The Lakes and the Lakers.

As I am now detailing my “Impressions of England,” I must leave out my Scottish chapters, for Scotland is far too rich in material to be smuggled into the world under any cover except its own. After a most interesting visit to this romantic land, I again saw England as I approached the Cumberland mountains, at Ecclefechan, and in spite of my delight in Caledonia, I somehow felt that it was home. I reached “Gretna Green” from a direction the opposite of that which is the fashion for runaways, and hence saw nothing of “the blacksmith;” but I was informed that he duly posts himself at the station when the train approaches from the other direction, and very frequently finds customers. It is not now as in the days of posting; and if a brace of lovers can make sure of a train in advance of pursuers, they are quite safe. The next train may bring the frantic friends and parents; but the wedding is already performed, according to the barbarous law of North Britain. It has been remarked as something singular, if not disgraceful, that several who have risen to be Lord-Chancellors of the southern kingdom, were, in early life, married in this way. After a moment’s pause at the Gretna station, we were whirled across the Sark, with a glimpse of the Solway, and soon I was in “merrie Carlisle.” I entered it, thanks be to Bishop Percy, with special thoughts of “Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudeslee.” The poetry of the town is, in fact, concentrated in that ballad of ballads. As a border town, it has always been subject to those fearful scenes and tragedies, which only war creates: and its history is a romance, from the days of the Conquest to those of the Pretender, whose flag once waved on its walls. It is charmingly situated, and well watered by its three rivers; but its castle and its cathedral are its chief objects of interest, and offer little that can be described with effect, after a review of more striking specimens of their kind. Among the tombs in the latter, is that of Archdeacon Paley, the moralist, who “could not afford to keep a conscience.” I did not regard it with any great emotion. The adjacent Deanery, at one time inhabited by Bishop Percy, was more interesting to me, for whatever he may have been as a bishop, I cannot doubt that his taste and industry in literature have produced a vast result in the poetry and letters of his native tongue. I have often amused myself, not only with his “ballads” themselves, but with an effort to trace their immediate and remote effects on the taste, and even upon the genius of England. They are very striking, and prove what may be the lasting results of a very humble sort of literary enterprise, when it is founded on “truths that wake to perish never.”

I was in the region of the Lakes, and felt upon me already the powerful influences which its great poets have left it for an heritage forever. The noble range of the Cumberlands seemed to lift their monumental heads, in memory of Southey and Wordsworth. I went to Kendal, and sighted the castle where Katherine Parr was born, but was glad to take the earliest train to Bowness. Welcome was the sight of Windermere, brightly reflecting the evening sky, and encircled by an army of mountains, lifting their bristling pikes as if to defend it, like a virgin sister in her loveliness. Who can forget Dr. Arnold’s enthusiastic return to this dear spot, from the Continent: his just comparison of its charms with those of foreign scenes, and his close noting of the very minutes that lingered as he hasted to his home at Fox How? To me, there is all the heart of poetry in his honest effusion of genuine English feeling. “I see the Old Man and the Langdale Pikes, rising behind the nearer hills so beautifully! We open on Windermere, and vain it is to talk of any earthly beauty ever equalling this country, in my eyes. No Mola di Gaeta, no Valley of the Velino, no Salerno or Vietri can rival, to me, this Vale of Windermere, and of the Rotha. Here it lies in the perfection of its beauty, the deep shadows on the unruffled water; and mingling with every form, and sound, and fragrance, comes the full thought of domestic affections, and of national and of Christian: here is our own house and home: here are our own country’s laws and language: and here is our English Church!” Good! glorious! every word. I can feel it all, and the last words more than he did. It is to the Church that England owes all the rest, and yet that palladium (I hate the word) of England’s holiest, and dearest, and best peculiarities, he would fain have Germanized! I believe, in my heart, he was better than his theories, and would have been the first to shrink from his own dreams of reform, had he lived to see them coming into shape as realities. I cannot but follow his speaking memoranda:—“Arrived at Bowness, 8.20; left at 8.31; passing Ragrigg Gate, 8.37; over Troutbeck Bridge, 8.51; here is Ecclerigg, 8.58; and here Lowood Inn, 9.04 and 30 seconds!” No fast man, at the Derby, ever held his watch more breathlessly; he was speeding home, and there he was in twenty minutes more, at his own “mended gate,” wife and darlings all round papa, and so ends his journal! Oh, what so enviable as a home, just here? My own is far away—and I stop at Lowood Inn, grateful for such inns as England only affords, and proposing to spend such a Sunday as England only hallows. I am not forgetful of my own dear land; I love her Hudson, as I can never love even an English lake; but the janglings of a Sunday in America, the unutterable wretchedness of perpetuated quarrels among Christians, and all the sadness of religious disunion, in its last stage of social disorganization, take away my sense of repose, when I survey an American landscape, and the spires of our villages; and who can measure the indifference, the atheism, and the godless contempt for truth which all this breeds? Good Lord! when shall this plague of locusts disappear from our sky? When shall all Christians who love Christ in truth and soberness, agree to love one another?

At Lowood Inn I spent such a Sunday, as I had promised myself, at St. Asaph. A morning and evening walk, by the lake, was its morning and evening charm, and calm, sweet enjoyment of the service was its substantial blessing. Here, Southey’s words came forcibly to mind, as I recalled the common worship, in which my beloved friends, at home, were uniting with me; the Prayer-book its blessed telegraph!

Early on Monday morning, in a fairy-like little steamer, I made a circuit of the lake, enjoying fine weather, and delightful views. The clouds took the shape of everything beautiful during the day, now hanging over the “Pikes,” like legions of angels, and now building themselves up into domes and cathedrals, upon the summits of the everlasting hills. As for the lake itself, it is something between Lake George and Cayuga Lake: its scenery in some parts, even finer than the finest of the one, and its tamer parts, almost always equal to the best of the other. Lake George, however, in its exceeding wildness, has its own special charm for me; and Windermere is too artificially beautiful, on the whole, to rival it. Towards noon, I went, by coach, to Grassmere, passing through Ambleside, and by the late residence of Wordsworth, and enjoying the views of Rydalmere, and Knab Scaur, and then of Grassmere itself, with its sweet church, deep in the vale. The inn at Grassmere is well placed, on a slight ascent from the valley, and provides a toothsome repast for the tourist. I went on horse-back, over hill and dale, to “Dungeon Ghyll,” a cataract well known to readers of Wordsworth, but less interesting in itself, though curious as well as pretty, than the scenery through which one passes to get there. The mountain ranges, and peaks, as they come into sight, and seem to shift their positions, are sufficient, I should think, to make the region ever new in its peculiar attractions, especially when one takes into account the endless variety imparted to such scenes by the different seasons, hours of the day, states of the atmosphere, and conditions of sky and clouds. Wise poets were these Lakers! And how “Kit North” must have revelled in these palaces of nature! As I slowly returned, I caught my last glimpse of Windermere, and then saw the vale of Grassmere, in its evening beauty. Arrived at the churchyard, I sought the grave of Wordsworth. A plain grave, and his name merely. The river rushing by lulls his repose. A carriage drove up, and seeing a female mourner approach, attended by a servant, or waiting-maid, I withdrew, and pretended to be otherwise engaged. The lady scattered flowers on the grave of the poet, and stood there awhile, musing. It was his widow; and when she had left the sacred spot, I returned, and admired the fragrant and beautiful tokens of her affection, which, as I learned, she every day renews. I gathered some wild flowers, growing by the grave, and resolved to bear them to Keswick, and leave them on the grave of Southey. This pilgrimage I was determined to make, on foot; and having arranged for my luggage to be sent to a convenient point, I started accordingly, late in the afternoon, with a walk of twelve miles before me; to do which, I gave myself three hours for the walking, and one for resting and idling. I expected to reach Keswick by early moonlight, for the moon was new, and the days long. Mine host thought it too late for a start, after a fatiguing day; but I had practised in Scotland, and knew my strength, and the inspiration of the spot was such that I felt no weariness. On the contrary, it is impossible to describe the flow of spirits with which I began and ended this walk. Passing Helm Crag, I decided that the “old woman” on the top, is far more like a millenial group, in colossal sculpture, for it greatly resembles a lion with a lamb in its embrace. At every step, Wordsworth and Southey revive in memory; every pebble seems to have attracted their love, and taken its place in their poetry. After a long, but gradual ascent, we reach the cairn that covers King Dunmail’s bones, and looking back at the charming view, say farewell to Grassmere. In the distance, ahead, what looms up? The guide-book says Skiddaw. There once lived Southey; there now he sleeps. As I left this neighbourhood, I observed to my surprise, another group on the mountain, in all respects like the “old woman,” only turned the other way. Both are formed by loose rocks on the height of the mountain; but I have seen no mention of this one. And now my way lay along the base of the “mighty Helvellyn.” The road was easy to the foot, and innumerable are its charms. I came to the lovely Thirlmere, or Leatheswater: the views of the surrounding crags, and of the water itself, wearing a more beautiful aspect, for the hour and the departing daylight. Blue-bells were everywhere growing by the road, in handfulls. I stopped to examine a stone which seems to record the death of a Quaker’s favourite horse. A carriage came along, which proved to be full of cockney tourists. One of them descended and read, as follows:—“Thirtieth of ninth month, 1843;

The pathos with which these words were uttered was truly Pickwickian, and the step from the sublime to the ridiculous was so effectually taken by my feelings, that for a long way beyond, Helvellyn re-echoed to my laughter. Passing Thirlmere, the sweet vale of St. John opened a bewitching prospect, and I loved it for its name. Leaving it on my right, I then turned toward Keswick, and as the last light of day disappeared, there, before me, lay Derwentwater, the new moon shedding a tremulous light on its bosom. This, then, was Southey’s own Keswick, and Skiddaw rose over head! I slept soundly and sweetly at the “Royal Oak.”

In the morning, I took a barge, and was rowed round the lake, which did not disappoint me. One of the men had been a servant of Southey’s, and he told me many anecdotes of his master. “Yonder, it seems to me, I can see him now,” said the fellow, “walking with a book in his hand.” He described him as good to the poor, and said, “he often gave five shillings, at a time, to my mother.” In wet weather he still took the air, and walked well on clogs. I was much charmed with the islets of the lake, and the singular traditions which invest them all with so much interest. The romantic stories of the unfortunate family of Derwentwater, whose earls were attainted for their share in the Pretender’s rebellion, are partly connected with one of these islands, and the lake itself seems made for a scene of romance. Windermere is not to be compared with it. I was rowed to Lodore, and saw “how the water comes down.” Sometimes ’tis a mere burlesque of the poem; but I saw it in full force, and entirely justifying all the participles which the genius of Southey has contrived to set going, like a cataract, out of the fountain of his brain. After this, I swam in the lake, tempted to do so by the double attraction of its pellucid waters, and its Castalian associations.

I visited Southey’s grave, in Crosthwaite churchyard. ’Twas solemn to see the grass growing, and its tall spears shaking in the breeze, over the head of that fine genius, and the heart of that good and faithful man. In the church, where he so often prayed, a superb statue of the poet lies, at full length, on an altar-tomb. I placed in the marble hand the flowers I had brought from the grave of Wordsworth, a tribute to their friendship, and a token of my homage for both. Great and good men; they were the “lucida sidera” of English literature, in a dark and evil time and now that their sweet influence has triumphed over the clouds and vapours which obscured their first rising, how calmly they shine, in heaven, and brighten the scenes they have left behind!

Greta Hall, the poet’s late residence, stands a little back from the road, in the shadow of Skiddaw. I paid a visit to a daughter of the bard, who loves to linger near her father’s grave; and it was delightful to observe the simplicity with which she entered into the enthusiasm of a pilgrim to that shrine of her affections. The aged Mrs. Lovel, whose name is familiar to the readers of Coleridge, and his contemporaries, also allowed me to be presented to her. It was affecting to see a group of Southey’s lovely little grand-children with her, in mourning for a mother. They are richer in the heritage of his name and character than if they were the heirs of the Derwentwaters, and restored to all their honours and estates.

By coach to Penrith, by the vale of St. John, and Huttonmoor. On the moor, I saw a cottage, with an inscription too deep for me, of which my reader shall have the benefit. It was this:—

A Waltonian puzzle in its quaintness, not to speak of the initials! Driving by Graystoke, in which is an old town-cross, we had a sight of its church and castle. But two odd-looking farm-houses, which we passed, presenting at a distance the appearance of forts, surprised me more, by their American names, “Mount Putnam,” and “Bunker-hill.” They were built and named soon after the battle: and the whip laughed as he slyly surmised, that the Duke of Norfolk, to whom they belong, “must have been afraid the ’Mericans were coming over.” At Penrith, I visited the extraordinary grave in the churchyard, called the Giant’s. Its history is lost in the obscure of antiquity; but one Owen is said to lie there, at full length, the head and footstones being fifteen feet apart. The stones are tall needles, of curious form, and covered with Runic carvings and unintelligible words. Not far from Penrith, are some ancient caverns, marked by traces of gigantic inhabitants, such as iron-gratings, and other relics worthy of the habitation of Giant Despair.

Next morning, we were favoured with a brilliant sky and cool breeze, and I took the top of the coach for a drive across the country, through Westmoreland, into Yorkshire. A sweet odour of hay-making filled the air as we started; and soon we had fine views of Brougham-hall, and castle, with a small adjoining park. A more interesting object to me was a small column, by the roadside, celebrated by Wordsworth, called the Countess of Pembroke’s Pillar. It was erected in the evil days of Cromwell, not to celebrate a battle, or a crime, but as a monument of love. On that spot, in her better days, the Lady Anne Clifford had parted, for the last time, with her beloved mother, the Countess Dowager of Pembroke, and she therefore caused this stone to be set as a memorial, and inscribed accordingly. But she did yet more, for hard by is a stone table, on which the anniversary of that parting is annually celebrated by a dole of bread to the poor of the parish of Brougham, to pay for which she left the annual sum of four pounds to the church forever. This is giving a stone to those who ask bread, in an orthodox way. The inscription ends with Laus Deo; and my heart responded in the manner which Wordsworth suggests. “Many a stranger,” he says, “though no clerk, has responded Amen, as he passed by.” Our drive continued a pleasant one till we came to Appleby, an interesting old town, through which runs the river Eden. In its church are monuments of the Lady Anne Clifford and her mother. At Brough, we came to an old castle, erected before the Conquest. Its church has a pulpit, hewn of a single stone; and they tell a good story of its bells. A worthy drover of the adjoining moors, once brought a fine lot of cattle to market, promising to make them bellow all together, and to be heard from Brough to Appleby. Accordingly with the money they sold for, he gave the parish a peal of bells, which constantly fulfils his vow. He deserves to be imitated by richer men. At Brough the coach left me, and I took a post-chaise over the dreary region of Stainmuir; dreary, just then, but not so in the sporting-season, when the moor is alive with hunters and fowlers. At Bowes, again, emerging from the moorlands, we came to the remains of a castle, and to the less interesting relics of a school, which had disappeared under the influence of a general conviction, that it was the original “Dotheboys Hall.” A dull place is Bowes; but striking over a rugged country, northward, I came soon into the charming valley of the Tees, and so arrived at the secluded church and parsonage of Romaldkirk, on a visit to a clergyman, who bearing my maternal name, and deriving from the same lineage, in times long past, yet claimed me as a relative, and welcomed me as a brother. I found a missionary from India, addressing a few of his parishioners, in an adjoining school-house, and there I first saw my hospitable friend, and joined with him in the solemnities of a missionary meeting, among a few of the neighbouring peasantry. With this estimable clergyman, and his family, I tarried till the third day, enjoying greatly their attentive hospitalities, and trying to catch trout in the Tees. The very sound of this rushing river recalled the story of Rokeby, and amid its overhanging foliage, I almost fancied I could see skulking the pirate-figure of Bertram Risingham.

I was not allowed to leave this happy roof unattended. The eldest son of the family, a young Cantab, took me more than twenty miles, to Richmond, through a most romantic country, allowing me to visit the ruins, near Rokeby, and to stop at many interesting spots. We journeyed through Barnard Castle, and by Egglestone Abbey, and met with several adventures in our “search of the picturesque,” but at last emerged into the surprising scenery of Richmond, which I found beautiful beyond all that its name implies, and not unworthy of sharing it with its southern namesake, on the Thames. It is the older of the two, and is remarkable for something more than beauty. It has a touch of grandeur about it, and the ruins of its old historic castle, on the banks of the Swale, full of traditions of feudal sovereignty, and still massive and venerable in appearance, give an imposing air of majesty to the town. The aspect of the valley of the Swale is almost American, in its wildness, in many parts, and I keenly relished even my railway journey through a region so inviting to delay. I made my way to Leeds, where, amid smoke, and much that is disagreeable, stands the interesting Church of St. Mary’s, lately renewed and beautified by its faithful vicar, Dr. Hook. I had barely time to visit this sacred place, and contenting myself with having sighted Kirkstall Abbey, in the vale of Aire, I continued my journey to my first English home, in Warwickshire. The glimpses of Derbyshire scenery which I enjoyed, in my rapid journey, were full of beauty: and the mishap of losing a trunk, gave me the opportunity of putting to the test the fidelity of the English railway system. As soon as I discovered that some blunder had been committed, I informed the guard, and at the first station, telegraphic messages were despatched, and in a short time my trunk followed me to the parsonage, where I passed the Sunday with my friend.

Cowper—Greenwich.

As I was taking my ticket for a second-class passage to the nearest point on the railway to Olney, I happened to meet a gentleman who had just bought his, and with whom I had the pleasure of some acquaintance. Knowing him to be connected, by marriage and position, with some of the most aristocratic families in the kingdom, I very naturally said to him—“I’m going the same way with you, but shall lose the pleasure of your company, for I’ve only a second-class ticket.” I was amused with his answer:—“Yes, for I’ve only a third-class ticket.” He briefly explained that he was forced to economize, and that, although he did not like it, the inconvenience of a seat among a low-class of people, for a short time, was not so intolerable as a collapsed purse, “especially” he added, “as I am thus enabled to travel in the first-class carriages when I travel with my wife.” Such is the independence as to action, and the freedom as to confession of economy, which characterize a well-bred man, whose position in society is settled; and I could not but think how snobbish, in the contrast, is the conduct of many of my own countrymen, who, if they ever use prudence, in their expenses, are afraid to have it known. An aristocracy of money is not only contemptible in itself, but it curses a land with a universal shame of seeming prudent. It makes the dollared upstart fancy himself a gentleman, while the true gentleman is degraded in his own eyes, as well as in the estimation of the vulgar, by the fact, that his house is small, his furniture plain, and his table frugal. Hence so much upholstery in America; so much hotel-life; and such a contempt for quiet respectability.

This anecdote is not out of place in a chapter devoted to Cowper. The poet was a man of gentle blood, and, in every sense of the word, a gentleman. Many an English nobleman is vastly inferior to him in point of extraction. He was descended from the blood-royal of Henry Third, and in divers ways was allied to the old aristocracy of England. He used to be visited at Olney, by persons of quality, in their chariots; and titled ladies were glad to accept his hospitalities. But his home at Olney, where he lived for years, was one of the humblest in the place, and even his darling residence, at Weston, was such a dwelling as most country-parsons would consider barely comfortable. Now, I do not mean to say that John Bull prefers such an establishment for a gentlemen’s habitation; but I do mean that nobody in England would be so insane as to think less of a gentleman, for living thus humbly, especially if he lived so from principle.

As I came to Newport-Pagnel, a respectable elderly person drove by, in an open carriage, whom the whip pointed out to me as Mr. Bull; the son of Cowper’s old friend, whom he delighted to call his dear Taurus. Having a few minutes to spare in the place, and a proper introduction, I called at his house, and was glad to be shown a portrait of the venerable personage himself—the “smoke-inhaling Bull” of the Letters. A lady of the family politely gave me all needed directions, but assured me I should be greatly disappointed in Olney, where “there was nothing to see but old houses, and a general aspect of decay.” I said—‘Yes, but the house is there—and the summer-house—and the spire—and the bridge?’ I was answered that these were yet remaining, though somewhat the worse for wear and weather; and so, having succeeded in hiring a horse, off I went, alone. As I approached the neighbourhood of Olney, the first truly Cowperish sight that struck me—and I had never seen such a sight before in my life—was a living illustration of his lines:—

She little knew how much pleasure the sight of her gave to a passing stranger, with whom her art had been rendered poetically beautiful, by the charms of Cowper’s verse. This is, in fact, the secret of his spell as a poet, the power of investing even homely things, in real life, with a certain fascinating attractiveness. He avoids the romantic and the poetical, in choosing his themes; but he elevates what is common to a dignity and beauty unknown before. He is the most English of English bards, and I love him for teaching me to see a something even in the English poor, which makes them, to me, vastly more interesting than the romantic peasantry of Italy. True, the latter tread the vintage, and the other only stack the corn; but the English cottage has the Bible in it, and its children learn the Ten Commandments, and also learn that “cleanliness is next to godliness;” while in Italy, among fleas and other vermin, the idle parents sit lazily in the sun, and the children run after the traveller’s coach-wheel, lying while they beg, and showing by their religious vocabulary, that Bacchus and Maria are confounded in their imagination as saints of the same calendar.

At length I saw the spire of Olney, and soon I crossed the bridge, over whose “wearisome, but needful length,” used to come the news from London, to solace Cowper’s winter evenings. I was not long in finding the poet’s most unpoetical home, now occupied by a petty shop-keeper, who has turned his parlour into a stall. Here he lived, however, and here he sang: here, motherly Mrs. Unwin made tea for him, and Lady Austen gave him “the sofa” for his “Task.” Under these stairs once lodged Puss, Tiney, and Bess; those happy hares which, alone of their kind, have had a local habitation, and will always have a name. In the garden, I saw where the cucumber-vine used to grow, and where Puss used to ruminate beneath its leaves, like Jonah under his gourd. An apple-tree was pointed out to me as “set by Mr. Cowper’s own hands.” The garden has been pieced off, and to see the “summer-house,” I was forced to enter, by a neighbour’s leave, another enclosure. Here is the little nestling-place of Cowper’s poesy—the retreat where his Egeria came to him. In the fence, is still the wicket he made, to let him into the parsonage-grounds, when Newton was his confessor. ‘Here, then,’ I said, ‘one may fancy the lily and the rose, growing in rivalry; and another rose just washed in a shower; and the sound of the church-going bell, and a thousand other minute matters in themselves, all taking their place in the poetic magazine of Cowper, and so coming into verse, through his brain, as the mulberry leaf becomes silk, by another process of spinning.’ It was a small field for such a harvest, and yet “the Task” grew here.

And now, another mile brought me to the more agreeable Weston-Underwood, the resort of all his walking days at Olney, and the dear retreat of his later life; the dearer, because bestowed by the lovely Lady Hesketh. This is, indeed, a residence worthy of a poet, and though all who once rendered it so charming to Cowper have passed away, I was agreeably surprised to find no important feature changed. A painful identity belongs to it: you recognize, at every step, the fidelity of the poet’s descriptive powers, and it seems impossible that he who has made the scene part of himself, has been for half a century in his grave, while all this survives. You enter the desolate park of the Throckmortons, and there is “the alcove,” with its commanding view, so dear to the poet’s eye, and Olney spire in the distance. You pass into “the Wilderness,” now a wilderness indeed, for it is neglected and overgrown. Here are a couple of urns, now green with moss, and lovingly clasped by ivy, but each marked with familiar names, and graced by Cowper’s playful verse. The one adorns the grave of “Neptune,” Sir John Throckmorton’s pointer; the other is the monument of “Fop,” his lady’s favourite spaniel. I hailed this memorial of “Lady Frog’s” pet; but was far more moved to descry, before long, at the end of a flowery alley, the antique bust of Homer, which Cowper so greatly valued, and to which he gave a Greek inscription, which Hayley was proud to do into English:—

Here, then, that “stricken deer that left the herd,” was led to a sweet covert at last, and went in and out, and found pasture, under the guidance of one “who had himself been hurt by the archers.” With what enchantment these haunts of hallowed genius inspired me! And yet never felt I so melancholy before. The utter loneliness of the scene; the fact that they who had bestowed its charm, were all, long ago, dead; and then that painful reality—everything else there, as it should be; the Task, no poem, but a verity, and before my eyes; but Cowper, Hayley, Austen, Hesketh, all gone forever; these thoughts were oppressive. I sat down, and almost wept, as I repeated the names of those who were so “lovely and pleasant in their lives,” and who now are undivided in death! It was an hour of deeper feeling than I had realized before, at any shrine of departed genius, in England.

I went to the house, and rejoiced in the comfort it must have afforded Cowper, in his latter days. It is neat and comfortable, and the village is a pretty one, trim and thrifty in its look, and sufficiently poetical. It has “an air of snug concealment,” which must have been most congenial to its gifted inhabitant, and it was not unsuited to his fondness for receiving his friends as guests. I went into the poet’s chamber, and also into that which Lady Hesketh used to occupy. In the former, there is a sad autograph of the poet, in lead-pencil, behind a window-shutter. The window had been walled up, and only lately re-opened, when the pencilling was found. It is one of the poet’s last performances—an adieu to Weston, written there, as he left it forever:—

No wonder he lamented a departure from such a retreat, into nearer proximity to the bad world. Walking in the park, beneath its avenue of ancient limes, I envied the nibbling flocks that were straying about, and the cattle that were reclining in their shade. So peaceful! If life were given us for ignoble devotion to self, I know of nothing within reach of a clergyman’s humble fortune to which I should more ardently aspire, than such an abode as Weston, where a golden mean between what is common and what is poetical in scenery, and situation, still offers every inducement to a man of taste to settle down, and live contentedly; or, like Walton, “to serve God, and go a fishing.”

On returning to London, I was rejoiced to meet an old and intimate friend, from America, whose genius has given him distinction, at home and abroad—Mr. Huntington, the artist. With him I, once more, visited the Crystal Palace, and enjoyed the benefit of his criticisms in surveying the works of art, there displayed. We were interested to observe a constant group of admiring spectators hanging around the Greek Slave, of our countryman, Mr. Powers. Other nude figures, although many of them were far better calculated to appeal to coarse curiosity, were comparatively neglected, so that we could not but consider the amount of interest which this work secured, a proof of something superior, in its character. I own that, for my own part, I do not like it. The subject is a sensual one, and does not appeal to any lofty sentiment. Beauty in chains, and exposed in the shambles, is a loathesome idea, at best.

I went with Mr. Huntington to the rooms of the British Institution, in Pall-Mall, where is a fine collection of paintings, by British and foreign masters. It was a great advantage to me to be prepared by the hints of so eminent an artist, for my continental tour, and often, in the galleries of Italy, I had occasion to thank my friend for enabling me to appreciate many things which would, otherwise, have escaped me. At the exhibition of water-coloured paintings, I was astonished, by the rich collection, and the exceeding beauty of many of the pictures. The fruit, and flower pieces, of Hunt, were almost miracles. He paints a bird’s nest, with the eggs, and every straw, so perfect, that the bird would infallibly attempt to sit in it, and he contrives to bestow it in a hedge of hawthorn, so green and white, and so entirely natural, that you would not think of taking the nest, without making up your mind to be sorely scratched. It would make May-morning of a winter-day, to have a few such paintings to look at, and no one who loves nature could ever be tired of them.

The weather was as hot, at this time, in London, as it is ordinarily, at the same season, in Baltimore or New-York. It was the middle of August, and the moon being near the full, the nights were very beautiful; and I observed it the more, because neither sun nor moon have much credit for making London attractive. Late at night, I could see the Wellington statue almost as distinctly from the Marble arch, as at Hyde-park corner, and the scenery of the Park, by moonlight, was enchanting. When shall we have such parks in all our large towns?

Next day, with Huntington, and Gray, both of our National Academy, I went out to Greenwich Hospital, to survey the place, and to enjoy a parting white-bait dinner. We went down in a steamer, enjoying the excursion the more for our comparisons of all we saw with the Bay of New-York, and the Hudson. It was pleasant, now and then, to discern an American vessel, and to know her at once, by her graceful form, amid a forest of masts.

Greenwich is the great outside park of London, the resort of thousands of her pleasure-seekers, of the humble class. The Royal Observatory stands on a commanding eminence, and the slope of its hill towards the river, is the favourite sporting place of mammas and children. As a prime meridian, however, I always regret that it is not deposed, by the religion of England, which ought to take the lead in making Jerusalem the starting point for all Christian reckonings. The wings of the morning should rise every day, from the Holy Sepulchre, and there evening should come down to brood, with everything to make it the first, and the last place, in the minds and hearts of a ransomed world.

Greenwich Hospital is, indeed, a palace of the poor. On the terrace, between its wings, one cannot but be impressed with a sense of the greatness of a nation which thus lodges the humblest of its worn-out defenders. The old pensioners, hobbling about, in their blue uniforms, and cocked-hats, move your profound respect. Their wounds, and battered visages, seem to speak of storm and shipwreck, and of shell and broadsides, in every climate under heaven. They can tell wonderful things of Nelson and of Collingwood; and all seem to address you, like Burns’ hero, with the tale,

In “the Painted Hall,” which is full of pictures of naval battles, one sees how terribly their pensions have been earned. There, too, is shown the coat worn by Nelson, when he fell, and it is stained with his blood. It was a comfort to turn from this temple of the Maritime Mars, to that of the Prince of Peace. The old sailors have a superb chapel, elaborately adorned, and furnished with an altar-piece, by West, “the shipwreck of St. Paul.” From a little book which I picked up in Paris, written by a Frenchman, and a Romanist, I gather that the service, in such places, in England, is very impressive, and that the contrast, in France, is not in favour of the Romish religion. He describes the chaunting, and apparent devotion of the soldiers, as very striking; and he seems to have been especially struck with their responses to the Ten Commandments. He adds—“all that would make us laugh in France:” and he goes on to say—“if it be answered that our soldiers are at liberty to go to mass, I reply, that’s true; but for all that, a young conscript, religiously educated at home, would be ridiculed so unsparingly for continuing in his pious habits, that he could not long resist the bad examples of his comrades.” At Greenwich, the Bible and Prayer-book are the constant companions of many an old salt; and bad as all armies and navies must be, I could not but think that there is a great advantage, in the morale, of Chelsea and Greenwich, as compared with the Invalides.

We adjourned to our White-bait—a fish, according to the same French authority, most delicate and delicious, and to be eaten only at Greenwich, because it is necessary to transfer them, instantly, from the water to the frying-pan, and thence to the plate, and because they are fished only in the Thames. I fully agree with Monsieur, as to the attractions of the plat, especially when enjoyed in good company. The dinner ended, my friends accompanied me to the Southwark station, at London, where I had all things in readiness for a start: and bidding them a warm farewell, I reached Dover in a few hours, and soon embarked for Ostend. The sea was calm, and heaving in long, broad, glittering swells; and as the chalky cliffs of Dover, gleaming in the cloudless moonlight, gradually sank in the distance, I felt that no native Briton ever waved a more affectionate salute to the bright isle, than that with which I said good-night to Albion.

Return—Conclusion.

It was four months later than the incidents of my last chapter, when after a tour on the Continent, I found myself safely landed at Dover, in the gray dawn of a winter’s morning. I had left Paris, in all the frightful confusion consequent upon the coup d’état of Louis Napoleon. In touching, once more, the free and happy soil of England, if I could not say—“This is my own, my native land,” I could yet feel that it was the sacred land of my religion, of my parentage, and of my mother tongue. I was, once more, at home, and ceased to feel myself a foreigner, as I had done in France and Italy. How good and honest, sounded again in my ears, the language of Englishmen! As “bearer of despatches” from Paris, to our ambassador at London, I was landed with the advantage of precedence, and very rapidly passed through the custom-house. The state of things in France, and the feverish anxiety, in England, to learn the changes of every hour, invested my trifling diplomatic dignity with a momentary importance, strikingly diverse from its insignificance at other times: and I was amused to see how much curiosity was felt by the officials as to the mighty communications which might be going up to London in my portmanteau. Even an old salt, as I stepped ashore, could not forbear accosting me with—“Any news this morning, yer honour?” ‘Bad news,’ said I, ‘the Frenchmen are going to have a bloody day of it; be thankful you are an Englishman.’ “So I am, your honour,” was his hearty, and most honest reply.

I had been travelling in Southern Europe, where, to borrow a thought of Dr. Arnold’s, no one can be sure that anything is real, which he seems to see: where Savans are not scholars—where captains are not soldiers—nor judges lawyers—where noblemen are not men of honour—where priests are not pure—nor wives and matrons chaste. I was, again, in the land of facts, a land deeply involved, indeed, in the sins and miseries of a fallen world; but still a land, where, for centuries, everything has been steadily advancing towards a high realization of human capabilities, alike in the physical, and mental, and moral of man’s nature. I was once more in a land where it is base to lie; where domestic purity and piety find their noblest illustrations, whether in palaces or cottages; and where not even luxury and pride have been able to vitiate the general conviction of all classes, that righteousness alone exalteth a nation, and that sin is a reproach to any people.

On arriving in London, my very first employment was to visit the tomb of the holy Bishop Andrewes, at St. Mary’s, Southwark. The prelate is represented, at full length, stretched upon his sepulchre, and right dear it was, after long tarrying amid the monuments of popes and cardinals, to behold, once more, that of an honest and true man, and a saint of God, who, in his day and generation, was “a burning and a shining light.” The tomb of the exemplary and amiable poet Gower, is also in this Church, and has often been described.

Attending Evening Service at Westminster Abbey, on the following Sunday, I was so much struck with the effect produced by the light of candles, in the choir, that it seemed to me, I had never before fully felt the wonderful impressiveness of that Church, nor even of the church service. The surpliced singers, ranged in their stalls—the many faces of the worshippers—and the lofty arches of the sombre architecture received a new aspect, from the mingled light and shade, and the tones of worship were imbued, by association, with something strange and solemn. Deep under the vaultings lay the shadows, and here and there shone out a marble figure, or glimmered a clustered column. When the organ sent its tremulous tide far down the nave, it seemed to come back in echoes, like the waves of the sea—the more effective, because of the distance through which it had stretched and rolled the surge of sound; and when the responsive Amens rose, one after the other, from the voices of the singers, plaintively interrupting the petitions, and marking the impressive stillness of the intervals between, which were filled only with the low monotone of prayer, then I felt how amiable are the temples of the Lord of Hosts, and how fair a resemblance of that temple not made with hands, where they rest not, day nor night, from their hymns, and responsive praises. By the sides of the altar fared two immense wax lights, giving a fine effect to the sanctuary. After the Second Lesson, the preacher, Canon C——, ascended the pulpit, in his surplice, and preached the sermon; after which, the Evening Prayer continued, as after a baptism, the choir taking up the Nunc dimittis, followed by the creed, the collects, the anthem, and the prayers, while the organ thundered through the lengths and heights of the abbey. I joined the throng which passed down the nave, and looking back again and again, I received such powerful impressions of the sublimity of the place, as had been wholly wanting to the effect by daylight, as experienced on former occasions. One parting look through the western door, through the dimly illuminated perspective, and then I turned slowly and thoughtfully away. On the preceding Sunday, I had left the cathedral service, at Rouen, in circumstances precisely similar, and my mind naturally fell into a comparative train of thought. There was a great similarity in the effects produced on the senses by the two services. A stranger to the Latin and English languages, would have failed to note any marked difference between them. He would have recognized the Catholic unities of the two rites, and would have failed to observe their diversities, papal and reformed. The French sermon had been vastly better than the English one: the former was preached by an orator, the latter by a spiritless and formal favourite of Lord John Russell. Yet, between the two solemnities, in their entire effect, the disparity was greatly in favour of the English service, which was audibly and reverently performed, while the other was mumbled, and not understood by the congregation. I felt that the Church of England was strong, if compared with that of France, in her heritage of Catholic and Apostolic truth, as distinguished from the systematic falsehoods, which have made the religion of the other, a mere fable, in the general estimation of the French people.

At a later hour, the same evening, it was my lot to preach in St. Bartholomew’s, Moor-lane, in the pulpit once filled by the worthy Archbishop Sharpe. The incumbent of this Church had lately discovered at Sion College a collection of papers and books once belonging to the saintly Bishop Wilson; and he placed in my hands, for that evening, the original Sacra Privata of that holy and venerable prelate. I could not but think how much we may owe it to his prayers, that the Church of England is now what she is, as compared with what she was in his day; and, in preaching, I took great delight in paying a parting tribute to that Church, as compared with the churches of the continent.

I am convinced that the debt which England and the world owe to the Anglican Reformers of the sixteenth century, has never been properly appreciated. Like the air which we breathe, but do not perceive, the spirit with which they have invested the religion of England, is that of life and health. They banished nothing but the fogs and noxious exhalations of the middle ages; and, as the result, we find England hale and hearty, and bearing more fruit in her age, while the churches which allowed the Tridentine vapours to become their atmosphere, are perishing in the agues and fevers of a long and ghastly decline. Look at Spain and Italy!

And I cannot forbear, in conclusion, to remark, that when American travellers go to England, and copy the false statistics of some infidel almanac, to justify their railings against the National Church, they are about as wise as John Bull is, when he takes the statistics of our (immigrant) pauperism and crime, as a test of the true state of American society. It is true that there are great abuses connected with the establishment; and it is also true that they are deplored by no class of Englishmen, half so much as they are by the true churchman. If the Church could be left to herself, they would be immediately reformed; but the very creatures who rail at her, because of them, are they who refuse to give her the freedom which she claims, and who do the most to enslave her to the State power. I am no friend to that power in the Church of God; but they who prate against the church, because of her misfortunes, deserve the rebuke of all thinking men, whose knowledge of history, and of the existing state of the world, enables them to compare what has been done for England, by that church, even in her fetters, with what all other religions put together have done for the residue of the world. When we reflect upon the three great achievements of that Church for English liberty—the Reformation, the Restoration of the Constitution and Monarchy, and the repudiation of the Popish Stuarts, we may well afford to laugh at such sneers as a Macaulay endeavours to raise against her, on the ground of blemishes with which his own reckless and treacherous political allies have deformed and afflicted her. And when we attempt to estimate the blessings she has diffused through the whole Anglo-Saxon people, and by them through the world, who can refrain from blessing the dear Church which has placed the English Bible in every cottage, and which, for three centuries, has read the Ten Commandments, every Lord’s day, in the ears of millions of the people? It is only when we think of what that Church has done, in spite of the golden chains which fetter her, and in spite of the political miscreants who have always hung like hounds upon her heels and hands, that we can rightly estimate her strong vitality, and her vast beneficence.

And let it be remembered, too, that all that is good among English dissenters, is sucked from the Church, as the parasite derives its nourishment from the oak. The dissenters are mainly the small-tradesmen of England, a people intelligent enough to perceive the faults of their hereditary religion, but not generally enlightened enough to know its value and its services to themselves. They are like the Dutch boors, who thought the sun did no good among the Flemings, because they saw it so seldom, and who concluded that daylight came from the clouds, which were always visible. Whoever will take the pains to contrast the dissenters of England with those of Germany, will learn how much even they derive from the Church, against which they so ignorantly rail.

I desire to speak with great respect of many of the dissenters of England, who, like their estimable Doddridge, are such by the force of circumstances only, while they love and revere the Church of the nation; but I have known even American Presbyterians to experience the greatest revulsion of feeling against the mass of English dissenters, after actual contact with their coarse and semi-political religionism. I was not less surprised than gratified, moreover, to observe very lately, in a widely circulated American newspaper, edited by eminent Presbyterians, a full vindication of the Church of England from the odious and false views current among us in America, with respect to the system of tithes. The writer was himself an English or Irish dissenter, and he frankly asserted the fact, that in paying his tithes, he suffered no wrong, and contributed nothing to the establishment, which did not belong to her. “In short,” said he, “the Church owns one-tenth of my rent, and I am quite as willing to pay it to her, as to pay the nine-tenths to my other landlord.” The nine-tenths might go to a popish priest; but does he who pays it contribute to uphold Popery? No more than one who hires his house of a play-actor, supports the stage.

But although the decline of dissent, in England, is universally admitted, it is generally imagined that Popery is growing. So it is if the immigration from Ireland, of thousands of navvies, who have built Romish chapels and convents, out of their earnings on the railways, be the basis of the remark. But nothing was ever more over-rated than the late Apostacy, which is the fruit of a mere personal influence, over a few young men at Oxford, gained by one brilliant sophist, and perniciously directed by him towards ultramontane Romanism. It has spent itself already in a spasmodic revolt against common sense, which is breeding a reaction towards rationalism: but the Church of England is as much in danger from Irvingism as from Newmanism; and Wesleyanism was vastly more energetic against her than either. The chagrin and disappointment of Mr. Newman himself is most apparent. After numbering the “educated men” whom he had involved in his own downfall as a hundred, he confesses that their defection from the Church has scarcely been felt by her. “The huge creature from which they went forth,” he says, “showed no consciousness of its loss, but shook itself, and went about its work as of old time.” Yes, but with a newer and mightier energy than ever before, and that in both hemispheres. The unhappy man seems to have imagined that by getting into a balloon, he could kick the earth from its orbit: but the planet still revolves around the sun, while he dangles in the air, lost in the brilliant clouds of his own imaginations, and fancying his petty elevation as sublime as her pathway through the skies.

In the same manner, the Dublin reviewers are continually deploring their powerless expenditure of vast resources against the religion of England, which stands in its fortress of Scriptural truth, more impregnable than Gibraltar. Let the reader reflect, for a minute, on the essential characteristic of the Anglican Reformation, as it began under Wycliff, in a translation of the Scriptures, and then weigh the importance of the following citation from a Romish periodical.

“Who will not say,” says the Dublin Review, “that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country. It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of the church-bell, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the gifts and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of the English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land, there is not a Protestant with one spark of righteousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible.”

Action and reaction are always equal; and it is my own opinion that the hand of God is visible in the permission of the late scandals, and their sequel will demonstrate that He has been infusing into modern Romanism a spirit which will blow it to atoms. Among the beardless boys, who have swelled the numerical strength of the apostacy, there are some prodigals who will yet come to themselves, and remember their father’s house with penitent tears: and as to their leaders, the ex-Jesuit Steinmetz in his narrative of a residence at Stoneyhurst, introduces the following striking view of the case, which sustains my own impressions. “Though the men of Rome,” he says, “exult in this reaction (as they call it) which is making Oscott a refugium peccatorum, perhaps from among the very men whose captive chains clank in their triumphal thanksgiving, there will be shot the lethalis arundo, the deadly arrow that will pierce and cling to the side of their mother church in the appointed time. It is not children that they are receiving; but full-grown men, accustomed most pertinaciously to think for themselves. They began with being reformers, and it must be confessed with some of the boldness of reformers. Will they be content to change their skins? To become sheep, from having been, as it were, wolves? To smother the cunning and the clever thought, which seems so flattering to one’s own vanity, in the cold, dead ashes of papal infallibility? We shall see.” This is reasonable, and consoling. We may not live to see it; but a rebellion against Truth must have its rebound, and Church and State will be stronger for such rebellions in the end.

If then, the decline of English arts and arms be near, of which I am by no means as confident as some, it will be a very slow decline, and coincident with a new glory, and a brighter one, than England yet has known. Instead of armies, she is now sending forth soldiers of the Prince of Peace. She has discovered that it is cheaper and wiser to sustain missionaries than bayonets. The era of her greatest work is before her. She is to become the nursing mother of nations, and in her language, the sound of the Gospel is to go forth into all lands, and unto the end of the world. Hers is the deposit of the faith once delivered to the saints. The Roman Churches have divorced themselves from the promises, and in the Catholicity of England chiefly is fulfilled the promise of Christ, to be always with His own Apostolic commission, even to the end of the world. At the same time, there is a moral life in English society, which must long salt the State, and preserve it from decay. I appeal to the common sense of Christian men, and I ask, in what other country under heaven is there such a mass of domestic and social purity? Where else is there so large a benevolence, so masculine a religion, so enlightened a conscience, among any people? England has her shame as well as her glory; she is part and parcel of a sinful world; but her light is not hid under a bushel: and if the hope of the world be not in her candle, I am at a loss to know where to find encouragement as a Christian, that the Gospel is to become universal. I believe, indeed, that my own country is to share, with her, this magnificent career of peaceful conquest. We are bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh: but I believe, also, that before we can heal the nations, we must first heal ourselves of the wretched religious anarchy which is the bane of our education, our society, and our National character.

After lingering for a few days in the society of my friends, in London and Oxford, I was, once more, for a short time, the guest of the friend to whom this memorial is inscribed, and met at his table, again, the venerable Vicar, who was one of the first to welcome me to England. To part with such friends, and their families, perhaps forever, was only to become aware how deeply I had entwined with theirs, my brotherly feelings and Christian regards. But I had been long enough enjoying myself amid the scenes and friendships which even our holy religion, while it alone can produce them, forbids to our self-indulgence, in a world where every Christian is called to the work of a missionary. Much as I longed to mingle in the delights of an English Christmas, I felt the call of duty, and the blessedness of giving as greater than that of receiving. My own parishioners expected to see me at the altar, on the approaching feast, and my heart warmed towards them, as deserving my best endeavours to gratify their reasonable wishes. Thanks, under God, to the good steamer Baltic, and its skillful commander, I escaped the perils of a wintry sea, and on Christmas-eve, was restored to my flock, and family, in Hartford. On the following day, as I celebrated the Holy Eucharist, I trust it was not without befitting gratitude to God, nor without a new and profound sense of the blessings we owe to him, whose Gospel is the spirit of “peace on earth, and of good-will to men.”