Easter Holidays—Lichfield and Dr. Johnson.

The three spires, crowning the principal towers of the Church, soon came in sight, and beneath its paternal shadow were clustered the humbler roofs of the town. How like a hen gathering her chickens under her wings, is a true cathedral amid the dwellings which it overshadows, and how completely is its true intent set forth by this natural suggestion of its architecture! I had never, before, seen a city purely religious in its prestige, and I felt, as soon as my eyes saw it, the moral worth to a nation of many such cities scattered amid the more busy hives of its industry. On alighting, I could not but remark to my companion, the still and Sabbath-like aspect of the city. “It is generally so,” he answered, “with our cathedral towns; they are unlike all other places.” This is their reproach in the eyes of the economist; but such men never seem to reflect that the cathedral towns owe their existence to the fact they are such, and would, generally, have no population at all, but for their ecclesiastical character. Why can they not see, besides, that such a place as Lichfield is as necessary to a great empire, as a Sheffield? It bred a Johnson—and that was a better product for England than ever came out of a manufactory of cotton or hardware. Probably, just such a mind could have been reared only in just such a place. “You are an idle set of people,” said Boswell to his master, as they entered Lichfield together. “Sir,” replied the despot, “we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.”

But here at length is the cathedral, and service is going on! A moment’s survey of its western front, so old, so enriched with carvings and figures, so defiant of casual observation, and so worthy of careful study—and we pass inside—and here is the nave, and the massive and dim effect of the interior—somehow not all realized at once, and yet overpowering. We reach the choir, and a verger quietly smuggles us within. After a moment’s kneeling, we observe that the Epistle is reading, and the service about to close. In a few minutes my first impressions of worship in a cathedral are complete, and they are very unsatisfactory. I had reached the sanctuary too late for the musical parts of the solemnity, and there was rather a deficiency than an excess of ceremonial, in the parts I saw. A moment’s inspection convinced me that Lichfield Cathedral is, by no means, over-worked by its Dean and Chapter. Alas! I said to myself, what we could do with such a foundation in my own city, in America! We might have such a school of the prophets as should be felt in all the land: we would make it the life of the place; the seat of perpetual preachings, and prayers, and catechizings, and councils; a citadel of power to the faith, and a magazine of holy armor and defences for the Church. Why do not these worthy Canons wake up, and go to work, like genuine sons and successors of St. Chad?

We now went the rounds of the Church, with the stupid verger for our orator, and I began to experience the intolerable annoyance complained of by all travellers. “Oh, that he might hold his tongue! We know it—we know it—only let us alone, and here’s your shilling”—said my inmost heart, a score of times, but still he mumbled on. He was most impressive in detailing the exploits of the Puritans: here they hacked, and there they hewed; this was done by Cromwell’s men—when they broke into the old Bishops’ sepulchres; and that, when they hunted a cat, with the hounds, through the nave and aisles. Here they tooted with the broken organ pipes, and there the soldiers mounted the pulpit, and preached à la Woodstock. They went so far as to cut up their rations of flesh meat on the altar, and they baptised a calf at the font; but, enough; mine eyes have seen that there were such men in England two hundred years ago, and oh, let us pray that we may not deserve such judgments again. It was refreshing to stop before the tomb of Bishop Hacket, and to thank God, who put it into his heart to be a repairer of the breach. The Bishop had his failings, but what he did for his cathedral should cover a multitude of sins, if he had so many. He was the man who, during the worst scenes of the rebellion, was threatened by a soldier with instant death, unless he desisted from the prayers which he was then offering, in the Church of St. Giles, Holborn, and who answered, calmly, “you do what becomes a soldier, but I shall do as becomes a priest,” and so went on with the service. At the Restoration, being already three-score and ten, he was appointed to this See. He found the cathedral almost a ruin; thousands of round shot, and hand-grenades had been fired upon it; the pinnacles were battered to pieces, and the walls and spires seemed ready to fall, while the interior was a mass of filth and desolation. The very next day after his arrival, he set his own horses to work in clearing away the rubbish, and for eight years he devoted his wealth and labor, and made perpetual efforts among the zealous laity of the kingdom, to achieve and pay for the restoration of the Church, which he thus accomplished. Finally he reconciled the holy place by a solemn ceremonial, and re-instituted the services. When he heard the bells ring, for the first time, being then confined to his bed-chamber, he went into another room to hear the sound; but, while he blessed God that he had lived to enjoy it, said it was his knell, and so, soon after, died like old Simeon.

We paused before the busts of Johnson and Garrick, and the monuments of Miss Seward and Lady M. W. Montague, and also before a monument lately erected to some soldiers who perished in India, over which the flags of their victories were displayed. The kneeling figure of the late Bishop Ryder is pleasing and appropriate; but the object of universal attraction is the monument of two children, by Chantrey, so generally known and admired in prints and engravings. I cannot say that the style of this monument comports well with the surrounding architecture, but in itself it is beautiful, and bespeaks that sentimental love of children for which the Church of England has made the English people remarkable, beyond other Christian nations. The epitaph is a sad blemish, but the reposing Innocents make you forget it. So simple and sweet is their marble slumber, which, of itself, speaks “the Resurrection and the Life.”

The cathedral-close is open and spacious, and one gains a very good view of the architecture, on all sides of the exterior. I sat down beneath some trees, at the eastern extremity of the Church, and for a long while gazed at the old stones, from the foundation to the topmost spire. They told of centuries—how mutely eloquent! All was so still that the rooks and jackdaws, chattering in the belfries, supplied the only sounds. There was the bishop’s palace at my right, the scene of Anna Seward’s bright days, and of some of Dr. Johnson’s happiest hours. The ivy almost covers its modest but ample front. The close is a little picture of itself; too much, perhaps, like the swallows’ nests, around the altar, in the warm and inactive contentment with which it must tend to surfeit any but the most conscientious of God’s ministers.

On one side of the cathedral is a pretty pool, and altogether, in this point of observation, it presents a beautiful view. Swans are kept in this water, and go oaring themselves about, without that annoyance from boys and vagabonds, which prevents their being kept in public places, in our country. They came familiarly to us, and even followed us a long distance, as we walked on the margin of the pool, as if doing the honors of the place to ecclesiastical visitors. We now took a walk through the meadows, to Stowe, distant about half-a-mile, and presenting another pleasant picture, with its old, but beautiful parish-church. Here we found tokens of that work of Church restoration which is going on throughout all England, and which will make the age of Victoria enviably famous with future generations. The little Church was in perfect keeping, throughout; severely plain, but strictly Anglican, and full of reverend simplicity. There were some pews in the Church, but the new sittings were all open, and apparently free. We looked with some interest at the monument of Lucy Porter, daughter of the lady who afterwards became the wife of Dr. Johnson. Hard by the Church is the well of St. Chad, to which I next paid a visit, and from which I was glad to drink. It is twined with roses, and neatly arched over with masonry, on which is chiselled CE. EP.—that is, Ceadda Episcopus, and here, in the seventh century, the holy man lived and baptized. St. Chad, though a Saxon by birth, was in British orders, of the primitive ante-Gregorian succession, and held the See of York, until his own humility, and the Roman scruples of the Archbishop of Canterbury, transferred him to Lichfield, where he lived the life of an apostle, and from which he itinerated through the midland counties, very often, on foot, in the spirit of a truly primitive missionary. It was with exceeding veneration for the memory of his worth and piety, that I visited this scene of his holy life, and blessed God for the mercies which have issued thence, even to my own remote country. Such are the world’s true benefactors: the world forgets them, but their record is with God; and He will make up His jewels yet, in the sight of the assembled universe.

Returning, we had the cathedral before us, all the way, in truly delightful prospect. I observed the birds that darted across our path with peculiar pleasure, and could not but remark that the sparrows were John Bull’s own sparrows, having, in comparison with ours, a truly English rotundity and plumpness, which should no doubt be credited to the roast-beef of Old England, and to good ale, withal, or to something equivalent in the diet of birds. We now took a turn into the city, and first, went to see the house, in a window of which Lord Brooke was seated when he received the fatal bullet from the cathedral. It seems a great distance for such a shot; and this fact heightens the peculiarity of the occurrence. There is a little tablet, fixed in the wall, recording the event. As it took place on St. Chad’s day, and as the shot was fired by a deaf and dumb man in the tower, putting out the eye with which the Puritan besieger had prayed he might behold the ruins of the cathedral, and killing him on the spot, it is not wonderful that the providence was regarded as special and significant. Sacrilege has been dangerous sport ever since the days of Belshazzar. It was a more gratifying occupation to seek next the birth-place of Dr. Johnson, with which pictures had made me so familiar, that when I came suddenly into the market-place, I recognized the house and St. Mary’s Church, and even the statue, all as old acquaintances. The pillars at the corners of the house give it a very marked effect, and one would say, at the outset, that it must have a history. It is not unworthy of such a man’s nativity. The Church in which the future sage was christened is almost directly opposite; and as I came in view of it, I looked for its projecting clock, and found it, just as I had seen it in engravings. The statue of Dr. Johnson is placed in the market square, just before the house in which he first saw the light. It was the gift of one of the dignitaries of the cathedral to the city. Did poor Michael Johnson, the bookseller, ever console his poverty and sorrows, as he looked from those windows on a stormy day, with visions of this tribute to the Christian genius of his son? Perhaps, just where it stands, he often saw his boy borne to school on the backs of his playmates, in triumphal procession; and this incident of his childhood is now wrought into the monumental stone. In another bas-relief, he is seen as a child of three years old, perched on his father’s shoulder, listening to Dr. Sacheverel, as he preaches in the cathedral. In a third is illustrated that touching act of filial piety, the penance of the sage in Uttoxeter market. For an act of disobedience to his poor hard-faring father, done when he was a boy, but haunting him through life with remorse, the great man went to the site of his father’s humble book-stall in the market-place, and there stood bare-headed in the storm, one rainy day, bewailing his sin, and honoring the lowliness of the parental industry which provided for the wants of his dependent years. What moral sublimity! worthy indeed of a memorial, and doubtless recorded in the book of the Lamb that was slain to take away his sin!

Opposite St. Mary’s, and next door to the birth-place, we found the “Three Crowns Inn,” where Johnson chose to stay, with sturdy independence, when he visited Lichfield, refusing even the hospitalities of Peter Garrick. I suppose the room in which we lunched was the scene of another instance of true greatness in Dr. Johnson, who, with the dignity of a gentleman, entertained here a friend of his humbler days, “whose talk was of bullocks,” and whose personal appearance was by no means agreeable, but to whose tiresome volubility, in things of his own profession, the sage extended the most patient and condescending attention. We could not but drink our mug of ale to the memory of the immortal old man of ten thousand honest prejudices, and as many virtues; in whom “has been found no lie,” and who has made his own massive character, in some respects, the ideal of a genuine Englishman.

We visited the hospital and Church of St. John Baptist, a charitable foundation of an old Bishop of Lichfield, who was also a munificent benefactor of Brazen-nose College, at Oxford. It is a queer, out-of-the-way, little blessing, of the sort which attracts no attention, but which bespeaks a Church at work among the people, of the like of which England is full. I was much pleased with this fragrant little flower of charity, for such it seemed, hiding, like the violet, out of sight, but heavenly when discovered. The Church of St. Michael, Green-hill, next attracted me, standing on an eminence, and crowning it with a conspicuous tower and spire. An avenue of venerable elms leads to its portal, and I found it open. The font, which is a relic of very high antiquity, has lately been restored to its place; and nearly the whole of the nave is a late restoration. Here, then, is another proof of the revival of primitive life and zeal in the Church of England! And all so truly national; Anglican and yet Catholic; consistent with self, and with antiquity, and attesting a continuous ecclesiastical life, from the days of Ceadda, and his predecessors, until now.

The Evening Service at the cathedral was far more gratifying than the morning’s experience had led me to anticipate. The evening sun streamed through the windows of the clere-story with inspiring effect, and the Magnificat quite lifted me up to the devotional heights I had desired to attain, in such a place. Then came the anthem, suitable to Easter-week—“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” How amiable the beautiful and holy place in which such strains have been heard for ages! In passing through the streets, on my way home, I saw one of the popular sports of the Easter-holidays, peculiar to the midland counties, and a relic of the many frolics in use before the Reformation. Some buxom lasses were endeavoring to lift, or heave, a strapping youth, who, in no very gallant style, repelled the embraces and salutations of his female aggressors. I take it for granted, however, that he was not released until he had been handsomely lifted into the air, and made to purchase his freedom by a substantial fine. This is a custom confined, of course, to the vulgar—but even among them, according to my judgment, “more honored in the breach than in the observance.”

Birmingham—The Oratory—Newman.

Going up to London, I tarried for a few days at Birmingham, a town not pleasing to my fancy, and yet one which no tourist in England would choose to omit. I found it, indeed, as Leland described it three hundred years ago, “to be inhabited of many smithes, that use to make knives, and all manner of cutting tooles: and many lorimers, that make bittes, and a great many naylors; so that a great part of the town is maintayned by smithes who have their sea-coal out of Staffordshire.” To this, I cannot help adding, in the style of old Fuller, that “there be divers many also who do make buttons; and a great store of all things gilt, and showy, and not costlie nor precious withal, do come out of Brummagem; for which also the new bishoppes which Cardinal Wiseman did lately make therein, be commonly called the Brummagem hierarchie, that is to say, not so much Latin bishoppes as Latten bishops; latten being much used in Brummagem, and is made of stone of calamine and copper, or chiefly of brass.” I confess that good part of my interest in Birmingham proper was to see what this new hierarchy were about.

The Town-Hall has been often enough described and praised, and is, no doubt, very fine; but I did not go to England to see Grecian temples, and I took much more satisfaction in any old frame house of three centuries ago, than in the frigid and formal show of all its columns.

On the whole, I think King Edward’s Grammar School the most interesting object in the town. Though the buildings were erected very lately, they are in the true academic style of Cambridge and Oxford. The pile is massive and imposing, and I was pleased to find that the solid oak of its noble rooms is the production of American forests. Here I first saw how English boys are made scholars; the drill being obvious to even a moment’s glance; every motion and look of the masters, who walk up and down among the boys in their college gowns, implying a discipline and method, of which our schools are too commonly destitute. Queen’s College is also worthy of a visit, and I was much pleased with some of the pictures which I saw in its hall, among which was an old one of Mary Queen of Scots, representing her with her child, James Stuart. Who ever conceived of Mary as a motherly creature, or of the old pedant king as an unbreeched boy? Yet such were they in this painting, which was no doubt true, as well as beautiful, in its time. With the churches of Birmingham I was not particularly impressed. St. Martin’s, the “old paroch-church” of Leland’s day, scarcely retains any remnant of its ancient self, except the spire, which leans, and seems likely to fall. The sovereign hill of the town is surmounted by St. Philip’s, which ought to be a cathedral, and the seat of a school of the prophets, but which looks like nothing more than a plethoric Hanoverian temple, in which indolent and drowsy worldliness would be content to say its prayers not more than once a week. I was better pleased with a church in the suburbs, built in George Fourth’s day, and partaking both of the merits and defects of that period of transition, when the church was in palmy prosperity as “the venerable establishment.” Here first I saw an English funeral, evidently of one of the humbler class, all parties walking on foot, and the coffin carried on a bier. The curate met the procession at the gate, in his surplice and cap, and then reverently uncovering his head, led the way into the house of God, the consoling words of the service gradually dying on my ear, as the rear of the funeral train disappeared within. The parsonage is close at hand, an ecclesiastical looking house of most appropriate and pleasing aspect; and the abode, as I can testify from personal knowledge, of the true spirit of an English parish priest—such an one as Hooker and Herbert would have rejoiced to foreknow. In his Church the prayers are perpetual; the fire never going out on the altar, and its gates standing open, as it were, night and day. The vicinity is known as “Camp Hill,” for here was the furious Rupert once in garrison; but a queer old house, all gables and chimneys, is pointed out, upon the hill, as the former lodging of his redoubtable adversary, old Noll himself. Hence we stretch into the country, and gain those pleasant extremes of Warwickshire, which Leland noteth, not forgetting the return by Sandy Lane, through “Dirty End,” which, since the days of his chronicle, is euphuized into Deritend. This place is full of what the Brummagem Cardinal would call slums, and one of them, as if on purpose to affront a portion of my countrymen, displayed to my astonishment, on a street sign, the name of “New-England.” Did any returned pilgrim settle down here, and give the last retreat of his poverty this name?

is a well-known epitaph, which may possibly explain this circumstance; for, said Dr. Johnson, “who that was born in New-England, would care to die there,” or words to that effect. Yet I confess, for life or death, I have scarcely seen any place in our own New-England which would not be preferable to this, although Leland calls Dirty End “a pretty street with a mansion of tymber hard on the bank of a brook, with a proper chapel close by.” Here I stopped before the aged front of the “Old Crown Inn,” which I take to be the same “tymber” mansion, having all the odd corners, and juttings-forth, and quaint appurtenances of centuries long gone by. These out-of-the-way ramblings and searches were far more to my taste than the gaudy sights of the shops and manufactories.

I went out to Oscott, and took a survey of the enemy’s headquarters, to begin with. Here Tridentinism shows her best front, and yet it falls far below what I had been led to expect. The college is built of brick, but is prettily situated, and commands a fine view from the leads, to which I ascended, for a prospect of the surrounding country. There is little architectural merit in any part of the structure, and the general appearance of things, throughout, is below that of collegiate institutions in England, or on the Continent. I was pleased, however, with the rooms set apart for ecclesiastical visitors, so far as their furniture was suitable to offices of private devotion, and not merely to those of rest and recreation; and I was not sorry to see in the Library a pretty large selection of standard English divines, though I am painfully suspicious that they are not there to be freely used by all who would read and study them. The chapel is gaudy, yet in true Mediæval character, and somewhat impressive. The other rooms are labelled—pransorium, deversorium, and the like, or surmounted with the names of the divers arts, as Rhetorica, Dialectica, and so on. In the common-room are showy portraits of the chiefs of the Romish recusancy in England, some of whom look like saints, and some like Satan. There was a portrait of Pugin, to which I directed the attention of the official who served as guide. He sneered significantly, and said Pugin was a queer fellow, which meant that they had found him not so blind as they wished him to be, to his fatal mistake in joining them. He studied Mediæval Anglicanism, with the illusion that it was all one with modern Tridentinism, and had left his mother Church in the vain hope that he should find a more congenial sphere for his antiquarian tastes, among the English Papists. But he found the past even more absolutely ignored at Oscott than at Oxford. Anglicans are glad to retain all that may be safely retained of their own antiquity: but Romanists are Italian throughout, and any thing that is national, is schismatical. They know nothing of Augustine and little of Anselm; they date from Trent, and to that all must conform. Old liturgies, old customs, old principles, as he in vain tried to recommend them, they laughed at as utterly obsolete: and he in turn scoffed at their Romanesque, and their Oratorianism, as infinitely less Catholic than the Anglican Gothic, and the Anglican Prayer-Book. Poor fellow! he has since died in a mad-house—a noble genius, but the victim of theory, and of unreal conceptions as to the diseases and the cure of the times.

If I was disappointed at Oscott, much more at St. Chad’s, their new cathedral in Birmingham. So much was said about this attempt, that I had supposed it a chef d’œuvre of the architect, and a complete trap for dilettanti Anglicans. It is the reverse of all this, being so poor, and even niggard in its entire conception and execution, that I am sure it must be a spoiled Pugin, if his at all. It is of brick, and of small dimensions, and not cleanly. Its crypts are instructive as to the way in which the crypts of the old cathedrals were formerly used, being fitted up for masses for the dead, but not much adorned. They are damp, dark, and somewhat offensive, as they are used for burial.

Strolling out to Edgbaston, I saw the rising walls of Newman’s Oratory. This, too, is strictly conformed to his new Italian idea of religion, which scrupulously eschews the old English architecture, associated as that is with Magna Charta and the Constitutions of Clarendon, and with three hundred years of absolute independence. This is in strict agreement with his development theory. The Romanism of the present is the rule, and that is Italian: the past was immature and undigested, and hence savored, more or less, of nationality. How vastly more severed, then, from the historical antecedents of his country is the British papist, than the genuine Anglican!

While I was in Birmingham, Mr. Newman yet occupied his temporary Oratory, in the neighborhood of Camp-Hill. It was an old distillery, and, of course, was but an ill-looking place for worship. Wishing to see him and his sect, I went one day to the spot, and pushing aside a heavy veil at the door, such as is common in Italian churches, found myself in a low and dirty-looking place of worship, in which the first object that met my eye was an immense doll of almost ludicrous aspect, near the door, representing the Virgin, with the crescent beneath her feet. Bishop Ullathorne proves Mohammed to have been the first believer in the Immaculate Conception, so that we cannot but admit the propriety of the symbol. Before this image several youth, with broad tonsures, and in long cassocks, were kneeling, in a manner truly histrionic. One of them rose and asked if I would like to be shown the library, and so conducted me up a dark and narrow stair-case into a large apartment, in which were no books, but which appeared to be hung with baize, like the rooms of an artist. He informed me that the books were in petto, and would, by and by, be manifested; apologizing for the present deficiency.

A person, in like costume with my conductor, and with a shaven crown even more grotesque, was pacing to and fro in the room, apparently devoting himself to a book which he held in hand. At a question of mine, addressed to my guide, as to where Mr. Newman might be, this personage turned sharply round and answered, “he has been all day in the Confessional, where he would be glad to see you.” “Who is that person?” I demanded, looking towards the strange apparition, as he continued pacing up and down, and addressing my guide. “Father Ambrose,” was the reply. “Yes, but what is his name beyond the walls of the Oratory?” The young man, rather reluctantly, lisped out, “Mr. S——.” “Mr. S——,” I rejoined, “late of —— College, Oxford! Can it be possible?” I looked at him, utterly unable to conceal my surprise, and pitied him in my heart. The youths whom I had seen were doubtless all, like him, young men of promise and of parts only a few years since, in Oxford; and now to see them thus ignobly captive, and performing such unreal and corrupting dramatics, in an age of wants and works, and of awful realities, like this! But where was the ignis fatuus of the bog into which they had fallen? Inquiring for their Master, I was informed he was to preach in their chapel on a certain evening, and accordingly I attended at the appointed time. It was during the Octave of Easter, and on entering, I observed that the altar was a bank of flowers, looking more like the shelves of a conservatory, than the table of the Lord. Above this horticultural display towered a thing of wax and glass and spangles, (or what seemed to be such,) as the apparent divinity of the shrine. It was a shameful burlesque of the Virgin, and utterly incompetent to excite one religious or reverent thought in any mind not entirely childish, or depraved in taste. It was surrounded with tawdry finery, and looked like the idol of a pagoda. The room was well lighted, and filled with the sort of people usually frequenting Romish chapels in this country. A few well-dressed persons seemed to be strangers, and like myself were treated with great civility. The chancel was filled with the youths I had seen before, wearing over their cassocks the short jacket-like surplice, usual in Italy. These were offering some prayers in English, but they could not be called English prayers; and then followed a hymn, given out and sung very much in the style of the Methodists. I could not distinguish what it was altogether, but the hymn-book which they use was given me in Birmingham, and consists, in a great degree, of such ditties as this, which they apparently address to the image over the altar:—

Many hymns in the collection are not only lack-a-daisical in the extreme, but highly erotic, and even nauseously carnal. I could scarcely believe my eyesight, so senseless seemed the ceremony; and yet here were educated men, Englishmen, sons of a pure and always majestic Church, and familiar with the Holy Scriptures from their infancy! How shall we account for such a phenomenon in the history of the human mind, and of the human soul?

While the singing was going on, a lank and spectral figure appeared at the door of the chancel—stalked in, and prostrated himself before the altar. This was followed by a succession of elevations and prostrations, awkward in the extreme, and both violent and excessive: but whether required by the rubric, or dictated by personal fervor only, they added nothing to the solemnity of the scene. Meanwhile the hymn was continued by the disciples, as fanatically as the pantomime was performed by the Master. But could this be the man? Could this be he who once stood in the first pulpit of Christendom, and from his watch-tower in St. Mary’s, told us what of the night? Was this the burning and shining light who for a season allowed us to rejoice in his light? What an eclipse! I felt a chill creep over me as he mounted his rostrum, and turned towards us his almost maniacal visage. There could be no mistake. It was, indeed, poor fallen Newman. He crossed himself, unfolded a bit of broad ribbon, kissed it, put it over his shoulders, opened his little Bible, and gave his text from the Vulgate—Surrexit enim, sicut dixit—“He is risen, as he said.” The preaching was extemporaneous; the manner not fluent; the matter not well arranged; gesticulations not violent nor immoderate; the tone, affectedly earnest; and the whole thing, from first to last, painfully suggestive of a sham; of something not heartily believed; of something felt to be unreal by the speaker himself. And yet “the hand of Joab was in it.” There was no denying the craft of no common artist. He dwelt chiefly on Sicut dixit—to which he gave a very Newman-like force, repeating the words over and over again. “Sicut dixit, my friends, that is, as he said, but as you would not believe! This was a reproach: as much as to say—What did you expect? Were you not told as much? Of course, he is risen, for he said so!” In this way the preacher reached the point of his discourse, which was, that “the original disciples themselves, who thought they knew and loved Christ—nay, who did love him, and came to embalm his body, after he was crucified—had so little faith, as to deserve a rebuke, instead of a commendation. They had to be harshly reminded of what Jesus had said to them with his own mouth. Well, just so in our day, thousands who think they know and love him, have yet no real faith; don’t believe, in short, what the Church requires them to believe, and hence are strangers to the Catholic faith.” Drawing illustrations from the days of Noe (so he called him) and many Old Testament histories, he endeavored to show, in like manner, that God had always required men to believe the very things they were not willing to believe: and hence he drew his conclusion that the slowness of men to believe all that Romanism prescribes, is mere want of faith. It would have been quite to the point to have shown a sicut dixit in support of the matters which he endeavored to force upon us, before he asked us to admit that denying the “Deification of Mary,” is all the same thing as doubting the Resurrection of Christ from the dead; but of course this joint was wanting. I was amused at the ingenuity, but shocked at the juggle of such an argument, which was simply this—that because it is sinful to doubt what Christ has said, therefore it is equally sinful to doubt what he never said, and what is directly contrary to many things which he did expressly say! The orator, in delivering this apology for his new faith, by no means forgot a little plea for himself personally, in which I saw evidence of his wounded pride. He said, “Christ thus sent a rebuke to his disciples for not believing what he said; and you know how hard it is, for even us, to bear such unbelief in our friends. We know we are sincere; but they say, for example, he is artful, he don’t believe his own words, he deceives; or, if they don’t say that, then they say, he is crazy, he is beside himself, he has lost his wits.” On this he enlarged with much feeling, for he was pleading his own cause, and in fact he rambled on in this direction till he had nearly forgotten his argument. But I was amused at one instance of his forgetting himself in particular. In referring to the hard names Christ himself had to bear, he had occasion to quote St. Matthew xxvii., 63, where the Romish version reads, “Sir, we have remembered that that seducer said, yet living, etc.” But before he knew it, he forgot that he was an actor, and unwittingly quoted the smoother rendering of his good old English Bible, “Sir, we remember that that deceiver said while he was yet alive.” While dwelling on the words that deceiver, he bethought himself that he was quoting heresy, and hobbled as well as he could into some other equivalent, but whether the very words of his new Bible or not, I cannot affirm. There were other similar haltings of the tongue, which show that a man may have a good will to say the Romish Shibboleth, and yet betray himself occasionally, by “not framing to pronounce it right.” Newman certainly forgot the talismanic aspirate on this occasion; he seemed to be conscious of playing a part, and, altogether, when he had done, I left the place, contented to have done with him. Alas! that gold can be thus changed, and the fine gold become so dim!

I could not learn that he was doing much by all his efforts; in fact he was said to be somewhat crest-fallen and irritable, about things in Birmingham. His Oratorians were going about the streets in queer, and, in fact, ridiculous garments, and attracting stares and jibes, and no doubt they felt themselves martyrs; but there is, after all, much sturdy common sense in John Bull’s hatred of the absurd, and few can think any better of folly for wearing its cap in broad daylight. The results God only can foresee; but a delusion so patent, one would think—if it must have its day—must also find daylight enough in the very shortest day in the year to kill it outright.

They showed me, at the Oratory, a wax cast of the face of St. Philip Neri, and a very pleasant and benevolent one it was. He was an Italian Wesley, and the Pope was his bitter adversary, in his life-time, interdicting him, and refusing him the Sacraments, and almost excommunicating him. But somehow or other when he was out of the way, it became convenient to canonize him, as a sort of patron of enthusiasts of a certain class, who find in his fraternity, a free scope for their feelings and passions. Oratorianism is the Methodism of the Trent religion, but has a virtual creed of its own, and is as really a sect as Methodism was in the life-time of its founder. Hence it is odious to many even of the new converts, and many old-fashioned Romanists abhor it. I left the Oratory of Mr. Newman with a deep impression that he has yet a remaining character to act, very different from that in which he now appears, but in which it will be evident that he is far from satisfied, at this time, with the direction which he has given to his own movement, and with the grounds on which he has chosen to rest his submission to the Pope.

Arrival in London, and first two days.

In early life I had always promised myself a first view of London, either approaching the Tower by water, and taking in the survey of steeples, bridges, and docks, or else descending from Hampstead, on the top of a rapid coach, and beholding the great dome of St. Paul’s, arising amid a world of subordinate roofs, and looming up through their common canopy of cloud-like smoke. Alas! for all such visions, we have reached the age of the rail: and, consequently, I found myself, one afternoon, set down in a busy, bustling station-house, with a confused sensation of having been dragged through a long ditch, and a succession of dark tunnels, and with a scarcely less confused conception of the fact, that I was in London. A few policemen loitering about, and a line of cabs and ’busses of truly English look, confirmed the conviction, however, that I was really in the Metropolis, and I soon found myself looking up my luggage, in the business way of one accustomed to the place, and without a single rapture or emotion of the marvellous. Some things were very different from an American station-house; as, for example, the dignity of an ecclesiastical gentleman emerging from the first-class carriages in cocked-hat, and solemn cravat and surtout, his short-clothes eked into pantaloons by ponderous leggings, buttoned about his black stockings, and his whole deportment evincing a reverend care of his health and personal convenience—the inevitable umbrella especially, neatly enveloped in varnished leather, and tucked under the consequential arm; or again, the careful avoidance of the crowd evinced by a dignified lady, accompanied by her maid, and watching with an eye-glass the anxious manipulations of a footman, in showy livery, piling up a stack of trunks, hat-boxes, and what not, all inscribed, “Lady Dashey, Eaton Place, Belgrave Square.” Getting into a cab, with my very democratic luggage safely rescued from the vans, and forcing an exit through vehicles of all ranks, from the dog-cart up to the lumbering coach, with footman behind, and my lord inside, I emerge at length into London streets from the Euston Square Station, and begin to make my way towards the focus of the world. How mechanically I jog along, just as if I had lived here all my life, and without the least conformity to the fact that my pulse is quickening, and mine eye straining to realize a long ideal, which in a few minutes will be substantial fact! Every street-sign arrests my eye, “Paddington New Road,” “Gower Place,” “Torrington Square,” “Keppell Street,” “Bedford Square,” “Great Russell Street,” “Bloomsbury,” “Bond Street,” “Seven Dials,” “St. Martin’s Lane,” and now I begin to know where I am. There is St. Martin’s—there the lion with a long tail on Northumberland House—here is Trafalgar Square—I see Charles First on horseback, at Charing Cross—and here old George Third, with his queue, at the head of Cockspur Street—and here the Haymarket and Pall Mall, and here I am set down at the hospitable door of a friend, first known in America, and who has kindly insisted on my spending my first few days in London as his guest. It was an unexpected pleasure, but a great one, to receive my first impressions of London in the agreeable company of the Reverend Ernest Hawkins, a person singularly qualified to share the feelings of a stranger, but upon whose valuable time I should not have ventured to trespass, except at his own friendly instance. After renewing the acquaintance, formed during his short visit to our country in 1849, the question was, Where shall we begin? A fine day was already clouded over, and alternate light and shade were inviting and again discouraging out-door amusements. However, a turn through St. James’s Park to Whitehall was practicable enough, and at Whitehall I was resolved to begin. Forth we go, step into the Athenæum Club House, and descend into the Park, by the Duke of York’s Column, descrying through the mist the towers of Westminster Abbey, and soon passing through the Horse-Guards, stand “in the open street before Whitehall.” There is the Banqueting-room—there the fatal window—here is the very spot, where the tide turned between old and new, and parted on an axe’s edge. That martyrdom! What that has happened in Church and State, not only among Anglo-Saxons, but in the greater part of Europe, since 1649, has not resulted from the deed of blood done here!

My kind friend took me out upon Hungerford Bridge, and bade me use my eyes, and tell the different objects if I could. I turned towards Lambeth, saw the old towers through the gray mist, and began with indescribable pleasure to single out St. Mary’s, Lambeth, the New Parliament Houses, Westminster Hall, the Abbey, St. Margaret’s, and so forth, till turning round, I descried St. Paul’s, (vast, sublimely so, and magnificently tutelary,) and nearer by, Somerset House and the bridges, and the little steamers shooting to and fro beneath their noble arches. Enough for a first glimpse! We went into Regent Street, and by Burlington Arcade into Piccadilly, and turning into St. James’s Street, I first saw the old Palace at its extremity, looking just as one sees it in Hogarth’s picture of “the Rake going to Court,” in the last century, old and shabby, and venerable altogether. Such was my first ramble in London and Westminster.

I was so happy as to meet at dinner that evening, a small party of the clergy of the Metropolis, in whose company the hours went rapidly and delightfully by, with many warm, and, I dare say, heartfelt expressions of interest in America and her Church; the whole presided over by my reverend entertainer, with the most animating spirit of dignified cordiality. The general desire which prevails to know something of a new Bishop of the Church, may excuse my particularizing the Rev. John Jackson, Rector of St. James’s, Westminster, and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, who was one of the party, as a person of very unassuming, but attractive manners, of whose subsequent elevation to the See of Lincoln, it has given me no little pleasure to learn.

With what a world of new and confused emotions, I tried to drop to sleep after such a day! The roof beneath which I was reposing was an historic one. Standing in the precincts of St. James’s, it had once been the abode of the beautiful but unhappy Nell Gwynne, the one of all those wretched creatures who disgraced the Court of the Second Charles, for whom one feels more pity than scorn; and for whom, remembering the comparative goodness of her natural qualities, and her own plaintive lament over her education in a pot-house to fill glasses for drunkards, there must have been compassion from the Father of Mercies, and possibly pardon from the blood that cleanseth from all sin, her penitent death being more than probable. It is certainly gratifying that a mansion once given up to such associations is now turned into an abode of piety and benevolence, and made the head quarters of the operations of the venerable S. P. G. In the chamber where I was lodged, had lately rested those estimable missionaries, Bishops Field, and Medley, and Gray, and Strachan; and I felt unworthy to lay my head where such holy heads had been pillowed. But a blessing seemed to haunt the spot which they, and many like them, had reconciled to virtue, and hallowed by their pure repose; and I slumbered sweetly, dreaming of Lud’s town, and King Lud, and of divers men of divers ages, who had come to London, upon manifold errands, to seek their fortunes there, and there to flourish and wax great, or to rise and fall, until now it was my lot to mingle with its living tides, and then to pass away again to my far-off home, as “a guest that tarrieth but a night.”

When I rose in the morning, I looked out into the park, and now for the first time, gained a clear idea of that strange scene described in Evelyn’s Memoirs, as occurring between King Charles and Mistress Nelly, while the grovelling monarch was walking with him in the Mall. The wretched woman was standing on a terrace, at the end of her garden, and looking over into the park, when the king turns from Evelyn, and going towards her, holds a conversation with her in that public place and manner. “I was heartily sorry at this scene,” says the pure-minded journalist; and indeed it forboded no little evil to both Church and nation, as well as to the miserable Prince who could thus debase his crown and character, in the face of the open day, and of a virtuous man.

After we had carefully inspected this interesting hall, Lord John was as good as his word, and took us to see the robes, but precisely where he took us, it would be hard for me to say. It was in some room contiguous, where a fidgety little woman with keys in her hands, attended as mistress of the robes, and opening the repository of the sacred vestments, displayed them with such profound obsequiousness to the mildly dignified ecclesiastic who conducted us, that if she called him “my lord” once, she did so some twenty times in a single minute. The readers of Mrs. Strickland’s “Queens of England” will not require me to enlarge upon these superb vestments, now dimmed and faded in their splendour by the lapse of nearly two centuries, since they were made for the coronation of the luckless, and almost brainless, James the Second. They are worn at coronations only, by the clergy of the Abbey, and we had the pleasure of seeing our reverend guide in his appropriate cope as Sub-dean; the same which he wore when Victoria was crowned, and which has been worn by his predecessors, successively, at the coronations of William and Mary, Queen Anne, the four Georges, and William the Fourth. Similar vestments in form, though not in splendour, are to this day the rubrical attire of the clergy of the English Church in celebrating the Holy Communion, but I believe they are now never used, although they were in use at least in Durham Cathedral, so late as the middle of the last century. Having seen these interesting and historical vestments, we thanked the amiable dignitary, to whom we had been indebted for so much polite attention, and took our leave, emerging into Dean’s Yard, and so finding our way to the New Houses of Parliament.