A Year in Europe

The force which will bind all men in a real and permanent union is no mere knowledge of navigation, nor is it Anglo-Saxon commerce, laws, or language; it is the Christian religion.

The latter part of our voyage was less trying than the earlier, and the days were generally brighter, though still cold. Yet all were glad when one night, about nine o'clock, the intermittent gleam of the lighthouse on the Scilly Islands came into view, assuring us that the voyage would soon be ended. Next morning we were steaming along the picturesque south coast of England, with the white chalk cliffs and velvety green downs in plain view through the tender blue haze, the water was quieter and the weather warmer, and in a few hours more we entered The Solent, passing on our right, almost within a stone's throw, "The Needles," three white, pointed rocks of chalk, at the western extremity of the Isle of Wight, which rest on dark colored bases and spring abruptly from the sea to a height of a hundred feet, and which are in striking contrast with the vertically striped cliffs of red, yellow, green, and grey sandstone behind them.

At last the great engines cease their throbbing for the first time in nine days, the tender comes alongside for the passengers bound for Great Britain, and in another half hour we set foot on the soil of England, in the ancient city of Southampton.

CHAPTER II.

They are familiar, too, with the hard-hearted action of William the Conqueror in laying waste an area of one hundred and forty square miles in this neighborhood for the purpose of making a hunting ground, which has ever since been known as the New Forest, and which still stretches westward from Southampton Water. It will be remembered that the Conqueror's son and successor, William Rufus, met his death here, being found one day in these woods with an arrow through his heart. That arrow may have been shot by one of the many peasants who had been driven from their homes when the New Forest was made, though most writers attribute the deed, without sufficient proof, to a gentleman named Walter Tyrrell. At any rate, here William Rufus was killed, and at Winchester, thirteen miles from Southampton, he was buried under the floor of the cathedral, "many looking on and few grieving," as the old chronicler says.

Of still more interest to young readers, especially boys, who are familiar with Sir Walter Scott's stories, The Talisman and Ivanhoe, is the fact that the Crusaders under Richard the Lion Hearted, sailed from Southampton for the Holy Land. That was in 1189.

In the summer of 1620, however, a far more important expedition, though far less spectacular, was fitted out at Southampton by the hiring of a ship here called the Mayflower, in which shortly afterwards the Pilgrim Fathers sailed for the New World.

It will be seen, then, that Southampton is a place of no small historical interest, to say nothing of its associations with Edward III., Henry V., and Charles I., or its being the birthplace of Sir John E. Millais, the artist, or of its having fine statues of Lord Palmerston and "Chinese" Gordon.

But it was not on account of any of these things that we determined to give to this place the first few hours we were to spend in England. The special reason for our interest in Southampton is that it was the birthplace and residence of the greatest hymn writer that ever lived, a man of totally different physique, character, gifts, and influence from the able, but bloody kings with whose names the earlier history of the place is associated, a small, delicate, scholarly, Christian man, of lovely spirit, who, by exactly antipodal methods, has established a wider, more real, more beneficent, and more lasting reign over human hearts than William or Richard were able to achieve—the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D., whose simpler pieces for children have become household words throughout the English-speaking world, such as, "Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber," "Let dogs delight to bark and bite," "How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour," etc., and who, as even a supercilious and grudging critic like Matthew Arnold admitted, wrote the finest hymn in the English language, "When I survey the wondrous cross," and very many others of scarcely inferior merit.

He was the author of various able treatises on philosophy and theology, but it was the thought of what he had done for the world by his hymns that caused us to stop at Southampton. So, mounting the winding stairway to the top of the "double-decker" electric tram car, much better adapted to sightseeing than our single-story street cars in America, we were carried smoothly and quickly up the bright and busy High Street, gaily decorated for the Coronation, and in a few minutes passed under the great stone arch of the Bar Gate, the most interesting portion of the ancient city wall. The modern city, of course, stretches far beyond the walls, street after street of clean and attractive houses, with a profusion of brilliant flowers and neatly trimmed greenery, shut in from the street, in many cases, by high stone walls, over which, however, we can easily see from our elevated position.

Presently, in the centre of a small park, which opens on the left with velvety grass and fine trees, we see the object of our search, a marble statue of a very small and wizened man, of benevolent face and venerable appearance, with a Bible in his hand, and on the pedestal in bold letters the name, "Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D." He was born in 1674, was devoted to books from his infancy, and began to learn Latin when four years old. Afterwards, as a youth he became so proficient at school that friends proposed to provide for his support at the university (he was the eldest of nine children, and the family, while not indigent, was not rich), but he declined the offer because he could not conscientiously belong to the Church of England. He cast in his lot with the Dissenters, and became one of the promoters of that mighty and beneficent force in English religious and political life known as "the Nonconformist Conscience." That his education did not suffer from the choice he then made is clear from his later work. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was a stiff Churchman, with no love for Dissenters in general, is constrained, in his work on English Poets, to pay a warm tribute to Dr. Watts' remarkable attainments, and says it was with great propriety that in 1728 he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited diploma, by which he became a doctor of divinity. Dr. Johnson adds a remark, which is commended to the earnest attention of American colleges, which have done so much to bring honorary degrees into contempt by their promiscuous bestowment, "Academical honors would have more value, if they were always bestowed with equal judgment." He says further that Dr. Watts was one of the first authors that taught the Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. "Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction."

Of his talents in general the same discriminating writer says that "perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled if he had not divided his powers to different pursuits," and of his character, that he admired Dr. Watts' meekness of opposition and mildness of censure in theological discussion (qualities which no one could attribute to Dr. Johnson himself), and that it was not only in his book, but in his mind, that orthodoxy was united with charity. Dr. Johnson concludes his appreciation of him with this remark, "Happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his nonconformity," which shows both his exalted estimate of the man and his amusing dislike of the Dissenter. But in nothing was the greatness of Dr. Watts' character more clearly shown than in his nonconformity; and his countrymen have continued to take his view of that matter in ever-increasing numbers, so that now more than half of the English people are nonconformists. But of that I shall have something to say at another time.

CHAPTER III.

We recognized the place, even before our train stopped, by the cathedral spire, which is 406 feet high, the loftiest in England, and which dominates all views of the town. This richly adorned spire is one of three things which entitles this cathedral to special attention, the other two being, first, its lovely close, unsurpassed in size and beauty, a glorious expanse of velvety sward, shaded by lofty trees; and secondly, the uniformity and harmony of its architecture, making it the most symmetrical and graceful of all English cathedrals. The interior is less interesting, having no wealth of monuments like Winchester, Westminster, and St. Paul's, and no profusion of stained glass windows like York.

On Sunday we attended service in the cathedral, and found it formal, cold and unsatisfying. I yield to no man in my admiration of the beauty of these vast and venerable cathedrals, but they have been in some respects a hindrance to vital religion, as I shall endeavor to show in a later letter. This one at Salisbury was erected in the middle of the thirteenth century, so that for six hundred and fifty years it has been used continuously as a place of Christian worship, first Romish and now Anglican.

But on Monday we made an excursion which took us back to a still more remote antiquity. One mile to the north of Salisbury at Old Sarum (a name well known to students of English politics as that of the "rotten borough," which till 1832 had the privilege of sending two members to Parliament, though without a single inhabitant), crowning a great hill which commands the surrounding country for miles, stands the vast, grass-clad earthworks of an ancient Roman fortress, the largest entrenched camp in the kingdom. That is old, but we are bound for something older still, and so we continue our drive northwards.

One great charm of the summer in Great Britain is the cool weather. The English people never have to endure the withering heats to which we are subjected in America. This year it has been much cooler even than usual. So, as we drive on through the June day, although the sun is shining brightly, the air is bracing and exhilarating.

Another marked difference between this country and most parts of ours is the extraordinary finish of the landscape, due to scantiness of forests, absence of undergrowth, thoroughness of tillage, and especially the luxuriance and smoothness of the turf. The quiet beauty of rural England has a perpetual charm. When I was here some years ago it was May, the hawthorn hedges were in bloom, and the whole country was robed in tender green. Before landing this time I felt some regret that we should not see it in the same lovely attire, thinking of the difference between early May and late June in America. But I find it even more beautiful than when I first saw it. The farmers were cutting the lush grass in some places, impregnating the air with the delicious fragrance of new-mown hay. In other fields the wheat was standing thick, with here and there a blaze of scarlet poppies, sometimes an acre or two in extent, a solid mass of brilliant red, no green or other color visible at all. Still prettier, if possible, are the scattered poppy blooms in a field of half ripe grain, looking like ruby bubbles on a gently moving, sunlit sea.

The youngsters in our party are interested to see horses hitched tandem to the wide hay wains in the fields, and to observe that when we meet a double team in the road, instead of being harnessed as two horses are with us, on each side of a tongue, here each of the two horses is in his own pair of shafts. Nor are they slow to observe that teams always turn to the left in passing each other, instead of to the right as with us, and the same rule is observed in the running of trains on a double track railway.

No frame houses are to be seen in town or country. We have not seen a wooden house since we landed. All are of brick or stone, though many of them in the country are covered with thatch, sometimes with clay tiles. But slate is more and more superseding these old-fashioned materials. This does not promote the cottager's comfort. Slate roofs are hotter in summer and colder in winter than those of straw, and, of course, too, they are far less picturesque. I observe that many farmers thatch even their stone and brick fences to prevent the water from coming in and freezing, to the injury of the masonry. No wooden fences are seen, and few of wire. They are either living hedges of thorn or privet or the like, or they are walls of stone or brick. In short, the improvements look more substantial than ours, the agricultural methods more thorough, the country more finished, and, I should think, more comfortable to live in, in the material sense. Very striking is the universal love of flowers. Every little village yard, if but three or four feet wide, and every cottage window, however humble, has its rows of brilliant geraniums, and other ornamental plants.

And now, after a drive of nine miles, we reach Salisbury Plain, a name familiar to me from early boyhood from the title of a little book that used to be read in many homes, The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. As we came up, sure enough, there was a shepherd on one of the green slopes, with his flock and his shepherd dog. We give them but a glance, however, for our attention is instantly claimed by the object which we have come so far to see, Stonehenge, "the most imposing megalolithic monument in Britain," a group of great stones which seem originally to have been arranged in two concentric circles enclosing two ellipses, but some are now fallen. Of the outer circle, which was one hundred feet in diameter, seventeen stones are still standing, with six of the great cap-stones over them. The largest uprights of the whole group, those near the centre of the circle, were twenty-two and a half feet high, and the transverse blocks were three and a half feet thick. These are, therefore, quite large stones, but it is not their size that gives them their interest. The ancient Egyptians handled much larger stones than these. It is their antiquity, and the mystery, still unsolved, as to the purpose for which they were erected. Were they placed here by the Druids? If so, for what purpose? The name does not help us, Stonehenge being but a corruption of the Saxon name, meaning "hanging stones." Were they intended for a temple of the sun, or a calendar in stone for the measurement of the solar year, or a huge gallows on which defeated enemies were hung in honor of Woden, or a sepulchral circle connected with the burial of the dead? No positive answer can be given, but the last mentioned view is now regarded as the most probable, and is confirmed by the existence in the immediate vicinity of great turf-covered barrows, or burial places. These barrows are of the Bronze Age, and to this same remote period Stonehenge itself is referred by the best authorities.

The present owner of Salisbury Plain has recently enclosed Stonehenge with a wire fence and charges an admission fee of a shilling. The public resents this in the case of a unique and world-renowned monument, which for ages has stood in the open, freely accessible to all, and there was not a little satisfaction at finding that, as a sort of road ran along within a few feet of it, and as the closing or moving of this thoroughfare could not be permitted by the county authorities, the fence in question had to run so close to the famous cromlech, after all, that the proposed exclusion of the public without payment of a fee has amounted to very little. Visitors can come so near, and can get so good a view of all that is to be seen that but few pay the fee and go inside the enclosure.

We return to Salisbury by a different road, which takes us for miles through the meadows of one of those "sweet and fishful rivers," which add so much to the quiet charm of the scenery, placid and clear, flowing softly not only between grassy banks but over grassy beds, the grass growing luxuriantly from the bottom, and being cut from the stream by the hay harvesters, as though it were on the open meadow.

On reaching the town, I went to the Market Square to see the bronze statue of a man for whom I had always felt respect and admiration since studying his work on Political Economy when I was a student in college, Mr. Fawcett, a talented native of this place, who, though he had the misfortune to lose his sight early in life, by the accidental discharge of a gun in the hands of his own father, nevertheless became a student, a professor, an author, a man of affairs, a member of Parliament, and Postmaster-General of Great Britain—a fine example of the triumph of character and will over grievous limitations.

It added to the interest of our visit to Salisbury, and especially of our walk through the lovely grounds of the Bishop's Palace, to see this dignitary of the Church of England in his clerical garb, with apron, knee breeches, and all, except that he was bareheaded, romping delightedly on the lawn with a little girl, probably his granddaughter, and to recollect that the Bishop of Salisbury, after bringing the wealth of his undoubted scholarship to his recent book, The Ministry of Grace, had declared, like Dean Stanley, Bishop Lightfoot and Dean Milman, that "throughout the early church, even at Rome, and Alexandria, down to the third century, the government of the church was Presbyterian," thus going even farther than Stanley, who says that "nothing like modern Episcopacy existed before the beginning of the second century."

It interested us also to recall that Addison, Fielding, and Bishop Burnet had resided here. So, considering these things, and those above mentioned, we all left Salisbury reluctantly, declaring with one accord that it was an exceedingly interesting place, and wondering whether even Winchester could equal it.

CHAPTER IV.

For example, in Winchester Cathedral, close at hand, lie the remains of Hardicanute, the last Danish monarch, who died of excessive drinking. The fact that a man is buried in a cathedral argues nothing here as to his piety. If he wore the crown, or won battles, or wrote poems, he is given a place in God's house, regardless of his character.

But, besides men like Hardicanute or William Rufus, Winchester Cathedral boasts the possession of mortuary chests containing the bones of Canute, Egbert, Ethelwulf, and other kings. There is a monumental brass on the wall in memory of Jane Austen the novelist, who is buried under the pavement.

But by far the most interesting thing of this kind in the cathedral, is the floor slab which marks the resting place of Izaak Walton, the Prince of Fishermen (1593-1683), and the author of The Compleat Angler, concerning which it has been truthfully said that Walton "hooked a much bigger fish that he angled for" when he offered his quaint treatise to the public. There is hardly a name in our literature, even of the first rank, whose immortality is more secure, or whose personality is the subject of a more devoted cult. Not only is he the sacer vates of a considerable sect in the religion of recreation, but multitudes who have never put a worm on a hook—even on a fly-hook—have been caught and securely held by his picture of the delights of the gentle craft and his easy, leisurely transcript of his own simple, peaceable, loving, and amusing character." When, on the outbreak of the civil war, he retired from business as milliner for men in London, he went to a place in the country which he had bought, but we are told that he spent most of his time "in the families of the eminent clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved." He married twice, both wives being of distinguished clerical connection, the second, Anne Ken, sister of Thomas Ken, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells. Of Thomas Ken we shall have something in particular to say presently. As we strolled, after supper, along the banks of the Itchen, from whose clear and grassy waters Walton himself had drawn so many fish, it was interesting to come upon anglers plying his beloved vocation. By the way, long before the time of Walton, there were people at Winchester who were fond of fish, and oysters, too. We read that, before the Reformation, the monks of Netley Abbey, twelve miles distant, were wont to keep their brethren at Winchester supplied during Lent with oysters from Southampton Water, they in return receiving forty-two flagons of ale weekly.

Enough has been said above to show that no church in Great Britain, outside of London, is richer in monuments than Winchester Cathedral. It has also the distinction of great size, being 556 feet long, the longest nave in England. But the exterior is heavy, without a suggestion of the symmetry and grace of Salisbury.

The other "lion" of Winchester, also, has a very uninviting and even forbidding exterior. This is the ancient College, a school for boys, where Alfred himself is said to have been educated, though William of Wykeham refounded it in 1382. The front of it looks like a prison, but within the quadrangles, and stretching far back to the river, are lovely grounds covered with grass as green and smooth as a velvet carpet. The best thing I saw here was the following inscription on the walls of a school-room, accompanied by the painted emblems which I mention below in brackets:

Aut disce. [A mitre and crosier, as the expected rewards of learning.]

Aut discede. [An inkhorn and sword, the emblems of the civil and military professions.]

Manet sors tertia caedi. [A rod.]

Which may be freely translated, "Either learn, or depart hence, or remain and be chastised," though the pithy, alliterative rendering in vogue among the boys is better, "Work, or walk, or be whopped" (h silent in the last word). American boys would probably have rendered it, "Learn, or leave, or be licked."

The school has revenues of nearly $100,000 per annum. There are 420 pupils. A number of them were having their supper as we passed through the dining-hall, eating from square beech-wood trenchers instead of plates, talking in shrill tones, and nudging and pushing each other just like American boys, unimpressed by the fact that the heavy, narrow tables from which they were eating were five hundred years old. How like boys it was to call the water pipe in the quadrangle, at which they wash their hands and faces, "Moab," and the place where they blacked their shoes, "Edom," because in Psalm lx. 8, it is said, "Moab is my wash-pot, I will cast my shoe over Edom."

As we walked through the ancient cloisters we came upon another characteristically boyish thing, a name cut on one of the stone pillars in clear, strong letters—"Tho Ken 1665"—and hardly anything in Winchester interested me so much as this, for the boy who cut it there, nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, became afterwards the author of what we call "the long metre doxology," four lines which have been sung more frequently than any other four lines in the English language, and which for generations to come will express the praise of increasing millions. This doxology was written by Ken as a concluding stanza to his famous Morning, Evening and Midnight Hymns, the best known of which, perhaps, is his evening hymn, "Glory to thee, my God, this night."

But there are other reasons why it was a pleasure to be vividly reminded of Ken at Winchester. He was a man of singularly modest, sweet, and lovable disposition. Macaulay says that his character approached, "as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian virtue." Yet he was no weakling, and on two notable occasions he showed that, mild and gentle as he was, he was also firm and fearless.

When the profligate Charles II. was at Winchester, waiting for the completion of his palace there, he requested Ken, then prebendary at Winchester, to lend his house temporarily to the notorious Nell Gwynn, the King's mistress. Ken refused to let such a person have his house. Charles does not seem to have resented the affront, for he afterwards made Ken Bishop of Bath and Wells. It is one of the abominations of the English union of Church and State, that a thoroughly depraved man like Charles II., if he succeeds to the throne, becomes ipso facto the head of the Church of England. By the way, the altar books in black letter in Winchester Cathedral were presented to the church by this same graceless Charles II. Things get badly mixed under such a system as that of the Church of England.

The second occasion on which Ken showed that, notwithstanding the infelicities of the national church, she does have men who will stand for God against the King when necessity arises, was when James II., without calling Parliament, issued what he called a declaration for liberty of conscience, the real aim of which was to put England again under the yoke of Romanism, and ordered that this declaration should be read in every cathedral and church in the kingdom. Ken and six other bishops refused, and they were arrested, and committed to the Tower of London. Instantly a blaze of popular indignation burst forth. Enormous crowds assembled to see the seven bishops embark, the shore was covered with crowds of prostrate spectators, who asked their benediction, as did also the very soldiers sent to arrest them. The bishops bore themselves well throughout, and, a few days after, when they were tried in Westminster Hall, and the verdict "Not guilty" was brought in, there was a tumultuous outburst of joy. Thus Ken bore his bold and manly part in the revolution, which finally swept the Stuarts from the throne, and delivered England, for the time, from the menace of Romish domination.

Winchester, then, with her ancient cathedral and her ancient school, with her Alfred the Great, her Izaak Walton, and her Thomas Ken, with her wealth of heroic, and gentle and saintly memories, has given us two of the most profitable days of our sojourn in Southern England.

CHAPTER V.

Coal serves the same purposes in London that it does elsewhere, of course. But, while elsewhere it warms only thousands of people, and makes steam for only thousands of factories, locomotives, and steamboats, here it warms and works for more than five millions. The output of smoke from this unparalleled consumption of coal is, of course, something enormous, and when we consider that the weather itself is frequently, perhaps I may say generally, dull, heavy and thick, with an amount of clouds and rain unknown to our brilliant American climate, it is not strange that the fogs of London are the thickest and most dangerous in the world, sometimes producing complete darkness at midday, and necessitating the lighting of the gas, as though it were midnight, and at other times producing a peculiar gloom, which is so impervious to light itself that the traffic of the streets has to be stopped for hours. Nor is it strange that the city is begrimed to an extraordinary degree from one end to the other.

I have a friend in America, whom I sometimes jestingly call an "Anglomaniac," because he admires Great Britain and her belongings so much. I once accused him of trying to convince me that the sky was bluer and the grass greener in Canada than in the United States—and who speaks of the blackness of the London buildings as "richness." It is interesting to find that he is supported in this view by some of the best writers on London. Hare, for instance, in speaking of St. Paul's Cathedral, emphasizes this point, "Sublimely impressive in its general outlines, it has a peculiar sooty dignity all its own, which, externally, raises it immeasureably above the fresh, modern-looking St. Peter's at Rome. G. A. Sala says, in one of his capital papers, that it is really the better for 'all the incense which all the chimneys since the time of Wren have offered at its shrine, and are still flinging up every day from their foul and grimy censers.' Here and there only is the original grey of the stone seen through the overlaying blackness." Nathaniel Hawthorne, too, says, "It is much better than staring white; the edifice would not be nearly so grand without this drapery of black." By the way, the whole cost of St. Paul's, which was nearly four million dollars, was paid by a tax on every chaldron of coal brought into the port of London, "on which account it is said that the cathedral has a special claim of its own to its smoky exterior."

Whatever one may think of these views, as to the æsthetic value of soot on great stone buildings like St. Paul's, it must be admitted by all that London, as a whole, is intensely ugly. Henry James, speaking of one of the fashionable quarters of the city, says, "As you walk along the streets, you look up at the brown brick house-walls, corroded with soot and fog, pierced with their straight, stiff window-slits, and finished, by way of cornice, with a little black line resembling a slice of curbstone. There is not an accessory, not a touch of architectural fancy, not the narrowest concession to beauty." In the indictment thus brought against one quarter of the city, it will be observed that there are other counts besides the soot, such as the monotony and plainness of the architecture and the character of the building materials, and in both particulars London does compare very unfavorably with some other cities.

There are, of course, some very handsome stone buildings, such as the British Museum, the new Parliament Buildings, many of the churches, and some of the government offices and private residences, but most of the houses are constructed of ugly brownish yellow brick, and capped with rigid rows of chimney pots. The same thing is true of English towns in general, and is one of the most obvious points of inferiority on their part to the cities and towns of Scotland. Of Glasgow as it was in the eighteenth century, then, of course, but a small place in comparison with its present size, Sir Walter Scott wrote, in Rob Roy, "The principal street was broad and important, decorated with public buildings of an architecture, rather striking than correct in point of taste, and running between rows of tall houses, built of stone; the fronts of which were occasionally richly ornamented with mason-work—a circumstance which gave the street an imposing air of dignity and grandeur, of which most English towns are in some measure deprived, by the slight, unsubstantial, and perishable quality and appearance of the bricks with which they are constructed." Of the later Glasgow of his time, Hawthorne said, "It is the stateliest city in the kingdom." The adjective was well chosen. Those solid, strong, stone-built Scotch cities, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and others, are stately, as no English cities of brick are or can be; though there is also a suggestion of sombreness or severity about them, which seems to belong to that dour, grey land of the North; so that, after all, the Scottish cities do not afford the strongest contrast to London's dingy masses of brick. To find that, we must look to some of the cities of the Continent, especially Paris, the cleanest, brightest, and most beautiful of all the great capitals of the world. The Parisian climate is clearer, there is less fog and smoke, the houses are built of a white stone that gives the city a singular fairness to the eye, quite different from the rather gloomy greyness of the Scottish cities, and, of course, antipodal to the brick and grime of London. Moreover, the streets of Paris, driven this way and that through squalid tenement districts by Baron Hausmann, in his renovation of the city thirty or forty years ago, are broad and splendid thoroughfares, abounding in pure air, bright sunlight and green trees, all as different as possible from the cramped and tortuous streets and alleys of the British metropolis. "London has had no aedile like Hausmann." Few things add so much to the attractiveness of great cities as handsome streets along the water fronts. In Paris, on both sides of the Seine throughout its entire course in the city, are broad, well-paved, and well-shaded Quais, flanked by noble rows of stone buildings, while in London the Victoria Embankment is almost the only worthy improvement along the Thames. This Embankment is unquestionably a fine work, but as one walks along the broad stone pavement of it, the view he gets on the other side of the river is made up principally of dirty wharves and hideous warehouses.

In many respects, also, London is untidy. Orange peel, paper and trash are much in evidence. Why should there not be street scavengers like those who keep even the small towns in France and Germany quite free from that kind of litter?

Strictly speaking, London is not a city, but, as Madame de Stael called it, "a province of brick," and it looks as though it might become a continent, for, though there are already more people in it than in the whole of Scotland, and more than twice as many as in the whole of Norway, it is still growing rapidly. It has more than three thousand miles of streets. In spreading thus, the great city has reached out to, and absorbed, many towns that once stood around it. By the way, this accounts, to some extent for the fact that so many streets in London have the same name. I venture to think that the most preposterous and vexatious system of nomenclature ever in vogue is that which has been employed for the streets of London. Until quite recently there were 166 different streets in this city bearing the name of New, 151 Church, 129 Union, 127 York, 119 John, 109 George, and so on. Of late some part of this infuriating ambiguity has been removed by certain changes, but enough of it still remains to baffle and puzzle the visitor, and to cause him the loss of much valuable time and some temper.

I have not flattered London. The picture drawn above is repulsive. Perhaps some of my readers are ready to ask whether such a place can be attractive. Yes. Bulwer says of it, in Ernest Maltravers, "The public buildings are few, and, for the most part, mean; the monuments of antiquity not comparable to those which the pettiest town in Italy can boast of; the palaces are sad rubbish; the houses of our peers and princes are shabby and shapeless heaps of bricks. But what of all this? The spirit of London is in her thoroughfares—her population! What wealth—what cleanliness—what order—what animation! How majestic, and yet how vivid, is the life that runs through her myriad veins!" Externally, Paris is incomparably more beautiful than London, but the fundamental characteristics of the French people are not to be named with those of the British. The charm of London is deeper than that of Paris; it wears better; it lasts longer.

"Sir," said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, as they sat in the Mitre Tavern, in the centre of the city, "the happiness of London is not to be conceived, but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten miles from where we sit than in all the rest of the kingdom." And again, "He who is tired of London is tired of existence."

It is the history of the city and the character of the people, rather than the shape and color of their houses, that give London her abiding charm. And, with her vast treasures of literature, science, and art, what a paradise the great smoky city is to all readers and students, in spite of her wretched climate, and her oppressively dingy tout ensemble!

It is only fair to add that the famous French sculptor, M. Rodin, has recently been expressing his admiration for the smoky British metropolis, declaring that "nothing could be more beautiful than the rich, dark, and ruddy tones of London buildings, in the grey and golden haze of the afternoon."

CHAPTER VI.

It is the custom of the American Ambassador to England to give a reception every year, on the Fourth of July, to any of his countrymen who may be sojourning in the British metropolis. Being in London on the recurrence of that memorable date in 1902, we made it our special business to attend this reception. It did not differ from the conventional affair of this kind. Mr. and Mrs. Choate and their daughter received their guests with gracious cordiality. The house is a large one, well furnished, and worthy to be the home of the representative of the greatest nation in the world. All the great halls, wide stairways, and spacious parlors were thrown open as well as the large dining-room, on the first floor, where refreshments were served, and a wide spreading marquee on the terrace in the rear, where lively music was discoursed and these were all filled with people, well dressed, and, for the most part, well-bred ladies and gentlemen, the ladies predominating a company so numerous as to give one a very strong impression of the number of Americans visiting London in the summer. This season may, indeed, have been exceptional, as the coronation of the King had been expected to take place in the latter part of June. But apart altogether from that, it would have been a large crowd, and it is certain that, under ordinary conditions, the number of our people visiting London steadily increases year by year, and that they feel at home there, as among their own kith and kin, to a degree unknown in any other of the European capitals.