atwater, and Mr. Bartine, the Methodist. His eyes are disproportionally small. In many points of assurance,
dogmatism, conceit, and sarcasm, he reminds one of, to
whom he is greatly superior in gentlemanlike bearing and absence of nasal twang, while he falls far below him in learning, original illustration, and I think inventive genius. But Spurgeon preaches the blessed gospel of the grace of God.
You know my passion for London: it is next to impossible to get away, though the feeling of heat is as great as it would be at New York, while the mercury is about 77°. Drives into the environs are very sweet. All the banks of Thames are lovely. No words can describe the verdure, the cottages, the roses, the green lanes, the field-paths, the hay-making, the parks.
The thoughts are very serious which one has amidst the most favourable circumstances, in a foreign land. I trust they are not without spiritual profit. My friends at home are certainly not less in my mind. The feeling of being so much a truant is very oppressive to me at times. After all, I would a thousand times rather be at home.
The speakers whom I heard in the House of Commons, were the Attorney-General, Mr. Henley, (a fine, blunt John Bull,) Mr. Collier, (a fine orator,) and Mr. Rolt. As I never heard Randolph say more than one word, viz., “Palgrave,” so all 1 ever heard Palmerston say, is: “Because they (the Proctors) are to be swept from the earth.” I was mightily struck with the gentlemanly tone of the debate, and the subdued and delicate manner in which adverse opinion was stated, even when the argument was point-blank in opposition.
This was the day for our visit to the Crystal Palace. It is far nobler than the original one, forty-four feet higher, and with three transepts. As it takes a volume to describe it, I will bring that with me, for little can be done in a letter. The park and gardens and fountains are on prodigious scale. Even within the building every sort of tropical tree and plant is growing, and there is almost as much vegetable matter as any thing else. Landscape gardening is producing its chef d’oeuvre without. In a wild part of the grounds, you have models of life size, and in appropriate surroundings, of all the hideous creatures of +he early formations, pterodactylus, hyloeosaurus, ichthyosaurus and all. On our way, E. stopped me and said: “O look what a noble little boy!” We presently found it was Prince Arthur, who, with two sisters, was viewing the palace. We heard two excellent orchestral concerts, stayed all day, arid all for a shilling. The pleasantest thing was the great number of the lower class. On reaching lodgings, I found cards of Messrs. Dallas, Senr. and Junr., [the American Minister and son,] and a letter from the Earl of Waldegrave, expressing regret that his son was not in town.
I have seen all the Inns of Court, and of the Inns of Chancery, Clement’s Clifford’s, Furnival’s, Thavie’s, and Staple. Strand Inn is pulled down. Barnard’s I cannot find. The only remaining ones of the june, Lyon’s and New Inn, I will look for. With Christ’s Hospital some of these are my favourite spots. Some say the very first wool-staplers of London lived at what is now Staple Inn. Such an antiquity would not abide a year in New York. Even in London such cool, moist, monastic spaces are preserved only by belonging to guilds or other corporations.
LONDON, July 3, 1857.
The House of Lords is superb, but bad for hearing. Lords appear in morning-dress — many with hats on; some lounging, and one asleep. Law Reform was up. I was glad to hear Brougham at length. He is erect, and agile, though very gray. The manner of a vehement old preacher. Able and emphatic. Lord Chancellor Cranworth spoke, leaving the woolsack. His voice and manner that of the late President Maxwell, [of Virginia.] Lord Fitzwilliam spoke; tall, thin, quakerish, hat over eyes. I afterwards saw him canter off on a spirited horse, brought by a groom in white livery; the Earl is 75. Lord Campbell spoke. Without his [Judge’s] wig, looks bluff and hearty; dark hair, baldish; age 76. Afterwards they went into committee, Redesdale in the chair. I also heard him speak. Then came on
1 The son of the Earl is the Hon. and Rev. Samuel Waldegrave, now canon of Salisbury, and author of several excellent religious works. Of one of these — “New Testament Millenarianism” — Dr. Alexander gave a synopsis in the Repertory, July, 1856. Mr. Waldegrave’s book has many acknowledgments of the value of Dr. J. A. Alexander’s “Isaiah,” and some letters passed between the two authors.
a second reading of Lord Campbell’s bill about immoral publications. He spoke with much animation. Lord Lyndhurst made a few remarks. He looks young when sitting, with hat on, having a youthful wig; but when he walks, his spindling, failing shanks, betray 85 years. I had pointed out to me the Duke of Argyle; red head, slender, strutting; fine forehead. Lord Nelson rather foppish. Lord Shaftesbury youngish and graceful. Lord Wensleydale (Park) very burly and strong. I heard some very poor speaking. The general look of the Lords reminded me of Virginia gentlemen; quite so in manner; but more neatness of dress, though not more simplicity, in most. The fine hale condition of so many old Lords, speaks well for English climate, dinners, sports, and general habits. The law-lords have no easy times. After a long day on the bench, Campbell comes to the Lords’ and makes speeches; he has no Scotch accent, of which Brougham has much. Shaftesbury is 56. His son, Lord Ashley, is in the House of Commons. S. is the great philanthropist of the aristocracy. I have never been in Parliament, without hearing America mentioned. In connexion with lawreform, it is always honourably. The Lord Chancellor, Lyndhurst, Brougham, Campbell, and Fitzwilliam, all agree in urging simpler forms. They are now hammering at complications of the mortgage. Contrary to the genius of English law, they seek to make the transfer of real estate as easy as the transfer of bank-stock. I saw two bishops, both in and out of rig. Their undress is nobly beautiful; with their robes and lawn they look like Falstaff in the buck-basket. Lord Ellenborough made a speech of some length on India. He is 66; tall and stout, heavy voice, more than the usual stammer, little of the peculiar tin-pan, palatal utterance, which makes Granville resemble the lower classes. It appears to be quite the thing for members to go home on horseback.
We went to Albert Smith’s Ascent of Mont Blanc, Piccadilly. It lasted two hours, and was a union of first-rate painting with irresistible humour. Indeed, I never heard any thing so comic as his songs and dialogues “up the Rhine.”
Smith is one of the Punch set. The entertainment is modish, the rooms elegant.
LONDON, July 6, 1857.
At 6£ yesterday I sought out Baptist W. Noel’s chapel in John Street, near Gray’s Inn. As I approached I heard a man say it was “ordinance day,” a dissenting phrase, which I happened to understand. The chapel is old and old-fashioned; showing what the Ranstead Court Tabernacle may have been copied from. Galleries on all four sides, and very wide; seats under the gallery lengthwise; pulpit high; vestry-end thrown in by moving a partition; full house of plain but earnest people. Precentor gave out hymns and notices. Mr. Noel is a thin-faced pale, refined, American-looking man. I recognize the incompar,- able elocution which I admired so much in ‘5l. I also perceived afresh that the higher you go in society here, the more the talk is like that of educated men at home; say of Charleston. I don’t say Boston, because of the Yankee bens, and dooty, and stoodent; nor yet of Virginia, because of the R — phobia, as Dr. Rush used to call it. Otherwise, it is more like Virginia. He used no notes, and in an hour’s preaching never broke into any intonations which would sound wrong if he had been speaking to three people, by his fireside. He was on Matt. xxv. 25 — 29, the Institution. It was simple and chaste, but scholarly; deeply interesting and even delicious, but not impassioned; no fancy, no illustration; eminently didactic and parenetic. Altogether I must place it among the most pleasing, useful, and holy discourses I ever heard. He made a bold declaration of free-communion.
BRIGHTON, July 13, 1857.
Brighton itself is a large place, with much elegance of structure, and all the appliances of sea-bathing. The air is like Newport. Just before our windows (Pier Hotel) is a drive frequented by ceaseless processions of gentry in every kind of vehicle, ladies with grooms, donkeys, goat-carriages, foot-folk, and just beyond, still very near us, the sea-beach, with rows of the machines out of which they bathe. The surf is much less than at Newport. There are innumerable children wading in the low tide. One pleasant thing is the total absence of that glare which prevails on our beach. The streets, moreover, are watered with such English faithfulness, that there is no dust. Remember it is not the “season” at Brighton. That begins in October. Walking and driving on the beach are here in their perfection. The parade is three miles. The high banks are paved and pali saded, so as to be charming. A pier, highly ornamented, juts out into the sea, on the widened end of which a band of music plays in the evening. So gay and brilliant a spectacle I never saw out of Paris. I no longer wonder at the popularity of Brighton, nor at the fondness of George IV. for it. The stone and brick buildings give a look of permanence, wanting in our
1 A church in Philadelphia, built for Independents, but afterwards the Seventh Presbyterian.
summer-resorts. It is a wonder Brighton is not always full of people, but they go by thousands to the continent. England is over-peopled, and they flee from one another. Watering places at home compromise them. As Albert Smith says of Baden-Baden, “all the English get up from the table at once, because each one is afraid he shall make a blunder, and each one wants to be a greater swell than the others.”
The beautiful downs, or wavy hills, which mark all the coast, afford charming eminences, and the perfect roads tempt to drives, especially as villages, plantations, and meadows with ancient hedges, are numerous. The high, solid drive for miles, on the brink, is totally novel and the effect is surprising. Long streets and squares are built up uniformly with the cream-coloured “composition” fronts, which bulge out so as to afford windowviews both ways. The beach is divided into inclined planes of perfect smoothness, with low partitions. Here the machines are. The old granny who waits, assists the practitioner, who is under cover till the instant of dashing into deep water. There is nothing of the social bathing and aquatic fracas which makes much of the fun in America. It is a separate, exclusive, Anglican immersion. Brighthelmstone, which is the full Anglo-Saxon name, was a British settlement. Flemish men settled here 800 years ago. It became famous as a resort about 100 years ago. See Madame d’Arblay for later popularity. In Madame’s day hoops were worn, as again now. George IV. came here in 1782, and this made Brighton. It is confidently said that the high paved promenade is the finest in the world. So much does uniform building prevail that whole rows look like palaces, and it resembles Swiss or French architecture. The Downs extend fifty or sixty miles. Their exposures show pure chalk, and like all hills of chalk, they are beautifully rounded and covered with fine, close, velvet turf. The great peculiarity of these hills is the graceful serpentine curve formed by their contour, and the plush surface of short grass which precisely resembles a fine rug in its feel.
We took a drive on the 10th to the Devil’s Dyke, five miles. The sea was almost always in view as we climbed from one graceful ascent to another. As if by special order, a sky-lark was scarcely ever out of hearing, though often out of sight. We would hear the laughing, ecstatic song, long before we could descry the tiny creature as he looked. Then he would come into view, mounting higher and yet higher, and drifting a little adown the wind, so as to get before us, but often just overhead, in a passion of joy, fainter and fainter to the ear, and dashed to pieces by the wind, till at length with circles lessening every moment he would drop down to the earth. When we reached the summit, where there is. an inn, the sudden view was amazing. You are astonished that a few hundred feet should open such an expanse. Before us is the whole Weald of Sussex, a plain 100 miles by 40, like the parterres of a garden. With the naked eye we saw the isle of Wight. They tell us that sixty churches are in sight. I cannot express the thronging suggestions. In some degree of purity, from all these churches has for centuries ascended the song “Thou art the King of glory, O Christ!” It was beauty rather than sublimity, though even the sublime was caused by extent, and by the wide prospect of the Channel from Beachy Head to Portsmouth.
The little hamlet of Stanmer is the prettiest about Brighton. The old houses of the peasants are absolutely hidden with running plants and flowering shrubs. On one we saw currants trained to run even over the roof, and bearing red fruit there. You will judge from the length of my twaddle, that we are engaged in the dolce far niente. We have the delightful prospect of Mr. Stewart’s company all through Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. This is matter of great thankfulness.
YENTNOR, ISLE OF WIGHT, July 17, 1857.
The resemblance between the Isle of Wight and Staten Island is very striking; but the parts of the isle which we have seen, are beyond any word-picturing. To say that the fields and woods are of a soft green, all moist and pure, and without any mixture of fading or decay, even now in the dog-days, would be only to say that it is England. But Wight has very peculiar features. The north and south parts are unlike; the north being all garden and the south broken and wild. For ten miles from Ryde, southward, every route was as beautiful as any park or pleasure-ground. The roads wrere, of course, hard and smooth; but they were also hedged, and ever winding, and ever changing level, and ever and anon entering some quaint village or hamlet, or bringing us suddenly in view of the sea. We passed the church and rectory of Legh Richmond. No exaggeration need be feared as to the cottage-life; no fancy of yours, however melodramatic, could make a picture to exceed these one-story, old, thatched dwellings, half hidden in creepers, and parti-coloured with flowers. The romance of hill, dale, copse, glen, cliff, spring, dark shady lane, and look-out to the sea, cannot be carried
1 The Rev. Charles S. Stewart, who had joined our travellers in London, and whose kind attentions and agreeable society are frequently and affectionately referred to in many letters.
VOL. II. 11* further. The fields, as Emerson says, look as if finished with the pencil, rather than the plough. In considering the scenery of this back part of the island it occurs to me that its exemplifies the production of great effects by combination of few elements; as the ancient Greek painter had, they say, but three colours on his palette. In this little corner of a little island, effects are produced which are really Alpine; as if the Creator, in his overflowing bounty, had determined to show his child on a small scale, how he sometimes works on a large one.
We visited the smallest church in England, if not in the world, called of old St. Lawrence-under-Wuth. Till a late enlargement, it was 25x12.
On the 16th Mr! Stewart and I determined to circumnavigate the island — a sail of about 70 miles. In order to commence it, however, we must needs go thirteen miles to Ryde. At 11 we went on board a small steamer and proceeded westward. The company was genteel. I soon cottoned to an Anglican clergyman, who cheered our whole voyage by his clever and witty talk. We had a capital view of Osborne House, Norris Castle, (the seat of Bell — “Life in London,”) Hurst Castle, Lymington, Yarmouth, &c. Where the island begins to turn southward, the scene becomes very remarkable. The chalk cliffs are cut straight up and down, and assume fantastic contours and colours, like cornices, like walls, like mantels, like tapestries, like ruled musiclines for giants. The streaks of ore, in and near Alum Bay and the Needles, are of many hues, and the formations unlike any thing I ever beheld. The Needles are exactly like monstrous icebergs, and they, with the rocks, present a spectacle not only interesting but sublime. Ventnor showed nobly on the terraced cliffs of the south point, but it is too fresh and American-looking to compare with such thatched, hedged, embosomed spots as Bowchurch or Godshill. We made our periplus in 4 hours 30 minutes.
Next day we made a pilgrimage to Legh Richmond’s place, Brading. We saw his church, and the grave of Jane, “the Young Cottager,” and then by a delightful drive over high commanding downs, to Arreton, where we saw another old church, and the grave of “the Dairyman’s Daughter.” We also called at her cottage, now occupied by her nephew, and saw her Bible, &c. After dinner we went to tea at Mrs. Pelham’s, by her kind invitation. Her grounds join her brother-in-law’s, Lord Yarborough’s, and we strayed over the whole — an earthly Paradise which only great wealth can produce. Here she introduced us to her pastor, the Rev. Charles Livingston, rector of the tiny church. Mrs. Pclham is a grand-daughter of the duchess of
Manchester, and cousin of Lord John Russell and of the duchess of Wellington. Mr. Livingston lives in a superb place on an ornamented cliff, commanding the sea. It gave him pleasure to hear of his relatives in America; and he several times related the story of his ancestor of the Kirk of Shotts. He spent a long evening at our lodgings, and awaited our stage-coach at the avenue of his house to pronounce a blessing on us.
Some of the best descriptions of the scenery of the isle are in Richmond’s three tracts. For example, in the “Negro Servant” he paints a series of scenes, which we instantly recognize, though he does not name them. They are the Down between Allerton and Newport, the vale of the Medina, the Solert, Southampton, and Alum Bay. I shall never hear the name of the Isle of Wight without a thrill of recollections, nor without gratitude for having been allowed so leisurely and thorough a survey. Moreover, there my cough seemed to be suspended, if not ended.
PARIS, July 24, 1857.
I am overwhelmed with the greatness of the changes in Paris, [since 1851.] The mere extension of the rue de Rivoli, with rows of palatial edifices, is but a part. Entire boulevards have been opened, with names gratifying to the Emperor, as B. de Strasbourg, B. de Sebastopol, &c. Two grand objects are plainly in view, the holding Paris as a great walled encampment, and the filling of the people to the brim with amusement. Without a nocturnal drive no one comprehends Paris. The world has no such turn-out of population; no word but swarming gives any idea of it. As we approached the Boulevards, where the great cafes seem one complex of glass, mirrors, and light, the rows on the broad pavements were often ten, twenty, perhaps thirty deep. Among these thousands, we heard nothing like outcry, observed no rudeness, and detected no signs of drunkenness. People drive out after dinner, and the stream of carriage-lamps continues till midnight.
Mr. Stewart visited the Emperor at Plombieres, and was received by him in such a manner as would have been impossible at Paris; dining, walking, and chatting with him for three hours, with every mark of sincere friendship and the absence of all ceremony.
MACON, (SAONE ET LOIRE,) July 28, 1857.
Here we are, having come at one stretch (from Paris) 275 miles. This, and the region we have passed lately, is the country
1 The Rev. Mr. Stewart had known and befriended the Emperor during his stay in the United States, in his early career.
of the famed Burgundy wine. “Corn and wine” are given to these plains in abundance. The country wine is weaker than cider, and more refreshing. I never saw a town of uglier houses. In no instance do we see any flowers, or plants, trained over the doors and windows. Apricots and figs are by bushels, and the country wine is without charge. The people seem quiet, innocuous, and stolid — that is not precisely the word — unambitious and unin quiring. On this blazing day I look everywhere for what we call a shade-tree; I see nothing but the stiff rows of poplars, and these in places where there are no houses. There is a promenade, with shadeless trees and no grass.
Points observable in our rapid tour yesterday: All champaign country for 200 miles. No cottages, no barns, no lanes, or cross roads, no divisions, no groves, and almost no beasts of burden, except the human ones. Women universally the majority of workers in the harvests. Country fertile, thoroughly tilled, and pleasing for a first view, but unutterably monotonous. People seem quiet, like so many sheep. In a few instances I descried little edifices, which I have no doubt were Protestant temples, and the sight was affecting. A little bread and a little wine seem to be the fare of the peasantry, who are universally temperate. Chalons-sur-Saone is a fine town, the Cabillonum of Ca3sar: it is known to have been visited by Augustus, Constantino, Attila, and the Saracens.
GENEYA, July 29 — August 6, 1857.
Delightful place; one can’t help breathing the air of Protestantism and freedom. The lake and environs and mountains are as lovely as Rousseau, Cooper, and Byron have described. I drove to Dr. Malan’s, at Vendceuvre, a beautiful hamlet. The venerable man was sitting with his wife and daughter. At the Bcrgues I found Dr. Tyng, returning from Palestine. What a pity that the very best descriptions of the Leman and its shores are in Rousseau’s worst work! There are few places I ever saw in which I could more willingly reside. Shops, libraries, &c., are abundant; there is the best of Protestant society and preaching; schools numerous and good; mild winters and luscious fruits; neighbourhood of Paris, the Rhine, and Italy; a perfect laissez-faire as to the way in which you shall live.
Dr. Malan said: “Most of your countrymen have what I call the American venom — they want to feel before they believe.” For a place of its size, Geneva has an air of polite letters and refined art, which reminds one of Athens. Like Athens it is also a resort for many nations. We had a beautiful view of Mont Blanc from Dr. Malan’s, and afterwards from Col. Troncli in’s beautiful place. On a steamboat excursion around the Like I made the acquaintance of William Turrettini, lineal descendant of the great three; he is an eminent lawyer and legislator, and a pious, orthodox man. The arch-duchess Marie of Kussia was on board, with forty-five in party; a handsome woman, with a handsome daughter.
On Sunday I heard Dr. Malan; who is certainly eloquent, though he evidently speaks without the least preparation. The congregation was about eighty. At seven we had a service in our own room, which was very delightful. Dr. Tyng expounded John xxi. The present government of Geneva is radical, Fazy being President. They favour Papists. Protestant and Popish interests are about in equilibrio. At the treaty of Turin, Geneva obtained increase of territory, but with it an accession of Papists. The Sabbath is much profaned here; for an age the elections of the Canton have been held in the cathedral on a Sunday. There is a Greek chapel here, entirely for the convenience of a sister of the late Emperor Nicholas. The princess goes there on Sunday, for some formal cause, and then rapidly drives to one of the French churches.
Geneva is full of old covered alleys or passages, running clear through piles of buildings. They probably have some connexion with the defences of other times. One finds a remarkable number of ancient noble houses degraded into factories and dwellings for the poor. They are too massive to be pulled down, as would be done in the United States. I found one this morning, of grand proportions, with a defaced blazonry over the door. No one could tell me what it was formerly, (it is now an iron warehouse,) but a little street back of it, named la rue de vieux college, reveals the story.
I have been at the cathedral, and once more saw the canopy under which Farel, Calvin, and Knox preached. They also have Calvin’s professional chair. I suppose no place of its size has half as many book-shops as Geneva, and 1 have never seen a place so stocked with beautiful prints and engravings. The truffles of all this region of the Khone are fine, succulent, and savoury. Every variety of fruits in market; mulberries, immense yellow and crimson gages, strawberries, raspberries, pears, plums, apricots, and such potatoes as rival Ireland; sold chiefly by a poor, withered-looking set of brown women, sitting on the ground, many with goitres, and though in this Alpine land, devoid of rosy freshness and all grace. At our breakfast we have honey, black cherries, and very large figs.
Geneva is a sweet home-like place, which I am sorry to think I shall never see again.
254: DUKING HIS SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE.
BERNE, August 7, 1857.
It is surprising how many persons speak English, and how many Russians we meet. The Bernese are far better looking as a people than the Genevese. Among the latter, even the young women look haggard and withered. Here there is much of the blonde character, which belongs to the better sort of Germans. Berne is a strange, solid, grotesque, middle-age place, built so mountainously that nothing but an earthquake could well alter it. The view of the Oberland Alps is very fine in good weather.
INTERLAKEN, August 9 — 20, 1857.
Interlaken lies between the lakes Tlmn and Brienz. Never since Niagara have my descriptive talents been more tasked and baffled. The village combines every thing, both old and new, which the most romantic fancy could demand in Swiss architecture. The streets crooked, the houses tumbled about with all lines but straight ones, in a way to drive a Philadelphian mad, the eaves overhanging, stones on the roofs, every characteristic which we see in the stone villages. All this in a little circular basin quite surrounded by irregular mountains, with the Jungfrau in full sight from our windows. This, as the most ravishing spot in Switzerland, has been seized on by the English. In the height of the season, I reckon there are two thousand of them here. I sit and muse with a sort of childish admiration at these great and lovely works of God, now half- veiled with clouds and mists, the fantastic changes of which make a new picture every minute. The thought of my dear and honoured father’s pleasure in such sights, often comes to me; he sees better than these — perhaps these also. The hour at which I write, allowing for longitude, is that of morning service in our church, a season which I always remember with a sense of communion. Our Sabbaths abroad have been memorable, and not the less so for the mingling of pages from God’s two great records. I have just read the whole of Ezra, hard by the Jungfrau.
For the first time (August 11) I heard a band of Swiss girls sing Alpine songs, with that peculiar falsetto voice which is called yodling. It was sweet, wild, and in such surroundings, delightful. I cannot think there is any more lovely place than this on the face of the earth; a vale, a river, two lakes, a wall of mountains, snow Alps beyond, English shops, society and service, clear air and luxurious accommodation. A trip on horseback into the Oberland gave me a thorough acquaintance with snow-peaks, mountain paths, avalanches, alp-horns, singing-girls, ranz-des-vaches, cascades, &c. The cow-bells of the innumerable cattle are large and musical, and every cow has one, so that the sound while they graze is peculiar.
BADEN-BADEN, August 23 — 31, 1857.
I never dreamed of such a Vanity-Fair. The Champs Elysees afford no such concentration of trees, lamps, dresses, music, crowds, and fashion as the promenade before the Conversations-Saal here; all in full dress; a ball-room out of doors, and the numbers 1,000 to 3,000; nothing heard but French. The waters are about 160° Fahrenheit.
The Anglicans keep up service here, and in a Roman Catholic church. When I entered the door, I thought I had been mis directed. The epistle and gospel our British brethren must always read at the altar; and here the two parsons had the regular thing, with all its mantel-furniture, candles, and framed papers, more tawdry than usual. “While I say this, I must do honour to the English for everywhere keeping up the service of God, and for the frequency and decorum of their attendance. How profound and distressing is my impression of the irreligion of these countries! No Sabbath and apparently no grace! The boors are so ground to the earth, that they look like slaves. Blessed Americans, sua si bona norint! I am refreshed by a handful of precious German tracts, (some by Ryle,) which Dr. Marriott, of Basle, sets forth. That hot but sincere man does much good; and among these epicures and Sadducees (Phil. iii. 18, 19) every thing is notable, that tends towards the saving of the soul. Wo is me, if I seek it not more zealously on return. A series of tracts in large print, by old Andrew Read, entitled “Cottage Tracts, or Christ’s Welcome to all comers,” is very fine.
You must consult Sir Francis Head,1 or some of the guide books, about Baden-Baden. I had no idea of the grand scale on which every thing is conducted. It is a lap of earth among high, near, and round hills, which are cut into innumerable walks and drives. The water is drunk hot as well as used externally. But the great thing is raving, idolatrous, expensive pleasure. The princes of all the continental states are to be seen here during the season. Every moment we look for the king of Flanders, and a cloth is already laid for his feet. People suffer as much with heat as in America.
Our windows are just beside the front door, so we see royalty [king of Belgians] whenever he goes or comes. The king is a good-looking old gentleman; he is well made up with black wig, but no whiskers or moustache; full suit of black, an orange something under his waistcoat. Legs a little shaky. In the
2 “Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau.”
afternoon a coach and four postilions, footman and outriding groom, drove up. Two ladies in white muslin got out. The king descends — grand uncovering and bowing. He ascends the coach, leaving one of the ladies. These are the princesses of Prussia, who have a summer-house here. The king travels incog., as Count d’ Ardennes; his suite consists of seventeen persons. «i ‘.
The gambling-scene at the Conversation Hall is very stirring. A woman very eager and prominent, booking her profit and loss. Mothers showing boys and girls how to stake. The roulettetable is just such as I have seen in my childhood, with sweatcloth, &c.
In Switzerland I thought much of Wordsworth’s poetry concerning it, and of Scott’s Anne of Geierstein. On the Rhine I consider Byron’s stanzas descriptive of the same better than any painting. Goethe often occurs to me. People get to be great polyglots here. I often hear the same person speak three languages in as many minutes. The African servant of a Russian prince has just been talking fluently under our window in German, Italian, and French; he says he is from Central Africa. The princess Helena of Russia is here, and the Emperor is to visit a camp at Stuttgart next month. We have had the best instrumental music I ever heard, from the band of the 28th regiment of Austria, now at the neighbouring city of Rastadt.
The more I view Baden, the more I see its walks to be inexhaustible; they wind around all parts of the valley, and creep up the numerous hill-sides, with clumps of trees, gravel-paths, parterres of flowers, and well-placed seats. The Old Castle has a grand site, and is a fine ruin. Every thing Mrs. Radcliffe could desire is afforded by this crumbling, ivy-covered castle. So long has it been vacant that numerous trees of the largest size grow within the walls. On our way home, we went to the New Castle, such only by comparison. It surmounts the acropolis of the town. The old margraves of the Palatinate lived on the high place till 1471, when the modern Schloss was built. It was burnt by the French in 1689, but restored. The dungeons are horrible; subterranean vaults of great extent through which we groped with candles. The contrast to the inhabited parts is striking; here the rooms are brilliant. The young couple now reigning live chiefly at Carlsruhe, but their private apartments here are very comfortable. The Orphan House of Baden was founded by Stultz, the famous London tailor, who was made a nobleman by his prince.
HEIDELBERG, September 1, 185Y.
The woman who accompanied us as guide through this castle of castles, and who spoke good English, was a most agreeable and accomplished person; thoroughly versed in history and literature, and quite intimate with Bryant and Longfellow. I heard some capital singing at St. Peter’s, and a very legal sermon from a very young divine. The Church is Reformed. Here we have more Germanisms of the table — raw meat, rolled boiled
Fudding of meat, sourkrout, fish after flesh, sausage and omelette, went to the University and Library before breakfast.
FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, September 2 — 4, 1857.
This is a noble city. The Zeil is a broad street, resembling Broadway in cheerfulness, brilliancy, business, and crowd; it is wider, and the trottoirs twice as wide. We are next door to Rothschild’s town residence. Statues in honour of Goethe and of the three inventors of printing adorn our neighbourhood. To crown all it is full Frankfort-fair; and the booths, shows, and tantarara, beat all since I saw Greenwich Fair in 1851.
The deep gloom apparent everywhere in the English, about the Indian mutinies, awakens my sincere sympathy. How I wish America could at least speak some words of neighbourly cheer on this great occasion; it would be profoundly felt by the magnanimous part of the British people.
The Romer is a famous old building. Here the Senatus was sitting, with men in scarlet at the door. I did homage to the magistracy of a great city-commonwealth. I saw the Golden Bull of 1356, the fundamental law of the German empire; it is in Latin, and perfectly well kept. The banqueting-hall is surrounded by full-lengths of fifty-two emperors, the last filling the last niche. Since Car. V. they are portraits. In this Kaisersaal the new emperor was always feasted, while princes waited on him. Some Prescott or Motley is wanting for this subject.
Every available broad street and area is occupied by the (Michaelmas) fair; miles of shops, booths, and stalls. The Jews predominate in this Feast of Tabernacles. Imagine twenty Bear-markets, all in one, with tents and sheds for the stalls, and twenty different languages. I suppose it is chiefly for exchanges, and for giving and receiving orders; but it is far more stirring than the got-up World’s Fairs, and has antiquarian relations of high interest. 1 see many Russian advertisements and stores of Russian books. The show and mountebank department is extremely broad. In the presence of many a miles gloriosus, order’ was perfect. Every thing, all over town, came to a dead stop at 9 30’. I went to see the house of Goethe’s birth, a truly patrician old pile, seven windows across. The earlier parts of his autobiography and his Wilhelm Meister came very strongly before me. I see hair-dye advertised of “a celebrated American chemist, Dr. Wanylliam.” I have seen forged labels for wares in unmistakable German-English. American gum shoes (Gummijschuhen) grace the fair. I traversed the Jews’ Quarter. Formerly this old Jewry was locked up every night. The houses are tall and rickety, mysteriously dark and judaically dirty, and seem squinting and nodding towards one another. There are six thousand Jews in Frankfort. We have suffered much and unexpectedly from heat, but never from musquitoes, bugs, beetles, or those dire-voiced crickets, katydids, and nightfrogs, which have been my dread from my infancy; the dryness and wholesomeness of the night air is likewise creditable. But O how I long for home, and for the glory of all lands!
At the Public Library (200,000 volumes) saw Marchesi’s fine statue of Goethe, also Cranach’s portrait of Luther and wife, some autographs of Luther, and a pair of his shoes. Then around the former ramparts where now are fine avenues, to the Bethmann Museum, and saw Dannecker’s Ariadne. In the evening, during a direct interview, a young lady of St. Gall, aged 21, and of very good manners, addressed Mr. Stewart in German and Italian, and conversed with me in French. She is going to Hamburg, and then to England, i Her stature is eight feet five inches. She is attending the Fair. The giantess is prettybehaved, and shook hands at parting.
WIESBADEN, September 5 — 7, 1857.
First impressions of Wiesbaden are favourable. It is naturally less picturesque than Baden, and improved in a less picturesque manner, but with more elaborate beauty. The strong points are a dozen boiling springs, covered promenades near them, Kursaal with cafes, billiards, rouge-et-noir, le roulette, and immense colonnades, the court within shady and with fine jets, — behind is a grand promenade, where thousands take coffee and ices to the almost perpetual sound of music; an artificial lake with fountain, rustic bridges, innumerable seats in numerous groves, walks winding and climbing up into the eminences, a capital grand ducal residence, extraordinary cheapness of living. The company is evidently two or three carats coarser than that of Baden.
Church in the Ducal Palace, a temporary chapel off the riding school. No sermon, but 1 enjoyed the service greatly. A large congregation; among them Sir Frederick Thesiger. At dinner to-day (10th) ten Presbyterians of us sat together. We are commonly waked by a hymn-tune. When I rise I see the Kochbrunnen steaming about fifteen yards off. The procession of all nations, holding tall glass cups of hot water, which many carry half a mile, is amusing. They do it all to music. So perpetually are we amidst English talk, that I must needs, from my imitative ear, pick up some brogues, though I shall not intentionally carry home any English pronunciations. We are now eating the first ripe grapes. The white are like the Chasselas of our hot-houses, but with a more rich raisin flavour. The carp of the hot brooks are fine and healthy, testifying well of the bath; they serve it after the meat. The Germans have no moral scruples connected with gambling. The toy-shops contain little roulette-tables and sweat-cloths, which enter the youth early in the sport. Probably I have had a better glimpse of continental, and especially German life, than I could have had in months at ordinary places. My good opinion of the Germans, in all social relations, is much increased, and I think far more highly of their comforts than I did. As to religion, 1 have little means of judging. The negative marks are very black. The gambling here is more eager, hot, and vulgar than at Baden. The order of these countries, in things which they choose to order, is marvellous. Every street-noise is prevented, and every inn and cafe is cleared at the “police-hour.” All the gambling regulations are by Ducal authority; not only a tarif of cabs is settled by the same power, but every donkey-ride to this or that place is rated, and the very order of dances in the balls at the Kursaal is prescribed in a placard, signed by the Grand Duke’s Commissary. Accidents to vehicles are severely punished. Pla cards prescribe where wheels shall be locked and paces slackened. The Grand Duchy contains about 360,000 souls, half Romanists. Of Lanyenschovalbach nothing can be added to Sir Francis Head’s “Bubbles” — a work full of entertainment, and less exaggerative than I once thought. I refer you to it for this, Schlangenbad, and Wiesbaden, as no one can say as well what he has said. The Springs are powerfully chalybeate, delightfully cool, and sparkling with effervescence. The taste is far more winning than that of the Congress Spring. The baths are celebrated for their tonic character. The L. is much what the Red Sweet [of Virginia] would be, if artificially improved. The surrounding eminences strongly resemble American forests. The bath is incomparable for velvet softness, and the water is exported as a cosmetic.
COBLENZ, September 9 — 11, IS 57.
We had a very fine afternoon from Biebrich, down the Rhine, to this place. The four hours were of almost painfully exquisite
DUEING HIS SECOND VISIT TO ETJKOPE.
interest: the earth has no such shores. Our windows face the Gibraltar of the Rhine, Ehrenbreitsteiri. This fortress has cost five millions of dollars in its reconstruction. It can hold 100,000 men. I arose in the night, and saw the waning moon in the high heaven, and Orion just ascending obliquely over the grand fortress. Byron’s descriptions of Rhine scenery are to me beyond any lengthened detail in prose, or even any painting. What a power of true poetry! I feel it here on the spot. See his stanzas beginning “On the banks,” &c., and “The castled crag of Drackenfels.” We have visited the famous castle of Stolzenfels, (Rock of Pride,) now a summer residence of the King of Prussia. Thence to Ems, the most ancient of the aristocratic Brunnen of Nassau. The wrater is somewhat warmer than the Red Sweet.
1 The coincidence of the place and the subject, induces me to insert on this page the following lines by the late Professor J. Addison Alexander, which were u literally composed, though certainly not written, on recrossing the Rhine at Coblcnz, after an absence of several months to the eastward.” This was during “a sleepless night in the month of March,” 1834.
STAGE-COACH STANZAS.
Thou art a king among the streams,
Thou river deep and broad,
In regal pomp thy surface gleams — To man, but not to God.
I hail thee as an ancient friend,
And as I cross thy line,
My democratic knee I bend,
To greet thcc, royal Rhine.
The day and hour, when last we met,
Come o’er me like a dream,
And then I saw, I see thee yet,
Unchanging, changeful stream.
The rush of waters o’er thy bed
Distracts my labouring brain —
Forever dving, never dead — Buried and born again.
What is the secret of thy life?
What holds thy channel fast,
Amidst the elemental strife,
The earthquake and the blast?
Why is it that the swollen tide,
Which ever northward sweeps,
So warily on either side
Its well-marked station keeps?
Why dost thou not, old Rhine, at length
Break thy ignoble chains,
And mustering all thy mighty strength
Submerge the adjacent plains?
Thy full deep current bold and proud,
In his almighty view,
Is but the sprinkling of a cloud,
A drop of morning dew.
Though thou shouldst empty every rill,
And drain the neighbouring land,
Thy giant-waters could not fill
the hollow of his hand.
The same almighty hand, that drives
Thy current to the sea,
Can well control it, when it strives,
And struggles to be free.
And if at times that hand grows slack,
And lets thee do thy worst;
He brings thee still at pleasure back,
And rules thee as at first.
So when I bend my stubborn knee,
To greet thee, royal Rhine,
I render homage, not to thee,
But to thy Lord and mine.
COLOGNE, September 11, 1857.
On the steamer from Coblenz was Macaulay, (soon to be Baron,) and I fear I studied him more than the Rhine. He greatly -resembles In man’s portrait: stout, broad, and stalwart, but pale and slightly flaccid in cheeks; bluish gray eye; gray hair and whisker; blue surtout and cap, plaid waistcoat and gray trousers; about five feet six; gold spectacles near the end of nose. Very arch but subdued smile sometimes. An ugly but distingu6 man with him who read “Cicero de Republica,” while the Baron read a vellum-covered Italian book, seemingly a history, inter changeably with Murray, [Guide-book.] They ha-ha’d cheerily over some of Cicero’s passages. Only one or two points attracted Macaulay; such as the Seven Mountains, Drackenfels and the Dom. I expected talent in his face, but I was delighted with its moral traits, tranquil content, gentleness, and benignity — the last finely displayed towards an infant. I am sure he would break into tears sooner than into laughter.
Four hundred men are working on the cathedral. The row of windows presented by the late King of Bavaria is superb, but nothing to the ancient glass. Then to St. Ursula’s and the osteology of the 11,000 virgins — to St. Peter’s to see Rubens’s great painting of St. Peter’s death. In all these churches, as throughout Prussia, the children (Catholic) are gathered every morning before school hours. I heard a thousand sing German hymns at Coblenz. This tells powerfully on the next generation.
SPA, September 12, 1857.
We have to-day passed from Prussia to Belgium. The country is beautiful; unlike all we have recently seen, and very like England in hedgerows and verdure, especially about Aix-la-Chapelle, which lies in a picturesque way beside a charming hill. Spa is very famous in old Chesterfieldian times, and is still visited by kings, dowagers, and vieux moustaches. The water is carried all over Europe, as containing the most extraordinary mixture of iron and effervescence. The Germans are great tipplers of mineral waters, and those of other Springs are brought to each and sold in bottles. All agree in giving the palm to the genuine Seltzer-water from Niederselters, in Nassau. It is a most refreshing beverage, greatly useful to pulmonary patients. It is used at tables to correct the acid of the white wines. I have seen no one at table yet who did not drink wine, but I have seen no intoxication. The labouring classes are hard driven. A chambermaid at Frankfort gets $18 a year. Women are seen
1 Lord Macaulay died Dec. 28, 1859.
yoked with cows in the plough. Nine-tenths of hay and harvest are carried on women’s heads, and a horse is not seen in one field of a thousand. Women work at railway excavations in ganirs. These remarks apply less to Belgium, and not at all to Holland. Belgian agriculture has a noble appearance; a neatness like the English, but in kind, in extent, in absence of cattle, roads, and division, altogether French. No spot is in a state of nature; weeds and brush quite unknown. Root-crops are predominant at this season. I see a blue clover, not known in America. A great deal of tobacco is grown on the Rhine, making good light cigars. Indian corn is frequent, but low, straggling, and with irregular ears. It is hard to think how large a portion of these crops goes to the crown. A crazy bridge, a rutty, rough, or stony road, or a miry spot, I have not seen, unless in the Alps. No apprentice or field-hand goes from one hamlet to another, without falling under the municipal argus. The creatures seem ruddy and merry. As a sort of indemnity, the government offers numerous public and accessible pleasures; parks, music, bands of singers, illuminations, Sunday frolics. The grand .instrument, however, of subjugation is the priesthood. You will hear it said that the hold of Popery on the masses is declining; in my opinion the reverse is probably true, and I see an advance in six years. The priests are more numerous and obtrusive, the churches are fuller, and especially the rising race is more under their hand. Belgium is politically liberal, but religiously priest-ridden. The English service is performed at every principal place by a regular chaplain every Sunday. At least ten thousand persons hear the gospel in English, on the Continent, every Lord’s day.
ANTWERP, September 14 — 15, 185Y.
The country from Spa hither through Louvain and Mechlin, is flat but garden-like; people contstantly dressing the crops with spades, hoes, rakes, and the hand. Our hotel is just over from the great Notre Dame. I was in the immediate neighbourhood of the great tower, 405 feet high, when the bells began to play before the stroke of seven; it was in parts, and several minutes long. As I thus stood, in the dreamy twilight, in the irregular area in front of the majestic pile and surrounded by quaint old gables, I felt the impression to be deeper than even at Cologne. But these architectural emotions with me are not religious, as are those of Chamonix, the Jungfrau, or the Natural Bridge, [Virginia.] This piling of man’s hand is Babel-like. I arn deadly sick of popish ceremonies and of all liturgical aping of them, and approximations to them. Read John Owen on Liturgies; read it; read it!
I went to early mass in the cathedral; there were some hundreds, as it is a jubilee and octave of the something, with plenary indulgence, &c. The music was seraphic. I have always thought men’s voices in a vaulted cathedral attained the musical acme. The five aisles came out well in the morning gray. The number of Rubens’s chefs tfceuvre which are in Antwerp is stunning. Though I had seen many of his works, I really had never conceived of his power till now. The Magdalene in his Crucifixion is, in Reynolds’s judgment, the best profile extant. In the “Doctors in the Temple,” he has given likenesses of Luther, Calvin, and Erasmus, all fine, and the first admirable. At the superb old church of St. Jacques we saw a funeral and three masses all at once. Different parts were in progress, and while the bell jingled, a beadle was trotting us about and explaining the pictures; but whenever a tired lady took a gentleman’s arm, it was arrested — it would have been promenading. There are ninety-nine bells in the great tower, one of which it takes sixteen men to ring.
At St. Andrew’s we saw the wonderful pulpit of woodcarving, representing the calling of Andrew and Peter from their nets. We had seen many such things and despised them, but this is a noble piece of sculpture. The figures are of life-size; the boat is real; the net and fishes marvellous; the manner in which the pulpit and stairs are concealed in rocks and trees is most ingenious, and the expression of the forms and faces masterly. The whole is about 30x20x15 feet.
Most of the Walloons understand me when I speak German. The great favourite among their writers is Hendrik Conscience, who has ennobled the Flemish tongue as Burns did the Scotch; a genial story-letter for the people; a Goldsmith in ease, a Franklin for adages, and a Scott for nationality: so they pretend. His whole works are publishing here, about 20 volumes, ISmo, being, out. He has just been made viceroy of Flanders, and is considered as having given himself to the Catholic, or retrograde party.
BRUGES, September 16, 1857.
There is certainly no spot so redolent of grandeur in decay. Once the Tyre or New York of the continent, it stands with its rows of towering, tottering, ghastly palaces and halls, a builded desert. The streets remind me of London before dawn. Greatness and beauty are in these streets. I would have missed any thing rather than this.
The region we have just passed through is acknowledged to be the most highly cultivated in Europe; small properties — 700 passed in 18 miles — not metaphorically but literally tilled like a garden — hundreds of women on their knees, weeding with the hand.
BRUSSELS, September 17 — 18, 1857.
We breakfasted at Ghent; saw old churches, old streets, and marks of that wealth which existed in Gaud, when its great native Charles V. said he could put all Paris in his gand, (glove.) To morrow we part with Mr. Stewart.
LONDON, September 19 — 23, 1857.
To get back to green, clean, cool, Christian England, is just like enchantment. The verdure seemed an illusion, and “we were like them that dream,” (with words following.1) At the “Old Slip” in Dover, we resumed our familiarity with tea, toast, sole, big basins, thick towels, soap and joogs of ‘ot water. When we last saw the green meads of Kent, we undervalued them, being just from the Isle of Wight; but coming now from rich but russet Flanders and Normandy, where are ho grazing herds and flocks, and no detached cottages, we were in amaze.
On Sunday (20th) to Mr. Noel’s, and heard Mr. Muncaster, of Manchester, a Congregationalist, one of the clearest, ablest, and most theologic sermons I ever heard. The singing was delightful; precentor and [Lowell] Masonic plain-song. My soul was melted within me by the fellowship of so many unmistakably devout persons. Mr. Noel sat below in his pew; an American face strangely reminding me of my father’s, at the age of forty. Blessed Sabbath — blessed gospel — and blessed England still! More than “the ten” are found in London. Prayers for Indian brethren very touching, and infinitely better than the “prayer in War and Tumult,” 2 which we have been hearing. To get away from printed prayers 4111 d repetitions, is like Alpine air after a chapel full of torchxSmell and incense. The Dissenters in England have universally abandoned standing in prayers, so far as I see. As I cannot consent to irreverence in worshipping God, I am as frequently an object of note as in our prayer-meetings at home, where grown men pray sitting, and sometimes staring. Two-thirds of the Episcopalians also sit. The Germans and Scotch all stand. To such as kneel I feel much respect. I heard Mr. Noel in the evening, (Philip, i. 23.) Lan-
1 “Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing.” “The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.”
2 In the “Book of Common Prayer.”
guage simple but masterly, half an hour without a gesture, but very bewitching; voice that of a parlour-talk; perfect English, delivered with an absolute absence of all alien intonation. In this respect he is a study. A holy gentleness, with an almost death-bed solemnity; experimental, mature, evangelical, and spiritual; very fervent towards the close. No manuscript. When he stopped, I was like Adam with the angel. His dulcet notes remind me of the Bruges carillons. I think Noel’s idea of preaching the right thing; just talking over the Word. My own father was not more simple. Only deep and long experience could have brewed such a sermon. The only man I ever heard preach with so little clamour was Dr. J. P. Wilson.
After what I deemed adequate knowledge of London fog, I am this morning (21st) surprised; perhaps I ought to call it smoke, for it is not wet; it fills the street so, that I see every object through a medium the colour of weak rum and water. Over the top of this fog, the sun is brightly reflected in the threepair windows opposite. I record with feeling, that for now 118 days I have not lost an hour or a rneal by sickness.
I saw a young lady driving a carriage through the jam of High Holborn and Oxford street, with a liveried servant by her side. The shaded sun and autumnal temperature, without any decay of verdure, are just the thing for me. Sun comes out fine. I just missed the annual exhibition of the Blue Coat school and its 900 boys. I was actually within the cloisters, but could get no ticket. The subject of one of the scholar’s hexameters was Funis Electricus.
After viewing so many Gothic buildings, I have this result: My interest in them is scarcely that of beauty in form; it is the dim association of history. Look at the matchless row of painted windows in the south aisle of Brussels cathedral, or the minute finish of Freiburg — how intense, how continued, how widespread the sentiment which could produce such results! The greatness of the mechanism is often astonishing. Above all, the English cathedrals are wondrous. Carlyle says, what I often think of in reference to better and Christian things and ages, which seem barren from want of record, “greater men have lived in England than any of her writers; and, in fact, about the time when these writers appeared, the last of those was already gone.”
American affairs are as much in men’s mouths as Indian; and the comments are not always courteous. Renewed reading of the newspapers renews my opinion, that those who have only
1” So chnrming left bis voice, that he a while
Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear.”
Paradise Lost, VIII, VOL. II. 12 this way of judging (that is, nine-tenths of the English) cannot but despise America. The articles inserted are about Kansas, Slavery, Repudiation, Burdell, Walker, and especially the Mor mons. N’importe, we are a century ahead of them. The Times shows up the fogyism which has ruined India. Even now they are waked up to no real energies of reparation. Louis Napoleon must laugh in his sleeve. I believe no court in Europe is so lullabied with Lord Chamberlainism. Large numbers are perpetually busy about the pleasures of the Queen and Prince Consort.
YORK, September 24, 1857.
We took the Great Northern Railway at 11, and arrived at 5 15’ — 191 miles. The points which most interested me wrere Marston Moor, Newark, and Scrooley, where the little group lived who went to Holland and then to New Plymouth. For twenty miles around York all is flat as a prairie. Glimpses of this pure white Minster, which you would say was built yesterday. But I am sick of what they call Christian Art; it is all an inferior stage of progress. This is the shooting season. At every station hares, grouse, and hampers of game were handed in or out. The number of hares one sees in the fields is surprising. Every day my provocation increases at the tone in which English people speak of and to Americans: it is ignorantly patronizing; they think of our advancement, precisely as we do of that of Liberia.
The Minster shines with a sort of celestial grandeur and beauty after the continental cathedrals. The east window, the chapter-house, and the side-aisles are unique.
MELROSE, September 25, 1857.
We left York at nine, and steamed through Newcastle and Morpeth to Berwick. Here we left the main line, and ran up the Tweed to this place, passing Kelso, an enchanting spot. We saw the Abbey with a glory of sunset breaking through its West window. At Abbotsford we heard a robin-red-breast sing.
EDINBURGH, September 26 — 30, 1857.
Prince’s street, where we are, looks right across the green ravine to the lofty houses of the Old Town. I never saw any thing more novel or beautiful than the play of thousands of lights as seen in the populous hill-side from these front windows of ours, flinging themselves not into right lines, but constellations. The Sabbath quiet is almost beyond belief. Only one vehicle has passed this house in the three hours I have been in our sitting-room. Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, whose truth abides here, and who has made this the happiest great city on the globe! We have had great comfort by the way in read ing good tracts, the varieties of which are very remarkable, both in England and Scotland. One finds here much more frequently than with us, those views in print which were so much our fathers’ views, and which are so little prominent in sojne Old-School preachers; I mean views combining sovereign freeness of gospel grace with inward spirituality and rest of soul.
On the Sabbath I heard Dr. Bruce at Free St. Andrew’s. Sermon on Christ’s two quellings of storms in Matt. viii. and xiv. General doctrine, that afflictions are ordered not only to try our faith, but to try our utmost faith; in the second case, Jesus let them go alone. It was a profound piece of experience, viewed philosophically; strong meat; dense, witty at times, unexpected turns like Foster; no elegance of manner, but immense impression. The prayers were almost inspired. Ah here is the true Eutaxia, without printed worship! At 2 I went to Free St. John’s. Strangers (how truly I comprehend the term!) are admitted only after the first singing. I found myself waiting in a basement with about 500 others. At length I was dragged through a narrow passage, and found myself in a very hot, over crowded house, near the pulpit. Dr. Guthrie was praying. He preached from Isai. xliv. 22, “Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee.” It was fifty minutes, but they passed like nothing. I was instantly struck by his strong “likeness to Dr. John IT. Rice. If you remember him you have perfectly the type of man he is; but then it is Dr. Rice with an impetuous freedom of motion, a play of ductile and speaking features, and an overflowing unction of passion and compassion, which would carry home even one of my sermons; conceive what it is with his exuberant diction and poetic imagery. The best of all is, it was honey from the comb, dropping, dropping, in effusive gospel beseeching. I cannot think Whitefield surpassed him in this. You know while you listen to his mighty voice, broken with sorrow, that he is overwhelmed with the “love of the Spirit.” He has a colleague and preaches only in the afternoon. As to manner, it is his own, but in general like Duff’s, with as much motion, but more significant, and less grotesque, though still ungraceful. His English, moreover, is not spoiled so much. The audience was rapt and melting. It was just like his book,1 all application, and lie rose to his height in the first sentence.
1 disliked the singing at Dr. Guthrie’s; a choir, with twiddling
1 Either “The Gospel in Ezekiel,” or “The City, its Sins and Sorrows: a series of Sermons from Luke 19: 41.”
times; a clear retrocession towards the way which is becoming unsavoury even to New England. The singers were in pews near the pulpit, and I saw an advertisement in the lobby for a tenor singer. They sing well with precentor at Free St. Andrew’s.
It is worth while to come here to learn how a Sabbath may be kept,. This great inn (Royal Hotel) has table d’hote at 5, to give rest to servants. The beautiful avenues of the New Town are thronged with grave but cheerful people, evidently with their faces Zionward, and most of them with Bible in hand. I have a great desire that H. should some day spend some months in Scotland to learn how to preach, catechize, and do pastoral duty. Gladly would I forego for him all that the continent has to offer, for the sake of this.
In reflecting on the two great and precious sermons of yesterday, I wonder at the beautiful diversity of gifts. They were as unlike as an apple and a pine-apple. I have no remembrance of any preaching so analytically experimental as Dr. B.’s, except my own dear blessed father’s. At each step he seemed to assume all that an ordinary preacher would have preached, and to go on beyond that. His prayers were the same; so searching in confession that I winced, and so paternal and pastoral in intercession, that I could not but fancy his hand feeling all around and gathering sorrows out of every heart to bring before God. His sternness in no degree modified the graciousness of his gospel freedom, as I have too often seen to be the case with rigorous casuists in America. The Bruces have been ministers ever since the famous Bruce, who rebuked King James.
Mr. Dickson’s house [see p. 156] is a museum of Sunday School illustrations. His garret is filled with matters from Palestine, beautifully arranged and with appropriate Scriptures. As a single instance, you see in one series flasks of water from Siloam, and four other places, a bunch of wheat from Zion, and one of barley, a plate of vine-leaves, a pomegranate, a phial of oil, a pot of honey from Jerusalem, a loaf, iron and copper ore — then the passage Deuteronomy viii. 7 — 9. He has a hortussiccus of Palestine plants; minerals picked by himself, and 400 views, which he sketched; enough being finished in oils to line his back parlour. In a tour of two months, he left no spot west of Jordan without a sketch. Dr. Guthrie is the link between evangelical religion and the aristocracy. People of all sects go.
1 “A land of brooks of water, of fountains, and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vine?, and pomegranates; a land of oil-olive and honey .... A’land whoso stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou raayest dig brass,”
Nobility coming down from London and stopping here, cannot pass without hearing him. They are willing to pay any sum for pews, in order to secure an occasional hearing. Dr. G. called on me, and was very cordial. Look at the “Fortunes of Nigel” and conceive him telling the story of Richie Moniplies’ brag concerning Edinburgh to George Ileriot; telling it too in broad Scotch, and at a window overlooking the JVbr’ Loch, or ravine. Dr. G. tells me he was sent in his youth to the Sorbonne for education.
Americans might well be amused to consider that the United Presbyterians, who joined very invidiously in the cry send back the money, (of the slaveholders,) should now be the only body which has slaveholders in its communion; a fact concerning their Calabar Mission.
I have seen twenty times as much drunkenness here in a day, as in the wine-countries in ten weeks; indeed I saw but one such in them, and he was only merry.
EDINBURGH, October 1, 1857.
Auld Reekie indeed, but the sun is breaking out in a way that is peculiar. I regard Scotland as the flower and crown of all our tour. I could contentedly and profitably have spent my whole time in Britain. Emerson says you can’t see England in a hundred years; and I have often told Stewart that the grand requisite for travelling successfully would be to live as long as Methuselah. One great advantage here, is the short distances. Much as you have read of the country, you would be surprised at this. Thus you go from Liverpool to Manchester in an hour; from Edinburgh to Glasgow in an hour and a half; and every where towns and other localities, often famous, follow one another with rapidity. Every nook and brook and hill and mansion has its name, and in Scotland these are embalmed in ballads and legends. The position of a “minister” here is high. I remem ber something of similar observance, when New York and Philadelphia were smaller, towards Dr. Mason, Dr. Green, and Dr. Wilson; but Guthrie, Candlish, Bruce, Lee, Bonar, Tweedie, to say nothing of residuaries, are looked at all the length of Prince’s street.
The institution of the dinner is potent in Great Britain, and Edinburgh has a traditional geniality of intercourse, after tho day’s work is done. There is a free and happy mingling of copresbyters here, like nothing known to me elsewhere. Both Guthrie and Lee (before the Committee of the House of Lords)
1 Scotch for smoky.
have formally ascribed the “canny” character of the Scotch, not simply to their being trained on the Scriptures, and to their reading Solomon, but particularly to the custom of using the book of Proverbs as a reading-book. The Anglo-Saxon words and short sentences, where books are rare, made it the thing for the children. There is a pious weaver mentioned in Outline’s “Gospel in Ezekiel” as a man of prayer. The Doctor said to us “this man prayed, not as one going to heaven, but as one just come out of heaven. He would sit in his loom and superintend our education. And what we read was such pith as * he that hateth suretyship is sure,’ &c.”
The deep, I may say awful impression, made by the events in India in their religious aspect, is very observable in the pray ers. Generally Scotchmen do not give free vent to their inward experience in talk. I hardly ever was more solemnly wrought on by a prayer, than by Bruce’s about this distress; and not least by his tender thanksgivings for the spiritual good already done to bereaved and other suffering persons.
I like the Free Church Tract and Book arrangement. They publish nothing, but keep up the machinery of supply from all sources, colportage, &c. They have, for example, 6,000 different tracts, including the American.
1 The same day on which this letter was written, Dr. Alexander, with his wife and child, left Edinburgh for Glasgow. A short tour in the highlands, which was in their plan, was prevented by bad weather, and a week was spent in Glasgow in delightful Christian intercourse with many of its principal clergymen and others. They then proceeded to Liverpool, and embarked in the steamship Baltic for New York.
It is no more than a proper testimony to the liberality of the congregation to their pastor to state, that of the sum placed by them at his command for this journey, nearly three thousand dollars remained untouched.