Appendix: Additional Letters from Europe

[No more extracts from the correspondence were inserted in Chapter XL, than were sufficient to furnish a general outline of the first European journey, without giving those few months a disproportionate space in the memoir. The following additional selections have been made as not only entertaining in themselves, but eminently characteristic of the observer.

LONDON, June 9, 1851.

As I am bent on old London, I caught at the coachman’s saying this morning, that we might see Greenwich Fair. Down the New Road in an omnibus to the Bengk, (so is “bank” hight,) thence to Temple Bar in another; thence to London Bridge in a third, (always on top,) seeing Bow church, Guildhall, Mansion House, &c., to the stairs by the bridge. Hundreds on hundreds of vans laden with country folk. Scores of steamers, some for a penny, for the Fair. Such masses of heads I never saw. Yet the ever-present police prevent the slightest jam. Off we go, under London Bridge, seven miles downward to Greenwich. Such a sight! Streets cleared of animals and vehicles for miles. All one raree-show. Thousands on thousands. Here is a mountebank; there a Highland piper in tartan, and boys dancing the fling; then theatres, with Hamlet and Ophelia begging the people to come in, price one penny. I saw three several Punch and Judys. Like ten old commencements [of Princeton College] in one. Yet among a hundred thousand people we saw no disorder, heard no oath, and met but one tipsy man. They get warm toward night.

Then to glorious Greenwich Park, acres of green turf, and trees centuries old. We supposed the number of separate stalls or places must have been several thousands. All laughing, all merry, all kindly, all rosy, all plebeian, and all Cockneys. We saw not one gentleman or lady. From time immemorial, the people at this Fair use a little noisy wooden scraper-wheel, called the “fun o’ the fair.” Everybody scrapes everybody’s back unawares. Hundreds of babes in arms, and all this in a smart rain. But, as I said, London rains are play-showers.

LONDON, June 10, 1851.

Holidays continue. Hundreds of people will come from all the railways. I am writing early at the south-east window of the house, four-pair back. Through one pane of glass, without moving, I count fifteen churches, including St. Paul’s, over which the sun is trying to colour the black London smoke, but for which I could perhaps count forty steeples thus. I look down into the court of Somerset House, without rising from my chair. All about are chimney-tops, but by going to the flat roof, I see all this quarter — the Tower, Abbey, Lambeth, bridges, river, &c. It is what brought me here. [142 Strand.]

The wonder of wonders is the police. There are 900 added. They are so protected as to feel their respectability. A few days ago, an uppish Captain of the Coldstream Guards, connected with the Duke of Devonshire, struck a policeman. Notwithstanding his extreme flouncing, he was sentenced to ten days’ imprisonment. These policemen are to the great machine of London exactly what our fifty engineers were to the engine of the Arctic. 1 have seen but one tipsy man, and heard but one oath in England, yet I have been in the most populous parts. No crowding is allowed. There is ten times as much collision at Fulton street, New York, as at the East end of the Strand, or London Bridge. I have a passion for getting lost in odd streets, and have done it to my heart’s content here, resorting to police men for aid. It is believed any ‘bus-man, or officer, would be dismissed instanter who should be uncivil to a stranger.

Our host came yesterday, 97 miles in two hours and a quarter. Yet it was smooth as a sleigh. They are adopting some bars of solid iron, with no sills or sleepers between them and the gravel. All along the sides of road [railway] it is at this season like a parterre.

A ‘bus which I used was marked 6365. As many a-top as in. The ‘bus coachmen are far above ours; being often coach men driven from the roads by the railways. They never chew, talk low, or behave surly. The one who last drove me to the Bank is a genuine Mr. Weller, Senr.; was twenty-eight years coaching; came out of Hessex — “did ye never ‘ear of Hessex? Many convicts in America? I has a nevoy in Adelaide.” He helps me up, holds my umbrella, calls other ‘buses, and covers my legs with a cloth when it rains. He knows me again and engages to take me up. This is true of all. Two can sit each side of coachman. He has nothing to do with the money, but drives from 7£ A. M. to 12^ night. Some days, the Paddington says, he takes in his ten pounds, often only two. Price is sixpence.

Having been at Greenwich Fair yesterday, and seen all Cockney dom in glorious delight, I went up stream to-day to see the other extreme, viz., Windsor Castle. The contrast is extraordinary between this dead-level garden (like a magic prairie) of matchless green, and the frowning fortress, which you see for miles, and which you almost skirt in arriving at it. Its towers are a hundred feet high. All my ideas of castellated strength were quite feeble, compared with the reality. Outside it is a giant hold; inside it is a scene of luxurious art. All my conception of Gothic churches being from drawings, I was struck dumb when I first entered St. George’s Chapel. It is vain to enlarge on it. What I cannot get over is the glorious airy loftiness, lightness, and sweetness of this edifice, without one idea of gloom.

One of the very prettiest things I have seen was a string of Quaker girls at Windsor, no doubt wealthy, but uniting the innocency of the pale Philadelphians with the British roses. It requires some little historic knowledge to survey such galleries of art as these at the castle. One room is filled with the works of Van Dyck, and one with those of Sir Thomas Lawrence. The view from the top of the castle has often been described, (see Gray’s Ode,) but it seems endless, and may, for extent, be compared with Monticello, [Virginia.] The number of pedestrians is astonishing. Every one drinks the light malt liquor of the hostelries, but none seem excited. Games of cricket on the greens are often in sight. The boats on the river seem wholly gala-boats, and chiefly rowed by boys. The number -of the boys’ boats at Eton is surprising.

June 11. — Before breakfast 1 surveyed Co vent Garden Market near by, and saw the matchless flower and fruit emporium of London. Scores of large peaches, forced in hot-houses, and selling for 25. Qd. a-piece, [55 cents.] After breakfast across Waterloo Bridge to. the South- Western Railway. It is Hampton Races. This caused a multitude to be going the same way. This also showed us every variety of sporting character. The course is a mile from the Palace. (As a proof of English exactness, Is. 7d. is this moment sent in from the Post Office, to be returned to an unknown person in this house, which has been over-paid.) The palace of Hampton Court is on ths north of the Thames, ten miles up the river, near Richmond. Way very lovely; green lanes, winding pathways, cricket parties, green winding banks of the gentle Thames, pleasure-boating, (the only use of wherries now,) amazing swiftness of the four-oar boats, rowed by amateurs. At length get out at Hampton. Roads full, full; nobles, gentry, jockeys, pony-phaetons, donkeys saddled for races, grooms, postilions, men in every livery, and colour of breeches. As they turn off to the left, we turn off to the right, to the palace. .The elms were planted by Wolsey, who planned this immense structure. The glory of the building is its paintings. For the first time I beheld works of M. Angela, Corregio, Murillo, Guido, Titian, and the original Cartoons of Rafaelle. We visited thirty-two apartments and saw 1,026 pictures.

June 13. — I was much gratified with the law-courts. Lord Chancellor Truro was on the seat of equity, and Mr. Wood was speaking, in that hurried, clipping way common to all about St. Stephen’s. Lord Campbell and Coleridge at Queen’s Bench. Benches crammed with sergeants and barristers, in wigs, bands, and gowns. I also entered the court of the Vice Chancellor, Sir J. Knight Bruce. I hardly expected to see so many wigged ones on the benches; they filled them like pews. Then dash out, and lose myself in the city — in the London of C. Lamb. After all my study of the localities, I can hardly believe my eyes. Such dark, dim, tall, narrow, winding ways, such labyrinths, plainly just so for ages. People stare as I drive into the courts around St. Mary Aldermany church, Bow-lane, and peep into Friday street, Bread street, Old Change Alley; often have to get into a doorway to let a single cart pass. Come out suddenly on St. Paul’s Church-yard; go round it, among the shops; survey the Religious Tract Society, their beautiful committee-room and library. Portraits of Burder and Bickersteth. Invited to meet their Committee. See Arnold’s face [portrait] in a shop, and go in; it is Fellowes’s, his publisher. Greatly struck with New gate street and Old Bailey. Wonderful old courts opening into Farringdon St. Without. Down from High Holborn to Fleet street. O the throng! Think of Johnson. Fleet street becomes the Strand, and in this I am now at home.

A wondrous eating and drinking folk are the Cockneys. Pastry-cooks and chop-houses seem to be a fourth of the shops in some parts, and you can hardly look up without seeing bright pots of ale carried about. Yet nobody seems to be drunk in the streets. I begin, however, to be aware of desperate lazars, and see pallid, begrimed children. I have no time for telling of the ancient churches, which are numberless. Their names carry me back to Foxe’s Records. Bow church I pass daily. St. Mary le Strand is very near me; so is St. Dunstan’s in the East, and St. Clement’s. St. Sepulchre’s (St. Pulchre’s) is near Pie Corner, where the great fire stopped. In another direction I found my self at the Seven Dials. I owe much to the cuts in the “Penny Magazine” for my familiarity with these spots.

June 14. — I went out before breakfast to revisit Covent Garden market, which I suppose is the greatest flower market in the world. I could smell the rich odours long before I got into the street. I bought a moss-rose, a damask rose, a bud, a gera nium, and a bunch of pansies, all for sixpence. You must know that no rose will any longer grow in the close air of the “City.” After breakfast I went to the Horse Guards, traversed the St. James’s Park, and enjoyed the green grass, the water, the swans, the song of birds, and the play of a thousand children. These three great parks open into each other. Don’t think of them as little patches like those in New York. In the middle of these parks you are out of sight of all the great city, but with gigantic trees, velvet turf, copses, thickets, artificial rivers, even with miniature ships on them; thousands of people gently sauntering or resting, and children without number playing, romp ing, rolling, flying kites, and fishing. I pursued my way to St. James’s Palace, and found the Foot Guards just proceeding thither from Buckingham Palace with music. I followed them into the quadrangle of the ancient palace. There these noble red-coats formed a hollow square, and the band played for an hour the choicest operatic airs. I need not say a Queen’s band is

1 He afterwards had to acknowledge the superiority of the Paris market, page 144.

no mean affair. I then proceeded to another court, and approached one of the stiff sentinels. I showed him Mr. T.’s letter to his brother. He presented arms, and accompanied me to the right door. I rang and was admitted to the palace — to an ante chamber. Four servants were in waiting. Mr. T. had not arrived. It was about eleven, and all the court-people had been up till four at a masquerade ball at the palace. I was ushered into his office, which was full of great ledgers about levees, drawing-rooms, presentations, &c. The servant brought me a fresh “Morning Post,” which is the Court paper. Presently T. came in. I told him I had thus far failed to see the Queen. He directed me to go to Buckingham Palace, near Constitution Hill. Crossing Green Park 1 did so, and took a seat looking towards the Palace Garden. Presently there was a sensation. A coach, with four elegant outriders, approached with the Queen and Prince Albert. I saw both distinctly. They were coming home from the Crystal Palace. The people observed dead silence, and the general raising of hats was quiet and momentary.

In the afternoon I went into Hyde Park, to see what I consider the greatest display in England. Every day before dinner (5 to 6J) all the aristocracy appear, either in carriages, or on horseback. The drive is miles round. All the wealth and beauty of England is here represented. Coachmen, footmen, postilions, all in livery, all in white cravats, breeches and stockings, and many powdered. In Rotten Row the equestrians appear. Our Virginians stand aghast at the bold riding of the ladies. Such horses and horsemanship cannot be matched. Among this multitude I did not hear a loud word, or giggle, or see an arrogant or bold look. Very few of the women are beautiful in face, but the figure and port are incomparable. Nothing was apparent to distinguish noble persons, unless it were studied cleanliness and plainness. All the finery is on the horses and servants. The most graceful dressing wras on the French ladies, of whom there are many.

June 16. — Clear again; but it will rain before night, as it has done every day. You don’t see one in a hundred, even of women, with an umbrella. The water here is good, and so are the milk and butter. Such mutton and beef I never saw. Bacon (as they call it) differs from ours, and is very melting and delicious. Cherries have just come. No cheap strawberries yet. English eat cheese with salt. Their Cheshire is about like our Goshen. The Stilton is rich and altogether peculiar. The cream cheese and the sausage are better than we have at home. The bread is not always good. It is not dark all night now. I waked at two, and could have read large print.

To-day at Westminster Hall; saw the Vice Chancellor on the Bench. In the Common Pleas saw the Lord Chief Justice, Sir J. Jervis, and Sir T. N. Talfourd. In Exchequer, heard a funny case about tobacco samples. Lord Chief Baron, Sir J. Pollock, displayed much keenness in bridling Mr. Humphrey, Queen’s Counsel. Sir James Park, of the same bench, spoke often. In Queen’s Bench again saw Lord Campbell. The lawyers wear not only the wig, with two rows of curls and two queues, and the gown, and very long bands, but also the strait coat of a century ago. I sat among them some time in the Exchequer court.

The house next door to me, (No 141,) is that in which Jacob Tonson kept shop, and where were published Thomson’s Seasons, Tom Jones, and the histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon.

June 17. — I again visited Covent Garden market to see the matchless fruits, and flowers, and vegetables. Here are things which cannot be described. I passed by the old Hummums. Revisited the Temple; entered the house where Johnson lived and Lamb was born, and Johnson’s house in Bolt court. Thence to the neighbourhood where the “Boar’s head in Little Eastcheap” once was; now occupied by the statue of William IV. Then to the American Minister’s, [Mr. Abbott Lawrence ;] great style; he has an excellent manner, very English, and keeps up the American style. Then for the fourth time, to the Crystal Palace. This time I must say there was a crowd. There must have been hundreds of school boys and girls in uniforms. When ever I see a well-dressed woman, I know she is French. The riding of the ladies in Hyde Park is a beautiful sight.

Mr. Lawrence had given to Major Preston and me an order to enter the House of Lords. Being a little too early I passed some time in Westminster Abbey, just opposite, among the tombs. Then I went out to see the Lords assembling. The day was fair, and it was a fine sight. The common mode was on a noble horse, with a groom on another, who immediately rides off with both horses. Some came in coaches. Some walked, and I even observed some getting out of very or’nary cabs and paying the fare. I had the uncommon pleasure of seeing the Duke of Wellington, for the second time. He was on horseback with a groom; white trows srs; much of Dr. Miller’s look. He dismounted with much difficulty. I did not see him afterwards in the House. The Chancellor, Lord Truro, was on the woolsack. I saw Brougham, Grey, Sir J. Graham, (in the gallery,) Lord Lansdowne, Earl of Anglesea, (with one leg,) Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishops of London, Norwich, and Oxford. Tho 314: LETTEES FROM EUROPE.

bishops waddle up and down in their full robes. The judges have their gowns and wigs. The Lord Chancellor has a wig with immense ears. The rest of the Lords are dressed in ordinary morning trim, generally in frock coats, very plain, but scrupulously clean. The Chancellor left the woolsack and made a very warm defence of Chancery. Lord Stanley made a powerful attack on the ministry in regard to the navigation laws. Every other sentence was about the United States. He was answered by Lord Grenville, of the Board of Trade, and when I came away at 7£ (still dinnerless) Lord Hardwiek was just speaking. I thought the debate most able. Stanley is a truly eloquent man.

PARIS, June 20 — July 9, 1851.

From London to Dover we wrent like lightning, flying through Kent, too fast to see much. It was about like going from New York to Trenton. O the wretched little steamer across the channel! They are half an age behind us in steamboats. We tossed like an egg-shell. The sea broke over us, so that the deck was soaking, and the spray like rain. Below — one pavement of emetic ladies. As for me, except the ducking, I never enjoyed any thing more. I could not stand up, but I felt perfectly triumphant as we cut through the waves. Calais in sight. What a change for two hours! Now for the customs. A little Frenchman, indescribably quick and habile, spies out the Americans in an instant; attaches himself to us as commissionaire; carries every thing; takes us to office to show passports; then to bureau to change our sovereigns for French money; then to a room, where coffee and luncheon; then to an office to get our ticket stamped; then to the cars to secure a separate carriage for ladies, &c.; then to weighing place (of trunks); then to another office where baggage-tickets are given; then to cars to see us locked in. All this (which we could never have done ourselves) little Mons. Marguerite does for one franc. At four wre are off on the newly-opened railway. Our carriage is as sumptuous as the finest coach, roomy and soft, in every way luxurious. We had 235 miles to go after 4 P. M. I can hardly collect my thoughts to tell about it. All the trees, even in .what seem to be woods, are planted in rows; all trimmed, except the innumerable poplars, which look like green pillars. Perpetual sight of peasantry. As they stop to look, the scenes are for a painter. They wear the boldest colours, and seldom less than four; high caps; groups in the deep-green hay and barley, look beautiful. Dear little children, in hues of the rainbow, held up by fathers in blouses from the hay -fields. Villages on villages; all of one story; all either tiled or thatched, and some both at once. At Amiens the beautiful sun was going clown in the western plains, and casting a blush on the ancient cathedral. How indebted I am to the u Penny Magazine” for its cuts and descriptions! At Douai (where the Bible was translated) the whole neighbourhood is cut up into ups and downs by the fortifications, and the green sides of the moats and ramparts were filled with people. They gathered around us, but in the most civil way. The peasant women are as coarse as men. It was still daylight when we passed Lille, and these scenes were repeated on a larger scale. Arrived at an enormous station-house in the north of Paris, we take an omnibus for the Hotel, and roll through lighted streets. Thousands sitting out in the rue de la Paix, &c., even at midnight.

After breakfast next day, I took a drive in a cab; stopped to deliver my letters to Dr. F. Monod. The concierge says: “to the left, second floor.” I ascend; see door marked “Monod, Pasteur.” I send in my name; instantly I am seized and kissed on both cheeks, not by good Dr. M., but by Mr. Bridel, who remembers me in an instant. Adolphe Monod lives opposite.

Besides our general view of the President [Louis Napoleon] at the review of the Champ de Mars, [p. 142,] we had two several occasions of looking him closely in the lace, at corners where” our pushing driver drew up. We were enveloped in the enthusiastic crowd, who began with Vive la JRepiiblique, and ended with a universal shout of Vive VEmpereur! Women ran like mad among the tramping of the horses. The cortege was preceded by guards holding cocked pistols, and followed by the carabiniers in brazen helmets and cuirasses, which sounded as they rode. All the troops were regulars. I never expected to see such a review, as they commonly fall on Sunday. All the fine equipages seem English, as do all the beautiful children. The creatures that go about in sabots, and run after you with bouquets, or carry great panniers on their backs, are brutally hideous. The grisettcs in shops, and the trim little women in caps, that trip along every moment, are well-dressed, and graceful to a degree. There is nothing in England like the Avenue des Champs Elysees, or the Concorde, or the Louvre, or the fortifications, or the middle age piles of the Cite, or the quays, or the Arche de Triomphe. This last fills my eye more than any thing architectural I have seen. But I love London more. I miss the ever-present police, always kind and ready, giving you a senee of protection wherever you are. And then there are not ten men in France whom I could care to go ten miles to see; whereas I can name a hundred in London.

1 Dr. A. Monod died April 6, 1856.

On the 23d, I passed through lines of soldiers to the south side of the National Assembly. Place assigned me in the gallery, opposite the tribune and President’s chair. Assemble at two. President has an enormous bell, which he rings to keep order. Heard a speech from Leroux, and a long one from Laurent. Then for a long walk, along the matchless Avenue, through the Tuileries, among hundreds of statues, deep shade of trees, and thousands of flowers to the Champs Elysees. Scores of amusements among the trees. All the working-people of Paris seem pouring into these artificial forests. Punch and Judy. Cripples with music. Flying-horses and circulating boats. Dancing dogs. Two little open-air theatres, with numerous singers and large orchestra. These immense forests, called gardens, are used by the Parisians as nursery, smoking-room, and study. The people live out of doors. All the men seem to be either priests or soldiers, so the women keep the shops.

In the pays Latin I was in a little rapture. The Hotel Cluny gave me impressions for life. These old black, grim, fimous, conic-topped towers, fill all my mental blanks au sujet of the middle ages. In the rue St. Jacques, that long, long, tumble down street, I began to breathe afresh, as in the Old Jewry, &c., but with more hoary and romantic souvenirs. The inside of French churches is stable-like, compared with St. George’s, Windsor, or HenryVII.’s chapel.

One morning I took my early coffee at a laiticre’’s. Saw the sale of milk, and the perfect courtesy and elegance of the servants who came for it. I have learnt to bow to the lady when I enter a cafe; this was, however, a plebeian shop, the cafes were not open. On returning, I found that Mr. Rives had called in person, and afterwards had sent me his silver medal to admit me for the day to the diplomatic tribune,>the. best place for seeing and hearing; so I shall go again. I have seen the chief notabilities of France in the Chamber. Soldiers are just as numerous as bees in a hive. The red-legged regulars are the meanest creatures, singly, I ever saw. The enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon is great. I am sick of seeing on every church, house, and wall, “Liber te, Egalite, Fraternite.” It is positively babyish. I miss the noble English policemen. It is advised not to ask the soldiers; they are provincials, and know nothing. I find the priests most suave and agreeable, and they speak such French; ifor much of the jumble of the badauds is incomprehensible French men do not compare with the English, but for one good-looking, graceful English woman, there are 800 French. I observe two marked classes of women: the peasantry, who work like horses and walk like oxen, and the Parisians, who are light, graceful, and lien mises. French children are no touch to the little angelic things of Kensington Gardens.

I wish you could get one glimpse of the Boulevards. Conceive of a curved street, a bow, of which the Seine forms the bowstring. Make this twice as wide as Broadway. Line it with lofty houses; set two rows of large trees in a sidewalk twice as wide as the widest in New York; illuminate this like daylight; fill it with thousands on thousands of holiday-people; imagine cafes and restaurants with fronts all plate-glass, and interiors all marble, mirror, and gold; then add chairs filling almost all the space on the sidewalk, occupied by well-dressed people, eating and drinking, and this nearly all night. Even the poor do every thing in public view. Before a bit of a shoe-shop, the man, woman, and children cut their loaf and hand about their bottle, and clack, and bandy compliments, as if no mortal were near them. This is repeated during this ambrosial weather every few paces for miles. In the old quarters, near the Pont Neuf, or Hotel de Ville, (town-house,) where the streets are about as wide as a bed, the swarms of people look, I suppose, just as five hundred years ago. They live on bread and wine. The bread is weighed in the shops. I even see broken crusts sold. The people live miserably inside of their houses. A tailor, for example, has a bedroom up eight pair of stairs, and over the river, and no sitting-room. His shop is all glass and gold. His wife keeps a brilliant cafe, as idol or presidente; i. e. if she is very handsome. After work-hours they are all the time in the public gardens and places, breakfast and dine in the open air, and look like Ahasuerus and Vashti; as Cobbett says: “pigs in the parlour, peacocks on the promenade.” Still these funny creatures are full of “Monsieur” and “Madame,” and full of gesture and smiles. The genteel French people are perfectly graceful. When I go to while away an hour over an ice, always accompanied by a whole decanter of ice-water, frozen around the inner surface, I study the groups of three, four, and ten. They are dressed to a marvel, as to fit, colour, and mise. They never stare at you, or seem to know you are near. They have no formal bows or motions. I observe nothing which would be unusual in a first-class New York parlour, except a certain smirk, arising from a feeling that one must always speak with a smile. The people look American; for we get our fashions here. The better sort, as in the Chamber of Deputies, (Cavaignac, Lafayette, Lamartine,) are like very plain American gentlemen; only some have a scarcely visible show of crimson ribbon in the second top button-hole — the decoration of the legion of Honour. Dr. Monod wears one. A. Monod is a beautiful, saintly man, for elegant, primitive simplicity. Every Thursday he has a general reception, and probably does more good than by preaching. Prayers in French before tea. Fine singing from the “Chants Chretiens.” I could not help thinking, at one of these soirees, I never saw so much simplicity, so much polish, and so much affection, mingled. My father would have been pleased with the sweet quietness of the girls. Almost all the conversation was religious.

Parisians hear music every hour for nothing, which it would take large sums to procure in America. I calculated that one might hear gratis thirty orchestras and 150 singers, any evening in the Champs Elysees. The music in the Madeleine, St. Roch, Notre Dame, St. Etienne, Notre Dame de Lorette, and St. Vincent de Paul, is rococo, and probably equal to any out of the Pope’s chapel. The solos of a distant, lamenting female voice, tremolo, minore, diminuendo, contrasted with a crash of a hundred instruments, and then a hundred voices like Russell’s, [deep bass,] and the interspersed canto fermo, or austere Gregorian chant, centuries old, combine with the tableau vivant of a priestly pantomime of purple and gold chasubles, (the mantle with cross,) and the yet more imposing long white flowing robe of cambric over pink, girt with pink — the young priests being picked for their figure — to make a bewitching show, which intoxicates poor female worshippers into a trance of ambiguous rapture, which they deem religion. I think the magic of anti-christian pomp has attained its acme. Poor Puseyism, compared with what it imitates, is but pewter to gold and rubies. They have made a separate art of the dressing and marshalling of hundreds of officiating persons, who move or stand with the height of solemn grace, and the overpowering combination of costume, the prelates, the priests in heavy purple or crimson, gilt — the younger clergy, imitating the white-robed angels of their pictures, the nuns, (most of them seemed crying, with swollen eyes,) the little boys in pure white, and the innumerable girls, in veils. I observed that men, who looked like emperors at the distant altar, were canal-men and bravos, when they passed me in the procession.

When an eminent speaker in the House of Commons said, this week, that none of the Dissenters went over to Popery, adding that the existing plan of Oxonian training tended to rear up Romanists, he uttered what any eye may see confirmed in Paris. Who would not, if he goes pomp-hunting, prefer the real old middle-aged mummery to the would-if-I-could-ish simulation of it? Frequent visits to Popish celebrations, must lead truly Protestant minds to doubt the possibility of giving any aid whatever to genuine worship, by the appliances of costly architecture, graphic representations, and elaborate music. “Christian Art,” in the sense of the modern art-mad school, there is none. The highest philosophy of cultus — if the phrase may be allowed — leads to the most simple and apostolic rites.

It is high time that America and Britain were bestirring themselves to send light and leaven into this continent. M. Gasparin has lately given some frightful accounts of once evangelical Germany. Among his statements are these: Public worship is disregarded. In Berlin, out of four hundred thousand souls, there are three hundred thousand who never attend any of the thirty-two churches. Dr. Tholuck declares that, a few months ago, at Halle, in the principal service of the cathedral there were present fourteen persons; in another church six, and in a third five! Next day he attended a sermon, of which he was the only auditor! The theatres are as full as the churches are empty. Is it wonderful, when we regard the tendency of German philosophy? The papers of the tailor Weithing are published by the state authority of Zurich. Delecke makes fun of poor timid Voltaire and Diderot, “who never were prepared to look on man as the culminating point of existence.” Marv and his fellows say: — “The idea of God is the key to the dungeon of mouldy civilization. Let us away with it. The true road to liberty, equality, and happiness, is atheism. Let us teach man that there is no God but himself.” Wieherri testifies that emissaries are out, that schools of atheism are founded very widely, under the guise of reading clubs and singing societies.

M. Thiers has made a speech against free trade, which, independently of the topic, is considered the greatest speech of the session. All the left side, his opponents, joined in the acclamation. I don’t believe that Demosthenes ever showed more tact in “wielding the fierce democraty.” His triumph as an orator is complete, though the question may go against him. This government feels itself in great danger. These amazing gatherings of soldiery show it. They are from distant provinces. Everywhere you see casernes taking the place of other buildings. People feel the mortification of this under a Republic. Two spies attend poor Mr. Close’s little chapel! The police is three fold: 1, soldiers; 2, police without uniform; 3, unknown spies, (waiters, guards, valets, drivers, &c.) Thank God for our gospel and our freedom!

In the number of animals the Garden of Plants is surpassed by the London Zoological Gardens; but what surpass its gardens, trees, walks, buildings, museums, fountains, and free lectures? Constantly open to the people. Every tree of every climate; all flowers of the world in numbers of enclosed gardens, with paths between; every plant labelled with the botanical name, and all arranged by families. The museums of natural history, the mineralogical and geological and paleontological collections of Cuvier, Hauy, and Jussieu, the collections of fossils and comparative anatomy, kept me perpetually wondering. The buildings are numerous and extensive. The Cedar of Lebanon, which is a colossal tree, repaid me for all my weariness. It is ten feet round, near the branches.

The palace of Versailles might occupy a volume. It would take a month to see it well. In my ignorance I thought all these palaces, with their grounds, not a hundredth part so extensive as they are. I did not figure to myself miles of avenue, trees of all zones, thousands of statuary, spaces so ample as to remind one of American forests and prairies, and chambers so numerous that the foot wearies before they are half traversed.

I attended a lecture on history in the College of Sorbonne. Entered the library, filled with quiet students reading; a priest presides. Library of St. Genevieve; what a place! Transcendent loftiness and beauty; 200,000 volumes; 100 reading; copy of Rafaelle’s School of Athens as large as the side of a house.

On the 5th (July) I went to church, expecting to hear Monod. The old psalms did me good. The old Huguenot look was in some of the Frenchmen. Just before the second singing, a sparrow tried to get into a window over the pulpit. Immediately they sang Psalm lxxxiv. 3. The preacher was M. Enfoux, of Geneva. I dined at the table d’hote; nineteen changes of plates. On my right, a Russian lady and four daughters; they spoke English, French, German, and Russ. On my left a party of fine English. I love to meet decent English people; you look in their faces and believe them. In the evening I went to Wesleyan chapel, and heard the minister, young Mr. Close, preach a beautiful orthodox sermon; full and able on original sin. About a hundred were there.

I sicken at the everlasting sight of bayonets and swords, and the feeling of espionage. There never was a stronger police under an autocrat. I am weary of speaking broken French, though the courtesy of every class passes description. So do the vastness, beauty, and keeping of public institutions. Fifty thousand persons are maintained in these charities. Under a polish, which reaches almost the lowest of the canaille, there is a godlessness which is horrible. Leaving out a few names in Sardis, blessed ministers and people, whose love seems the greater for insulation, this beautiful, matchless, glorious capital is Satan’s seat. Words fail — paper must not aid — to report the moral rottenness of a generation brought up in bloody infidelity. The fear of God, producing truth, is lacking. Yet of ceremonious rcliirion there is vast increase. The priests, in black garments, go about the streets. Yet evil as popery is, it owns a Saviour, prayer, a heaven and hell, and a God. There is a school growing rampant, which denies each or all of these.

The chief thought I had in these fairy-land palaces and Eden plcasaunces, was of the monarchs, and great ones, who had been violently torn from them; Louis XVI., Napoleon, Charles X., Louis Philippe. The chief thought as I gazed from the north balcony of St. Cloud on the incomparable view of Paris and the great spaces around and between, was, will God’s justice suffer this wicked country to remain uuvisited 1 The chief personal reflections were, I love American simple nature more than ever, and American freedom of religion more than any words can utter. I love and covet these matchless and incredible wonders less than my dear fireside; 1 less than ever wish ornaments for my church, or ornaments for my house. O for the purity and peace of Christ’s religion for all 1 love!

DIJON, July 10, 1851.

To-day I have been in a fairy-land all the while. O la belle France! It is just the word. By stage I can understand how it might be very tedious, but by luxuriously rapid and well-appointed rails, it was just the sliding of one ravishing picture over another. A few elements in bewitching combination — this is the secret of French landscape. The time is favourable. Every thing is in its glory. The early part of the day we were almost always dashing through the valley of some river. The valley is a prairie exactly; we see the gentle barrier on each side. Towards evening we began to be sensible of a great change. The scene became rugged. We went through tunnels of thousands of feet. Bare rocks expose themselves, and at length the basin (in which we seem always to be) shows around its further edge mountains and beginnings of what we are going to have anon. We pass the watershed, and are in a new world; every thing is changed. Geology, houses, dress, almost sky, seem new. have come into the land of St. Bernard! I am in the heart of Burgundy, a dukedom greater than many realms. Every village has had some memory, all day long, but now we are Hearing the central region of a country most famous. France is as green as England, and along here as much of a garden; but O how pensive from the total absence of cottages! Every inch is tilled except where perpendicular. No forest, but tens of millions of. trees, all planted and very scattering, now in clumps, now in rows. I have certainly this day seen a hundred miles of poplars.

In the boundless champaign of tillage, they seem as necessary to the scene as the spires of Holland. Why am I so often reminded of Old Virginia? I will tell you. In England, or even New England and New York, the eye would behold the plain cut up by hedges, &c. Here, as in Virginia, though for a different reason, all is open. Yonder is a view of rolling land, descending rounded towards the river we are skirting. Ten thousand acres lie over the round haunch of the broad swell, as perfect a garden as I ever saw, but so mottled that every one of us compared it, over and over, to a bedquilt; a patch of wheat, a patch of rye, a patch of mustard, a patch of broom, a patch of walnuts, the ground of all being vineyard, vineyard, vineyard, in a green like distant Indian corn. Vineyards are exactly like pole beans of a certain height. In certain situations they are very beautiful, as to-day, when ever and anon they hang over the round bank of land next the horizon, like hanks of green yarn over a hedge. Observe, the prospect is so vast, and so unobstructed by trees, that fields look like squares of chess, only oblong, and no division breaks the continuity except a sweet, fairy-road, winding away among vines and wheat, with, it may be, a cart load of girls, all colours, under broad brims of straw, with pitchforks. We have seen miles of hay-making, with five hundred groups, no one of which would disgrace a picture of Claude. You know all the people live in villages. These villages, at this season of deep verdure, seem always to be nestling. You wonder how the houses can squat and huddle so. They cluster around the little church, like sheep around the ram, as close, as irregular. All are of a colour, rusty russet red, tops are same as sides. In themselves ugly and mean, as parts of a rapid landscape very snug and beautiful. What remembrances crowd in during 200 miles of road carrying one deep into the ancient feudal soil! Here were the Gauls; hero was Ccesar; we have passed several towns named by him. Here were the barons and monks of the middle ages. Here were Burgundian princes, who were all but kings, and yonder are their castles, black with age and awfully frowning over the sweet peaceful soil. Here, as you approach Dijon, were the walks of Bernard’s and of Bossuet’s childhood.

Dijon! I now understand what an old rocky French town is. I never can describe it. Everybody here as fresh as Irish. I wonder at the hale, happy look of all. But we are high up; all the way from Paris to this vicinity, we have been going up the streams. Every thing in the air is like Lexington, [Virginia,] or Schooley’s Mountain, [New Jersey.] At a glance we see we are in the old Burgundian capital. Quiet, pleasant old town. Our first visit was to the celebrated Museum. Men and girls arc copying in the galleries. Among the signs of decreasing population, several churches are perverted to other uses — one is a corn-market, another a fruit-market, a third a fodder-market.

GENEVA, July 13 — 17, 1851.

The complexion, though we go south from Dijon to Geneva, gets clearer and clearer as we ascend, and I see many a blue eye, reminding me of the Germanic origin of the Burgundian stock. The ploughs have a wheel and four horses, and they plough very shallow. Great industry. Nobody looks unhealthy or suffering. Roses abound, and many times I meet peasants in the road, carrying each a rose in his mouth. The houses, as we gradually rose, assume a trace of the Swiss cottage, so that, when I saw a real chalet, I was not surprised at all. The great wooden shoe looks crippling, especially on children. Thatch on almost every house, about nine inches thick, often covered with a deep moss. Thus must these higgledy-piggledy towns have looked 500 years ago. These plains are rich, and tempted warriors. Therefore the houses are thick and defensible. Therefore also the people gathered in villages. We began to see single cows led by a string, to crop along the road’s edge. Cattle generally a reddish dun. Oxen yoked from the horns. The expanse of hay-fields or prairies amazed and delighted me. The swell of the land increased as we advanced, and with it the beauty of the prospect. “That great mountain” Jura, which we thus approached, is very long and very broad, made up of parallel ridges, together shaped like the back of a mighty ox. At certain turns we saw the peak of Mont Blanc, like amber. It is beyond Switzerland, being in Savoy.

We breakfasted at Champagnolle, having left Dijon at 3£ A. M. I am perpetually asking myself “can this be France 1” when I look at the beautiful skins. True the hard workers burn nearly mulatto, but the children and some women are of perfect red and white, and even the men show such blond that you wonder to hear French out of their mouths. In descending these sides, the valleys and gorges begin to assume more and more an amphitheatrical shape, and we found ourselves running sheer round the shoulder of great cliffs, with the depth opening green and solemn below, often with herds and cottages in the very fundus. How little did I expect to be so long crossing Mt. Jura, or to ascend it at a canter and almost a gallop. Ghylls or becks, little foaming streams, dashed across our way. Greater streams, white with rage, ran beside us. I remember one cascade of snow, which poured out of a field of emerald. It was young hemp. Every inch is rescued where a hoe can enter.

One sees hay -making girls, under broad flats, in a little rug of land, away over among the inaccessible rocks. The valleys have a green, which is black; the very air seems changed; the effect is not melancholy but an awful serenity. As we get more among proper mountaineers, cut off from the rest of mankind, it is pleasing to observe how the family feeling becomes more manifest. Fifty times I saw what I thought a family, on some knoll, by some spring, down some well-like plunge of green with a house at the bottom; three sisters with broad Leghorn flats, and haymakers under a tree; babies held by others little bigger, that the mothers might hoe or drive. No poetry or fiction can reach the reality of such scenes, occurring every moment, and amid such sights and such air.

On the beautiful evening of the 12th, we drove into lovely Geneva, a beauty in the midst of sublimity. We have been greatly favoured in weather, for it is said that there are not more than fifty days in the year which furnish a perfectly clear view of Mont Blanc, and we have had three of them, and seen the full moon rise above it, which could only happen with groat southing. As I now see it, it is rose-colour in one part, while, as the sun declines, the left-hand portion assumes a ghastly bluish pallor, which must remind every one of death. I had never thought much of this thing of hues. This very day (the 14th) as I was walking along the delightful avenue, skirting the south side of the lake to Dr. Merle’s residence in Eaux Vives, I suddenly found the perspective ending in the placid Leman. But what a play of hues! The foreground avenue all deep-green; the nearer water pea-green; the tilled lands just below, a veil of lilac; the mountains beyond that a crystalline hue, shading off into pearly clouds and blue heaven.

Who would have thought, that Geneva could have been turned into such a stamping-ground! 2 The park or wood on the northern eminence is full of booths, stalls, shows, and gambling tables. The variety of gamblings is great. Women generally keep the tables, and children are inducted into the mysteries. Some are rolling balls for eatables; some shooting a cross-bow at a target, over which a rude Liberty rises, on each shot, with the appropriate information that she purposes to go round the globe. Here are flying-horses, more rapid and comical than in Paris or anywhere else, having one row of whirlers within another, going not merely on horses, but on

1 Dr. Alexander found great pleasure and assistance, during his Alpine travels, and to Heidelberg, in the company of the Rev. J. W. Newton, chaplain of the U. S. Navy, and formerly of the Edgehill School at Princeton.

2 The Tir Federal: see page 148.

swans, sleigh-bodies, and so on. Here are lotteries, “on Ton ne pcrd pas,” and dice-playing, where you get gingerbread or knives. Here are booths of cirques, and jugglers, and posturemakers, most primitive in kind, and outvying Greenwich Fair. I never could have expected to see two such displays of un-American sportivcness.

Swiss politics is in much commotion about these times. Enjoying freedom for ages, except when the French had them under, they are nevertheless practised on by every sort of French and Italian refugee. What is in the mouths of every one about aristocracy, is very much like the same talk in France, during the years preceding the reign of terror. Yet, when I think of the past, wrhen I look on the face of nature here, and especially when I contemplate the thousands of mountain men and women now in Geneva, so fresh, frank, hearty, honest, and Protestant, I hope strongly that God has something better in reserve for the sons of Tell, as they love to call themselves.

I have seen four priests going about in the black robes of their detestable order. There is a rookery of Jesuits here, and they have set the sisters of Charity a-going, as most likely to win our Protestants by acts of real humanity. The number of papists in Geneva is about 10,000. The more I see of the pomp of Romanism — and I have seen perhaps as much as could be seen out of Rome — the more I am in love with simple architecture and simple worship.

GENEVA, July 19, 1851.

I have just returned here, fifty-one miles from Chamonix. It is summer, and European summer, without summer-clothes, summer debility, or summer insects. Geneva is full of English. Sir R. Peel is near me, and Lord Vernon and Lady Vane probably in the house. Lord Vernon put twenty balls in the centre of one of the targets the first day of the shooting match. The distant mountains interest me most; near by they are too cold, cloudy, and frightful. The sights one sees are somewhat, but nothing to the millions of thoughts which the sights awaken. The sights are only the keys; the thoughts are the music. Many a mark is in E.’s Bible of spots, where I have read God’s words under the tremendous shadow of mountain walls reaching to heaven, and by torrents pure and beautiful, leaping and foaming down the perpendicular but broken sides of deep vales. The dark, but clear atmosphere, caused by the elevation, the unparalleled verdure, the shadow of giant mountains, and the play of altogether novel lights and shades, affect me even more than the summits of the great Alps. I could slightly imagine the latter; the other is entirely beyond every descriptive power. I have thought of an eclipse; but there is no melancholy. It is a serene, heavenly awe. The very potato blossoms look pearly, and shine like some sort of brilliant exotic. This shows that it is the air and light which produce the effect. The imminent and terrific passes and paths make even the horse and mule different from ours. In precipitous ascents, when the driver dismounted, the stout muscular horses took the carriage up as well without him. As to the mules, their footing is next to a miracle. They always take the outside edge, and go boldly along places more difficult than the bowsprit of a ship.

It was almost like home when I reached Geneva. With its lake, its suburban parks and campagnes, its nearer hills, and its Alps in view, it is the loveliest place I know. Mr. Newton and I united in thanking God for the wonders of these three days, and for good tidings from home. “Let the God of my salvation be exalted.”

The horrible priest-riding of the kingdom of Savoy, smites me everywhere. The priests are the largest, finest, and fattest. The churches are solid and often modern.

O how a bell resounds in the green Alps! The crosses are as frequent as milestones. If the Virgin could weep, it would be to see the puppets and frights which represent her in the wayside shrines. Swiss families seem to love one another with intensity. They love all their little livestock. What a blessed land do you and I live in, where poor woman is not turned into a beast! I am sure I have seen girls of fourteen, carrying as much straw or green branches as would fill a cart. Their heads are used for this. I saw one woman carrying thus a closed umbrella, and another a heavy pick-axe. My soul is weary of soldiers. The sight of a soldier or a priest makes me first angry, and then sorrowful. As I surveyed the boundless arable lands on the slopes of the mountains, which contain the lower Arve, all one map of varying meadow, garden, and harvest, unincumbered by fences, dotted with sweet cottages, sprinkled with trees and vines, without a square foot in a state of nature, I remembered the numberless wars between Savoy and Geneva. And when I looked at the soldiers, and listened to the fierce, radical politics, and the sounds of rifle-shooting at the grand national match, I was made sure that unless God interpose, all this sweet land will be given up again to fire and blood. Yet these Swiss of the great cantons are a noble race. It was doubtless the best of them I saw here, during the great democratic celebration. The mountain-girls, in costumes of every cut, were fresh as roses and brawny as boxers. The middle of the streets was their walk. Not a loud word, nor a disorderly gesture. To tell the truth, they looked American to me, and 1 laid it to (1) Republicanism, and (2) to Protestantism; but rather of their fathers than their own.

Here the wheat-harvest is in its glory. I looked out on rising, and saw a company of young men and lasses going a-field. Their sickles were all fantastically ranged around a staff, surmounted with a grand bouquet, and borne aloft by one in the middle. They make a play of every thing.

YEVAT, July 21, 1851.

We arrived at Vevay by steam from Geneva on the 19th, in order to spend the Sabbath in one of the loveliest, quietest towns in Europe. From the bank here, we look into the rounding of the lake, and see the castle of Chillon. We took a caleche, and visited it on Saturday. Without an interval this road is walled the whole way. It has on the right the lake-shore, vineyards to the very edge, and on the left, the swelling round mountains, vineyards to the very top. So populous is this region, that it is like one village all the way. Vevay is celebrated by Rousseau as the most enchanting spot on earth, and I see no reason to the contrary. The old cathedral is the chief Protestant church. The building bears date 1498. Alas! the gospel of the Reformers who occupied it, is not preached there in French, but in English. I heard one of the most blessed gospelsermons, of the Simeon sort, from an Anglican chaplain, Mr; Cleves; John v. 42. About sixty English were present. It was a refreshment to my weary soul, which I shall remember all my days. When I came out, and looked from under the perfect shade over vineyards, town, lake, and nearer hills, to the silvery, heaven-like Alps, on a day of’ great clearness, with temperature making cloth dress indispensable, I trust my heart experienced some of God’s sure mercies, and I was reminded that his covenant is more durable than the Alps, which must crumble away. The people are in great contrast to the mountaineers of Savoy. They are a ruddy, industrious, teeming, happy generation. The illusory view of a tourist is that they know no care.

On Saturday evening, at dusk, the streets and neighbouring roads were full of people, coming in from the vines, and sitting at their doors. A most wonderful yodler sang in the court, in the Alpine manner. It is as indescribable as inimitable, and does not sound like a human organ. The peasantry drink wine as freely as we drink water, but intemperance is very rare. Bread and wine are the universal meal. 1 am surprised to see how little flesh is used, even in twenty courses, at table d’hote.

Indeed I think the air and climate lessens one’s taste for it. There is no end to the confections. Their cakes arc always dry, crisp, and macaroony. I am sure 1 have tasted 200 kinds in France and Switzerland. Warm bread is unknown.

LUCERNE, July 25, 1851.

From Vcvay I went to Berne, a stern old Protestant town, more noble in my view from my having just come out of Freiburg, the chief Catholic canton. The Jesuits are in full blast there. I have no expectation of ever seeing such farms, such crops, such peasantry, such houses, and such babies as I saw in Berne. The chalets equalled all my best forethoughts, and erased the ill impressions of the Savoy Alps. Millions of bee hives in these vales and heights. Morning or evening the honey is never absent.

We entered Lucerne the 24th. The country people of Lucerne are not to be compared with those of Berne, whom I continue to think the finest yeomanry I ever saw. We took a little steamboat yesterday, to survey the lake Lucerne, which, in the opinion of Sir Jarnes Mackintosh and others, is the noblest lake in Switzerland, i. e. in all the world. I read Schiller’s “William Tell” among the very scenes it describes. The spirit of liberty waked up in me very strong at Riitli, the green ledge, where in 1307 the three Swiss conspirators met to free their country; at Fliichen, by Altorf, where Tell shot the apple; at the chapel where he leaped ashore out of Gessler’s boat; and in view of Kiissnacht, near which he slew Gessler. Five hundred years have not taken away the interest of the Swiss in these mighty deeds. At least three men, of whom two were quite common, indicated the localities to me, and the third told me the whole in English, with tears in his eyes. The music of the Lucerne church-bells is beyond any thing I have yet heard. Many of the people speak It’alian, but most a horrible German patois. The Jesuits have a college here, and go about like princes.

ZURICH, July 26, 1851.

Here I am, Deo favente, in the old Protestant city of Zuingle. We came from Lucerne in about 7£ hours across the Mt. Albis. We went through the canton of Zug; all Papists: but I saw no such horrendous life-size images of our Lord crucified as abound and stare at you in Lucerne. Crossing this little canton, we entered the sweet, rich, green, Protestant land of Zurich. The road wrent round and round the mountain (Albis) in successive platforms, for a length uncommon even in Switzerland, so that this enchanting paysage was every moment coming up afresh, all lying flat and long and wide before us, so as to remind me of What they tell concerning views from a balloon. I begin to fed quite German since 1 slept under a feather-bed, and paid my bill in Gulden and Kreutzers. Our removes were nine: Soup; bouilli and carrots; trout; tripe with oily mashed potatoes; cherry fritters, with the stems sticking out; volaille with lettuce; strawberries dressed with wine and cinnamon; cherries, cakes, &c.; a bottle of white wine at each plate.

On Sunday I went to the cathedral where Zuingle preached. The church is awkwardly divided by a rude ill-painted screen through both nave and aisles, and is seated with deal forms, with backs, marked and numbered but unpainted. There is no paint, except some daubing at the pulpit end. I saw and heard no organ. About 200 persons seemed little where 2,000 might have been. I saw one man besides myself in the nave. A few old men sat along the side walls. One gentleman was near the platform. Two men were on it at the preacher’s right; about six singers at his left; these were led by a blind young man, who read the hymn from a large book with raised letters. He is an admirable singer. They sang twice, but only one tune. The peasant women, who made up the assembly, sang almost perfectly. Every one had her black and gilt book, with a folded white handkerchief. The tune was ancient and slow. All sang, and all stood up in prayer. The preacher was in gown and bands. The sermon was on the fear of God, and seemed to be an attempt to be very pathetic upon mere moralities. The women almost all slumbered and slept. I saw whole rows thus exercised. The service was one hour; viz.: 1. Hymn, (sitting.) 2. Prayer — read by the preacher standing. 3. Sermon, (he stopped at each head, turned round and employed a blue handkerchief.) 4. A prayer read, (Lord’s prayer at close of both.) 5. Hymn. Minister then immersed himself in a hat, and people retired. I recognized no benediction. On retiring, some of the poor women bought fine cherries at the foot of the steps. A deader service, out of Quaker meeting, I never saw. No wonder they have forgotten Zuingle’s name. The University here has about forty professors and more than 300 regular students; but the Cantonalschule, like a [German] Gymnasium, has 400.

HEIDELBERG, July 31, 1851.

I left Zurich on the 28th for Basel. Some of the villages on the road were the worst I have seen. Dunghills all along the streets. They are just in wheat harvest, and the valley of the Rhine is one sea of corn and sheaves; the more striking from the absence of fences and roads. All the people seem to be out. Old men sit among the sheaves. There are more women than men at the work, and babies lie about in abundance. The approach to the Rhine naturally awakened me. At first sight I compared it with the Passaic at Newark, but I soon thought it more like the Shenandoah. The flow of the stream is majestic. We entered Basel as the eclipse of the sun declined. It was my first view of mighty walls of the middle ages, though I have seen many walled towns. The first stork I saw at the place where we dined.

We left Basel in omnibus, and took rails at Heiltingen for Freiburg. Crossing the Rhine takes me out of sweet Switzerland into Germany — the Grand Duchy of Baden skirting the east bank of the Rhine. I now go fully into German-speech. At Berne it began, but it has been ‘mixed, everywhere the two languages and always English at the inns. The headman at Lucerne spoke English, French, Italian, German, and Dutch. He is a Hollander, and says he learned them by grammars, in order to be a waiter.

Freiburg is a Romish town with a small University. It borders on the Black Forest, which, in truth, is a mountain-range, covered with firs, some of which are 120 feet high. The cathedral greatly impressed me. The sculptures exceeded my thoughts. The tower, 380 feet high, all of stone, looked like a delicate and graceful nothing against the mountains or the sky. Living water flows in wide streams through all the streets. It is a healthy but wintry place. We left it (on the 30th July) by railway to Kehl; by omnibus to Strasburg Cathedral! Leaving S. in the afternoon, we passed Rastadt and Carlsruhe, and entered Heidelberg just after dark.

Kenilworth is a plaything compared with the mountain-castle of the old Electors. Old ruins and new erections; walls twenty feet thick in places; twenty rooms at least with shrubbery full-grown in them; vaults and dungeons; towers, half fallen, where you have the city under your very feet, and a champaign country all gold and green, now falling before the mowers and reapers. There are about 650 students here. They swagger through the streets with little caps of every hue. The rowdyism of the boys passes belief. An apprentice let loose is a feeble comparison. The number of professors and lecturers is seventy. Many of these get not more apiece than a New York coachman. In the Medical Faculty some zeal is apparent. There are two courses of Medical Jurisprudence; one for jurists, and one for medical men. There are lectures on the History of Medicine, on diseases of the aged, and on many subdivisions of anatomy and therapeutics.

COLOGNE, August 4, 1851.

I left Heidelberg on the 1st. Tnough nominally at Frank fort, I did not really see any thing of the place. I saw a good many troops, and one corps in white uniform, who were probably Austrians. Biberich, where I took boat, may be called thf port of Wiesbaden. When I got to Cologne about 10 P. M.. my trunk was missing. All inquiries proved fruitless. A gentleman condoled with me, and offered to lend me from his wardrobe. I afterwards found it was Lord Dudley Ward. Visited the cathedral; more than a hundred men are working in sheds at the costly carvings. That which most struck me in the interior is its awful grandeur, its vast extent. The Papists grow zealous in proportion as the Protestants have become erroneous and indifferent, and are regaining their hold on the young. In the cathedral I saw rows after rows of girls deeply engaged in devotions, in the side chapels. I dare not give the proofs I have of lax morals in the towns; the natural consequence of forsaking God.

The streets of Cologne are narrow, crooked, dirty, and with out sidewalks. The filth of German inns is inexpressible; yet the linen and beds are fine. Bread is capital, so is butter, which I have never seen salted in Europe.

Since I left Paris, I have seen no painting that moved me so much as one at the Museum here — “the Jews at the willows of Babylon,” by Bendeman, of Dresden. Cologne delights me with its Roman ruins and inscriptions, its labyrinth of old lanes, toppling houses, indescribable courts and markets, and quaint edifices. Yet I long to see our own fresh and progressive cities; to see a land where there are no guards, watch-towers, passports, and over-worked women. Poor things! their furrowed mahogany faces, their gray hair streaming from whimsical head-dresses, often make me muse sadly.

I was in the great cathedral on a high day. The vaulted roofs resounded with an orchestral mass. A great number of instruments, joined with a grand organ, performed one of the most learned masses. But by far the most impressive part was purely vocal, and plain chant, all in one part, often by boys; the per formers being visible in stalls around the choir. I was very near the Archbishop of Cologne, who is also a great prince. The Priests’ seminary, near by, has 400 young priests. I was at the Jesuits’ church, which is fine; also at St. Peter’s, chiefly remarkable for an altar-piece, the apostle’s crucifixion, which Eubens esteemed his best work. The only Protestant church,

1 The trunk was not recovered until August 8, at Rotterdam.

borrowed from the Romanists, is for the soldiers here who happen to be Protestants. I saw yesterday (the Sabbath) a wonderful procession around St. Martin’s church. It was St. Martin’s day. Purple and gold, incense and tapers, chanting and mummery. I cannot describe the agony of devotion I often see in German Catholics, especially in old women and young girls, with their rosaries, &c. In my humble view a generation is growing up most craftily trained in every popish delusion. The German popery is altogether a different thing from that of France and Italy. The very advertisements on church-doors breathe a spirit of profound tenderness. God grant that some of the poor priest-ridden souls may find the true cross!

I attended the Episcopal service at the British Consulate. There were sixty present, apparently people of some mark. It was Puseyitish. The priest backed the people, had an Oxford cap, moved here and there, and had much mumming over the elements of the offertory. Twenty-one communed.

AMSTERDAM, August 5, 1851.

From Cologne in steamer Rubens for Arnhem in Holland — the charmingest town for elegant neatness. We really know nothing of interior Holland in America. The East India trade enriches hundreds of men, who live at home, in a quiet grandeur, like Quaker princes. The fronts of some houses are just like white porcelain. The landscape gardening is English. The windows are the most chastely elegant; adorned with little screens of Berlin-work, embroidery, or costly Japan. Apropos, the Japan trade is all with the Dutch. Of Java tin, a sale was yesterday made, (two million guilders,) all to a fellow-traveller and acquaintance of mine. The Dutch complexion is even better than the English; and the people are quiet and happy. The sea ports are indeed like others, and Amsterdam is filthy; its canals smell like bilge water; but Utrecht is like an island in a sea of tranquil academic verdure. I spent some delightful hours (in U.) traversing the China-like streets, the water-side-walks, and the cool still University and Library. Mr. Ader, the librarian, was all attention; spoke English, German, French, Dutch, and Latin. All the theological lectures in Holland are in Latin; the medical in Dutch. Utrecht is the seat of so-called orthodoxy. Leyden and Groningen are liberal. There are about 5,000 Jausenists in Utrecht. Of the 200,000 population of Amsterdam 30,000 are Jews. There are 600 windmills. The Philadelphia “State House” is plainly a reminiscence of the palace. The very name is the same. I feasted my eyes at the Museum with paintings of the Dutch school, which gave me the same pleasure in comparison with Guido and Rafaelle, that Boz does in com parison with Milton. The country we passed is a perfect flat. Think of the meadows near Newark, [New Jersey ;] make these perfect green or yellow velvet; remove all fences; intersect with narrow and broad canals full to the green edge; cover them with myriads of cattle, always black and white; dot them with low white houses; extend this plain till the windmills all along the horizon look like chessmen; add flowers, clean peasants, and storks, and you have Holland. There is no country but America so belied as this. It is the only country I have thought I could live in. Arnhem, for example, is a little city of trim, lovely houses, pure streets, green parks, ramparts turned into promenades, and an appearance of wealth among the retired East India merchants which was new to me. But Utrecht gratified me yet more. Its hotel meets every demand of the most fastidious quietist. Though very large, it is so quiet that I never saw or heard another guest in it. The women going by were all dressed like a play, in clean caps, longish short-gowns, and black petticoats. All looked like toy milk-maids.

In Holland people smoke at the dinner table, smoke while eating melons, smoke while setting the table. In Leyden nothing moved me more than the remembrance of Boerhaave. I came away with reluctance from his speaking portrait. It has some traits of our Franklin, but more heart and more love. I stood by his simple memorial in St. Peter’s.

“SALUTIFEKO

BOERHAYII

GENIO
SACRUM.”

On a basrelief medallion likewise the legend Sigillum veri sim plex. We were shown about the University by Prof. Dozy, to whom Dr. Robinson had letters. They have only one term and the holidays are now. The library has 1,631 oriental MSS., exclusive of Hebrew. Dozy has published one volume of a catalogue of these MSS. At the University I ascended the desk where Witsius often held his acts. But the Senate Hall is a place which, Niebuhr says, has no equal for academic memories. It contains 108 portraits of Leyden professors.

We visited Siebold’s Japan Collection, the only complete one in Europe. He was eight years in Japan, and one of these in prison. The “Museum van Oudheden” carried me back to Egypt, Carthage, and Etruria. Mummies of babies, who died 3,000 years ago. The Museum of Natural History has a world wide fame. In ornithology and comparative anatomy, it beats Paris. Whole droves of skeleton genera, from an elephant to a mouse. The rector of the Leyden University is Dr. Nicholas Christian Kist. The Theological Professors are Kist, Van Hen gel, Van Oordt, and Scholten. Add, from the Philosophical Faculty, Rutgers, who reads on Exegesis, Antiquities, and Sanscrit; Juynball, on Hebrew and Arabic, and Stuffken on Logic. According to a hasty enumeration the Professors amount to thirty-three. Both at Utrecht and Leyden, the libraries are in buildings devoid of all costly display. At Leyden the accommodation for books is altogether insufficient. Leyden is the only place where we have seen bills advertising students’ rooms, in Latin; several windows held out cubicula locanda. But the medical lectures are already in Dutch, and the theologians will soon be forced to follow the example of Germany. Customs, how ever, take deep root in Holland, and one sees many usages which are known in Bergen and Somerset [New Jersey]. In our inn at Utrecht — the neatest and most home-like I ever .entered — five footstoves were in our breakfast room; and there were at least twenty in a pile beside the door of the great lecture-room. In one of Wouverman’s celebrated paintings at the Hague, we observed the same implement, of the same fashion, even to the rhomboidal cup for the charcoal, which always belongs to the Vuur Stoof. The same persistency might be exemplified in window-mirrors, storks, health-bulletins, and the clerical-looking undertaker, who invites to funerals in a dress as dignified as a bishop’s. Take it altogether, Holland, in its rural portions, gave me such unexpected pleasure, that my chief regret is that I had only a passing glance. Of the moral and religious state of Holland, I must refer you to more authoritative statements, which may be expected at the Evangelical Alliance next week, in London. A hurrying visit, like mine, to inns and galleries, does not give much insight beyond the surface; every word 1 write on this head must be subject to correction. We were of one mind in thinking that evangelical religion had not sunk in Holland so much as in Germany and Switzerland. A pious and intelligent officer, high in the service, declared to me his belief that the persecution of the Separatists was at an end. They abound in the province of Groningen, where also lax divinity is most rife. The Heidelberg Catechism is too much supplanted by abridgments, but is still regularly preached on. Many good people in the National Church contribute to the support of the pious Separatists. My informant himself does so; and further expressed his belief that thousands of the common people hold fast to the divinity and atonement of our Lord. At the same time great coldness and formality are prevalent, as in Scotland under Moderatism. But the churches are full, and the people have that Protestant and

Presbyterian look, which is in contrast with what one sees on the upper Rhine. The works of the great poet and historian Bilderdijk are read with affection. His admirer and friend Dacosta is well known as an evangelical believer. Yet the book-shops reveal a portentous preference for German, and especially for French literature, and the days of vernacular Dutch theology seem to be over. Many versions of English practical works are for sale; and at the Hague, in an open market, we found a tract-man vending Christian broad sheets and little books, of which I will show you a sample. Hopes are entertained that measures will soon be taken to restore in part the freer action of the Classical and Synodal Courts.

THE HAGUE, August 6, 1851.

I do wish I could for one instant show you a Dutch town. You will never believe me if I describe it. Broeck, as every body knows, is the cleanest place on earth; we failed to reach it, but know that there is neither horse nor cart road, that every pipe must have a stopper, that the pavements are in figures like mosaic, and the gutters running with pure water. English comfort is not so cosy, nor so universal. The Dutch of this city are the best-dressed people I have seen; fashion without finery, and plainness without dirt. Positively, whole rows of houses look more like china-ware than bricks and mortar. The Hyde Park of Haag is called the Bosch. It is a forest, two miles long, with a square green parade in the middle. For imitation of nature it surpasses the English parks. Dr. Robinson says it beats the Thiergarten of Berlin, and that of Munich. What music I have heard there just now at sunset! All the better sort of people seemed to be walking there, but orderly and composed. Holland is not seen to advantage by Americans who hasten up the Rhine. All my days shall I remember Arnhern, with Vevay, Eton, and Heidelberg. True, I felt the contrast more after three days in Cologne, of which Coleridge says —

“Ye nymphs who reign o’er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth cleanse the river Rhine?”

The Hague, as a royal residence, adds a subdued splendour to the Dutch neatness. I do not therefore take it as a sample of Holland. The streets are clean. The canals are not so intersecting as at Amsterdam, which is cut into 95 islands. The houses are peculiar, but neat. Much marble is used for the whole pavements of halls, and for the trottoirs in a few places. The bricks are so thin, and the white pointing so exact, and the paint of the wood-work so redoubled and polished, and the plate glass so large, that the fronts have an indescribable porcelain look. It is like the quietest parts of Third street [Philadelphia] thirty years ago, with a great addition to finish.

The Hollanders drink tea, which is very fine, and comes from Java. The quantity of East India furniture, japan-ware, &c., in Holland is very great. The little frames, which lift up with the sash, are very pretty. They conceal the people spying out of the spions, or mirrors. I used one of these mirrors at Leyden, and could sit and see a great wray up the street. They have an admirable linen curtain, which a simple cord pulls up, in fanfolds; very cheap and pretty. Every parlour-window looks beautiful from outside.

LONDON, August 19, 1851.

I arrived here in the night of the 9th, in twenty-two hours from Rotterdam. The English being poor sailors avoid this by preferring Ostend, or even skirting along to Calais. I would not have missed the voyage for much. As soon as I got to the noble Boompje of Rotterdam, and saw the Indiamen, and flags of all nations, and the “General Washington of Alexandria,”’ better-looking than them all, I began to take courage. A sniff of sea-air revived me after the unutterable stench of the canals, and every breath of the German sea did me good. We had more than 100 passengers, besides 108 calves. N. B. The veal of Holland is peculiar and a rarity. They serve it as the bonnebonche; it is as white and delicate as chicken. I could not say with Voltaire, “Adieu canards, canaux, canaille!” I shall always love Holland; the more for that it took me unawares. Amsterdam and Rotterdam are all. over like Chatham St. [New York] and South street [Philadelphia] combined. Amsterdam is alive with Jews, who seem the mobile part of the population. Erasmus’s statue at Rotterdam is in the very midst of a throng, not one whit above the Market street [Philadelphia] fishmarket, and we could scarce approach it for the folks taking down their movable stalls. Boats lie almost touching the really grand old image. The immense cathedral, frowning over the whole, is begirt with dark, musty shops, such as America has none of. The Boompje, or great maritime street, is a wide quay on the Maes, (the Rhine has here lost its name,) and is lined with such trees as are in the Philadelphia State House yard. But the heaviest shipping penetrates by canals into the very heart and bowels of the city, and is unloaded at the doors of stores.

What most pleased me in Holland, was to see how different the lot of woman is from that of the sex in France and Germany. Here are no women carrying heavy loads, or doing men’s work. Indeed, the Hollanders have a hundred devices to save the very men. Horses and carts abound in their fields. There are thousands of dog-carts; and wind and water are levied on for every kind of work. In Holland the chief reading, if I may judge by the bookstores, is first of French, then of German, then of English. This is unfavourable. Col. S. says the Separatists are no longer persecuted; that the people would not bear it. He thinks most of the poor country people retain sound doctrine. The rationalists are city-men and professors, and even these do not openly impugn the doctrines of grace. The churches are largely attended; which differs from Germany.

Here, in the thick of old London, a stone’s throw from Milk street, in Cripple-gate Within, it is as quiet as a New England village. In the evening after my arrival, coming ‘by the little old church of St. Mary’s in the street (Aldermanbury) of our first lodgings, I saw lights and could even discern the preacher, whose motions indicated earnestness. I slipped in near the further door. The preacher, a middl«-aged man, was very warmly engaged on Hebrews i.: “Thy throne, O God,” &c. He had not uttered many sentences, before I found him to be evangelical. His third point was on the perpetuity, his fourth on the glory of Christ’s Divine kingdom. He read part, but added much ex tempore, reading his numerous and fervent citations from a little Bible lying beside his MS. The application was full of point and unction. Coming just from the depths of popery and neology, and from the tossings of the German sea, I enjoyed as much as Jonathan when he found the honey-comb, and my eyes were lightened.

On the 13th we got into very good snug quarters at 34 Great Ormond street, Queen’s square, Lamb’s Conduit street. I went to survey Billingsgate. It is well, for they are putting up a lofty pile to supersede the old classical place. The fish-people were more decent than I expected. Crossing several vessels, I boarded one of the oyster-sloops, and got acquainted with the skipper. He ordered up some oysters for me to taste, such as sell for thirty-two shillings a bushel. They have a high flavour, and are small, round, flat, and not clustered. Larger ones, for nine shillings, are coarse and repulsive.

As I walked up Cheapside I met a school of little girls, belonging to some old foundation; brown petticoats, white capes, caps and pinafores; little old women of a former age. One can scarcely walk about in London, without seeing some token of the numerous charities of a better day. The supply of churches in

VOL. II. 15 the “City” unquestionably surpasses that of any town on earth. You sometimes pass a dozen in a five minutes’ walk, almost every one bearing a name of history. To-day I came all of a sudden on St. Swithin’s lane and church, and looked about for London Stone. I came near missing it, for an idle fellow, leaning against the wall of the church, entirely covered it. I feel a strange interest in the very old part east of the Monument, i. e. the part untouched by the fire of 1666. Some of the houses look as if Wiclif and Chaucer might have lived in them. I went to St. Paul’s, and heard some of the cathedral singing. Then I perambulated the great precincts. Two statues held me long, and I went back to them — Dr. Johnson and John Howard; and both are by John Bacon, the pious sculptor. Johnson’s is a noble work of art, though the idea is ancient, being neither more nor less than a Hercules. As to the rest, I grew weary of attempts to ring the changes on Victory supporting a dying hero. Emblematic and allegoric sculpture has done me no good.

The corner house opposite our lodgings is a gin-palace, brilliant as day. The next, a vintner’s. The next, opposite to us, is a sweet dairy shop. Most of the other houses in this Sansom-like [Philadelphia] street, are private. I have scarcely been able to write for the delicious street music. No music has given me such soothing pleasure, as what I have heard by chance. The gin-palace has a stream from dusk onward — boys, women with infants, smart young women, errand people. I see sad signs of drink in London, on a closer inspection. No drunkards abroad — the police see to that — but men and women muddled, and in that sleepy state which daily imbibing secures.

There is, in my judgment, a rancorous envy of America very general in a certain English class, and that a very large one. They lose no chance of laughing at the American part of the Exhibition, and ringing changes on Mexico, Slavery, &c. This is mingled with a certain dread and respect, which is flattering to us, but only implied. They think our cleverness amazing. Mr. Bull is somewhat slow to take an idea. Certain things in the American Exhibition will run all over England before they have done funning at us. For example, McCormick’s threshing-machine will cut down hundreds of English harvests. A rulingmachine sets the stationers aghast. In the care of the soil and the housing of crops, and the saving of land and produce, we are very far behind them, but as tar before them in tools and quick work. The American cradle is itself a century in advance of the old corn-growing countries. I travelled hundreds of miles through actual harvests. The sickle was universal, (so here also,) and the work slow, though neat. Ploughs and harrows were going for the next crop, while the wheat was in the shock or wagon; but nine-tenths of the ploughs I saw on the continent were shallow things, drawn by oxen or cows, and with a wheel. In Holland, things are more as in Somerset and Bergen, [New Jersey.]

The Christian Evangelical Alliance meets on the 20th, and lasts twelve days. I do not expect to go, after their acts concerning American slave-holders. I declared to Dr. Hamilton that whatever my private opinions were on slavery, I would sit in no body where my Southern brethren were excluded, and that I would not submit to any inquisition by English Dissenters.

LONDON, August 22, 1851.

It is impossible to give an idea of the way the street-people talk. It is not this or that word, but all the words; and hardly a name fails of some change. “Go by the Fondlin’ sir, ye’ll see no turn in’ to put ye out, till ye git to Lamb’s Cundick” — “theng’ ye” — “hit’s a good ‘apenny” — -“ye’ll bean American.” Mr., when I ask after his family, always says:

“Nicely! I assure you.”

I am now familiar with the sight of liveries, uniforms, and odd costumes. Postmen, servants, soldiers, proctors, bishops, some clergymen, coachmen, beadles, charity-scholars, wagoners, appear in a dress peculiar to each. The low population is very vile.

The opening of the Evangelical Alliance on the 20th was the most elevated season of devotion I ever attended. I stayed from ten till two. It was a great prayer-meeting at Freemason’s Hall. I had some delightful chat with Noel. Dr. R. Buchanan, of Glasgow, read an address of an hour, full of Presbyterian good sense. The Rev. Ed. Bickersteth (the son) made an address so full of modesty, humility, and love, that every one felt like embracing him. He is pale, small, and plain, but so simple, John-like, scholarly, and winning, that I rejoiced that the church of England had such men. When he alluded to his father, all the house was in tears. In this the English assemblies are just like the Virginians. There were three hymns and three prayers. The first hymn was,

“Come, let us join our cheerful songs.”

Another was Psalm 133, old version. The whole look of the assembly is English. So many stout, ruddy men; more [than English] uncouth, peculiar faces; more ugliness, greater strength, health, and play of countenance. Occasionally I would see a swarthy, sour-looking one, like me; he was always a Frenchman. Sir Culling E. Eardley, Bart., was made President. He stepped up gaily; a fresh, smiling little man; youngish; green frock, yellow waistcoat, white trousers, checked neck-cloth, brown gloves, and umbrella under arm while he spoke. The meeting was more familiar than with us. The speeches were numerous, and generally short; kindly, but often poor and sometimes very awkward. The sing-song tone of some was comical enough. The more educated and gentleman-like spoke most like Americans. A churchman, who offered an extempore prayer with open eyes, is the only Englishman whom I have heard say Icylnd and gyide. Sir Culling says “urgin’, givin’, utterin’, also illustret, mndiket. The meeting, which was very long, was one of animation, devotion, and many tears. There was much clapping of Bickersteth, and some “hear! hear!” Next day (21st) I heard Mr. Noel’s address at the Alliance. His manner is very easy, quiet, and perfectly colloquial. But he was never animated, and seldom made a gesture.

My ticket at the Tower showed that I was the 4,002d visitor yesterday. At the Alliance to-day I entered the house when they were discussing a paper of Dr. Baird’s, which I have not seen, but which is said to have been sound and patriotic. My name was mentioned by the President, Sir Culling E. Eardley, and I was suddenly asked whether I would consent to meet a Committee on the subj ect. Much surprised, I nevertheless replied as follows:

“‘I have been present, Sir Culling, only as a respectful and affectionate visiter, and am under obligations to leave town to morrow.’

“Sir Culling E. Eardley. ‘At what hour? ’

“l That question, let me answer, seems to imply that there is some hour in which I would engage in such a discussion. We, Sir Culling, who have preached to the slave, and stood by the slave in his dying moments, know too well the agitations which a question so complicated with other interests can produce. I have joined in the prayers, and at a remote part of the circle, in the praises of this festival of Christian love; and for one I am not willing to introduce an element into these conversations, which, happily, has been thus far absent; and not willing to engage in any gladiatorial exhibition on the subject of American slavery.’”

The spirit of certain Independent and Baptist members of the Alliance is quite offensive. I would not give place to such, by subjection; no, not for an hour. Some of the Church of England men and the best heads of the Free Church, are willing to hear the facts and to discuss the matter candidly and frater nally.

Lime-street, famous in theology,1 is a narrow, crooked alley. The number and closeness of the old churches is surprising. The day was when great regard was had to the spiritual wants of London. If the Non-conformist Reformation had not been quenched by war and by Cromwell, this home-missionary zeal would have made London the glory of England, and England of the world. As it is, the star has gone westward. It is in America that the genuine principle of English Protestantism has expanded itself. The spirit of slumber has fallen on the titular Church of England, which has neglected God’s poor. Little is to be hoped from the fiery fanaticism of political dissenters, who are constantly fevering themselves with some new excitement. God grant that American Christianity may go forward, with that life which I know so much better how to prize, after seeing the symptoms of moribund society here!

Street-shows and street-wonders would take up a book. This morning we had — 1, a venerable gray-haired man, without hat, led by a dog, cantillating his woes; 2, a trio, Hindoo man and two children, one beating a drum-keg with his hands, and singing his ills; 3, a show of unknown contents, like a Swiss char-a-bane. Accompanied Dr. Robinson to the British Museum, the great object of my curiosity. We made at once for the antiquity gallery. Here are Layard’s things. Most are figured in his books: the perfectly Caucasian and fine profile of the chief figures. The Egyptian faces show the Hindoo eye, unmistakably. Elgin Saloon! Models of the Parthenon as perfect, and as in ruins; representing even the friezes, metopes, and internal statue of Minerva. This is indeed the consummation of sculpture-art. Tangled, rumpled drapery, from the age of Pericles. My mind is made up in an instant. I am glad they are here. Here they are safe, and only here can they be examined nearly. Wonders on wonders in the Egyptian saloon, taking one back to the times of Moses.

On the 17th, I heard Dr. Hamilton on Col. iii. 16. Service 1 hour 45 minutes. Prayers long, before and after. Order thus: 1. Singing part of Ps. cxlvii. 2. Prayer. 3. Reading Col iii., ending with “The Lord bless his word.” 4. Singing of Psalm cxlvii. continued. 5. The Lord’s Prayer. 6. Sermon. 7. Singing of remainder of Psalm cxlvii. 8. Prayer. 9. Notices. 10. Blessing. The sermon was about an hour; was exuberant in similitude, and full of pathos. Altogether different from the one in June. Just like his “Mount of Olives.” Manner warm; sermon read, but with interpolations. Gown and

1 “The Lime Street Lectures,” by Non-conformist divines, 1*730-’31.

34:2 LETTEKS FROM EUROPE.

bands. Bible carried before him into pulpit. One of the deacons acted as precentor. All sang, but in bad time, and amazingly slow. I sat in a high pew, back, called the “Elders’ pew.” In it was Dr. Brown, Greek Professor at Aberdeen, former Moderator of the Free Assembly. The house was built for Irving. Some painted glass, on which the Scotch thistle and the burning bush. Seats in the aisles, and rush of people after the first prayer. Next day had good chat for an hour with Dr. Hamilton at his house, and thence with him to the British Museum.

This morning I went to Westminster Abbey for a leisurely survey. My more mature thoughts differ from what I expected. In no view that I can get of it does the outside of Westminster present itself as one idea, like Freiburg, Strasburg, or Cologne. As works of art few of the statues in the wilderness of tombs, redeem the English school from the common censure. Chantrey’s, even, are not all I hoped for. The best in my humble judgment is a bas-relief by Flaxman, representing a sister prostrate in all the effusion of hopeless woe upon a brother’s tomb — that of George Lindsay Johnstone in the north aisle.

BERWICK UPON TWEED, August 26, 1851.

Before leaving Cambridge yesterday, I found the rooms of Martyn and Kirke White at St. John’s. The chambers of Milton, at Christ’s, are no longer known. We were warmly invited to dine with the Fellows of Trinity, but we had already dined in King’s by invitation of the new Vice Provost, Mr. Heath. There are about sixty Fellows at Trinity College; about eight get £300; about eight £250; the rest £200. King’s about £250. Not necessary to reside. Thorwaldsen’s statue of Byron, which had been refused at Wesminster Abbey, is in the library of Trinity. I am yet to behold any thing so enchanting in its mixture of antique art and perfect nature as King’s College. The grounds are like green plush, without even a daisy, or an extra neous leaf on the smooth-rolled turf. This extends over many acres to the river, and is encircled and broken by majestic trees. The Fellows live like princes.

In six hours from Cambridge we reached Lincoln. We saw the noble exteriors of Ely and Peterborough cathedrals, the surpassing tower of Boston Church, and more fully Lincoln Cathedral and York Minster. And here we are on the edge of Scotland, England, Tweed, and the German Ocean. We are one day ahead of the Queen, who is to sleep at Doncaster to-morrow on the way to Edinburgh. I never saw so much wheat, even on the Rhine, as I have seen harvesting during a week. It is matter of unspeakable thanks. This I feel when 1 see often fifty persons gleaning in a stubble field. The country gets tumbled and rumpled as you get into Durham. They most awkwardly cut the wheat writh a scythe. But their stacks and ricks of immense height are worth going to see. Berwick is a fine old town; the clear, black situation, with hillside, Tweed-vale and sea, took me by surprise. There is no railway known to me, which goes so long by a river of picturesque beauty. Is there any lovelier valley than that of Tweed?

EDINBURGH, August 30, 1851.

The way from Berwick was along the Tweed by Kelso to Melrose. Every name recalled Border history, Burns, and Scott. How often has poor Sir Walter’s pony crept along the sweet, shaded lanes, through which I went to Abbotsford! I was in his superb library, and the study; saw Chantrey’s bust, with abundance of the things named by travellers. We crossed the Gala Water again and again., It is generally said this borderland is the loveliest in Scotland. The little rivers, pure as crystal, and winding in green vales, come purling in every now and then, and each is known in history; and here and there a castle or abbey 800 years old rises majestically among the verdant fields. The only trees are planted. The round hills are treeless, but green or purple writh heather, and the eye runs over such waves of this green ocean, that the distant herds and flocks look like specks. We came near Flodden-field and saw Dryburgh Abbey, where Scott lies. When we got to the quiet little inn at Melrose, and had lunched on broiled salmon-steak, the host said: (i There is an American here, who has been walking over the hills.” Presently he came in; it was Major Preston. I had already given him two adieu x. He accompanied us to Abbotsford.

How soon we lose the Northumberland burr on crossing Tweed, and what a different look in everybody! The children talking broad Lowland Scotch seem so funny. I hear some boys flying kites — “Jamie. I bate ye ‘till be ower heevie — ye’ll hae it agen the brae.” This is not as stumping as the Yorkshire “He maxum pikuin,” (he makes them pick them;) and “Sneckyett” is “shut the gate,” for they have no article.

We are at 20 George’s square. Mr. Dickson met us at the terminus with a cab and real Scotch hospitality. I enjoy a i Christian house more than you can know, till you have been l three months in hotels. Queen Square is a private street; no horse or vehicle passes. Sir Walter Scott passed his boyhood in this row, No. 27. Back of us is Watson’s Hospital, with the meadows, as the fine avenue is called, which leads to the greeu outskirts. I cannot note a tithe of the sights. The Universityrooms of ChalrncrV, Wilson’s, and Hamilton’s Lectures. Statue of Burns, by Flaxman, his last work. The Harrow, where Hogg lodged. Houses of Hume, Blair, Knox, Cardinal Beatoun. The Wynds; the Tolbooth; Grey Friars Church. The Castle. The Antiquarians’ Museum. The Advocates’ Library, where the librarian showed us a letter of Charles I., when a boy, a Mazarin Bible, and the autograph of Waverley. I find Edinburgh, as often described, “beautiful for situation,” beyond all cities. It has eminences, valleys, architecture, mountains, water, wide prospeets, and thronging memories. Surely Scotland is “a field, which the Lord hath blessed.”

The intelligence, culture, and warmth of the excellent persons I meet, is delightful. They are the quickest people I ever saw, and this is united to great piety. I have fallen into the very circle to which McCheyne’s friends belong. Hewitson (his life is published in America) was an intimate of Mr. Dickson’s, whose name occurs often in it. The piety of the Free Church folks of this school runs in the vein of exceeding tenderness and humility. Among many others, I must remember the Rev. Andrew Cameron, editor of the Christian Treasury; the Rev. Mr. Gould, of the Reformed and Presbyterian church, editor of the new edition of Owen’s Works; Mr. Johnstone, of the house of Johnstone & Hunter, chief publishers for the Free Church; Dr. Hetherington, the historian; Dr. W. Lindsay Alexander, the Independent; Mr. James Bonar, editor of the Assembly’s Proceedings; Mr. Hackett, of the Advocates’ Library.

On the 28th the Queen entered about 4 o’clock, through the Dumbiedykes to Holyrood. I had a close view. Prince Albert was by her in an open carriage. The next carried the Prince of Wales and Princess Royal. Instead of receiving the Queen in the narrow streets, the body of the population poured out and spread themselves in a broad, green valley, between Holyrood palace and the range of hills including Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags, &c. This ravine was covered by tens of thousands, not in a level mass, but stretching up the sides of the hills on the clean turf, higher and higher, till the remote groups were almost too small for vision. The crags resounded with enthusiastic acclamations and the roar of cannon. So happy a multitude and so sublime a gathering I had not seen. If the Queen has any heart, she must have been overcome. She looked hearty, though she had come 250 miles that day. Lord John Russell was very much cheered, but I heard some Popish hissing. He visited the New College of the Free Church. The people love to speak of the Queen’s punctuality and energy. On the night of her arrival she went out to see Lady Buccleuch, who is ill, and the next morning she went to Donaldson’s Hospital before her early start northward at 8 o’clock. At the Hospital provision fa made for the instruction of 300 boys. The building is so grand, and the grounds and prospects so delightful, that it is thought of for a palace.

At the “Ragged School” we saw 300 children, all without means of living. They come every morning and go home every night. When they come they strip off all their tatters, go into a bath, put on school-clothes, learn, work, have three meals, then put on old tatters and go home.

On the 1st of this month partridge-shooting began. The number is surprising of gentlemen with gun-cases, &c., that one meets. They have regular dog-tickets on the railway.

At the College of the United Presbyterian Church we saw the Library, and the beautiful Hall in which their Synod meets. They have about 130 students. Their professors are all pastors, and their session is only seven weeks! It is common for the ministers to live several miles out of town. Dr. Eadie comes here every day from Glasgow to his lectures. Almost every pastor is away at this season.

BRIGG OF TURK, PERTHSHIRE, September 2, 1851. Dr. Robinson and I left Edinburgh yesterday morning. I sit at a window of my bed-room in this lonely mountain inn, just at the opening of the Trosachs, or pass to Loch Katrine, to which I expect to walk after breakfast. All day yesterday and all to-day, it is the scenery of “the Lady of the Lake,” and this is really what draws people here; for there is grander scenery in Europe, but men love to go where poets have been. On the way from Edinburgh were Linlithgow Palace, Bannockburn, and Stirling Castle. If I had got to Stirling a day sooner I should have seen the Highland Sports, such as pitching the stone, tilting, broad sword, highland-fling, wrestling, &c. As it was I saw plenty of beggars and barcfoots, and part of the 79th regiment in the castle, all bare-kneed, but mighty brawny and big. I began to see the Celtic visage and hear the Gaelic, which is a sweet language and very like Irish and Welsh. This morning the sun rose beautifully over a mountain. The air was Alpine. Huts in the distance had low roofs, and sometimes no chimney, the blue peat-reek coming out of the door. Wherever you looked, all was tumbled up and down in fantastic hills and dales, but perfectly soft and perfectly green, except where the purple heather covered the sides. An old Highlander sat in the fog, wrapped in his plaid, with his shaggy dog, watching a herd. Hay was making in

VOL. II. 15* some little patches far off, and through my glass I saw a little girl using her hands for pitchfork, and a baby propped up in the hay. We got into a vehicle, without cover, and drove through the Trosachs to the Loch. While we waited for the steamboat I mounted a hill, and lay down in the heather. It is soft and “fragrant, and the flower is beautiful. It is not unlike clover at a distance, but taller, and far more uneven, and when viewed closely, is a beautiful bushy flower. I can well understand now how people might sleep on it, and how the fleeing Covenanters, in hiding, could escape by means of it. No wonder it is the darling growth of Scots. Almost every one travelling carries some heather-bloom somewhere about him. On the boat we had a Highland piper. Why did he not play “Hail to the Chief,” which was made for this lake 1 He played “Roy’s Wife,” and “the Campbells are comin’.”

We got out in sight of the house where Rob Roy was born. We then rode five miles to Loch Lomond. No woods, no farms, no cultivation; all hills and muir-land, and peat-bog; all green, with thousands of fern and heather; and mountains before us to the north and on both sides. I saw peat or turf burning for the first time. They cut it in the moors, and pile it in stacks. It makes a nice, gentle fire, and the smell is pleasant. The people have little tillage, and live by their cattle and sheep. Almost every man wears a plaid around him, and so do half the gentlemen tourists. Stunted trees of tangled growth sometimes appear. Stone fences run irregularly up and down, often surmounted by scrubby dwarf-oak hedge, and with every crevice full of mingling fern, broom, and heather. Black cattle and blackfaced sheep roam over the muir-land. The whole scenery is wild and novel, but thus far less lofty than I expected. The trip in a cart from Katrine to Lomond was very jolting, but O the singular, dream-like wildness of those hills and moors, where a man would be lost in half an hour, if he left the only road, and yet no forest! Look on every side, and see the horizon shut in sometimes by rocky mountains of every varied contour which primitive granite can take, but seldom bare, and for miles together gently blushing with the flower of the heaths now in their glory. Within this bounding rim, see the country tossed up and down, as if the ocean in a long roll had suddenly been turned into green land; for everywhere the green is perfect, and the matted grass is short and thick like moleskin. Mark the silver rill that meanders on the left to join Lake Artlet to Loch Lomond, showing that we have passed the water- shed, and go down. Observe the low piles of granite rocks, without mortar, without window, thatched or turfed, the smoke coming out of the chimney or door, and the truncated pyramid of black peat standing by. Do not neglect the million gay flowers with which God has beautified these solitudes, nor the fantastic mists and clouds that roll about the eminences of Ben An, Ben Venn, and Ben Lomond.

GLASGOW, September 10, 1851.

At Balloch, on lake Lomond, we took rails for Dumbarton; saw the wonderful castle, but did not hear “Dumbarton drums beat bonnie O.” I had seen many castles, but for singular prominency this exceeds. The twin mount, on which it is built, rises out of the river beach, as if a gigantic elephant had pushed himself half way out of the flats. This, like Stirling, is kept garrisoned, by provisions in the treaty of union. Here we took steamboat for Glasgow, and ascended the broad Clyde. Every mile showed us the approach of a great commercial and manufacturing city. It is a noble town, is Glasgow, (as the English express it.) The college is of the grand stone common here, and has some massy houses and quadrangles. The professors have quite a street of academic mansions. The Hunterian Museum is rich in MSS., printed incunabula, and medals. A Virgil of 1470. A Golden Legend, Caxton, 1483. An Anthologia, by Aldus, 1503. A Plotinus, ed. princeps, 1513. A stereotype plate, used by Ged, in his Sallust, 1744, long before Didot. Principal Macfarlane preaches in the old cathedral. The beautiful choir is the place of worship; behind this is a Lady Chapel; then a Chapter House, used as a vestry. The cry.j£ts are very old and in good repair. Here Scott makes Rob Roy to have listened to the long sermon. The Green, or Common, a lawn with a drive of 2£ miles, was swarming with poor, drying clothes, and young folk playing and lying on the grass in a smart rain. The Bridge Gate, full of wretched poor, such as I have seen nowhere else. The Tron Church and St. John’s, memorable for the labours of Chalmers. The new parts of Glasgow are better built than Edinburgh; though the site is far inferior, yet equal to almost any other place. Houses of the finest sort rent for £100 to £120. They are built of a dark solid stone laid in large pieces. The smoke of factories keeps the town in such a smoke as I have not seen before. The Mitchells are full of hospitable warmth. Mr. Andrew Mitchell lives at Helensburgh, twenty-nine miles down the Clyde opposite Greenock, but comes up daily to his warehouse in Virginia street.

I attended, at Grey Friars Church, the ordination of Mr. Leach, the missionary for Madras, by the United Presbytery. Dr. King preached a great sermon from 2 John 8. It was memoriter, and eloquent in a high degree; polished, ingenious, and faithful. They had a choir, and artificial music, but all sang.

Dr. Symington, of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, (brother of the theological professor of Paisley,) showed me an original of the Solemn League and Covenant. I breakfasted with the Rev. David Brown, of Free St. James’s — the writer on the Millennium. Went to Paisley and saw the Abbey and Dr. Witherspoon’s old church.

The 7th was spent in a visit among the Highland lochs, with the Mitchells, Rev. Mr. McEwen, &c. The great characteristics of Scottish scenery were here apparent. The granitic hills come down everywhere to the water, leaving little laps of land for towns and seats. They run down in such wise to the great estuaries that they are all cut into indentures like glove-fingers. These run up among the highlands, and are girt with soft hill sides, beyond which mountains rise and peep. I was among these lochs, sometimes in steamboat, sometimes in row-boat, and often on foot. On every hand were towns, churches, mansions, noble seats, but generally wild walks for cattle and sheep. We saw Loch Long, Gare Loch, Loch Goil, and Holy Loch. In so doing, wre saw Greenock, Gourock, Dunoon, (of which Dr. Mackay is minister,) Ardentinny, Roseneath, (where is the Duke of Argyle’s seat.) The population of Glasgow fly to these seaward slopes. Some of the towns are made up of villas. Plenty of Gaels, with kilt and mull and guttural but soft language. The nestling churches and manses of Presbyterians differing only in name, and the cheerful aspect of a pleasure- taking yeomanry, gave me an unwonted delight.

The 8th — a lovely, placid Sabbath — was spent in Helensburgh. Such places and such scenes must have been in the mind of Grahame when he wrote his “Sabbath.” The hills lie softly on every side of the frith and around the neighbouring lochs. Small towns twinkle in the half-veiled sun across the water. The harvests, only partly cut, shine over the rounded fields. There is a perfect stillness. The temperature just admits, but does not demand fire. The town seems about the size of Princeton, and has an Established Church, a Free Church, a United Presbyterian, and an Independent. I worshipped with the third of these. The assembly was about equal to yours in Trenton. They were plain people in general, with a considerable sprinkling of gentry. A sister of the Duke of Argyle is a frequent hearer. Mr. McEwen preached in the morning on Col. iii. 17, the next verse to what Dr. Hamilton preached on in London. I preached in the afternoon from Jude 20, 21. It was like a revival meeting all day, for earnest hearing, looks of fire and affection, and psalmody that I never can forget. In the evening at Mr. Mitchell’s, some one suddenly observed that every man in the room was a minister’s son; and we soon discovered that four of the five were ministers’ grandsons. One of the company was Mr. 1 1 ugh Moncrieff, a descendant of the original Seeeder. The Secession body gave more than two-thirds to the United Presbyterian Church. They are together the most liberal of the Scotch Presbyterians. They have much of the best pulpit talent in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The prayers affect me more than the preaching.

The Duke of Argyle’s domain is very large, and I passed on foot through that part of it which lies between Loch Long and the Gare Loch. I passed the solid, modest new Free Church, with its tent for sacraments, and visited the Established Kirk of Roseneath. Turning into a green lane, I found about twenty-six low stone cottages close side by side. Then came the ancient grave-yard, overhung by trees, with walled enclosures for noble families, &c. Outside of this is the parish school and school master’s house, very well built and snug. The dominie showed me the church, which stands in the midst of the grave-yard. It is on a very narrow parallelogram, by far the narrowest church I ever saw. The pulpit and pews are unpainted, and the stone floor is cold and even wet. The sacramental table was longitudinally the whole length. Quality folks use the gallery, and the Duke’s pew is just opposite to the pulpit and singularly near it. Going out of the grave-yard, you enter a park belonging to the kirk, with the most extraordinary avenue of yews within, and limes without. They mingle for such a length, that in the remote perspective it is almost night-like. This charge of perhaps £180 cannot have more than forty hearers. The manse is a beautiful cottage, overgrown with vines, about half a mile off. From here you look over the Loch to Row, famous fbr the “Row heresy.”

We were accompanied on our return to Glasgow by Mr. James Smith of Jordanhill, who, at 70, has his yacht-pea-jacket on, and talks freely about Greek antiquities. He presented me a copy of his learned monograph on Paul’s Shipwreck. He is of the Establishment, [Presbyterian.] More walks over the city. Called on Dr. Runciman of St. Andrew’s (Established) Church. He does well here, and has filled his church from the wynds. His reception of me was cordial and elegant.

My mind, as you would expect, has been much on the Presbyterianism of Scotland. The surface-view, which a mere guest takes, is perhaps worth little, but I am seeing much and hearing more in answer to my queries. In general, the absolute state of religion in Scotland is higher than I thought. The events following the Disruption have wrought more widely and deeply. The effect on the Establishments has been to make them better and not worse. There is not a parish [Established] preacher, who would not resent the charge of being Arminian. They have noble charities, and the Normal schools, &c., are palatial. The Free Church is striving hard to keep up at the speed which they began. Nowhere, except in some new-measure spots of old, have I seen such signs of universal working, by Bible-classes, tracts, books, hymns, domiciliary visits, care of poor, Sabbath schools, &c. They cannot help remembering their undue zeal against Voluntaries, and burden themselves by claiming to be the Kirk, and so by planting a church beside every national church all over Scotland. Their mighty man is Hugh Miller. He is hot, excitable, and on occasion implacable. I see much to make me believe that the power of Scotch Presby terianism is in the United Presbyteries. They have no hypotheses in petto. They are more like us. They have acquired a status by the Disruption, and work heartily with the Free Church. There never can be any vital prelacy here. The Episcopalians here are about as often mentioned as the Moravians with us. The clergymen of the Free Church whom I have seen are exceedingly well-informed as to our American churches, and acquainted with our literature. The education of the rising ministry is going forward with great zeal. In acquaintance with all the modern works of German interpretation, the new race of ministers will be much before those of the Anglican Church. When I speak of the Free Church, I mean that the remark should apply to all the Dissenters of Scotland, between the different classes of whom there is an increasing fellowship. Even the Reformed Presbyterians appear to be separated by a scarcely distinguishable interval from the others. The angriness of the controversy concerning the Atonement seems to have departed; whether “with any sacrifice of old Calvinistic tenets in any quarter it would not become a passing stranger to determine. Both in Edinburgh and Glasgow the eye is continually saluted by Presbyterian structures. Many of these are in the modern Gothic style, and some are florid in a high degree. Their interiors, however, are less airy and ornate than with us. All the Scottish churches have vestries, and all the ministers wear the Geneva gown or cloak, which has come down from the days of Knox. In some churches the preacher pronounces the Lord’s Prayer immediately before the sermon. The old version of the Psalms is universal. The prayer after sermon is uniformly longer than with us, and the service varies from an hour and three-quarters to two hours. At this season the usual hours in town are eleven and two. The custom of “turning up” the passage remains in all its strength, and hundreds of Bibles are rustling at once. So far as I can learn, the topics which fill the pulpits are just those which fill the Catechism; and the general strain of preaching is not so much alarming as persuasive. The person and work of our Lord form a prominent part of public discourses. Great diversities, of course, obtain among men of various gifts and temper, but in general there is much earnestness in public addresses. In the cities many sermons are read from the manuscripts, but the country parishes scarcely tolerate this.

BELFAST, September 16, 1851.

If you knew that my letters are generally written on my knee, you would wonder that there is any handwriting about them. I write this, that you may know of my safe arrival in the land and province of my progenitors, after the dangers of the North Channel. There is something very solemn in approaching a new country by morning twilight; both my views of Ireland have been such. As this is the great mart of the linen trade, one of my visits was (with Dr. Maclean and Mr. Thomas Mitchell) to the Linen Hall, where we saw the article in all its varieties. An English Quaker gave us many explanations. He showed us the different bleached and unbleached fabrics. Some times a linen-house pays a thousand pounds in a week to hand-loom cottage-weavers. But cottage-spinning, so famous in the days of my great-grandfather, has been done away by machinery. We saw how gaudily the shirtings are put up for the American market. Also the difference of the linen for the British trade, which has less starch and less “beetling,” as a pounding is called, which flattens the thread. The British fabric looks as well after washing as before. No person whom I have questioned, knows any thing of the new operation for dressing flaxen thread, so as to remove the “cold feel” which distinguishes linen from cotton goods. It was boasted that this would make flax take the place of cotton. American flour is largely used here, as also in Glasgow; at about £1 Is. the barrel.

A jaunting-car took us to Cave Hill, where we had as good a view of the Lough and surrounding country as this hazy atmosphere allows. The Divis and other hills are fine. Abundance of water comes down from these heights. The country houses look well, but every thing lacks the trim finish to which my eye has been accustomed. The hills are without heather and often bare. In and near the town I see numbers of ne’erdo-weels, half-naked children, and canal-digger-like men, but no tokens of absolute distress. I am surprised that things are so familiar. It arises from the American look of the brick houses, the imperfect keeping of the lawns, and the Scotch-Irish countenance of the peasantry.

The drive along the sea-shore to the Giant’s Causeway was delightful. The beach is not sand, but generally beautiful rock, often limestone, which keeps the water from being muddy. It is as clear as a spring, and the mottled bottom has a novel appearance. The curves of the bays are beautiful. But every thing derives its character from the cliffs and mountains, which were always on our left, rising high and magnificent, with basalt columns and wonderful freaks of the igneous rocks, giving premonitions of what appears in its perfection at the Causeway. The whole north-east shore derives its picturesque loftiness from the primitive and basaltic rock, which girdles the inner limestone and other stratified rocks of the island. “When we began to turn inland, we had beauties of a different sort; mountain prospects, long winding treeless glens, hill-sides covered with the chequered oat-fields and pastures, occasional moors with peat, cottages and flocks, browsing goats and merry peasants. On leaving Ballycastle, where is a fine old ruin, we found a highly cultivated country. The church of Ballintoy seems almost in the sea, and the manse is a cold, white solitary house looking over the water to Rathlin. I saw the sun go down, a disk of molten gold, over the foreland of Bengore. About nine in the evening I saw a beautiful Aurora Borealis — well so called at this point. It was a zone arched over a chord of about sixty degrees of the horizon, having Arcturus in the centre, with bright radiations striking up from several points.

The prints generally represent the scene about the Causeway, so as to give the neighbouring precipices as the Causeway. These precipices are grand, and are likewise columnar, but they are nothing to the main object. The Causeway is well named. It is a platform jutting out in three capes into the sea, toward which it inclines. It is not very high above the water. It is made of columns, side by side, perfectly dry and close. You cannot thrust a knife between some of the junctures. These columns go down unknown lengths. They are exposed on the hill-sides, so that you can see them joined together in pieces. Where one end joins another there is a concavity fitting a con vexity, which is as wonderful as any thing. It is on the tops of these joined pillars that you walk. The surface is a little uneven, hut in general may be described as plane. The columns are of dark gray basalt. They are polygonal prisms — hexagons, pentagons, a few heptagons. I saw one nonagon, one square, and one rhombus. The little concavities in some hold sea- water, which leaves salt; and on most of them are numerous lichens, and even small flowers. Piles of these blocks are taken away, even to America. Our guide delivers a set at Liverpool for about £4. There are two famous caves. I entered one of them, Port Coon. The effect is awful. You have at your back a cavernous depth of dark, and in front the wild ocean roaring in to your feet.

DUBLIN, September 18, 1851.

My first stage from Belfast was to Armagh, a fine old town, where the Papists are building a cathedral, which Dr. Cullen says shall surpass the Anglican one. Here we coached it across the county to Castle Blayney. The country has the same undulations, but looks worse; smaller patches, ruder hovels, more wastes, later oats, and dirtier folks. At Blayney we took cars for Dublin. Drogheda is a seaport, and has a brisk commerce, fine edifices, a stern, middle-age gate, but we drove through long streets of blank, ugly, stone, one-story thatched hovels, and were infested with beggars. From there southward through the counties Louth and Meath, the beauties increased every mile. Often we were by the sea, and at Malahide Bay were carried over its noble arm. Howth Head is a grand eminence, and the approach to Dublin is famous. Its capacious bay, its broad river, its eight bridges, and its superior public edifices, tell of grandeur, which is every day decreasing.

Saw the poplin-looms at Atkinson’s, Sackville street. He sells nothing but poplins, and only to retail-buyers. Got a sample of a dress worn by the Queen, fifteen dollars a yard. Phoenix park is seven miles round, and contains 1,760 acres.

I made a trip to Inch to inquire about the relatives of our servants at home. Their mother had gone to America, but was directed to a brother. I went there. Poor man! he denied his name, and was afraid to come out, fearing no doubt some proctor or landlord’s agent to turn him out. At this point I made known my purpose, and a great change came over them. As many as seven persons, old and young, came out of the cottage-door, and gathered around my jaunting-car. They asked many questions about the girls, and said all here were well. When I rode away, the blessings of the whole group followed me in most hearty Irish. The country around Thurles, Drum, and Inch, is very beautiful and the roads are like a floor, with walls or hedges. Indeed I can no longer say Ireland is without levels, for we were in a stretch of flat land most of the way from Dublin.

But then on our right we had the blue ridge of Sliebh Bloom, which we flanked, and took its south-west on our right in going to Limerick. At Thurles we got out. The most of it is of white rough-cast stone houses thatched; with irregular streets and a little dirty market-place, where a score of women have piles of excellent potatoes on the earth. Beggars and tattered hordes of lazzaroni, more ragged than those of Drogheda, roamed in the ways. Thurles is a very churchly little town, and was once a great one. Three castles in ruins, a monastery, two nunneries, a college, an English church, a chapel, barracks for the soldiery, barracks for the constabulary police, poorhouscs, (here as elsewhere fine edifices, and lately containing 1,700 poor,) female schools, and other charities. Here the great Popish Synod met some months ago.

I inquired at Inch for L.’s father, and saw him. He bears a good character, but is very poor, and patched to a mournful degree. He had heard nothing from L. for eighteen months. The poor old man has no longer any work at the college. Great numbers have gone to America from Tipperary. Twelve cottages were desolate on a mile of road. Only one tenant is left on Mr. Trant’s estate, which is six miles long. This is the worst county in Ireland for shooting landlords and proctors. The land is good, but the people look dogged and unhappy. From Thurles to Limerick we had broad pastures and romantic hills. Take it altogether, Ireland is a land of unsurpassed charms of the green, wild, and quiet sort. You are hardly ever out of sight of some ivy-crowned ruin, castle, church, or abbey, telling of the power which has gone by.

Roman Catholic Ireland is depopulating in some sense. Small cottage-farms are disappearing, large estates are growing larger, fewer hands are required for pastures and sheep walks; better cultivation will make this beautiful, this enchanting island, more beautiful and enchanting; the Celtic race will be increasing in America and Australia, and the over-stocked priesthood of Ireland will lose its slaves and its supports. Ulster is in a different case. It smiles with agricultural, pastoral, and manufacturing wealth, and has spots unsurpassed on earth.

I found that our Minister, Mr. Abbott Lawrence, had been at Limerick and at Galway, and was down the river with Lord Monteagle and others. As to Limerick — 50,000 population — the new town is beautifully built, no place of it size is more showy. The people in the good streets are handsome and elegant; but the masses in the over-crowded lanes and along the quays and noble bridges, beat all I ever beheld for abandoned, rowdy, jovial, beggarly appearance. Such rags, such stench, such impudence, such almost naked, though often ruddy and handsome Irishism, I find not even in Ireland. The grand old cathedral is begirt with offensive smells and fearful sights. I doubt whether Venice is more full of license than Limerick. Here popery revels. The new part of Limerick is more fair and regular than Belfast, with streets like Chestnut street somewhat vulgar ized. But who can describe the gangs of wretched, wanton, roystering, impudent women and children, half-naked, tattered and foul, who sit, sprawl, lie, squat, bluster and laugh about the cathedral, the bridges, and the quays!

The mountains on our left after quitting Dublin, were no doubt part of the Wicklow cluster. Kildare was an interesting point. Its ruined abbey, and tower 130 feet high, are grand objects. Portarlington is noted as the place of Wellington’s education. A French colony till lately had French preaching here. There are many boarding-schools, and we saw a bevy of fine young girls going to the capital. All the country scenes rich; much pasture, heavy hay, some oats, occasional bog with piles of turf, few cottages, few labourers in the fields, and these were more haggard and woe-begone than in even the middle counties. This whole vale is more wooded than usual. As wo entered Tipperary the land looked flatter and more neglected, but with more numerous broken-down castles and some good mountains towards the south.

GALWAY, September 21, 1851.

On the 20th I left Limerick on the top of an old-fashioned mail coach, of which there are more remaining in Ireland than in England. The roads wrere fine, and perfectly smooth all day, and as the country is limestone, and rocky, were without exception lined by stone walls for all the sixty-four miles (Irish) to Galway. Castles and abbeys in ruins were scarcely ever out of sight. The, country grew poorer and rockier as we went on, and the small dust of the limestone roads was exactly like rye-flour. At Clare, a small wretched town, with a beautiful site, wre saw hundreds of young women and girls on the river bank. I was told their mates have gone to America. The fields look stony and poor, and the whole country is marked up by the ugly stone dykes. Moors or bogs are not very frequent. The roads abound with foot-people; they are squat, flat-faced, homely, and often brown. At Ennis we left the coach for a jaunting-car. Ennis is the chief town of the county Clare. It is made up chiefly of one-story hovels, thatched. It was market-day, and the peasantry were crowding the marketplace. This day, it seemed to me, that I saw more asses than in all my .previous life. The same poor, barren, stony, white land, prevailed all the way to Gort; but when we came near to Gort, we arrived at the demesne of the Viscount Gort, extending some miles. We drove through it. Though he is poor, the castle is fine, and the grounds are in a fine style of landscape-gardening, with parks, deer, avenues of ash and beech, dark and romantic; glimpses over the lovely lake Cootra of sloping mountains, and exit by a grand carved portal. A little beyond we got out to see a great natural curiosity. A river, called Blackwater, runs out of the lake, and then goes under ground, and reappears in a wonderful manner in a deep place fifty feet down like a goblet, and called the Punch Bowl. We are now in the county Galway, Province of Connaught. It was market-day at Gort also, and from the inn where we dined we looked out on the broad but irregular market-place. Here we were among the aboriginal Irish. The women wear a dark blue cloak and hood, and red petticoat. The scene was novel and lively. Crowds and groups, stalls, booths, and tents. One was selling kitchen stuff by auction. A woman had four hats on a board, and another two. One had dulse, [an edible sea-weed.] There were carts of buttermilk packed in straw around kegs. Stalls of shoes, and of nails in little parcels. A woman brings a hen or a dozen eggs for a mile. A girl had a donkey to scfll, and held it by a straw rope. Pigs, washed clean, were conducted by the same sort of line. Potatoes, of course, abounded. Hay in bundles; heather brooms; sacks of oatmeal. Plenty of rags and little appearance of dress. Red coats here and there pre dominating over the sport, Connaught-men, and a good many in the constabulary uniform.

We took another car, and posted to Galway. The samescene; walls, ruined cottages, roads full of women in hoods, and groups of travellers from the market. Occasionally, a “plantation” announced a rich estate. Ruined cottages, with only walls. All gone to America. An English clergyman tells me he counted 114 such ruined cabins in eight miles in Mayo. Galway and Mayo suffered more than any other counties. I passed a hut, and saw the woman on the straw-bed, her only seat. All speak Irish. Two poor little boys, about four years old, came to beg. The larger one said, apologizing for the silence of the other, “he has no Inglis.”

Galway is the fifth city of Ireland, and has about 20,000. It has some fine buildings. The Queen’s College is- magnificent. There are also the two court-houses, the Union or Poor-House, the usual barracks, several monasteries, and several Catholic chapels. But whole streets are of one-story hovels, close together, dark and thatched. The noble estuary and neighbouring lake give dignity to a place which is far, far beyond all I ever dreamed of for squalor, filth, and poverty.

On the Sabbath I found the principal street crowded with people even more than Princeton in an old-time Commencement. All talking Irish. Not one well-dressed person. Even the female sex shows no care for finery or cleanliness. Dark cloaks and broad-ruflled caps, without bonnets or shoes or stockings, and with red petticoats. Women carrying babies in their cloaks behind them. It is difficult to get through the throng in the mid-street. Women in red wrappings. Lines of women sitting on the ground. Little appearance of drink or gaiety. No good faces, but many open, funny ones. I am reminded of squaws. I never saw such rags, holes, fringes of tatters, filth, combless black locks, and babies half exposed and shamefully uncovered. I saw a thousand such. These are Irish of the Irish. Men in knee-breeches. Beggars follow you for a furlong full of wit, comic entreaty, and prayers for your welfare. A gentleman, who has been at Connemara, says their car was surrounded by a hundred at once. The stench of the ways is horrible. Near the chapels the crowds are indescribable. The English church was a Catholic one till the time of Edward VI. It is of fine stone, a regular cross, with a lady-chapel added to the west side of the south transept. Since the twelfth century it has had a foundation for a warden and six vicars, who still reside. The service was going on, and I heard the conclusion of an evangelical discourse (to the military) from Mr. D’Arcy, who is a Galway man. He kindly showed me over the house. The nave is walled up, and the service is in it and the choir and south transept. Mr. D’Arcy preached again (to the congregation proper) extempore, on Rom. v. 1, a right) Calvinistic sermon upon justification by faith and imputed righteousness. I never heard better organplaying. It was almost a cathedral service, and two voices in the choir were transcendent. I had not gone to the Presbyterian church, having heard that it was Arian; but finding I had been misinformed, I went there in the afternoon, and heard a young man preach to twenty-five hearers. The Protestants are increasing, and are about one in twenty.

Billingsgate is a paradise to the fish-market of Galway. A chatter rises from it to the bridge above, which is unlike all I have met with. Though so overcrowded and underclothed, these Connaught Irish seem peaceable. During the famine it was indeed otherwise. As I looked at an ass with panniers of bread, the post-boy said “a year or two ago that load could not have gone by here without an escort.” As we entered the walled hill-road, which leads into Galway, we met cart after cart for miles, all full, having more women than men, and in some cases all drunk. We met gangs of the same sort on foot in the road. The post-boy said robberies were frequent not long since along here, and that he should stop in Galway all night.

An optical phenomenon was observed by Dr. Maclean, Mr. Mitchell, and me, near the Queen’s College. Persons in some numbers, walking on a quay, or river-promenade, looked so much taller through a scarcely perceptible mist, that we all agreed the same appearance would, in ordinary circumstances, indicate a stature of thirty feet. It was fearful.

The poor people are all emigrants in intention. I never talked with one among hundreds, who did not speak of America as of Paradise. The population still seems to an American eye immense. The priests walk among them like a superior race, elegantly dressed, and with an air not unlike that of our own clergy. I rejoice to add there is a work of God going on among these lowest of European Papists. Last month in Connemara alone, 1,900 Papists were “confirmed” under church-missions. In Mayo there is persecution. The Rev. Hamilton Townsend was thrice shot at in his own house. After all, ray general conclusion is, from repeated conversations with the most informed gentlemen, that a better day is coming. The very famine has tended to improve agriculture; the very depopulation also has thrown thousands out into a new soil, and at home has aggre gated innumerable ill-tilled patches barely sustaining life into large farms or sheep-walks requiring fewer hands, and gradually filling with new tenants. But this involved in part a change of race. Nowhere has the pure Celtic blood been energetic. Unlike as are a Highlander and a Connaught man, they are as to nnthrift and idleness, identical. Large numbers of English labourers arc coming into Mayo. In the east of Ireland the mixture of Celtic with Anglo-Norman blood has produced the finest physical result on earth. The better class at Dublin and Limerick, the people you meet in carriages, are by all odds the very handsomest people I ever saw. In Galway one has the population of a city with the squalor and brutality of a hovel. I dare say there are a thousand houses in the town without a floor. The contrast between these and the palaces of the regiment, the police, and the priests, tells a painful tale. I dwell thus on Galway, because it is the worst place I have been in.

DUBLIN, September 23, 1851.

Leaving Galway, we came directly eastward by the Midland Great South-western Railway, 127 miles across Ireland to Dublin. The first part of our way was stony like the road from

Gort. The number of ruinous cabins was great. Castles were numerous. As we advanced through the great limestone plain, the country constantly improved in verdure, houses, and crops. After leaving Cranmore we were in quite a plain. We were some time in the county Roscommon, formerly the most turbulent in Connaught. Athlone is an important central point, but its glories are in ruins. Great fortifications, and signs of military force. The British government pursues a policy like that of the Romans, laying out vast sums on public works, which will last for ages; these show Ireland to be a conquered province. Now, on leaving the Shannon again, we came into gentle wooded regions, which, nearer to Dublin, became perfectly English, with lodges and trimmed trees, and neater cottages. Great numbers of emigrants were in the trains, and we saw bitter partings outside. The people look far better in Leinster. But every where, those who have the least pretension to gentle blood are the best-looking people I ever saw. A Spanish gentleman in the train told me he would have taken me for a Spaniard; he and I looked like mulattoes among the lily and rose of ‘Jerne. Mullingar and Maynooth were passed. The grounds and colleges of Maynooth are stately, with an old castle and fine trees. Well-dressed, important-looking priests, were pacing, with the neverabsent breviary, on the green banks of the canal.

All over the island Ulster is spoken of as a happy model, and even in the mouths of the priests “Ulster-tenure” is a common word; it amounts almost to fee simple.

So many things crowd on me, that I am utterly unable to say what I wish on any one. As to the government policy — for some years I am fully convinced government has seriously intended the good of Ireland. The problem has been almost insoluble. It was perplexed by the potato rot, fear, dysentery, and cholera. If Providence had not opened the new world, the results would have been awfully worse. Mr. D’Arcy told me, that at one time he saw 130 putrefying corpses above ground in a field near Galway. The power of the government has been put forth to an extent which no man can estimate without being here. Let me hint at some of its indications. In the number less towns and villages through which we passed, the majority of houses being hog-pens, and the people like beggars, there were always three or four noble structures of the finest building stone in the world. You need not ask what these were. The largest is the Poor House; the next is the jail ;> the third is the regimental barracks; the fourth is the guard-house of the Constabulary, who are in great strength, wear uniform, are fine picked men, always from a distance, and armed. Here we see the conquered Province, but who can say what else England could have done? Again, government has lent vast sums to the railways of Ireland, and these given (not to flourishing London derry) but to Drogheda, to Enniskellen, to Cork, to Gal way. They are fully equal to the best English roads. The stationhouses, as a whole, are superior to the generality in England, being such as will abide for ages, to speak for England as the ruined roads and aqueducts do for Rome. I know England has sought her own power in this, but she has no less served the interests of Ireland by her recent policy. Even this matter of evictions has two sides, just as slavery has with us. The Presbyterians of Ulster are perfectly satisfied with government. Truth is no doubt hard to be got at among such differences. That the tenant-tenure and the absenteeism have wrought iniquitously and murderously no sane mind ought to doubt. Yet on this very head matters tend in the right direction. Under the Encumbered Estates Act (which is named every hour in Ireland) titles can be made good to purchasers. The beggared nobles of Ireland are selling to rich merchants, gentlemen, &c. In the long run this helps the populace, notwithstanding proximate evils. Just as you know how much more miserable are the slaves of a poor planter, or a bankrupt. Emigration (blessed be God!) has allowed hundreds of thousands to go to a country, where they may be happy. The priests have had their day. They are phrensied just now, under the Ecclesiastical Titles’ Bill, and the ultramontane zeal of Dr. Cullen. But my belief is their time is short.

OXFORD, September 27, 1851.

Leaving Liverpool day before yesterday, the train came by the beautiful Trent valley again, and I caught a glimpse of Lichfield Cathedral and Lord Liehfield’s park. The first few stages I was alone in my carriage. From Blatchley to Oxford my companion was the lion., son of Lord S., going to Eton. He

was constantly opening his hat-box, which contained a pair of trousers, and his carpet-bag, which was swollen so as to be tied with twine. He was very offish and affected, till the sky was covered by a rainbow of uncommon beauty, and then he was so carried away, and so lighted up, that he lost all sense of his rank, and submitted to be taught the word vibgyor. My gentleman had risen very early to take the train, and, I fear me, had not washed his hands; and his beautiful hair streamed in the wind like elf-locks. At Oxford he furnished himself with a Benjamin’s

1 The mnemonic initials for the primitive colours.

portion of tarts and cakes, which he attended to while I dined, keeping his hat on; (boys here all wear hats.)

The Oxfordshire peasantry talk more like New Englanders than any I hear, but not in regard to their Us. My guide might pass for a Massachusetts man, in his very intonation, were it not for the pains he takes with his “aches.” He industriously says “hentrance,” “Hoxford,” “Hariel College,” “hinnercloshters.” I employed a guide, and visited the exterior and grounds of Christ Church, Magdalen, University, Balliol, Merton, Exeter, Queen’s, New, Lincoln, All Souls, Jesus and Pembroke Colleges, and Magdalen Hall. Happily the verdure is as yet untouched. I rejoice in these genuine old English streets and yellow house-fronts, gables, square casements, oriels and projecting stories. They first won my affection at Eton. I foresaw that Oxford would take all the colour out of every thing else; because I knew there was nothing like it on earth. I should like to be here again in term-time, yet I would not miss the solitude, silence, and memorial ghastliness of such haunts as New College Garden, Christ Church Meadow, Maudlin Walk, Quadrangle of Jesus College, place of the martyrs, &c. King’s at Cambridge greatly surpasses any one thing here taken singly, and Trinity College, Cambridge, is fully equal to any one structure here; but all Oxford is immensely above all Cambridge. Things which strike me: — Christ Church Meadow, walks, and trees. The avenue is nowhere so perfect as that of Trin. Coll., Cambridge, but is vaster, wilder, and if not so pensive, more captivating. The sunset meanwhile was American. The tower of Maudlin, from which Dr. Phillips’s church [Fifth Avenue, New York] is derived, as the Lenox Hall, [Princeton Seminary Library,] from Magdalen chapel. The walks of Magdalen, especially Addison’s walk. New College, antique and massy; its gardens and trees sans pareil. Deer were at the very doors in Mag. College Park. The Bodleian. The Clarendon. The Theatre. The Radcliffe Library. “Manners makyth Man,” over the gate of New College. Jesus College, only for Welshmen; its physiognomy like its namesake at Cambridge. The reading of my childhood was strangely and cagerty about the Universities, and it left deeper traces than I knew of before. These English boys have some peculiar and winning points. Being sent so early from home they gain a certain manliness. They abound in a slang idiom, which would be almost unintelligible in America.

LIVERPOOL, September 30, 1851.

From Birmingham to Liverpool is five hours. There was much to please, in the winding of little rivers, the verdant VOL. n. — 16 pastures, the universal hedges and planted trees trimmed in an odd slender way; the fine cattle, the thatched cottages, with roses; the hayricks as trim and smooth as vases; the rosy children; the winding country roads and lanes; the peeping spires, and mighty substructions, viaducts, and tunnels of the Great North Western Railway.

On the Sabbath I proceeded to make a new trial to hear Dr. McNeile. His beautiful new church is in the country suburbs, far from houses, among gardens and villas, with abundance of well-kept ground about it. The congregation was very large, many being strangers, whom the gowned vergers led up. The assembly looked plebeian, but devout. The organ was simply played; no interludes, no intoning, no musical Kyrie Eleison, only the Gloria was so given. The people all bowed at the name, but McN. not perceptibly, if at all. The hymns were of Bickersteth’s collection; a hymn opened the service and all the people sang loud and well. Dr. M. read the lessons well, but rhetorically. He has two voices, and his baritone voice is incomparably rich, but he makes too much of it, barely shunning the theatrical. He is tall and thin for this country, florid, with noble aquiline face, and hair very gray. He prayed extempore, both before and after sermon. He preached in the gown. The text was Matt. xi. 25, 26. He preached without manuscript, holding a small Bible in his hand throughout. His oratorio art was seldom apparent in preaching. His manner is the elevated colloquial. His discourse was clearly unstudied, but clearly unwritten. There was no hesitation, nor any infelicity of expression, while he went often to the very edge of familiarity. He had no occasion for the pathetic, but was awfully solemn in places. His plan is evidently to be a teacher. He opened most familiarly from ver. 26, “Thou hast hid these things: — what things 1” His introduction was an answer to that from a perfectly plain, natural, simple, concise, but elegant exposition of ver. 16 — 24. He spent about half the body of the discourse in showing that some things were not hid from “the wise and prudent.” He exalted the man of worldly wisdom, quoting largely from Sir John Herschel, and reading from two bits of paper, which he held up just as if at his fireside. He showed how much the great philosopher may learn of God. Here he horrified me by a most pernicious doctrine, viz., that God’s benevolence cannot be inferred from creation and providence. I could scarcely keep quiet in my pew. He was clear and able on the incapacity of a carnal mind to see the spiritual objects. I have seldom heard this great but ticklish

Eoint more cleverly touched. Illustrations from the senses, iter alia- “It is a peculiarity of spiritual light that it carries its own evidence with it. At this instant you perceive in this house a great variety of colours. (At the moment the sun was breaking in very radiant, and even shining on half his face.) You need no proof that the objects have these hues. You possess the senses for it. The light that appeals to these senses is self-revealing. Now suppose a blind man among you should say, 1 there are no such colours — there is no such beauty — the perceptions of these people are delusive and their admiration is enthusiastic folly ’ — would this disturb your persuasions 1 Not for an instant. But many of you lack another sense. You see no excellence in the Gospel; you discredit the witness of those who do. Why are some born with four senses instead of five 1 born blind 1 (then with scarcely audible tones and a manner of unparalleled abasement) ’ even so father, for so it seemed good in thy sight!’ And why are some born again with six senses instead of five? new born 1 (then with the same pause and eloquent subduing of tone,) ‘Even so Father, &c.’” This was his transition to the second part, which was to refer all to Divine sovereignty. He was thorough-paced in his Calvinism, and ended most abruptly with one of the very boldest demands on every hearer to bow and become a babe and believe it.

I regard McNeile as a prince among extempore preachers. He escapes several evils to which such are very prone. He is very dense; he says what he means, and goes on; yet he lodges his meaning completely, by a happy choice of words and by avoiding poetic terms, technical phraseology, and language unusual among common people. Though singularly happy in illustration, he is very sparing with it. The staple of his discourse was exegesis, and argument on the exegesis. I have said his voice is perfect. He never employs effort, or breaks into spouting tones. When most effective, he is most colloquial and least loud. At the warmer and more rapid places his native Irish broke forth most distinctly, never in pronunciation, which is classically English, but in the accent and cadences. As compared with Dr. Cook I note as follows: Cook is past his prime, being perhaps 65 — 68. Cook has a trifle of conventional pulpit tone, and becomes a declaimer, so far as management of voice goes. Cook’s sermon [p. 158] was much more articulate, and built up Presbyterian-wise. Cook plays the orator more, and soars into imaginative pictures and showers of similitude. I apprehend nine out of ten would give the palm to Cook. I am not sure but that I also should do so, when I get over the immediate impression of McNeile, as the last heard. Cook preached 69 minutes; McN. 50. They are by a long way the most eloquent men I have heard in these climates. Up to a certain point I thought Dr. King such. He is indeed a great preacher. But he has one set of faults inseparable from a Scotchman, and another set inseparable from a memoriter preacher. He cantillates, and more and more as he gets on; never uttering one sentence as he would at his table. He writhes, and brings his right arm around, as if he were reaping. He makes you sympathize with his pulpit sweats. Then his whole sermon, though learned, ingenious, and richly original, smells of the lamp. There is an artful reserve of pungency for the last part of the sentence, which is often antithetical. This surprises and gratifies, but it hinders the great effect, and is a mannerism. Pew can attain it, but those who do fall below the highest style. Dr. King abounds, even in prayers, in a cunning citation of texts so apt and so curiously tesselated, that it has almost the effect of wit; it is an outgrowth of Seceder textual preaching, as cultivated in a soil of elegant literature. Yet it sins against nature, and so against eloquence.

The best speakers I have heard, are Coquerel and Adolphe Monod. In no single word, gesture, or tone, do they ever transcend nature. I think McNeile sometimes does in regard to that deep organ-note which he cannot help using out of place. If I could hear Monod in a regular sermon, I should, perhaps, regard him as the nearest pulpit perfection. At present it lies between Cook and McNeile; and as to matter, the praise is greatly on the side of Cook.

I would not think of naming Dr. H. among “the first three,” yet he is a great man in his way. In spite of his pronunciation and tone, he is an eloquent preacher. His flowers deceive and betray him, but he has more than flowers; he has argument, original thoughts, and a pathos which redeems his metaphors and apologues. A few years hence he will probably be a far greater preacher than he now is.

Next to all these above named I place Mr. Scholefield of Cambridge; but he is as simple as a child, and as plain as a farmer, and not an orator at all.

STEAMSHIP “ATLANTIC,” October 1 — 15, 1851.

October 3. — We loosed from moorings at 1 15, P. M., on Wednesday the 1st inst. At eleven on Thursday night the piston rod broke, and after stopping an hour we got under way with one engine. The repairs will require immense labour, and many of the passengers wished to return to Liverpool, or put into Cork. It is a mercy that the wind is not as high as it was, though the sea runs fearfully high. I occasionally hear a sea, shipped over my head, running off the fore-deck like a river.

October 7. — For several days and nights it has been impossible to write. Indeed the place where 1 now sit has been filled with water during part of the time. We have now been six days going in the teeth of a gale, which, during many hours of Thursday, and especially that night, was a dreadful storm. It is a mercy to be remembered that our piston was repaired before the worst came; for with one engine we could not have kept our head to the wind, and so should have gone into the trough of the sea and been submerged. As it was, the irruption of waters was fearful. The seas which followed us were as high as the pipes. The forepart plunged into mountains of water, which swept the decks, floating the water-casks and making it deep enough to swim. It broke through four bulwarks or break waters, one of which was four inches thick. The sound of the labouring, creaking, smashing seams was like going to pieces every moment. The seas shipped forward came down the hatch way, breaking the thick glass, and making it knee-deep in some state-rooms in an instant. Our own was floating. High as is the stern of the “Atlantic,” the sea broke over the hurricane deck, and came through the dining saloon, and into the main saloon below. The thumps upon our counter were like tons of metal falling from a height. This lasted for part of a day and night, and even when it -remitted on the morning of the 3d, we were still in a terrible gale. Anxiety was increased by a man’s falling from the mast. We made only four or five miles an hour most of the time. During these awful hours every eye was turned towards Capt. West. His tall, noble form appeared everywhere, but for whole nights he was drenched. In the terror of that memorable night I believe many of us thought we should never get to land. It was too violent and noisy for prayer in common. Bishop Otey and I prayed in his state-room, together with my room-mate, (Capt. Cullum,) who was wrecked in the Atlantic, when Dr. Armstrong was drowned, [page 59.] We talked the matter over during the height of our tempest. Per: haps those suffered least who were deadly sick, as scores were.

On the 5th, the Lord’s Day, it was so far abated that I read the 107th Psalm, and prayed in the dining saloon. Soon afterward it abated further, and we had quite a passable night. Yesterday it was very rough again, but not so horrible. About midnight the wind and sea were comparatively quiet. “O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!”

October 8. — At noon we had an observation, and found by

1 Of the Episcopal Church, Tennessee.

dead reckoning, that we were 1,212 miles from Liverpool. Yesterday, during a blow a white bird alighted on our vessel, and was caught by the cabin-boy. It must have been driven out six hundred miles from the Summer Isles.

SONNET,

WRITTEN ON THE STEAMER ATLANTIC,

October 4, 1851.

Tossed like an egg-shell on the heaving main,
Our ship, that looked a giant at the quay,
Shivers and groans a frighted babe on sea,
As the wind roughens all the watery plain;
Till oak and iron own the wrenching strain.
So weak is man’s work in the mighty hand
Of him who gives the howling surge command,
To lift the wrestling waves that foam with pain.
But yet the force which drives the wreck to land,
Or whelms whole squadrons near some treach’rous strand,
Or forks the lightning in the helmsman’s face,
Or shoots the waterspout in column grand,
When gulfs.lay bare the deep uncovered sand,
Is power all wedded to triumphal grace.

October 10. — We approached the banks of Newfoundland, but the wind is stiff ahead, and it rains almost all day. Great gloom prevails in the company. Some -are not yet come forth of their chambers. Some are lying about in the cabins, both day and night, wretched with a sickness which has no parallel. In the upper dining-cabin, on the quarter-deck, much of the day is occupied with meals; breakfast from 8 to 1 1; luncheon at noon; dinner at 4; tea at 8, and supper at 10. Towards evening the rain abates, and at 9 the full moon shines beautiful over the whitening sea. For the first time, in this gloomy voyage, the young folks gather in the dining-saloon for games and merriment. Every morning Bishop Otey and I have prayers in his state-room.

October 11. — We are on the banks of Newfoundland. We had tremendous heavings, and one sudden pitch, which many thought greater than any during the gale. It threw down a sailor into the forecastle companion, and greatly injured him. Towards night a dead whale hove in sight, escorted by porpoises and birds. Grampuses are seen to spout, and sea-birds become numerous.

October 12. — Lord’s day. Divine service in dining saloon at 10£. Bishop Otey preached. The attendance was very good. After tea I preached in the same room on the prayer of the publican. The saloon was entirely filled, and the company was attentive.

October 13. — Fog. We blow the steam-whistles now and then, to give warning to poor fishing-vessels, which might be overthrown by our tremendous weight of 2,900 tons going fifteen miles an hour. We passed not a great way from Halifax. The bad weather, by preventing ventilation, has made many of the state-rooms quite offensive, so that when you pass by the doors you sniff a variety of odours, like the wards of a lazaretto. These ships are spoiled by the addition of new berths filling up what used to be the fine open space of the forward cabin. Not only are these state-rooms all along the sides of the vessel, but a compact village of rooms fills the interior, leaving only some insignificant areas, where the stairs and skylights are, and some narrow entries. These rooms are close and dark, and here the rush of waters was greatest during the gale. The gay fellows have names for several parts, such as Cavendish Square, Pall Mall, and Rotten Row.

October 14. — Shortly after breakfast it became evident that there was some cause of alarm. Presently we began to perceive breakers on our starboard bow. How beautiful are these deadly enemies! It becomes apparent that we have missed our reckoning, and have run too near Nantucket shoals. The engine stops, and steam is let off. It is hard to think of peril under this clear sun and amidst this beautiful blue sea, and from those snowy surges that dash up and twinkle in the sun. We heave the lead twice, and find about 24 fathoms.

October 15. — The wooded, flat shores of Long Island are in view. We soon pass the Narrows. It is an incomparable morning, making one think meanly of European skies. Sun and moon are both visible. The grand bay with islands and shipping is in sight. We come to at the foot of Canal street, about 6 30 A. M.

SUPPLEMENT TO THE EUROPEAN LETTERS OF 1857.

LIVERPOOL, October 9, 1857.

You will have learned from other sources, that the 7th of October was observed throughout the British Isles as a day of Humiliation and Prayer, in regard to the present Indian calamities. There is good cause to think that it has been a day of spiritual good to many thousands. The daily newspapers of yesterday from one end of the land to the other, are filled with

1 This is taken from Dr. Alexander’s correspondence with “The Presbyterian.”

reports of the sermons preached; and from these, it is plain that the talents and piety of the best men were employed in this work. In Glasgow, where I was at the time, the shops were closed, and there was no appearance of business in any one of the numerous streets through which I walked or drove. In some churches, the services were of a freer character, familiar to us in America, and prayers were offered alternately with addresses. This is true of the United Presbyterian church in Wellington Street, of which the excellent Dr. Robinson is the pastor. He was assisted by the Rev. Dr. Archer of London, and from both we heard faithful and memorable exhortations, addressed to a very large assembly of solemn and sometimes deeply affected worshippers. I accepted it as a token of confidence in American sympathy and Christian love, that these good men and esteemed brethren forced me into the service, which as a foreigner I scarcely knew how to undertake, especially after twenty weeks of silence, but which they were pleased to recognize as a tribute of unfeigned regard for the testimony which we uphold in common. On that, as on other occasions, my soul wras melted within me at the thought of these beloved missionaries of our own and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, who, I fear, have fallen asleep amidst the assaults of the murderous Sepoys. After the service of two hours, I saw the adjacent lecture-room, where the late venerable Dr. Mitchell, pastor of this church, for more than half a century, used to instruct the theological students of the Secession Church. His portrait and those of two ruling elders adorn the walls. According to my best recollection the communion numbers about thirteen hundred.

Not to confine myself to a particular body, I went in the afternoon to the Barony Church, belonging to the Establishment, in order to hear the Rev. Norman McLeod, who is at this time second to no preacher in Scotland, for what may be called a catholic popularity. Accustomed as we are in America to consider the Establishment and Moderatism to be much the same, we ought to rejoice and be thankful for the tidings that there are not a few ministers in that body who preach Christ, writh a fulness, fervour, and spiritual unction, which no denomination cah surpass, and which would have been stigmatized a century ago as ranting Methodism. On this occasion I heard only the second of two discourses, which was on Lam. v. 16, “The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us, that we have sinned.” Other topics had occupied the forenoon; he was now upon the sins to be bewailed, and the hopes to be cherished. Mr. McLeod has every advantage of external gifts, in stature, face, carriage, and gesture; and in regard to voice, I have never heard any more flexible, rich, and controlling; I cannot suppose that in popular address our Dr. Mason was either more strong or more pathetic than Norman McLeod. I had not heard him utter two sentences of devotion, before I ceased to wonder why crowds attend upon his ministry, while I less than ever was tempted to crave any liturgical crutches in the way of printed prayer. Let men pray thus, and we shall hear of no deviation from the way of our fathers; and with a rubrical imposition of forms men cannot thus pray. I have no quarrel with “our excellent liturgy;” I have gratefully joined in its best parts almost every Sabbath for months; I believe it to be the best compilation from the Latin offices that has ever been made, nevertheless I hold on in our primitive and more excellent way, and should be pleased to read an answer to famous John Owen’s tractate on Free Prayer. Apropos of this matter, I have heard one of the most celebrated ministers in Scotland, eminent alike for the gift and the grace of praying, interlard his devotions with passages from the prayer-book. I cannot but make reclamation against this, on grounds of unity and sacred composition. Those collects, which 1 had often joined in with reverential admiration, seemed out of tune amidst the inspired breathings of David and Jeremiah, which were legitimately and beautifully introduced at the same time. I could not help wondering at the gifted utterances of the very minister to whom 1 here allude, and who is known in more lands than one.

But to return, Mr. McLeod’s sermon was a noble piece of free argumentation and passionate eloquence. He spoke like a senator on this occasion, and you may judge in how untram melled a manner, when I add that he read from several volumes, and even from Tuesday’s Times. The secret of the effects produced by this preaching is, that his heart is bursting with the very emotion which he seeks to cause. I need scarcely add that he used no manuscript; sometimes he does so; but this was one of the discourses which cannot be written. There were several generous allusions to our own country in this delightful sermon, which gratified me all the more as contrasted with the crude, ignorant, and fiery attacks of many, on what they think American toleration of sin. Mr. McLeod’s vindication of Missions, his plea for national mercy, and his retorts upon the infidel party, were triumphant. But most of the time I was too near breaking out into tears to sit as a critic. When, on another occasion, I heard Mr. McLeod preach on a Sabbath afternoon, I was really lifted up to consider that God had still a testimony, in a large school of the younger churchmen, for the most evangelical doctrines and experience. This, however, need not be said to any one who has read the “Earnest Student,” which is his work, or the “Footsteps of St. Paul,” by another minister of the Kirk, in Glasgow.

It would be very presumptuous in a passing stranger to pronounce upon the ministry of a great people, or to characterize their pulpit. He can at best hear only a few, and these may not be the representative minds; I shall, therefore, indulge in no sweeping remarks, but content myself with saying, that so far as I can learn, there is no country on the globe, which is better furnished, in its rank and file, with a thoroughly orthodox and earnestly evangelical ministry than Scotland. How entirely exceptional all but the Presbyterian element is, may be gathered from the fact, that in Glasgow alone there are more than a hundred Presbyterian ministers. I am not very far astray, when I say that of these the Established Church has thirty-four, the Free Church thirty-three, and the United Presbyterian Church thirty-one. On the National Fast, it is to be supposed, all these, and many others, were engaged in leading the minds of their hearers to penitent reflections suited to the present crisis. In a word, the national mind has been thoroughly waked up to the religious aspects of this portentous theme. One mighty dictator of British opinion, the Times, though sometimes admitting letter-writers who take the other side, nobly vindicates Christianity and Missions from the charge of having provoked these hostilities. It is honourable to the British people, that everywhere the most candid confession of national sin is fairly uttered. The opium business has especially come in for its share. I acknowledge that our British brethren, who often say hard things of our government, are just as ready to say hard things of their own. This is a land where free speech and a free press are high in influence; nowhere more so. I felt the fellowship of the old Presbyterian temper, when I heard a pastor from his pulpit protest against the terms in which the Queen commanded the Fast to be observed; a protestation which the venerable Dr. John Brown also made very prominent in his discourse in Edinburgh.

As I sat in the gallery last Sabbath, when Mr. McLeod referred to a passage by chapter and verse, a thousand pocket Bibles instantly turned up the place; it is so everywhere in Scotland. The practice of using a reverent posture in prayer is universal here; and I have never found myself the only person, besides the minister, who was standing, as has often happened to me among the indolent worshippers of England and America. The Presbyterians of this country, that is to say, the great body of the population, love the house of God, and are attached to their own particular forms. Churches are built for use, and in most cases are very closely seated, so as to be full even to packing. I was delighted to observe that on an evening when I heard a Glasgow clergyman preach, the house, which had aisles and even pulpit-stairs crowded, was occupied largely by those classes of hearers who in some of our cities have so much left us for other denominations, or for none at all.

If my experience is worth any thing, there is not a more hospitable land than this; people talk of Highland welcomes, but you are met thus to Gretna and the very Tweed. A minister in Rosshire, whom I never saw, gave me a warm and cordial invitation to tabernacle with his family all summer, beside his lochs; and no doubt would have given us Gaelic treats of salmon and grouse. What Emerson says, concerning England, of “full dress and dinner at six,” as a national influence, is just as true of Edinburgh and Glasgow; and I question whether what Mrs. Hannah More said was already going out in London, to wit, conversation, is anywhere more nobly upheld than in the better circles of the cities. Some of the most instructive and entertaining — let me even add, edifying lessons I ever received, have been in such circles, as well six years ago as now.

While so many of our young men go annually to Germany, year after year, bringing home no practical good that I can comprehend, it is sincerely to be wished that some of them might go to Scotland, to see the Presbyterian machine really worked, by congregations having from twenty to thirty ruling elders each, and as many deacons, and to limber their academic sermonizing by a hearing of several commanding preachers, who unite athletic bodies with well-furnished, determined, and fervent minds. Some things I honestly believe they might learn of us, but in the faculty of carrying gospel truth with interest to promiscuous assemblies and the common people, they excel us. With hardly any exception, all the preachers of Scotland, who are much followed by the multitude, are as remarkable for purely evangelical preaching, as for intellectual power and impressive elocution. Few of them are what we should denominate good speakers.

With thanksgiving to the God of our life, who has preserved me and mine through many changes, I record my desire to return to the land which I admire and love the more by reason of all contrasts and comparisons, and to the labours for which I trust I am in some slight measure better prepared in body, though not yet wholly relieved.