CHAPTER IX.
A HIT.—THE DEBTORS’ PRISON.—UTTER CLEANLINESS.—“CITY” AND “TOWN.”—“DOWN” AND “UP.”—HEREFORD CATHEDRAL.—CHURCH AND STATE.—THE PUBLIC PROMENADE.
I must not forget two incidents of our visit to the jail. Punishment is inflicted by withholding food; also, I imagine, for slight offences, in other ways. An officer with us noticed some untidiness of dress upon one of the prisoners, and, pointing to it, said,—“You are an Englishman: I don’t want to treat you as an Irishman.” As we entered a certain apartment, our conductor said, “This is the debtors’ prison.”
One of us remarked, “We have generally abolished imprisonment for debt in the United States.”
The officer, quietly, “It’s a pity that you have.”
The quarters of the debtors were not cells, but decent rooms, and there was a large hall common to them. Every thing here, though, as every where else, was dreadfully clean, dreary, and mathematical, like a gone-mad housekeeper’s idea of heaven. I should expect that the prisoners would long, more than any thing else, to have one good roll in the gutter, and an unmeasured mouthful of some perfectly indigestible luxury. It was a relief, after being but an hour within the walls, to step out once more into the good old mud and clouds and smells of Nature again.
Among the debtors, one was pointed out to us as a well-educated lawyer, formerly having a large and respectable practice, and enjoying a considerable fortune. He had been confined for several years, but, it was thought, would soon be released. The placards of an association for taking the part of imprisoned debtors were posted in the hall.
The title city is applied, in England, only to a town which is the residence of a bishop, and is equivalent to “a cathedral town.” Hereford is a city; Chester is a city; but Liverpool, with ten times the population of both of them, is not a city. The term town, again, in England, is never applied to the subdivisions of a county, (a township,) but is used to designate a place that is closely built, and with a considerable population—what we should give the title of city to. Thus London, the largest town, is every where called “the town.” “The city” designates a small part of London, near the Cathedral of St. Paul. (All over Great Britain they speak of going “down to London,” never “up.” This use of “down” and “up,” meaninglessly, in a sentence, I had supposed was a “down-east” idiom; but it is common in old England.)
The cathedral at Hereford, built in the time of William the Conqueror, is in a more ornamental style of Gothic than any ancient religious edifice we had seen. I did not greatly admire it. Considerable additions or repairs have been lately made. On one of the new gables I was surprised to see some fifty of those grotesque heads, freshly cut. They were not very ugly, or very droll—indeed, had no marked character, or any thing that showed a genius, even for the comical, in their designer or executor. They were not necessary to the harmony of the modern work with the old; were, I think, discordant, and what they were put there for I don’t know. Extensive alterations had lately been made in the choir, and it was the most convenient hall for public exercises that I recollect to have seen in any English cathedral. The ceiling was painted (in encaustic) in the bright-coloured bizarre style that I spoke of at the castle near Shrewsbury. As I entered, it seemed to me to be in shockingly bad taste for a place of meditation and worship. We attended the daily morning service, and heard some fine gentle music—the organ sweetly played, and the singers all boys.
I was glad to notice that our dissenting friends seemed to have a pride and sense of possession in the cathedral, as if they were not in the habit of thinking of it as belonging exclusively to those who occupied it, but as if it was intrusted to them, and as well to them as to any other division, as representative of the whole Catholic Church of all English Christians. This way of looking upon “the Church” usurpations is quite commonly observable among the dissenters. It is not so honourable to them when applied to other things than mere furniture, as, for instance, the giving the exclusive teaching of religious doctrine to the children, or paupers, or soldiers, in whom they have a common interest, to the State Church, from a supposed necessity of giving it to some one in preference to all others; and if not to their particular church, then of best right to the church of the strongest. The idea that some State Church, separated from others by its doctrinal basis, is expedient, and almost necessary, to a Christian government, is quite common among dissenters. In my judgment, it cannot be expedient, because it is very evidently unjust. What is in the least degree unjust can never be expedient for a state, the very purpose of which should be to elevate and secure justice among the people who live under its laws.
Nor can I conceive of any thing so likely to strangle a church as to be hung with exclusive privileges from the State. For what are these? Bribes for the profession of doctrines and the acceptance of rules of debatable expediency; giving encouragement, so far as they have any influence, (that they would not have if the Church were independent of the power of the State,) to insincerity and the unearnest formation of opinions—to unreality, which is deadness in a church.
That the constant practice of perjury and the most miserably jesuitical notions of truth and falsehood, and that weakness and imbecility of both Church and State, is the direct and inevitable result at the present day of such a connection as is attempted to be sustained between them in England, it is as obvious and certain to me as any thing can be, that such great and good men as the divines and statesmen of England have different opinions with regard to.
There is a large green, close planted with trees, about the cathedral, and facing upon it are the official residences of the regiment of clergy, high priests and low, that under some form or other are provided with livings in connection with it. In front of one of these barracks was planted a bomb-mortar—with what signification?
There is another public promenade in Hereford, upon the site of an old castle which was demolished by Cromwell.
The ramparts are grassed over, and there are fine trees, ponds, gravel-walks, an obelisk in honour of Nelson, some graceful irregularities of surface, and a broad, purling stream of clear water flowing by it all. Here, before noon, we found a considerable company, of varied character: ladies walking briskly and talking animatedly; invalids, wrapped up and supported, loitering in the sun; cripples, moving about in wheelchairs; students or novel-readers in the deepest shades; and every where, many nursery-maids with children. Not a town have we seen in England but has had a better garden-republic than any town I know of in the United States.