Oxford—New College—Magdalen.

Now came my first day in Oxford—a day depended upon from boyhood, and from which I had expected more quiet and meditative delight than from any other enjoyment whatever. To every one who has made English literature and English history a study, I need not explain why. But Oxford has not only a literary prestige: it is so intimately connected with the history of our holy religion, that all other associations receive, as it were, an unction from this. Every college has its history; every stone, and every tree, and every turf, suggest ennobling reflections, as memorials of departed worth, but the hallowed memory of Martyrs sheds over all a deep and sober glory, that awes while it inspires. I know that our age has seen men, aye, and Oxford men, who could sneer at the reverend names of Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley: but who that has a heart not absolutely dead to generous emotion, but must feel a warm re-action in view of such impotent malignity? Who, in the days of the apostate and the dupe, can go to Oxford without blessing God that other days have left us the blessed example of men faithful unto death, and triumphing in the fire?

I stopped at “The Angel,” but it was not long before I found myself hospitably taken up, and transported to the house of a friend in the Turl, next door to Exeter College. My kind entertainer was one widely known throughout Anglo-Saxondom, not only by the books which he publishes, but by those also which he writes: and to whose elementary works on architecture we, in America, are indebted for about all that is popularly known of that beautiful art and science. As it was now vacation, I had an opportunity of seeing Oxford first, as it were, in scene, without the dramatis personæ; and no one is more capable than my kind host, of explaining the antiquarian and architectural glories of Oxford to a stranger. As he courteously gave me his valuable time, I made my primary rounds under his guidance.

As I came into Oxford, from Cuddesdon, I heard the bells of St. Mary’s in full peal, and experienced an exhilarating emotion that greatly heightened my impressions. After my arrival in the Turl—a name which indicates that the street was once a country-lane, guarded by a turn-stile—I took my second walk through the city, my first having been on the previous Sunday, passing from St. Ebbe’s to Wadham College, with the Bishop. Now, beginning with New College and the glories of William of Wykeham, I felt a new impulse of wonder and admiration, as if the half had not been told me. In vain does the pedant complain of the architecture here displaying the genius of that munificent founder, and tell us that it marks a decline from the elevation of the decorated period; for who can but see, in what is called decline, something much more like an elaborate adaptation of sacred art to academic purposes, exhibiting high invention, and a sense of the fitting and appropriate, which proves a taste truly refined, and a fancy rich and creative? So, at least, it strikes me; and the moral element is not less observable, the very stones seeming vital and instinct with the designer’s great soul and spirit. Thus the gateways, as has been well remarked, exhibit strength and utility, with little to advertise what is within; the domestic part is simple, and chaste and homelike; the hall bespeaks a generous hospitality, and suggests the social and civilizing character with which religion invests the table and the meal, and elevates it to a feast of reason; while, at last, the chapel is full of divine majesty, and commands abasement of self in the house of God, and at the gate of heaven. Wykeham was, for his day, a reformer, as really as Wyckliffe, and nothing is more certain than that the true Anglican alone has a right to glory in his achievements. They mark a period of contest with the papacy, every step of which contributed to the ultimate liberation of the Church of England from its Italian yoke, and they were perfected in that English spirit, against which the Pope was always at war, and which late apostates from our Nicene faith detest and anathematize as schism. True it is that we differ with Wykeham and Waynefleet in many items of opinion and practice, in which they were no wiser than their times; but they are one with us, historically, in the communion of the Church of England, in the maintenance of her individuality and independence, and in the confession of the Nicene Creed, as the authorized symbol of Christendom. These impressions, forced upon me within these walls, and growing on me every day that I spent in England, returned with ten-fold power after I had seen the Continent, and again beheld English Churches and colleges, and felt their essential antagonism to what is Italian and Tridentine, and their almost physical tendency towards the production of such a Church, in their ultimate result, as the Anglican Communion is at this day, and is likely to be in future. Let us depend upon it, and act upon it, as a fact in the providence and design of God, that the Church of England, from the first day she was planted until now, has been, as it were, “the Church in the wilderness;” retaining always a primitive and individual element, and preparing for eventual manifestation in the pure glory of the Bride, the great adversary of the harlot, with whose painted front and virago fury she now patiently contends.

Although the modern parts of the College are conspicuous from the gardens, I found in them a fascination which I can hardly account for or describe. The ancient city walls, with their bastions and defences, are still preserved as the boundaries of the premises, and possibly it is to them, with their embowering verdure and isolating effect, that one owes a feeling of enchanting seclusion and quietude. Here my trans-Atlantic eyes first beheld the loop-holes and embrasures of mediæval fortification; first grasped the idea of intramural siege, and bow-and-arrow fight! It struck me overwhelmingly with a sense of loss and mental injury, that I should have known only faintly, and from books, what thus the Oxford student receives in passive impressions of reality—the ennobling idea of our connections with the past, and its paternal relations to us. To see every day the walls on which one’s forefathers, ages ago, patrolled in armor, or from which they aimed the cross-bow; to walk and study and repose habitually under their shadow; to have always, in sport and in toil, in sorrow and in joy, such monuments of time and history about one: how ought it not to refine and mature the character; and make a man feel his place between two eternities; and inspire him to live well the short and evil day in which, if ever, what he does for futurity must be done quickly, and with might!

But now, somehow or other, we emerged into “The Slipe,” where one gets a fine external view of old wall, chapel and tower. But I was impatient to see Magdalen College, and Addison’s Walk, and thither we bent our way. Passing under its new and beautiful gateway, I stood before that effective grouping of architectural detail which makes up the western front. Here are tower, turret and portal, chapel, lodge, and non-descript doorway; here are great window, and oriel, and all sorts of windows besides; and trees and vines lending grace to all; and here is that queer little hanging pulpit, for out-door preaching, which, with all the rest, always made Magdalen, to my boyish taste, the very Oxford of Oxford. And I am not sure that this notion was a wrong one; for now that my ideal has received the corrections of experiment, what college shall I prefer to Magdalen? Perfect and entire is Wadham, where, in the warden’s lodge, I first broke academic bread; lordly is Christ Church, with its walks and its quadrangles; lovely is Merton, as it were the sister of Christ Church, and gracefully dependent; New College is majestic; All Souls worthy of princes: but Magdalen alone is all that is the charm of others, compendious in itself; yielding only a little to each rival in particulars, but in the whole excelling them all.

In Addison’s walk I gave myself up to delightful recollections of the Spectator, and marvelled not that the thorough-bred Englishman of that bewitching collection, was the product, in part, of such a spot as this! Here that great refiner of our language breathed the sentiment of his country, and nourished the spirit that knew how to appreciate her, and how to transfuse the love of her into others. I defy the most stupid visitor to feel nothing of enthusiasm here! I made the circuit of the meadow, surveyed the bridge over the Cherwell, took a view of Merton-fields and Christ Church meadows; and, after meeting with the late Vice-President, Dr. Bloxam, and encountering in him a cordiality of reception which I can never forget, concluded by attending prayers in the chapel. I was placed in a stall, and had as favorable a position, for sight and sound, as I could have desired. The service was sung throughout—although, as it was now vacation, comparatively few were in attendance besides the singers themselves. I observed that here, as in other college-chapels, the chapel itself is the choir of a cruciform Church, the ante-chapel is the transept, and the nave is wanting. Add the nave, that is, and you have a cathedral, or minster, complete. In the ante-chapel of Magdalen, there are always persons devoutly following the service; and although they can see nothing, they hear it with very sweet effect, the chaunt being softened by their separation from the singers, while it is articulate and altogether devotional.

Magdalen became my home in Oxford, for there I more frequently walked, and worshipped, and visited than elsewhere—and there, for a time, I was lodged; while in its grounds I became a frequent and familiar guest; taking, in grateful confidence, the repeated invitations which I received from Dr. Bloxam and other members of the College, although obliged to decline far more of their kindness than I could possibly accept. During this first visit I dined in the Hall, meeting a number of eminent members of the University, and greatly enjoying their conversation. This superb Hall is lined with portraits of the distinguished sons of Magdalen. As I sat at meat, Addison’s portrait was just before me, and at the end of the Hall was the portrait of one whom I am accustomed to reverence even more, as the pattern of the true Anglican pastor, the pure and holy Hammond. All around hung the venerable pictures of great and historical personages, who have illustrated their college in becoming illustrious themselves. Among such worthies, none can forget Bishop Horne, who, although he died in 1792, was the immediate predecessor in the presidency of Dr. Routh, the present incumbent, now very nearly a hundred years of age. This venerable and extraordinary man is, indeed, as was often said to me—“the greatest wonder of Oxford.”

But how many are the sources of delight in this august University! Even the meanest are not unworthy of note. At dinner, in the Hall, for example, I remarked, that the queer old mug from which I was drinking, was the gift to the College of “Robert Greville, second son of Lord Brooke;” and when we adjourned to the common-room, for fruit and conversation, the traditions of the spot, which were recounted, were all of historical interest. In this very room, that sturdy champion of his College, Bishop Hough, by boldly resisting the Commissioners of the Popish James, with their three troops of horse at the door, paved the way for the Revolution of 1688; and yet no College in Oxford was so much distinguished for its subsequent loyalty to the house of Stuart as Magdalen—following, in this, the example of Bishop Ken and the non-jurors, who liked the usurpation of William quite as little as the oppression of James. A Jacobite goblet was put into my hand, bearing the inscription Jus suum cuique, which admirably apologizes for the position of the College, in both these historical issues; while, on the other side, is the legend, to which I gave emphatic utterance, as I drank—Vivat Magdalena! After an hour in the common-room, we returned to the Hall, where the choristers were rehearsing the anthem for the next service, and where I heard not a little sweet singing during the evening. The fire was brightly blazing in its chimneys; and the light and shade of the vast apartment, with its pictures reflecting the playful glare from painted armor, or robes of lawn, and academic scarlet, to say nothing of the visages of ancient worthies clad in such array, very much heightened the effect of the scene.

Before returning to London, besides making a general survey of the city, I became somewhat more particularly acquainted with Christ Church, its hall, and common-room: and with its chapel, which is the cathedral. In Oriel College, also, I passed some pleasant moments, and drank of the College beer, from an old traditional cup of the time of Edward Second. I also worshipped at St. Mary’s, and did the same at St. Thomas’s, a picturesque and venerable fabric in the outskirts of the city, near the site of Oseney Abbey. Here the late restorations were very fine; and, although it is a parochial Church only, the service was sung. I observed a somewhat excessive external devotion on the part of a few of the worshippers, which struck me unfavorably; but, perhaps, in times of less dubious allegiance to the Church, I should not have noticed it as peculiarly pharisaical. I paid a visit to the Bodleian and the Picture Gallery, and inspected the architecture of “the Schools;” and, finally, saw some ceremonies in the Convocation House, which were very well worth seeing, as illustrating the academic system of Oxford. Several masters-of-arts were made, the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Plumptre, presiding, in his scarlet robes; but all was done with an entire absence of pomp, and in presence of very few spectators. I was the more surprised, as this was the first day of Easter-term; and, from the general peal from towers and steeples, one might have supposed it a great day. Even the ceremony of admitting the new proctors, and the Latin speech of one of them going out, seemed hardly to have any interest for the academics, or others. The Heads of Houses were assisting, and looked well; and, when all was over, there was a procession, the Vice-Chancellor going in state, solemnly preceded by the bedels, with their maces—profanely called pokers by the undergraduates. There was, however, no strut, but rather the contrary. You saw, at a glance, that all this was the mechanical routine of the University, done as business; and so regarded by every body concerned. It is only when men are acting that they become sublimely ridiculous.

This remark applies to the May-morning celebration, on top of the Tower of Magdalen. To read of it, one would think it must be a romantic, or enthusiastic, piece of absurdity: but done, as a matter of course, and in continuity, year after year, from ancient times, it has, on the spot, a very different effect. The custom dates from 1501, the first year of the 16th century, when, in gratitude for a royal benefaction from Henry VII., a Hymn to the Holy Trinity, with the Collect of Trinity Sunday, and other solemnities, were instituted as a commemoration, to be celebrated on the first day of May. The produce of two acres of land, part of the royal gift, was at the same time to be distributed between the President and fellows. It now goes to pay for an entertainment supplied to the choristers, in the College-hall, at which a silver grace-cup is passed around with great formality. The boys have a complete holiday, moreover, and from sunrise to sunset are set free from College-bounds; but it must be understood that the boys here spoken of are those of the school and choir—not the undergraduates, of whom there are precious few at Magdalen—which is not an educational establishment, but a society of educated men, devoted to academic pursuits. But I suppose I need not explain the difference between such Colleges and our own, now so generally understood. To remedy what is considered by the progress-men a crying evil, and to turn the splendid revenues of Magdalen to the largest benefit of the largest number, is one of the professed purposes of the late Royal Commission: but, unfortunately, no confidence can be placed in its professions. Were the thing in the hands of true Churchmen, and relieved from the tinkering of Lord John Russell, there can be no doubt that a competent and moderate University reform might vastly augment the resources of the Anglican Communion, and furnish a noble and safe expansion to her missionary and colonization enterprises. The Lord hasten such a genuine improvement, and deliver the University from the rash and presumptuous hands of political capitalists and adventurers!

I was premonished by one of the Dons, that there would be very little danger of over-sleeping on a May-morning in Oxford, for that an old remnant of Druidical times still flourishes unrestrained among the lads of the town. This is nothing less than the blowing of all sorts of dissonant horns, about the streets, in honor of the British Flora, from the earliest peep of May-day; as if to remind every body of the shame of sleeping when nature is displaying her fairest and most fragrant charms. Awakened, then, by the promised croaking, up I rose, and repaired to the College, towards which the whole tide of early-risers was setting. Here, those who are not admitted to the Tower, station themselves in the street below, or line the bridge of the Cherwell, awaiting the aerial music. As I slowly wound my way to the top of the tower, I caught beautiful views through its loop-holes, and breathed occasional puffs of delicious air. On the summit were gathered almost as many gownsmen, and others, as half the place would hold: the other half was railed off for the singers—men and boys, in their surplices and caps, with sheets of music in their hands. The view of the surrounding country, towards Forest-hill and Cuddesdon, or round by Nuneham and Stanton Harcourt, to Woodstock, was exceedingly lovely—and, of course, the more so, for the inspiration of the hour. As the clocks of Oxford chimed the hour of five, every head was reverently uncovered—and, while the morning sun made all the landscape glitter, forth broke the sweet music of the old Latin hymn:—

Alas! it was too soon over; for while it lasted, looking up into the blue heavens, one could almost imagine himself amid the clouds, and surrounded by the melodies of the heavenly host. As soon as it was done, the bells beneath us began their chorus, and the tower fairly rocked and reeled. After lingering for a time, to survey the effects of a bright morning on the domes and spires of the University, and on the aged trees of Christ-Church meadows and the windings of the river, I descended to the walks, and there passed an hour, sauntering about, as it were, in the very foot-prints of Addison and Bishop Horne. The bells discoursed their music for a full hour; the rooks chattered, and made holiday in the tree-tops; the sweet-briar and rose perfumed the cloisters; the deer bounded across the College park; and wherever I went, or wherever my eye rested, I saw nothing to remind me that this world is a wretched and work-day world, and that England is full of misery and sin. For a time, rhyme seemed reason, and fancy fact. In the enchantment of that delightful May-morning, one might be forgiven for loving life and being fain to see many such good days.

The Crystal Palace—Opening, etc.

Having frankly confessed my prejudices against the Great Exhibition, I must now as frankly own that I am ashamed of them. The whole thing was indeed strongly marked by the spirit of the age, and was, therefore, such as no one who sees and understands the faults of our own times can enthusiastically admire. Yet, little by little, I saw so much in it which illustrates the better elements of that spirit, and which is capable of being directed to noble results in behalf of the whole family of man, that, to some degree, I rejoice in the complete success of that splendid experiment. I was nicely punished for my folly at the outset, in losing the pageant of the opening, of which I took no pains to be a spectator, until it was quite too late to obtain admittance. If I lost any thing, however, I suffered in good company. I am astonished, at this time, to remember the indifference of many Englishmen, in different ranks of society, to the entire project, until its success was demonstrated. From The Times, which was a great grumbler at first, and from old Blackwood, which railed at the Temple of Folly, down to the shopkeepers in Regent-street, there was a wide-spread feeling of contempt for Prince Albert’s hobby, as likely to cost more than it would come to: while sincere apprehensions were entertained that something revolutionary and bloody might be the result of the collection of vast bodies of men, with a large proportion of foreign republicans among them, into the bosom of the Metropolis. How idle all this seems now! At the time, I am sure, very few were satisfied that it was altogether idle; and I fancy the Queen and Prince Albert themselves wished the thing well over, for some time before it was fairly inaugurated.

I went into Oxfordshire without making any plans to see the show, and remained over the morning of the first of May, to hear the hymn on the Tower of Magdalen. This was the day of the opening of the Palace, and accordingly I immediately hastened to London, to see how it would end. Riot and murder were the very least of evil results predicted by some, and our American press had anticipated nothing less than general pillage and insurrection. On arriving in London, I found that if I had only secured my ticket beforehand, I might have been at the show, as well as at the Oxford solemnity; for it was yet early in the day. Immense masses of men were pouring into Hyde Park, as I drove down the Edgeware road, and the crowd and crush of vehicles was not less surprising. It was with difficulty that I made my way through Piccadilly, especially as my cab emerged into the vicinity of Hyde-Park-corner. The police were everywhere on duty, but there was no mob, properly speaking, to require their interference. Thousands of the humbler classes, men, women and children, in their best clothes, were endeavouring to enjoy the holiday, and get a sight of the Queen. That was all, at this hour—and so it continued through the day. Towards noon, the crowd in the Park grew oppressive, and the slightest accident might have bred a confusion, in which life would have been sacrificed; but there was absolutely nothing but good-natured pushing and thrusting, and the occasional squall of an infant, whose mother was more engaged to save her tawdry finery, than to secure the safety of her child.

Finding myself one of the people, I resolved to enjoy a nobody’s share of the sight-seeing. Some English friends whom I found in the same predicament, and who assured me I had lost nothing worth a guinea to see, volunteered to accompany me into the Park, where they thought it not unlikely the most exciting scenes of the day would come off. So then, we elbowed and pushed our progress into the Park, and were elbowed and pushed in return quite as much as we cared to be. At last, it became impossible to fight it out three abreast, and we agreed to “divide and conquer.” The last I saw of my friends, one was here and the other there, amid a crowd of hats and faces swaying about, with exclamations and entreaties in behalf of coats and shins, and toes, and umbrellas. We looked laughing adieus, and saw each other no more. At length I found myself in the line of the Queen’s procession, and hired a convenient standing-place to see her progress to the Palace. On she came at last, preceded by those superb horse-guards, who dashed magnificently through the crowd, and were themselves the finest military spectacle I had ever beheld. Several of the Court carriages followed, one containing the Crown-Prince of Prussia; and then came the Queen’s, distinguished by many horses, coachmen, and footmen; the coach itself glittering with gold; the horses splendidly caparisoned; and the servants in showy liveries, with powdered hair, cocked-hats, and immense nosegays thrust into their bosoms. The cockneys, however, had expected to see the coronation coach, and were accordingly much disappointed with this modicum of show. Then followed more horse-guards, kicking up the gravel into the faces of the plebeians, and sinking, with their haunches to the earth, as their riders spurred them into proud prancings and curvettings, as if to intimate that the very beasts knew they were attending the Sovereign of many Empires to a festival of all nations. Whew! how they dashed along! and soon a discharge of artillery announced her arrival at the Palace; nor was it long before another discharge of the guns proclaimed the ceremony concluded, and the Great Exhibition opened. Everybody looked happy and contented; and everybody, with wife and children in the bargain, appeared to be on the spot.

As the royal carriage passed, I observed the Queen to be apparently uneasy, and apprehensive. The glass was up, and she was giving herself that constant motion which was Louis Philippe’s art of safety on like occasions. Without any distrust of her people, she may have remembered the attempt of the madman, Oxford, and she knew that any similar desperado must have a better chance of success on a day like this. I saw the little princes, and the royal head, therefore, to great disadvantage; but fortune favored me with a fuller satisfaction on their return. While everybody was pressing towards the Crystal Palace, I now turned against the tide, and gradually extricating myself from the Park, passed down Constitution Hill, and finally arrived at Buckingham Palace just in time to get a full view. The crowd here was very light, and I saw everything to great advantage. The Queen was evidently in high spirits, the glass down, and she bowing most maternally. I was within a few feet of her, and lifted my hat in homage to the broad, good-humoured smile with which she seemed to regard her enthusiastic subjects. The grand-daughter of George the Third looks exceedingly like her venerable ancestor, and a glance suggested to me what must have been his appearance in his younger days. Her features are by no means unfeminine, though far from delicate; she was a little flushed, and hence less fair than she is painted; but her exhilaration at the happy conclusion of her morning, gave an attractiveness to her expression which she lacked when I afterwards saw her, on more splendid occasions, languid with the routine of a drawing-room at St. James’s, and sick enough, I dare say, of its heartlessness and formality. After the Queen passed into her residence, I supposed the pageant ended, but shortly after there arose a shout, which convinced me I was mistaken. I turned, and saw her exhibiting herself to the people in the balcony of the palace, in the centre of a very splendid group, and with the little Prince of Wales, and the Princess Royal, at her side. The Princess Alice, the Crown Prince of Prussia, and the Duchess of Sutherland, were in the splendid circle, but the Prince Consort I did not discover. The shouts of the people were not so vociferous as I should have anticipated; and the royal party soon withdrew. I afterwards learned that this was a novel proceeding, and was meant by her Majesty as an act of most gracious and particular condescension. I trust my republican interest in the spectacle was none the worse, however, for being wholly unsuspicious of the gratitude with which it should have been mingled. I looked not without reverence, at the Sovereign Lady, and not without solemn thoughts of futurity at her lovely little family of children. But the influence of my country was so far upon me, that I never conceived at the time, that her Majesty was doing more than might have been expected of her, in honour of her loyal and most decorous people.

To Americans in London the Crystal Palace soon became a sore subject. We were the laughing-stock of nations; and I confess, when I first visited the vast desert at the American end of the show, in which many of the articles exhibited were even worse than the lack of others which ought to have been there, I felt myself disposed, for a minute, to blush for my country. It would have been the very poverty of patriotism to plead that a few items of our contribution were of very great merit; and self-respect would not permit me to multiply apologies, or even explanations. What was really good spoke for itself. What was bad, or indifferent, was simply inexcusable. The fact is, our progress in the arts of civilization was not at all represented; and after observing the things which attracted attention, from other countries, I felt sorry that nobody had thought of making similar exhibitions for us. It really pained me to reflect, that I had seen much more attractive exhibitions in our provincial towns; and I was quite sure that one day’s work, in each of our great cities, might have sufficed to collect a far better show of industrial produce out of the ordinary market. Fortunately, the yacht “America” came in at the last moment to “pluck up our drowning honour by the locks;” and if we could but stop bragging about it, that would be enough, until some future occasion may afford us an opportunity of showing what American mechanics and manufacturers are able to achieve in their various departments of skill and ingenuity.

I was pained to observe the feeling engendered by the Exhibition between England and America, and by the highly-irritated recriminations of ill-bred representatives of both countries, on the spot. On the other hand, I was sometimes amused by the ludicrous attempts of some well-meaning Englishman to be complimentary. He would choke out something about the “Greek Slave,” and then pass rapidly to speak of his delight in meeting with a model of Niagara Falls: an execrable thing, which only served still further to confuse the unusually mudded ideas of that prodigy of Nature, entertained by the English generally. As it was simply an immense map of the Niagara, it of course represented the Falls on such a scale as entirely deprived them of sublimity and beauty: and so, when the speaker would enlarge upon the magnificence of this feature of our country, I usually took some satisfaction in confessing that the better half of the Falls is, after all, on the British side, and that I was sorry he could find nothing to praise that was entirely ours. The only instance in which I encountered rudeness upon this subject, was an absurd one, in a railway carriage, when a Paisley manufacturer, a little the worse for whiskey, and very rich in his brogue, after some impudent remarks, which led me to decline conversation, stuck his face into mine, with the startling announcement—“ye can’t mak’ shawls in your country!”

On my first visit to the Exhibition, I must own that my prejudices were utterly dispelled. The meagre effect of the exterior was forgotten in the enchantment of the view within. It was a high-priced day, when rank and fashion had the scene to itself. The place where the interest of the whole was concentrated was that beneath the transept, commanding, as it did, the entire view; and where the great trees, preserved within the building, furnished a comparative measure of the whole. The crystal roof showered a soft day-light over the immense interior; the trees and curious plants gave it a cheerful and varied beauty; the eye bewildered itself in a maze of striking objects of luxury and taste; musical instruments, constantly playing, bewitched the ear, their tones blending, from various distances and directions, in a kind of harmonious discord; fountains were gurgling and scattering their spray, like diamonds and pearls; and, amid all, moved the high-born beauty, and the rank and pride of England, mixed with auxiliar representatives of foreign states, but not unconscious of their own superiority, even while they seemed to forget that they were insular, in their easy transition through the pavilion, from England to France, and from France to Austria, and from Austria to India and China. I thought of “the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them:” did the vision which the Tempter disclosed to the Man of Sorrows glitter more ravishingly than this?

But others have written so well on this magnificent spectacle, that I must not enlarge upon my own impressions. It grew upon me, to the last. It was an encyclopædia, which I am glad to have consulted. It was, in fact, a great piece of luck to a traveller. How much of Europe it showed him in a day: how many leagues of travel it would have cost to have gained the information, with respect to divers countries, which here unfolded itself beneath one mighty roof! I am convinced, moreover, that its influence, on the whole, was good. It was opened and dedicated by prayer, and the blessing of the Primate; it was presided over by the religious spirit of the British Empire; it illustrated the pacific and domestic influences of a female reign; it furnished a striking proof of the stability and self-reliance of the Government, as well as of the tranquil prosperity of the state; it united many nations in a common and friendly work; it furnished a touching but sublime commentary upon the lot of man, to eat bread in the sweat of his brow, and it redeemed itself from the spirit of that other Babel, upon the plains of Shinar, by bearing, inscribed upon its catalogue, the text—“The earth is the Lord’s, and all that therein is: the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein.”

It is a good thing that the better counsel prevailed, and that the Crystal Palace, when it had served its purpose, was taken utterly away. It is now a thing of history, so far as Hyde-Park is concerned; and the Transept Tree will long be its best memorial to surviving generations. In this way its memory will have a moral value, till the end of time. A bubble, like the world, it has glittered and vanished. An epitome of nations and kingdoms, and manners and men, it has served its purpose, and been removed by its imperial architects. Who can doubt that, in like manner, when their noble ends are accomplished, the heavens shall be folded up as a vesture; and “the great globe itself, with all which it inherits,” shall forever pass away, according to His promise, who is King of kings and Lord of lords?

It would have been pity not to have seen poor Jack-in-the-Green, on a May-day, in London; and yet I had quite forgotten the sweep, and his right to a share in the festival, until I saw the sight itself, as I chanced to be passing through one of the streets of the West-end. A chimney of green things, it seemed to be; walking along, and nearly or quite concealing the occupant, who gave it motion, while a crowd of boys did honour to the show. The game seemed to consist, in pausing before certain doors, and soliciting a gratuity. Certain it is, that no one can grudge a penny to such an applicant, or behold the one day’s sport of the poor climbing-boy, without wishing he may succeed in trying to make the most of it. Lady M. W. Montague is said to have invented this beneficial anniversary of sweepdom, and the moving obelisk of green seemed to me no unmeet memorial of her benevolence. Better this, than the column of the Place Vendôme, unless it be better to be remembered for levying a world-wide tribute of blood and tears, than for giving one new object of hope and joy to the children of sorrow!

During the residue of the week I was engaged in the ordinary lionizing, but met several agreeable persons in company, dining one day at the Rectory of St. George’s East, and another day at Clapham. My first impressions of the enormous extent of London were gained in passing between these limits, and yet as vast a suburb lay unexplored beyond the former, as I had travelled through to reach the latter. Clapham is called four miles from the metropolis, but one reaches it, by omnibus, with no very clear idea of having left London at all. And so, in every direction, London seems interminable, and villages known to us from books as highly rural, and as affording delightful retreats from the city, are found, to our surprise, to be incorporated with the great Babel itself, and that by no means as its extremities.

St. James—Wellington—St. Paul’s.

I had been invited by Dr. Wesley, Dean of the Chapel Royal of St. James’s, to attend service there on Sunday morning. It was the Second Sunday after Easter. The old clock above the palace gate-way pointed eight o’clock as I entered the colour-court, and saw the flag of the regiment on duty, drooping about its staff, inscribed with the names of famous victories. All the region round about seemed to be fast bound in slumber. It was the cool, quiet Sunday morning of smoky London, to which only the most casual glimmer of sunlight gave any warm announcement of the advancing day. How still it seemed! A solitary sentinel, in scarlet, stood, six feet high, at the gate. “Service begun yet?” said I; and he answered, mechanically, “yes, the Duke just gone in.” I passed on; knocked at the door of the chapel; mentioned the Dean’s name as my warrant, and was admitted. The beadle, in livery, showed me to a seat, and after my devotions, I was able to look around. It was a plain place of worship, and quite small; just large enough for the royal household, none of whom, however, were now present, the Court being at Buckingham Palace. The book in my seat was stamped with the royal initial of William Fourth, and marked for some great officer of the household. There was one seat between me and the pulpit, the seats running along the wall, like stalls, and not as ordinary pews. The altar at the end of the Church, beyond the pulpit, was the conspicuous object of course, and the window above it—which one might hardly take for an altar-window in the street-view—gave the chief light to the holy place. Was this the same chapel in which Evelyn so often anxiously marked the behaviour of Charles and the Duke of York, at the celebration of the Eucharist? The place has been much changed, but I indulged the idea of its essential sameness. On the altar were the usual candlesticks, and the glittering gold plate of great size and massiveness, in the midst of which was conspicuous the Offertory-basin, bearing the royal cypher of Queen Anne. There was no one in the chapel but the beadle and—one other person, in the seat next me, at my right. There, in a dim corner, directly under the pulpit—quite crouchingly and drawn together, eyes shut, and white head bowed down, Roman nose and iron features, and time-worn wrinkles, all tranquilized—sat in silence the hero of Waterloo. He was in the plainest morning dress of an English gentleman, frock-coat of blue, and light trowsers. I scarcely looked at him, and yet gained, in a moment, an impression of his entire person, which I shall never lose. Occasionally I could not resist the temptation of a glance at the great man, but who would venture to stare at the Duke of Wellington in such a place, and at such a time? The Dean of the chapel entered, with another clergyman, who was habited for the pulpit. A clerical personage, attended by two ladies, at the same time, came in as I had done, and, during the sermon, there were four other persons present. The Dean began the Communion Service, which surprised me, as I had expected the usual Morning Prayer. Was the Duke about to communicate? Was I to see him in the most solemn act of our holy religion? Was I to kneel beside him to receive the same cup of salvation and bread of life? It gave me solemn thoughts of our common insignificance, in presence of Him whose majesty filled the place, and on whose glorious Cross and Passion, I endeavoured to fix all my thoughts. For ages in this chapel, sovereigns and princes had literally brought gold and incense, (as they do still, annually, on the Feast of the Epiphany,) and offered their vows unto the King of kings; and now, there I knelt with the greatest human being on the footstool; the first man of the first nation; the great man of the greatest Empire on which the sun ever shone; a man of blood, of battles, and of victories, coming as a worshipper of the Prince of Peace, to crave salvation and receive its pledge! ‘And yet, a greater than Solomon is here,’ said my inward thought, ‘and therefore let this impressive moment be a foretaste of that terrible hour when the Judge of all the earth shall sit upon his throne, and when all worldly glories must shrink to nothingness before His Majesty.’

I could not but observe the Duke, at the saying of the Nicene Creed. As usual, in England, he faced about to the East, and at the name of Jesus, the great Captain of his salvation, he bowed down his hoar head full low, as if he were indeed a soldier of the cross, and not ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified. The Duke was certainly not as eminent for sanctity as for his many other qualities; but who shall say that his worship was that of the formalist, or that the secret of his soul, which is with God, may not have presented to His eye the contrition and the faith of a sinner “much forgiven!” Surely, the splendours which seem so attractive to the superficial, must, long since, have become burdensome to him; and few, so well as he, have been able to confirm by experience the faithful witness of inspiration, that “man at his best estate is altogether vanity.”

The Dean is a grandson of the celebrated Charles Wesley, and I was somewhat disappointed that he was not the preacher. The text, it seemed to me, had been selected not without reference to the great person, whose attendance at the chapel is sometimes solitary, and who having entered on his eighty-third year on the preceding Thursday, might be supposed to regard this Sunday as one of more than ordinary solemnity. “Though thy beginning was small, thy latter end shall greatly increase”—(Job viii:7)—such was the text, and the reverend preacher dwelt on the approach of death, and spoke of “men covered with worldly wealth and honours, making their end in remorse and misery.” If the deafness of the Duke did not prevent his hearing, many parts of the sermon must have affected him, but he retained the immoveable and drowsy look of which I have spoken before, and sat close in his corner. The residue of the service proceeded as usual; five persons, myself and the beadle included, being the only persons present besides the officiating clergy. The collection at the Offertory was duly made as in parish churches, and at the proper time (the beadle opening the doors of our pews) the altar was surrounded. Supposing that some etiquette might be observed in such a place, I was very much pleased to find that the contrary was the case; and that all present were expected to approach the altar together. The Duke tottered up, just before me, and I knelt down at his side, just where the beadle indicated my place. Of course I had other things to think of at such a solemn moment, and I know nothing of his deportment, at the sacrament, except that it seemed humble and reverential. When all was over, and the Duke had retired, the Dean, who had beckoned me to remain, for the consumption of the residue of the sacrament, expressed great satisfaction at the presence of an American clergyman, and spoke affectionately of our Church. He told me that the Duke communicated thus regularly on the first Sunday of every month: and I was glad, as I left the chapel, that I had been so happy as to see him for the first time when engaged in such a duty. He is now gone to the dread realities we there confessed; and there is something peculiarly touching in the recollection of that morning at St. James’s, when that cup of salvation, out of which kings and queens have, so often, drank their weal or woe, passed from his lips to mine. It made me feel, at the time, both out of place, and yet at home; for what had I to do in a royal chapel, and in the company of the worldly great? and yet I was there because it was my Father’s house, and because my right to the children’s bread is the same as theirs, even the mercy which redeemed all men’s souls at the same unspeakable price.

When I next saw the Duke of Wellington, I had the honour of being presented to him, and of observing his person and his manners more narrowly, in a scene of private festivity. I saw him once again, and that, too, was at St. James’s, amid all the splendours of the Court, dressed in his military uniform, and glittering with decorations. Even there he was the “observed of all observers,” and long will it be before such another shall be seen amid its splendours, giving, rather than receiving lustre, in the face of the throne itself. But to have seen the old hero bowing at the throne of grace, and asking mercy as a miserable sinner, through the precious blood-shedding of Jesus Christ, will often be one of the things which I shall most pleasingly recall, when I see some poor dying cottager, or tenant of a garret, taking into his hand, with as good a right, the same cup of salvation.

When I first came into the neighborhood of St. Paul’s, I was far more impressed than I had expected to be with its dingy, but still sublime exterior. With this Cathedral I had no very agreeable associations. Erected during the first period of decline in correct taste and sound theology, subsequent to the Rebellion, it naturally partakes of the cold formality of the age, and is altogether as Anti-Anglican as pedantry and an over-estimation of the classical in art could make it. It is in the style of a Roman Basilica, rather than of an English Church, and is far more suitable to Tridentine notions, than any Church in England erected before the Reformation. Still, it is beautiful; I think exceedingly so: and St. Peter’s, in the Vatican, is as inferior to this, in model, as this is inferior to St. Peter’s in dimensions and internal magnificence. I give my opinion boldly, for I feel sure that there can be no just room for difference of opinion as to this matter. The more I saw of St. Peter’s, the less was I satisfied with its ill-conceived and awkwardly developed bulk; while every time I saw St. Paul’s, I found myself more and more in love with its rich combinations of grace and majesty. How it came to pass that Michael Angelo and his partners produced only a magnificent monster, while Sir Christopher Wren came so near producing a model of magnificence, it may be hard to tell; but though the latter has its faults, no one can do less than admit, that if the immensity of St. Peter’s embodied the same outline and proportions which are preserved in St. Paul’s, the whole effect of the front, as you approach it between the colonnades of Bernini, would be inconceivably better. St. Paul’s unfortunately has no such approach; but its great dome looms before you, as you begin to ascend Ludgate-hill, for all the world like a peak of the Alps descried through the gorge of Gondo. When the promised improvements are made in the neighborhood of the churchyard, and when a better finish and composition of details are adopted at the eastern end, or choir, of the cathedral, it may safely lay claim to the finest coup d’œil of its kind in Christendom. Its defects are notorious, but they appear to me of minor importance; and the double portico, at the west end, so mercilessly criticised by the mere grammarians of architecture, strikes me as worthy of high commendation, as a happy license in the poetry of the art, distinguishing a Christian Church from a heathen temple. The Pantheon and Madeleine at Paris are doubtless more correct, but they look—the one as if Voltaire and Rousseau might have ordered it expressly for their Mausoleum, and the other as if Julian himself had built it in grateful remembrance of his early friends, the Parisians.

I leave my readers to imagine the sort of enthusiasm with which I first sauntered about the purlieus of the cathedral, and inquired of my guide-book the actual site of the old Paul’s Cross, and strove to conjure up the images, thereto pertaining, by witness of the chronicler. Alas! how much rather would I have seen the old Paul’s, which poor Laud so munificently repaired in the ill taste of his day; and that old pulpit, in which Richard Hooker wagged his venerable head, than all this Italian and classical display of Wren’s! There is no relish of the past in it: and it has little that is truly religious in its effect on the mind. Yet as being St. Paul’s, one feels that a Greek and Roman composition would not befit any other of the apostles, so well as it does the one that was a Roman citizen, and the Doctor of the Gentiles.

Going to St. Paul’s to morning service, on Sunday, the fourth of May, I entered the south transept, and for the first time beheld its interior. The effect of the immense vault of the dome, as it first struck my sight, was overpowering—the more so, because at that moment, a single burst of the organ, and the swell of an Amen from the choir, where service was already begun, filled the dome with reverberations, that seemed to come upon me like thunder. I was so unprepared for anything impressive in St. Paul’s, that I felt a sort of recoil, and the blood flushed to my temples. I said to an American friend, who happened to be with me—“after all, ’tis indeed sublime!” I now went forward with highly excited expectations, and the voice of the clergyman intoning the prayers, within the choir, increased my anxiety to be, at once, upon my knees. I glanced at the monument of Howard, and entered beneath the screen. The congregation seemed immense. A verger led us quite up to the altar, and as he still found no place, conducted us out into the aisle, where I passed the kneeling statue of Bishop Heber, with a trembling emotion of love and admiration, and so was led about and put into a stall, (inscribed, “Weldland,” with the legend, Exaudi Domine justitiam,) where, kneeling down, I gave myself up to the solemn worship of God. And solemn worship it was! I never, before or since, heard any cathedral chaunting, whether in England or on the Continent, that could be compared to it for effect. The clergyman who intoned the Litany, knelt in the midst of the choir looking towards the altar. Even now I seem to be hearing his full, rich voice, sonorously and articulately, chaunting the suffrage—by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension—to which organ and singers gave response—Good Lord deliver us—as with the voice of many waters. Then, as the next suffrage was continued, the throbbings and echoes of this organ-blast supplied a sort of under-current to its simple tone, at first pouring down from the dome like the floods of Niagara, and then dying off along the distant nave and aisles like mighty waves of the ocean. Tears gushed from my eyes, and my heart swelled to my throat, as this overwhelming worship was continued. It was all so entirely unexpected! Cold, cheerless, modern, all but Hanoverian St. Paul’s—who dreamed of such a worship here! Yet so it was; and I am sure, from subsequent experience, that it is capable of being made a most attractive cathedral, and a very useful one. Knock away that detestable screen, and put the organ in a better place; confine the choir to the clergy, and compel all the canons, singers and officials of every grade to be there; fit up the Altar end, and make it new with a pictured window, in keeping with the architecture and vastness of the place; subdue the light; set the pulpit at the head of the nave, and let the entire Church be filled with worshippers and hearers: and then, with a little decoration, and warm colouring to aid the improved effect, we shall hear no more of the chilliness and poverty of this august interior. It might be made a great Missionary Church for the seamen and other laboring classes of the city and port of London; while the aisles should furnish a succession of chapels, for services at successive hours, and for Sunday schools, and catechizings. Church Societies also, such as the S. P. G., might be allowed their chapels, in which, before sailing, Missionaries might receive the Sacrament, or offer thanks after arriving at home. One would think, moreover, that a fitting use might be found for the great balcony, over the lower portico, at the west-end, if only the Dean and Chapter would imitate the May-morning hymn of Magdalen, and, in that public place, offer annual prayers and thanksgivings to God, for the health, peace, and prosperity of the vast Metropolis, to which they might make themselves the very centre of spiritual life, by a little inventive effort, in the line of useful and benevolent reform. Oh, for a besom and a reformer first, and then for the line and plummet of the builder!

Dean Milman appeared in the pulpit, and preached a well-written sermon (from Acts xvii. 26,) with evident reference to the influx of divers nations at the inauguration of the Great Exhibition. But the Apostle, for whom the cathedral is named, would have preached very differently, I am persuaded, to the assembled Gentiles. In the congregation, I discovered many foreign faces, and recognized, (by the familiar tokens of angular features, goat-locks under the chin, and collars turned down,) not a few of the more inquisitive and irreverent class of our own countrymen, who seemed to think the rhetorical powers of the worthy Dean altogether inferior to those of the stump, the camp-meeting, and the Tabernacle in Broadway. I must allow that, if such were their impressions, they are not much to blame. The editor of Gibbon, and of Horace, has other claims to our respect, and richly deserves an eminent station in the Academy, or in schools of Taste and Art; but the orthodoxy of a Hooker, and the zeal of a Whitefield, are the better qualifications for such a post as the Deanery of St. Paul’s ought to be. Even a little enthusiasm might be excused in cathedral preaching, as vastly preferable to the frigid decorum of a style and manner quite too rigidly harmonious with the Corinthian and classical details of the surrounding architecture.

The same day I attended Evening Service at St. Barnabas’, Pimlico, of which everybody has heard something. At this time Mr. Bennett had ceased to be the incumbent, and I was informed that the less defensible practices of this Church had been discontinued, in obedience to the injunctions of the Bishop. I cannot say I saw anything that need have given great offence, in ordinary times and circumstances: but I saw not a little which, in the time of apostacies and scandals, would more inevitably scandalize the weaker brethren, than would many far more serious sins against charity and brotherly kindness. Had these things been other than absolutely indifferent in themselves, or had they been less seemingly imitative of some ceremonies foreign to our primitive Catholicity, one might have said, at any rate, that they were quite as tolerable as the corresponding ultraisms of the opposing extreme in the Church. I certainly tried to feel both charity and fraternal sympathy for the brethren of St. Barnabas’, for I had heard them well-reported of for many good works. Yet, my impressions were not altogether favorable. On the whole, the effect was that of formalism beyond anything I ever saw in our Communion. The architecture was somewhat too highly charged with mediævalism for reformed Anglican worship, but would be not less inappropriate, in several particulars, to modern Romanism. It was antiquarian, rather than practical in any respect. The service seemed to be performed in the same æsthetic and almost histrionic spirit, even where the rubric was strictly complied with. One could not say just what was inexcusable, and yet felt that little was done unto edifying. The evil seemed to be that its good was made to be evil spoken of, by the excessive and unnatural, if not unreal way in which it was exhibited. Good there was, undoubtedly, in the original idea of this Church, and one scruples to impeach the motive of such displays of zeal for the glory of God: but we have the positive rule of St. Paul, given by precept and example, that everything beyond what is the ordinance and custom of the Church, is to be subordinated to the great work of evangelizing men compassed with infirmities, and who oppose to the Gospel the divers prejudices of the Gentile and the Jew. I am very much afraid the contrary is the rule at St. Barnabas’. After the Evening Service, the congregation was dismissed without a Sermon. Although the assembly was far from large, and however true it may be that prayers are better than preaching, in certain circumstances, I certainly felt that a few words of exhortation might have added a spirit of reality to the solemnities, and could not have seemed out of place on the Lord’s Day, even at Evening Service. Still it is but just to say that the services are so arranged, in this church, as to secure an average both of teaching and worship, much greater than is usual elsewhere. With all this, why cannot a bonâ fide English air of earnestness be given to the whole thing? Let us have a living ceremonial, at least, and a real one. The reading which I heard was not English reading: if the preaching be of the same sort, no wonder the people consider the whole a mere imitation of foreign performances. An external standard, and not the spirit of the English rubric, appears to be before the eyes of the ministers; just as a similar standard, and not the law, seems to have guided Dr. Lushington in his late decision against them. Strange that while his judgment demolishes furniture to which nothing but bigotry can object, he leaves the brazen doors of the chancel, which are repugnant to common sense, as they almost conceal the altar.

Later in the evening, I attended St. George’s, Hanover-Square, the Church so distinguished for marriages in high-life, and for a fashionable prestige altogether. Here one sees Hanover indeed! The names of its successive Churchwardens are emblazoned on the galleries, and I observed that they were generally those of noblemen and gentry. Fashion was much too prominent. A young and well-looking preacher, in Episcopal robes, appeared in the pulpit, and discoursed articulately, and with some spirit, (on Rev. xxii. 17,) though not remarkably in other respects. This was the new Bishop of Nova Scotia, who has since entered into the labors of his missionary field with great diligence and success.

I had attended four distinct services in divers parts of the Metropolis this day, and I was informed that I might easily have attended as many more. Very different hours are kept in different parishes; and it is not unusual for one, two, or even three Morning Services to be celebrated in the same Church, to accommodate different classes of worshippers. Such is one fruit of the awakened vitality of the Church of England.