LETTER VI.
Inverary.—The Argyle Family.—Dumbarton.—Sunset on the Clyde.—Glasgow.—Dirt and Intellect.—Stirling.—"The Scottish Chiefs."—Stirling Castle.—The Tournament Ground.—Edinburgh.—James Simpson.—Infant Schools.—Free Baths.—Melrose.—Abbotsford.—Walter Scott.—Dryburgh Abbey.—Scott's Tomb.
I am very sorry to leave such a wide gap between my letters, but I was inevitably prevented from finishing one that was begun for the steamer of the 4th of November. I then hoped to prepare one after my arrival here in time for the Hibernia, but a severe cold, caught on the way, unfitted me for writing. It is now necessary to retrace my steps a long way, or lose sight of several things it has seemed desirable to mention to friends in America, though I shall make out my narrative more briefly than if nearer the time of action.
If I mistake not, my last closed just as I was looking back on the hill where I had passed the night in all the miserable chill and amid the ghostly apparitions of a Scotch mist, but which looked in the morning truly beautiful, and (had I not known it too well to be deceived) alluring, in its mantle of rich pink heath, the tallest and most full of blossoms we anywhere saw, and with, the waterfall making music by its side, and sparkling in the morning sun.
Passing from Tarbet, we entered the grand and beautiful pass of Glencoe,—sublime with purple shadows with bright lights between, and in one place showing an exquisitely silent and lonely little lake. The wildness of the scene was heightened by the black Highland cattle feeding here and there. They looked much at home, too, in the park at Inverary, where I saw them next day. In Inverary I was disappointed. I found, indeed, the position of every object the same as indicated in the "Legend of Montrose," but the expression of the whole seemed unlike what I had fancied. The present abode of the Argyle family is a modern structure, and boasts very few vestiges of the old romantic history attached to the name. The park and look-out upon the lake are beautiful, but except from the brief pleasure derived from these, the old cross from Iona that stands in the market-place, and the drone of the bagpipe which lulled me to sleep at night playing some melancholy air, there was nothing to make me feel that it was "a far cry to Lochawe," but, on the contrary, I seemed in the very midst of the prosaic, the civilized world.
Leaving Inverary, we left that day the Highlands too, passing through. Hell Glen, a very wild and grand defile. Taking boat then on Loch Levy, we passed down the Clyde, stopping an hour or two on our way at Dumbarton. Nature herself foresaw the era of picture when she made and placed this rock: there is every preparation for the artist's stealing a little piece from her treasures to hang on the walls of a room. Here I saw the sword of "Wallace wight," shown by a son of the nineteenth century, who said that this hero lived about fifty years ago, and who did not know the height of this rock, in a cranny of which he lived, or at least ate and slept and "donned his clothes." From the top of the rock I saw sunset on the beautiful Clyde, animated that day by an endless procession of steamers, little skiffs, and boats. In one of the former, the Cardiff Castle, we embarked as the last light of day was fading, and that evening found ourselves in Glasgow.
I understand there is an intellectual society of high merit in Glasgow, but we were there only a few hours, and did not see any one. Certainly the place, as it may be judged of merely from the general aspect of the population and such objects as may be seen in the streets, more resembles an Inferno than any other we have yet visited. The people are more crowded together, and the stamp of squalid, stolid misery and degradation more obvious and appalling. The English and Scotch do not take kindly to poverty, like those of sunnier climes; it makes them fierce or stupid, and, life presenting no other cheap pleasure, they take refuge in drinking.
I saw here in Glasgow persons, especially women, dressed in dirty, wretched tatters, worse than none, and with an expression of listless, unexpecting woe upon their faces, far more tragic than the inscription over the gate of Dante's Inferno. To one species of misery suffered here to the last extent, I shall advert in speaking of London.
But from all these sorrowful tokens I by no means inferred the falsehood of the information, that here was to be found a circle rich in intellect and in aspiration. The manufacturing and commercial towns, burning focuses of grief and vice, are also the centres of intellectual life, as in forcing-beds the rarest flowers and fruits are developed by use of impure and repulsive materials. Where evil comes to an extreme, Heaven seems busy in providing means for the remedy. Glaring throughout Scotland and England is the necessity for the devoutest application of intellect and love to the cure of ills that cry aloud, and, without such application, erelong help must be sought by other means than words. Yet there is every reason to hope that those who ought to help are seriously, though, slowly, becoming alive to the imperative nature of this duty; so we must not cease to hope, even in the streets of Glasgow, and the gin-palaces of Manchester, and the dreariest recesses of London.
From Glasgow we passed to Stirling, like Dumbarton endeared to the mind which cherishes the memory of its childhood more by association with Miss Porter's Scottish Chiefs, than with "Snowdon's knight and Scotland's king." We reached the town too late to see the castle before the next morning, and I took up at the inn "The Scottish Chiefs," in which I had not read a word since ten or twelve years old. We are in the habit now of laughing when this book is named, as if it were a representative of what is most absurdly stilted or bombastic, but now, in reading, my maturer mind was differently impressed from what I expected, and the infatuation with which childhood and early youth regard this book and its companion, "Thaddeus of Warsaw," was justified. The characters and dialogue are, indeed, out of nature, but the sentiment that animates them is pure, true, and no less healthy than noble. Here is bad drawing, bad drama, but good music, to which the unspoiled heart will always echo, even when the intellect has learned to demand a better organ for its communication.
The castle of Stirling is as rich as any place in romantic associations. We were shown its dungeons and its Court of Lions, where, says tradition, wild animals, kept in the grated cells adjacent, were brought out on festival occasions to furnish entertainment for the court. So, while lords and ladies gay danced and sang above, prisoners pined and wild beasts starved below. This, at first blush, looks like a very barbarous state of things, but, on reflection, one does not find that we have outgrown it in our present so-called state of refined civilization, only the present way of expressing the same facts is a little different. Still lords and ladies dance and sing, unknowing or uncaring that the laborers who minister to their luxuries starve or are turned into wild beasts. Man need not boast his condition, methinks, till he can weave his costly tapestry without the side that is kept under looking thus sadly.
The tournament ground is still kept green and in beautiful order, near Stirling castle, as a memento of the olden time, and as we passed away down the beautiful Firth, a turn of the river gave us a very advantageous view of it. So gay it looked, so festive in the bright sunshine, one almost seemed to see the graceful forms of knight and noble pricking their good steeds to the encounter, or the stalwart Douglas, vindicating his claim to be indeed a chief by conquest in the rougher sports of the yeomanry.
Passing along the Firth to Edinburgh, we again passed two or three days in that beautiful city, which I could not be content to leave so imperfectly seen, if I had not some hope of revisiting it when the bright lights that adorn it are concentred there. In summer almost every one is absent. I was very fortunate to see as many interesting persons as I did. On this second visit I saw James Simpson, a well-known philanthropist, and leader in the cause of popular education. Infant schools have been an especial care of his, and America as well as Scotland has received the benefit of his thoughts on this subject. His last good work has been to induce the erection of public baths in Edinburgh, and the working people of that place, already deeply in his debt for the lectures he has been unwearied in delivering for their benefit, have signified their gratitude by presenting him with a beautiful model of a fountain in silver as an ornament to his study. Never was there a place where such a measure would be more important; if cleanliness be akin to godliness, Edinburgh stands at great disadvantage in her devotions. The impure air, the terrific dirt which surround the working people, must make all progress in higher culture impossible; and I saw nothing which seemed to me so likely to have results of incalculable good, as this practical measure of the Simpsons in support of the precept,
"Wash and be clean every whit."
We returned into England by the way of Melrose, not content to leave Scotland without making our pilgrimage to Abbotsford. The universal feeling, however, has made this pilgrimage so common that there is nothing left for me to say; yet, though I had read a hundred descriptions, everything seemed new as I went over this epitome of the mind and life of Scott. As what constitutes the great man is more commonly some extraordinary combination and balance of qualities, than the highest development of any one, so you cannot but here be struck anew by the singular combination in Scott's mind of love for the picturesque and romantic with the plainest common sense,—a delight in heroic excess with the prudential habit of order. Here the most pleasing order pervades emblems of what men commonly esteem disorder and excess.
Amid the exquisite beauty of the ruins of Dryburgh, I saw with regret that Scott's body rests in almost the only spot that is not green, and cannot well be made so, for the light does not reach it. That is not a fit couch for him who dressed so many dim and time-worn relics with living green.
Always cheerful and beneficent, Scott seemed to the common eye in like measure prosperous and happy, up to the last years, and the chair in which, under the pressure of the sorrows which led to his death, he was propped up to write when brain and eye and hand refused their aid, the product remaining only as a guide to the speculator as to the workings of the mind in case of insanity or approaching imbecility, would by most persons be viewed as the only saddening relic of his career. Yet when I recall some passages in the Lady of the Lake, and the Address to his Harp, I cannot doubt that Scott had the full share of bitter in his cup, and feel the tender hope that we do about other gentle and generous guardians and benefactors of our youth, that in a nobler career they are now fulfilling still higher duties with serener mind. Doubtless too they are trusting in us that we will try to fill their places with kindly deeds, ardent thoughts, nor leave the world, in their absence,
"A dim, vast vale of tears,
Vacant and desolate."
LETTER VII.
Newcastle.—Descent into a Coal-Mine.—York with its Minster.—Sheffield.—Chatsworth.—Warwick Castle.—Leamington and Stratford.—Shakespeare.—Birmingham.—George Dawson.—James Martineau.—W.J. Fox.—W.H. Charming and Theodore Parker.—London and Paris.
We crossed the moorland in a heavy rain, and reached Newcastle late at night. Next day we descended into a coal-mine; it was quite an odd sensation to be taken off one's feet and dropped down into darkness by the bucket. The stables under ground had a pleasant Gil-Blas air, though the poor horses cannot like it much; generally they see the light of day no more after they have once been let down into these gloomy recesses, but pass their days in dragging cars along the rails of the narrow passages, and their nights in eating hay and dreaming of grass!! When we went down, we meant to go along the gallery to the place where the miners were then at work, but found this was a walk of a mile and a half, and, beside the weariness of picking one's steps slowly along by the light of a tallow candle, too wet and dirty an enterprise to be undertaken by way of amusement; so, after proceeding half a mile or so, we begged to be restored to our accustomed level, and reached it with minds slightly edified and face and hands much blackened.
Passing thence we saw York with its Minster, that dream of beauty realized. From, its roof I saw two rainbows, overarching that lovely country. Through its aisles I heard grand music pealing. But how sorrowfully bare is the interior of such a cathedral, despoiled of the statues, the paintings, and the garlands that belong to the Catholic religion! The eye aches for them. Such a church is ruined by Protestantism; its admirable exterior seems that of a sepulchre; there is no correspondent life within.
Within the citadel, a tower half ruined and ivy-clad, is life that has been growing up while the exterior bulwarks of the old feudal time crumbled to ruin. George Fox, while a prisoner at York for obedience to the dictates of his conscience, planted here a walnut, and the tall tree that grew from it still "bears testimony" to his living presence on that spot. The tree is old, but still bears nuts; one of them was taken away by my companions, and may perhaps be the parent of a tree somewhere in America, that shall shade those who inherit the spirit, if they do not attach importance to the etiquettes, of Quakerism.
In Sheffield I saw the sooty servitors tending their furnaces. I saw them, also on Saturday night, after their work was done, going to receive its poor wages, looking pallid and dull, as if they had spent on tempering the steel that vital force that should have tempered themselves to manhood.
We saw, also, Chatsworth, with its park and mock wilderness, and immense conservatory, and really splendid fountains and wealth of marbles. It is a fine expression of modern luxury and splendor, but did not interest me; I found little there of true beauty or grandeur.
Warwick Castle is a place entirely to my mind, a real representative of the English aristocracy in the day of its nobler life. The grandeur of the pile itself, and its beauty of position, introduce you fitly to the noble company with which the genius of Vandyke has peopled its walls. But a short time was allowed to look upon these nobles, warriors, statesmen, and ladies, who gaze upon us in turn with such a majesty of historic association, yet was I very well satisfied. It is not difficult to see men through the eyes of Vandyke. His way of viewing character seems superficial, though commanding; he sees the man in his action on the crowd, not in his hidden life; he does not, like some painters, amaze and engross us by his revelations as to the secret springs of conduct. I know not by what hallucination I forebore to look at the picture I most desired to see,—that of Lucy, Countess of Carlisle. I was looking at something else, and when the fat, pompous butler announced her, I did not recognize her name from his mouth. Afterward it flashed across me, that I had really been standing before her and forgotten to look. But repentance was too late; I had passed the castle gate to return no more.
Pretty Leamington and Stratford are hackneyed ground. Of the latter I only observed what, if I knew, I had forgotten, that the room where Shakespeare was born has been an object of devotion only for forty years. England has learned much of her appreciation of Shakespeare from the Germans. In the days of innocence, I fondly supposed that every one who could understand English, and was not a cannibal, adored Shakespeare and read him on Sundays always for an hour or more, and on week days a considerable portion of the time. But I have lived to know some hundreds of persons in my native land, without finding ten who had any direct acquaintance with their greatest benefactor, and I dare say in England as large an experience would not end more honorably to its subjects. So vast a treasure is left untouched, while men are complaining of being poor, because they have not toothpicks exactly to their mind.
At Stratford I handled, too, the poker used to such good purpose by Geoffrey Crayon. The muse had fled, the fire was out, and the poker rusty, yet a pleasant influence lingered even in that cold little room, and seemed to lend a transient glow to the poker under the influence of sympathy.
In Birmingham I heard two discourses from one of the rising lights of England, George Dawson, a young man of whom I had earlier heard much in praise. He is a friend of the people, in the sense of brotherhood, not of a social convenience or patronage; in literature catholic; in matters of religion antisectarian, seeking truth in aspiration and love. He is eloquent, with good method in his discourse, fire and dignity when wanted, with a frequent homeliness in enforcement and illustration which offends the etiquettes of England, but fits him the better for the class he has to address. His powers are uncommon and unfettered in their play; his aim is worthy. He is fulfilling and will fulfil an important task as an educator of the people, if all be not marred by a taint of self-love and arrogance now obvious in his discourse. This taint is not surprising in one so young, who has done so much, and in order to do it has been compelled to great self-confidence and light heed of the authority of other minds, and who is surrounded almost exclusively by admirers; neither is it, at present, a large speck; it may be quite purged from him by the influence of nobler motives and the rise of his ideal standard; but, on the other hand, should it spread, all must be vitiated. Let us hope the best, for he is one that could ill be spared from the band who have taken up the cause of Progress in England.
In this connection I may as well speak of James Martineau, whom I heard in Liverpool, and W.J. Fox, whom I heard in London.
Mr. Martineau looks like the over-intellectual, the partially developed man, and his speech confirms this impression. He is sometimes conservative, sometimes reformer, not in the sense of eclecticism, but because his powers and views do not find a true harmony. On the conservative side he is scholarly, acute,—on the other, pathetic, pictorial, generous. He is no prophet and no sage, yet a man full of fine affections and thoughts, always suggestive, sometimes satisfactory; he is well adapted to the wants of that class, a large one in the present day, who love the new wine, but do not feel that they can afford to throw away all their old bottles.
Mr. Fox is the reverse of all this: he is homogeneous in his materials and harmonious in the results he produces. He has great persuasive power; it is the persuasive power of a mind warmly engaged in seeking truth for itself. He sometimes carries homeward convictions with great energy, driving in the thought as with golden nails. A glow of kindly human sympathy enlivens his argument, and the whole presents thought in a well-proportioned, animated body. But I am told he is far superior in speech on political or social problems, than on such as I heard him discuss.
I was reminded, in hearing all three, of men similarly engaged in our country, W.H. Charming and Theodore Parker. None of them compare in the symmetrical arrangement of extempore discourse, or in pure eloquence and communication of spiritual beauty, with Charming, nor in fulness and sustained flow with Parker, but, in power of practical and homely adaptation of their thought to common wants, they are superior to the former, and all have more variety, finer perceptions, and are more powerful in single passages, than Parker.
And now my pen has run to 1st October, and still I have such notabilities as fell to my lot to observe while in London, and these that are thronging upon me here in Paris to record for you. I am sadly in arrears, but 't is comfort to think that such meats as I have to serve up are as good cold as hot. At any rate, it is just impossible to do any better, and I shall comfort myself, as often before, with the triplet which I heard in childhood from a sage (if only sages wear wigs!):—
"As said the great Prince Fernando,
What can a man do,
More than he can do?"
LETTER VIII.
Recollections of London.—The English Gentleman.—London Climate.—Out of Season.—Luxury and Misery.—A Difficult Problem.—Terrors of Poverty.—Joanna Baillie and Madame Roland.—Hampstead.—Miss Berry.—Female Artists.—Margaret Gillies.—The People's Journal.—The Times.—The Howitts.—South wood Smith.—Houses for the Poor.—Skeleton of Jeremy Bentham.—Cooper the Poet.—Thom.
I sit down here in Paris to narrate some recollections of London. The distance in space and time is not great, yet I seem in wholly a different world. Here in the region of wax-lights, mirrors, bright wood fires, shrugs, vivacious ejaculations, wreathed smiles, and adroit courtesies, it is hard to remember John Bull, with his coal-smoke, hands in pockets, except when extended for ungracious demand of the perpetual half-crown, or to pay for the all but perpetual mug of beer. John, seen on that side, is certainly the most churlish of clowns, and the most clownish of churls. But then there are so many other sides! When a gentleman, he is so truly the gentleman, when a man, so truly the man of honor! His graces, when he has any, grow up from his inmost heart.
Not that he is free from humbug; on the contrary, he is prone to the most solemn humbug, generally of the philanthrophic or otherwise moral kind. But he is always awkward beneath the mask, and can never impose upon anybody—but himself. Nature meant him to be noble, generous, sincere, and has furnished him with no faculties to make himself agreeable in any other way or mode of being. 'T is not so with your Frenchman, who can cheat you pleasantly, and move with grace in the devious and slippery path. You would be almost sorry to see him quite disinterested and straightforward, so much of agreeable talent and naughty wit would thus lie hid for want of use. But John, O John, we must admire, esteem, or be disgusted with thee.
As to climate, there is not much to choose at this time of year. In London, for six weeks, we never saw the sun for coal-smoke and fog. In Paris we have not been blessed with its cheering rays above three or four days in the same length of time, and are, beside, tormented with an oily and tenacious mud beneath the feet, which makes it almost impossible to walk. This year, indeed, is an uncommonly severe one at Paris; but then, if they have their share of dark, cold days, it must be admitted that they do all they can to enliven them.
But to dwell first on London,—London, in itself a world. We arrived at a time which the well-bred Englishman considers as no time at all,—quite out of "the season," when Parliament is in session, and London thronged with the equipages of her aristocracy, her titled wealthy nobles. I was listened to with a smile of contempt when I declared that the stock shows of London would yield me amusement and employment more than sufficient for the time I had to stay. But I found that, with my way of viewing things, it would be to me an inexhaustible studio, and that, if life were only long enough, I would live there for years obscure in some corner, from which I could issue forth day by day to watch unobserved the vast stream of life, or to decipher the hieroglyphics which ages have been inscribing on the walls of this vast palace (I may not call it a temple), which human effort has reared for means, not yet used efficaciously, of human culture.
And though I wish to return to London in "the season," when that city is an adequate representative of the state of things in England, I am glad I did not at first see all that pomp and parade of wealth and luxury in contrast with the misery, squalid, agonizing, ruffianly, which stares one in the face in every street of London, and hoots at the gates of her palaces more ominous a note than ever was that of owl or raven in the portentous times when empires and races have crumbled and fallen from inward decay.
It is impossible, however, to take a near view of the treasures created by English genius, accumulated by English industry, without a prayer, daily more fervent, that the needful changes in the condition of this people may be effected by peaceful revolution, which shall destroy nothing except the shocking inhumanity of exclusiveness, which now prevents their being used, for the benefit of all. May their present possessors look to it in time! A few already are earnest in a good spirit. For myself, much as I pitied the poor, abandoned, hopeless wretches that swarm in the roads and streets of England, I pity far more the English noble, with this difficult problem before him, and such need of a speedy solution. Sad is his life, if a conscientious man; sadder still, if not. Poverty in England has terrors of which I never dreamed at home. I felt that it would be terrible to be poor there, but far more so to be the possessor of that for which so many thousands are perishing. And the middle class, too, cannot here enjoy that serenity which the sages have described as naturally their peculiar blessing. Too close, too dark throng the evils they cannot obviate, the sorrows they cannot relieve. To a man of good heart, each day must bring purgatory which he knows not how to bear, yet to which he fears to become insensible.
From these clouds of the Present, it is pleasant to turn the thoughts to some objects which have cast a light upon the Past, and which, by the virtue of their very nature, prescribe hope for the Future. I have mentioned with satisfaction seeing some persons who illustrated the past dynasty in the progress of thought here: Wordsworth, Dr. Chalmers, De Quincey, Andrew Combe. With a still higher pleasure, because to one of my own sex, whom I have honored almost above any, I went to pay my court to Joanna Baillie. I found on her brow, not indeed a coronal of gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her thoughts have received.
I prize Joanna Baillie and Madame Roland as the best specimens which have been hitherto offered of women of a Roman strength and singleness of mind, adorned by the various culture and capable of the various action opened to them by the progress of the Christian Idea. They are not sentimental; they do not sigh and write of withered flowers of fond affection, and woman's heart born to be misunderstood by the object or objects of her fond, inevitable choice. Love (the passion), when spoken of at all by them, seems a thing noble, religious, worthy to be felt. They do not write of it always; they did not think of it always; they saw other things in this great, rich, suffering world. In superior delicacy of touch, they show the woman, but the hand is firm; nor was all their speech, one continued utterance of mere personal experience. It contained things which are good, intellectually, universally.
I regret that the writings of Joanna Baillie are not more known in the United States. The Plays on the Passions are faulty in their plan,—all attempts at comic, even at truly dramatic effect, fail; but there are masterly sketches of character, vigorous expressions of wise thought, deep, fervent ejaculations of an aspiring soul!
We found her in her little calm retreat at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character and their mutual relation she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline. Although no autograph collector, I asked for theirs, and when the elder gave hers as "sister to Joanna Baillie," it drew a tear from my eye,—a good tear, a genuine pearl,—fit homage to that fairest product of the soul of man, humble, disinterested tenderness.
Hampstead has still a good deal of romantic beauty. I was told it was the favorite sketching-ground of London artists, till the railroads gave them easy means of spending a few hours to advantage farther off. But, indeed, there is a wonderful deal of natural beauty lying in untouched sweetness near London. Near one of our cities it would all have been grabbed up the first thing. But we, too, are beginning to grow wiser.
At Richmond I went to see another lady of more than threescore years' celebrity, more than fourscore in age, Miss Berry the friend of Horace Walpole, and for her charms of manner and conversation long and still a reigning power. She has still the vivacity, the careless nature, or refined art, that made her please so much in earlier days,—still is girlish, and gracefully so. Verily, with her was no sign of labor or sorrow.
From the older turning to the young, I must speak with pleasure of several girls I know in London, who are devoting themselves to painting as a profession. They have really wise and worthy views of the artist's avocation; if they remain true to them, they will enjoy a free, serene existence, unprofaned by undue care or sentimental sorrow. Among these, Margaret Gillies has attained some celebrity; she may be known to some in America by engravings in the "People's Journal" from her pictures; but, if I remember right, these are coarse things, and give no just notion of her pictures, which are distinguished for elegance and refinement; a little mannerized, but she is improving in that respect.
The "People's Journal" comes nearer being a fair sign of the times than any other publication of England, apparently, if we except Punch. As for the Times, on which you all use your scissors so industriously, it is managed with vast ability, no doubt, but the blood would tingle many a time to the fingers' ends of the body politic, before that solemn organ which claims to represent the heart would dare to beat in unison. Still it would require all the wise management of the Times, or wisdom enough to do without it, and a wide range and diversity of talent, indeed, almost sweeping the circle, to make a People's Journal for England. The present is only a bud of the future flower.
Mary and William Howitt are its main support. I saw them several times at their cheerful and elegant home. In Mary Howitt I found the same engaging traits of character we are led to expect from her books for children. Her husband is full of the same agreeable information, communicated in the same lively yet precise manner we find in his books; it was like talking with old friends, except that now the eloquence of the eye was added. At their house I became acquainted with Dr. Southwood Smith, the well-known philanthropist. He is at present engaged on the construction of good tenements calculated to improve the condition of the working people. His plans look promising, and should they succeed, you shall have a detailed account of them. On visiting him, we saw an object which I had often heard celebrated, and had thought would be revolting, but found, on the contrary, an agreeable sight; this is the skeleton of Jeremy Bentham. It was at Bentham's request that the skeleton, dressed in the same dress he habitually wore, stuffed out to an exact resemblance of life, and with a portrait mark in wax, the best I ever saw, sits there, as assistant to Dr. Smith in the entertainment of his guests and companion of his studies. The figure leans a little forward, resting the hands on a, stout stick which Bentham always carried, and had named "Dapple"; the attitude is quite easy, the expression of the whole quite mild, winning, yet highly individual. It is a pleasing mark of that unity of aim and tendency to be expected throughout the life of such a mind, that Bentham, while quite a young man, had made a will, in which, to oppose in the most convincing manner the prejudice against dissection of the human subject, he had given his body after death to be used in service of the cause of science. "I have not yet been able," said the will, "to do much service to my fellow-men by my life, but perhaps I may in this manner by my death." Many years after, reading a pamphlet by Dr. Smith on the same subject, he was much pleased with it, became his friend, and bequeathed his body to his care and use, with directions that the skeleton should finally be disposed of in the way I have described.
The countenance of Dr. Smith has an expression of expansive, sweet, almost childlike goodness. Miss Gillies has made a charming picture of him, with a favorite little granddaughter nestling in his arms.
Another marked figure that I encountered on this great showboard was Cooper, the author of "The Purgatory of Luicides," a very remarkable poem, of which, had there been leisure before my departure, I should have made a review, and given copious extracts in the Tribune. Cooper is as strong a man, and probably a milder one, than when in the prison where that poem was written. The earnestness in seeking freedom and happiness for all men, which drew upon him that penalty, seems unabated; he is a very significant type of the new era, and also an agent in bringing it near. One of the poets of the people, also, I saw,—the sweetest singer of them all,—Thom. "A Chieftain unknown to the Queen" is again exacting a cruel tribute from him. I wish much that some of those of New York who have taken an interest in him would provide there a nook in which he might find refuge and solace for the evening of his days, to sing or to work as likes him best, and where he could bring up two fine boys to happier prospects than the parent land will afford them. Could and would America but take from other lands more of the talent, as well as the bone and sinew, she would be rich.
But the stroke of the clock warns me to stop now, and begin to-morrow with fresher eye and hand on some interesting topics. My sketches are slight; still they cannot be made without time, and I find none to be had in this Europe except late at night. I believe it is what all the inhabitants use, but I am too sleepy a genius to carry the practice far.
LETTER IX.
Writing at Night.—London.—National Gallery.—Murillo.—The Flower Girl.—Nursery-Maids and Working-men.—Hampton Court.—Zoölogical Gardens.—King of Animals.—English Piety.—Eagles.—Sir John Soane's Museum.—Kew Gardens.—The Great Cactus.—The Reform Club House.—Men Cooks.—Orderly Kitchen.—A Gilpin Excursion.—The Bell at Edmonton.—Omnibus.—Cheapside.—English Slowness.—Freiligrath.—Arcadia.—Italian School.—Mazzini.—Italy.—Italian Refugees.—Correggio.—Hope of Italians.—Addresses.—Supper.—Carlyle, his Appearance, Conversation, &c.
Again I must begin to write late in the evening. I am told it is the custom of the literati in these large cities to work in the night. It is easy to see that it must be almost impossible to do otherwise; yet not only is the practice very bad for the health, and one that brings on premature old age, but I cannot think this night-work will prove as firm in texture and as fair of hue as what is done by sunlight. Give me a lonely chamber, a window from which through the foliage you can catch glimpses of a beautiful prospect, and the mind finds itself tuned to action.
But London, London! I have yet some brief notes to make on London. We had scarcely any sunlight by which to see pictures, and I postponed all visits to private collections, except one, in the hope of being in England next time in the long summer days. In the National Gallery I saw little except the Murillos; they were so beautiful, that with me, who had no true conception of his kind of genius before, they took away the desire to look into anything else at the same time. They did not affect me much either, except with a sense of content in this genius, so rich and full and strong. It was a cup of sunny wine that refreshed but brought no intoxicating visions. There is something very noble in the genius of Spain, there is such an intensity and singleness; it seems to me it has not half shown itself, and must have an important part to play yet in the drama of this planet.
At the Dulwich Gallery I saw the Flower Girl of Murillo, an enchanting picture, the memory of which must always
"Cast a light upon the day,
A light that will not pass away,
A sweet forewarning."
Who can despair when he thinks of a form like that, so full of life and bliss! Nature, that made such human forms to match the butterfly and the bee on June mornings when the lime-trees are in blossom, has surely enough of happiness in store to satisfy us all, somewhere, some time.
It was pleasant, indeed, to see the treasures of those galleries, of the British Museum, and of so charming a place as Hampton Court, open to everybody. In the National Gallery one finds a throng of nursery-maids, and men just come from their work; true, they make a great deal of noise thronging to and fro on the uncarpeted floors in their thick boots, and noise from which, when penetrated by the atmosphere of Art, men in the thickest boots would know how to refrain; still I felt that the sight of such objects must be gradually doing them a great deal of good. The British Museum would, in itself, be an education for a man who should go there once a week, and think and read at his leisure moments about what he saw.
Hampton Court I saw in the gloom, and rain, and my chief recollections are of the magnificent yew-trees beneath whose shelter—the work of ages—I took refuge from the pelting shower. The expectations cherished from childhood about the Cartoons were all baffled; there was no light by which they could be seen. But I must hope to visit Hampton Court again in the time of roses.
The Zoölogical Gardens are another pleasure of the million, since, although something is paid there, it is so little that almost all can afford it. To me, it is a vast pleasure to see animals where they can show out their habits or instincts, and to see them assembled from, all climates and countries, amid verdure and with room enough, as they are here, is a true poem. They have a fine lion, the first I ever saw that realized the idea we have of the king of the animal world; but the groan and roar of this one were equally royal. The eagles were fine, but rather disgraced themselves. It is a trait of English piety, which would, no doubt, find its defenders among ourselves, not to feed the animals on Sunday, that their keepers may have rest; at least this was the explanation given us by one of these men of the state of ravenous hunger in which we found them on the Monday. I half hope he was jesting with us. Certain it is that the eagles were wild with famine, and even the grandest of them, who had eyed us at first as if we were not fit to live in the same zone with him, when the meat came round, after a short struggle to maintain his dignity, joined in wild shriek and scramble with the rest.
Sir John Soane's Museum I visited, containing the sarcophagus described by Dr. Waagen, Hogarth's pictures, a fine Canaletto, and a manuscript of Tasso. It fills the house once the residence of his body, still of his mind. It is not a mind with which I have sympathy; I found there no law of harmony, and it annoyed me to see things all jumbled together as if in an old curiosity-shop. Nevertheless it was a generous bequest, and much may perhaps be found there of value to him who takes time to seek.
The Gardens at Kew delighted me, thereabouts all was so green, and still one could indulge at leisure in the humorous and fantastic associations that cluster around the name of Kew, like the curls of a "big wig" round the serene and sleepy face of its wearer. Here are fourteen green-houses: in one you find all the palms; in another, the productions of the regions of snow; in another, those squibs and humorsome utterances of Nature, the cactuses,—ay! there I saw the great-grandfather of all the cactuses, a hoary, solemn plant, declared to be a thousand years old, disdaining to say if it is not really much, older; in yet another, the most exquisitely minute plants, delicate as the tracery of frostwork, too delicate for the bowers of fairies, such at least as visit the gross brains of earthly poets.
The Reform Club was the only one of those splendid establishments that I visited. Certainly the force of comfort can no farther go, nor can anything be better contrived to make dressing, eating, news-getting, and even sleeping (for there are bedrooms as well as dressing-rooms for those who will), as comfortable as can be imagined. Yet to me this palace of so many "single gentlemen rolled into one" seemed stupidly comfortable, in the absence of that elegant arrangement and vivacious atmosphere which only women can inspire. In the kitchen, indeed, I met them, and on that account it seemed the pleasantest part of the building,—though even there they are but the servants of servants. There reigned supreme a genius in his way, who has published a work on Cookery, and around him his pupils,—young men who pay a handsome yearly fee for novitiate under his instruction. I was not sorry, however, to see men predominant in the cooking department, as I hope to see that and washing transferred to their care in the progress of things, since they are "the stronger sex."
The arrangements of this kitchen were very fine, combining great convenience with neatness, and even elegance. Fourier himself might have taken pleasure in them. Thence we passed into the private apartments of the artist, and found them full of pictures by his wife, an artist in another walk. One or two of them had been engraved. She was an Englishwoman.
A whimsical little excursion we made on occasion of the anniversary of the wedding-day of two of my friends. They had often enjoyed reading the account of John Gilpin's in America, and now thought that, as they were in England and near enough, they would celebrate theirs also at "the Bell at Edmonton." I accompanied them with "a little foot-page," to eke out the train, pretty and graceful and playful enough for the train of a princess. But our excursion turned out somewhat of a failure, in an opposite way to Gilpin's. Whereas he went too fast, we went too slow. First we took coach and went through Cheapside to take omnibus at (strange misnomer!) the Flower-Pot. But Gilpin could never have had his race through Cheapside as it is in its present crowded state; we were obliged to proceed at a funeral pace. We missed the omnibus, and when we took the next one it went with the slowness of a "family horse" in the old chaise of a New England deacon, and, after all, only took us half-way. At the half-way house a carriage was to be sought. The lady who let it, and all her grooms, were to be allowed time to recover from their consternation at so unusual a move as strangers taking a carriage to dine at the little inn at Edmonton, now a mere alehouse, before we could be allowed to proceed. The English stand lost in amaze at "Yankee notions," with their quick come and go, and it is impossible to make them "go ahead" in the zigzag chain-lightning path, unless you push them. A rather old part of the plan had been a pilgrimage to the grave of Lamb, with a collateral view to the rural beauties of Edmonton, but night had fallen on all such hopes two hours at least before we reached the Bell. There, indeed, we found them somewhat more alert to comprehend our wishes; they laughed when we spoke of Gilpin, showed us a print of the race and the window where Mrs. Gilpin must have stood,—balcony, alas! there was none; allowed us to make our own fire, and provided us a wedding dinner of tough meat and stale bread. Nevertheless we danced, dined, paid (I believe), and celebrated the wedding quite to our satisfaction, though in the space of half an hour, as we knew friends were even at that moment expecting us to tea at some miles' distance. But it is always pleasant in this world of routine to act out a freak. "Such a one," said an English gentleman, "one of us would rarely have dreamed of, much, less acted." "Why, was it not pleasant?" "Oh, very! but so out of the way!"
Returning, we passed the house where Freiligrath finds a temporary home, earning the bread, of himself and his family in a commercial house. England houses the exile, but not without house-tax, window-tax, and head-tax. Where is the Arcadia that dares invite all genius to her arms, and change her golden wheat for their green laurels and immortal flowers? Arcadia?—would the name were America!