Rambles—The Tower.

In Paternoster-Row I cruised about, and came to Amen Corner quite too soon for satisfaction. I strove also to understand the precise bounds of Little Britain, as I plodded therein, and bethought me of its right worshipful reputation for books and men of letters in olden times. In Cheapside, I could see nothing but John Gilpin and his family, till I came to Bow Church, and, by good luck, heard a full peal of the very bells that make cockneys, and that whilom made poor Whittington o’ the Cat a Lord Mayor. What they were ringing for did not appear, as the Church was shut. So I fared on through the Poultry and Corn-hill, paying due deference to the Royal Exchange, till on a sudden, by some odd crooks and twistings through the very ventricles of this heart of the Metropolis, I came before the Tower. It gave me a thrill of emotion to see it before me: and ‘here is Tower-Hill,’ said I—‘here stood the scaffold—and I am sure these walls must have been the last things seen, before they closed their eyes forever, by Strafford, and by Laud, and by so many before and after.’ And these the towers of Caesar, and their history the history of England almost ever since his conquest!

The Church of All-Hallows, Barking, happened to stand open, much to my satisfaction, as I was threading a very narrow and old-fashioned street near the Tower; and I entered, with a thrill of emotion, to behold the venerable interior, where the service for the burial of the dead was read over the bleeding corpse of Archbishop Laud, as it was brought in just after the axe had made him a martyr, and here temporarily interred. I remembered that Southey remarks that the Prayer-Book itself seemed to share in his funeral, for on the same day, the Parliament made it a crime to use it in any solemnity whatever: and I endeavored to recall the scene of desolation which must then have smitten to the heart any true son of the Church of England who was its spectator, beholding, as he did, the Primate of all England going down into the sepulchre, as the last, apparently, of his dignity and order; the Church herself beheaded, if not destroyed, with him; and the Prayer-Book reading its own burial! Thank God, there I stood, two hundred years later, a living witness of the resurrection of that Church and its ritual, and of its powerful life, in the new world of the West. I trust I did not offer a vain thanksgiving upon the spot. I then looked at the old tombs and brasses, which are interesting, if not fine. Here kneel a worshipful old knight and his dame, with their nine or ten children, demurely cut in alabaster, upon the common tomb of the parents; and there is a brass, said to be Flemish, commemorating another pair, who were laid to rest the same year that saw Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More beheaded and interred in this same Church. Here, too, is some fine carving; and some of the pews have curious adornings, in token of their being the place for magistrates and high parochial functionaries, of divers degrees. Surely, no one should fail to see this Church when he visits the Tower.

And now I turned towards that old historic pile, repeating, as it rose upon my sight, those striking lines of Gray’s—

Its very foundations were laid in blood, if so be, indeed, as the old chronicler asserts, “its mortar was tempered with the blood of beasts;” and for long ages it has never slaked its thirst for the blood of human beings, till now, in the halcyon days of Victoria, it stands a lonely monument of those barbarian elements, out of which has risen the nobler fabric of British freedom. Nor should it be forgotten, that popular violence as well as princely tyranny, has glutted the spot with murder. Of the many worthies whom we must remember here, none were more grossly butchered than Laud and Strafford, the victims of a ravening fanaticism; unless we except those gentler sufferers, whose sex and spotless innocence leave their murderers without even the appearance of excuse. A cold chill fell upon me as I entered the fatal precincts, thinking how many had passed the same gates never to return. If there be a haunted spot in all the world, it should be this Tower; and, indeed, strange stories are on credible record, which might well assist the fancy in conceiving that the ghosts of its old tenants, of the fouler sort, do sometimes revisit the scene of their dark and dreadful deaths.

The red-liveried yeomen, in the costume of the guards of Edward VI., receive you as you enter the gate beneath its old portcullis, and these are themselves no poor auxiliaries to your efforts at reproducing the past. One of them (they are popularly known as beef-eaters) conducts you to the Armory and Jewel-room forthwith, it being taken for granted that you have come to see these things particularly. Imagine yourself, then, passing through an immense outer-wall, in the circuit of which are set, like sentinels, the several inferior citadels, known as the Bloody Tower, the Beauchamp Tower, and the like. You gain the open court, or area, and in the centre rises the immense quadrangular and turreted mass, which overhangs this part of London: it is the Keep, or White Tower, called also Cæsar’s, though built by William the Norman. You pass the Bloody Tower, in which the young princes were smothered by the hunch-back Richard, and are shown into the Armory. Here you see, amid all sorts of bristling weapons, the sovereigns of England, from Edward I. to James II., all on horseback, and most of them in the armour of their times. The growth and decline of knightly harness is thus exhibited entire, from the “twisted mail” of Edward’s hauberk, down to the merely ornamental breast-plate of the recreant Stuart. What a procession! Some of the visors are down, and others are lifted—but to an imaginative eye, every figure appears instinct with vitality. Their very steeds, in their plated steel and ancient housings, seem clothed with thunder. Elizabeth, of course, retains her own fantastic costume, but there she sits before you, in spite of her peacock display, a glorious memorial of Tilbury, and you can fancy her prancing before her troops, and inspiring them to repel the “foul scorn” of the Armada. That very suit of armour, now stuffed with the resemblance of her father, was once worn by bluff old Hal himself; and further on, is the beautiful array of steel, in which the goodly limbs of the Royal Martyr were once actually encased. Nor are the heroes of this august Valhalla without other trophies of their times and achievements. Here are bills, pikes and partizans, Lochaber-axes and glaives, broadswords and stilettoes; and then all manner of fire-arms, from the earliest and heaviest matchlock down through all the grades of muskets, to musketoons, pistols, and pistolets. And then there are saw-shot, and bar-shot, and spike-shot, and star-shot; and then culverins and petards; and weapons offensive and defensive of all sorts and kinds. And they bear marks of having been well used in their day. Here the wars of the Roses have battered a helmet and pierced a shield: through that hole in the corslet, once spouted the rich blood of a hero at Tewksbury: that visor was rusted by the last sigh of another such as Marmion, on Flodden-field. Even this bludgeon of a staff, with pistols at the handle, has dealt midnight blows in the hands of the British Blue-beard, as he patrolled the streets of his capital, in the spirit of Haroun Al Raschid, somewhat heightened by the spirit of wine.

I was not above looking curiously and thoughtfully at the exhibition of Popery, displayed in the relics of the Armada. At the Crystal Palace there was a very bold and enticing parade of the modern instruments of this Protean enthusiasm, in the shape of candlesticks and monstrances, thuribles and pyxes, and all sorts of embroideries, spangles, laces, and millinery. By such things it would convert England now. In Elizabeth’s day, its missionaries were less attractive. Bilboes, collars, thumb-screws, and iron cravats; stocks, fetters, and manacles; a sort of portable Inquisition was, in short, the great reliance of the Pope in those times, for the reduction of the heretic English: and here, no doubt, old Fuller would go on to say, that “if forsooth we should feel closely about the fine things of even modern Poperie, we might, perchance, find a prickly point, or a sharp edge, or a rough chain, if not faggots and gun-powder also, stowed away among all their fancy stuffes and petticoats.” I could not satisfy myself with looking at these antiquarian treasures however, nor shall I attempt to satisfy my reader by detailing them. Let him think how he would feel to touch the very axe that divided the little fair neck of Anne Boleyn, and the stiffer sinews of the Earl of Essex. Even the block on which old Lovat laid his worthless head, loaded with crimes as many as his hoary hairs, gives one a shudder, though no man pitied him when he fell. It is, moreover, a monument of interest, because there the axe stayed, and has never since been lifted on the head of a British subject. He died in 1746, in the cause of the young Pretender; and possibly this fact suggested to me the thought, (by which alone I can convey any just idea of this Armory,) that the whole exhibition seems to be a complete property-room of the Waverley novels. If the characters of those successive tales could have deposited in one room the antiquarian implements and costumes to which they gave a sort of resurrection, they would have furnished us with very much such a collection as that of this Armory of the Tower.

A new stone strong room has been built for the Royal Jewels, and one now sees the Regalia by day-light. It is a glittering show; but nothing seems to be very ancient in the collection, except the spoon wherewith anointing oil has been poured on all the royal heads that have been crowned since the days of Edward the Confessor. How many Archbishops have held its handle; how many princes have been touched with its bowl! At the bare thought, all the history of England seemed to rise before my sight, and I felt that there is a value in such symbols of a Nation’s continuous existence. When displayed, not as gewgaws of a vulgar pomp, but as the memorials of a fruitful antiquity, they cannot but inspire a sentiment of veneration in every beholder, and serve to keep alive the vestal flame of loyalty and love for a throne which is invested, indeed, with traditional splendours, but which rests on the surer foundations of existing freedom and righteous law.

When I stood again in the open court, I longed to be told nothing so much as where the old Archbishop was confined, when he gave Strafford that parting benediction. It had been arranged by Usher, their common friend, that they should thus take leave of one another. The noble Strafford came forth walking to the scaffold on Tower-hill, but craved permission to do his last observance to his friend. For a moment he feared the old primate had forgotten him, but just then he appeared at the dismal window of his own prison. “My Lord—your prayers and your blessing”—said Strafford, kneeling down: and the benediction was given accordingly; after which the primate swooned in a fit of sorrow, while the stout Earl rising, said, “God protect your innocence,” and then stepped onward with a military bearing, and passed to his execution, as if it were to a triumph. Somewhere here, all this went on! I could almost fancy it before my eye. Then, too, I thought of Raleigh. And here, hard by, was the undoubted spot, within the walls, where stood the scaffold on which suffered the Queens Anne Boleyn and Katharine Howard; and Lady Jane Gray, more lovely and more innocent than either. But it was not the thing to be looking at such a spot in broad daylight. How much I should have been pleased with the privilege of lodging, just one night in the White Tower, not to sleep, but to stand at my window and look out upon the Court, and upon Tower-hill, by pale moonlight, and so—to think, and think, and think!

By dint of perseverance, I gained admission to the Beauchamp Tower, occupied at present by some officers as a mess-room. The apartments are covered with carvings and inscriptions, the work of many illustrious prisoners, in past times, and with some that merely tell of human sorrow, mysteriously, and without the name of any one that is known, to satisfy the curiosity they excite. A rich carving, in which figures the well-known bear and ragged staff, reveals the prison thoughts of Dudley, Earl of Warwick, father-in-law to the Lady Jane. There is another inscription, very naturally ascribed to poor Lord Guilford Dudley—the simple letters IANE. His sweet Jane was soon to breathe her farewells to him from her own lonely cell, and, after seeing his bleeding corpse brought in from the scaffold, to follow him to the block. The initials R. D. betray the work of another Dudley, who lived to be the favorite of Elizabeth, and the dismal husband of Amy Robsart. Here figure also memorials of Henry’s victims, and of the Marian Confessors, and not a few of those who suffered under the last of the Tudors. Underneath these rooms is the “rats’ dungeon,” where many have suffered the extreme of human agony; and directly overhead is “the doleful prison” of Anne Boleyn. Remorseless, indeed, must have been the heart of her husband, if in truth she sent him the letter, said to have been endited there, and if, after reading it, he could still abandon to the block the head that had so often reclined in his bosom.

I was resolved not to leave these awful precincts until I had also visited the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, the burial-place of so many of those whom I had thus endeavored to recall to mind. After some patience and perseverance I was admitted, and stood upon what a clever writer has justly called one of the saddest spots on earth. So many graves, of so many destroyed worthies, are here gathered together, that one necessarily thinks, as he stands by them, of the day of judgment. What a resurrection there will be in this place at that day—a resurrection of the just and the unjust! The Church is sadly disfigured, and should be reverently restored, but its pointed arches and mural monuments, with kneeling figures, and one rich altar-tomb, with effigies, still elevate the interior above an ordinary effect. Near this tomb repose the bodies of the weak Kilmarnock and the sturdy Balmerino; and upon my saying something about them to the sexton, he told me that, in digging lately, he had come to the relics of their coffins. He then lifted a cushion in one of the seats, and showed me the coffin-plates, which he had taken from the earth. Sure enough, there they were, quite legible, inscribed with their names and titles, and the sad date, 1746. I remembered how I had read in a contemporary number of “The Gentleman’s Magazine,” and in Horace Walpole’s gossip, the contrary impressions made upon these Jacobites by the scene in which they were to suffer. Kilmarnock acted pitiably, for his conscience was alive to his sin and folly; but Balmerino was troubled with very little of a conscience whatever, and what he had was such as to persuade him that he was dying in a good cause. The old hero cried “God save King James,” to the last; and, striding up to his coffin, put on his glasses, and read this very inscription, and said it was all right. Now, I was reading it fresh from the earth, after a hundred years had gone by. It greatly moved me. Then, I thought of Laud hobbling into this chapel, lame and feeble, leaning on his servant, but standing up amid the people, while the preacher railed at him; said preacher wearing his gown over a buff jerkin, as the holder, at the same time, of a parochial benefice in Essex, and the captaincy of a troop of horse in the rebel army! But where did memories begin or end, when I tried to collect them in such a place? Here lies, beneath the altar, the daring Duke of Monmouth, hacked and hewed to death by his awkward headsman; and, not less barbarously murdered, here lies that venerable lady, the last of the Plantagenets. Cromwell lies there, for helping Henry Bluebeard; and there, too, More and Fisher, for resisting him; Anne Boleyn and Lord Rochford lie there, for being innocent; and Katherine Howard and lady Rochford, for being guilty. Two Dukes are buried between the two Queens; and there Lord Guilford Dudley once more reposes with his lovely Lady Jane. Here lies brother slain by brother, the slayer sharing, in his turn, the fate of the slain; and these, with Monmouth, mercilessly condemned by his uncle, and the two Queens murdered by their own husband, seem to accomplish the melancholy record with associations of crime the most complicate, and of accountability the most dreadful that can well be imagined. Oh, God! what reckonings yet to be settled by Thee alone, are laid up against that day, even in the little compass of these walls.

I made a parting circuit to survey the Bloody Tower and its sharp-toothed portcullis—the only one in England that still rises and falls in a gate-way, and refuses not its office; the Bowyer’s Tower, in which poor Clarence was drowned in Malmsey; the Brick Tower, said to have been the prison of Lady Jane Grey; and the Salt Tower, which, with its adjoining wall, I found nearly demolished, and in process of restoration. Finally, I went round upon the water-side and surveyed the Traitor’s Gate, so called. Here, then, are the jaws of this devouring monster, sated at last, apparently; but who knows? Under that arch have passed, one after another, those great historic characters, whose names we have already reviewed. They abandoned hope when they entered here; and almost always with good reason. One alone on whom, in youthful sorrow, and by a sister’s cruel injunction, these massive gates yawned and closed, became, in turn, their mistress; and—alas! for human nature—made them often gape for others. Think of Elizabeth Tudor passing under this arch, the captive of the Bloody Mary! Who then could have foreseen the days of Hooker, and of Burleigh, and of Shakspeare? Think of old Laud in his barge, day after day, returning through this arch from his trial, to his prison, exhausted and panting like a hart pierced by the archers, from the cruel shafts of Prynne and his confederates, but accompanied, perhaps, by his noble defender, Sir Matthew Hale. Oh! could he but have seen the Anglican Church of the nineteenth century, how thin would have seemed the clouds which were gathering around her at that awful period, and which he feared, no doubt, were to overwhelm her forever. Such were some of the thoughts, partly sad, but largely grateful, with which I found myself chained to the place; and even when it was time to go, still disposed to linger about the spot, and bend musingly above the Traitors’ Gate of the Tower.

Two Nights in the House of Commons.

As soon as I could devote an evening to the purpose, I made my first visit to the House of Commons, going at a very early hour in the afternoon, and sitting through the whole till after midnight. This House, since removed to the new Palace, then held its sessions in what was formerly the House of Lords, said to be the scene of all the historic events which have illustrated that body for ages, down to the reign of William Fourth. It was fitted up for the Commons after the fire of 1834, which destroyed St. Stephen’s Chapel. It was, first of all, the hall of Edward Confessor’s Palace; was subsequently the scene of a fierce passage in the life of Cœur-de-Lion; and also of that romantic incident which Shakspeare makes the first scene in his Richard Second. There Bacon presided, and was impeached, and fell. Lord Chatham’s expiring effort was made there; and there he thundered those noble remonstrances against the American war, in which our own history is so intimately concerned. Its fitting-up, however, for the temporary use of the Commons, gave it a very modern appearance, and it was as plain as can well be imagined. Before I returned to America, its interior had been pulled to pieces, and the materials sold under the hammer. I saw it, therefore, in the Omega of its legislative uses, centuries having expired since its Alpha. Mr. Lawrence, our worthy Ambassador, had kindly supplied me with a ticket, which admitted the bearer to the diplomatic benches. These are on the floor of the House, and are only separated from those of the members by a nominal division; so that, in fact, I found myself surrounded by them. At first the House was thin, and it grew thinner towards seven o’clock; but at about nine o’clock it began to fill again, the members returning from their dinners, most of them in full dress. The earlier hours were consumed in dull and unimportant matters, and business seemed to drag on like the daylight, till the place began to be as stupid as it was dark and gloomy; when suddenly the Speaker touched a bell, and a flood of soft light was showered from the ceiling, not a lamp or burner being visible. This mode of illumination was quite new to me, although I have heard of similar effects produced in the same way in America. It seemed to quicken and cheer up everything, till the Speaker left his place suddenly, (for refreshments, it was said,) and then all stood still, the members yawning and lounging about, and talking in a very undignified manner. When the Speaker returned, business seemed to have begun. A message was received from the House of Lords, with the usual formalities; but, I observed that as the messenger backed out, making his three bows, he stumbled, and excited a laugh, at which he also laughed, and then retired, winking and exchanging grimaces with sundry acquaintances, as much as to say—who cares. He was dressed in wig and gown, and was probably one of the clerks of the Lords; and he was attended in the Commons by the Sergeant-at-Arms, who was dressed in court-costume, and during the ceremony carried the Mace on his shoulder. The sight of “that bauble” revived the recollection of scenes in the House of Commons of a very different character.

The great business of the evening was a debate on the Malt-tax, which brought out all the strength of the House, and enabled the opposition to talk “Protection,” with a show of very great sympathy for the distresses of “the British farmer.” Mr. Disraeli made a great speech, in his way; but it is a very poor way, his whole manner being declamatory and sophomorical in the extreme. I had met him several times as I sauntered through Pall Mall, and looked in vain for any traces in his face and manner of the clever author of Coningsby and its successors. A jaunty and rather flashy young man, with black ringlets, twisted about a face quite devoid of elevated expression—such was the impression he gave me in the open air, and in the House of Commons I saw nothing at variance with it. He is certainly a man of parts, but that such as he should have forced his way to the Leadership of the House of Commons, only proves the extreme mediocrity of this generation. That he is a Jew is a great bar to his advancement, although he is a Jewish Christian. He affects, however, to be very proud of his Oriental origin, and perhaps he may be so; but one feels that he cannot be confided in, and that he is a mere adventurer. He seemed to me to ape Sir Robert Peel, in his way of thrusting his arm behind the skirts of the coat, and exposing the whole waistcoat in a flaring manner. I have heard as good talking at a debating club as he treated us to that night in the House of Commons. Still he made some good hits at Ministers, and was often interrupted by cries of hear, hear, hear, which are rather muttered than vociferated around the benches. He has since been Chancellor of the Exchequer, himself adopting the very policy which he then abused in terms the most noisy and passionate.

Ministers were, of course, not slow in replying, and I had a chance of beholding some of the expiring grimaces of Lord John Russell, whose feeble government was just ready to fall to pieces of itself. I knew the man as soon as I saw him in the House. There he sat, under a hat that seemed to extinguish his features, trying to laugh and look good-natured. At last he rose, and I observed that the familiar caricatures of Punch were in fact good likenesses. He is his own caricature. A diminutive utterer of “great, swelling words;” paltry, and yet pompous; and altogether as insignificant a person as I ever saw dressed in brief authority. He had only a few plain things to say, and yet he contrived to utter them, as if he were saying—“I am Sir Oracle.” Cries of divide had circulated pretty freely during the whole debate, and now I saw a division. A personage who had been very polite to me during the evening, volunteered to put me where I might see the whole process. Just before the division, members came running in from the clubs, and the “whipper-in” returned to his seat, having discharged his duty in securing the attendance of votes for the Government. Members had been pairing off the whole time, apparently to attend a ball or the Opera, as the pairs were nearly always in full dress. Their negotiations seemed to be made near the bar of the House, and the Speaker was constantly silencing the buzz of members and spectators, by the cry of “order—order,” or “order at the bar,” which Mr. Shaw Lefevre knows how to speak most potently. At length for the division, the galleries were cleared at the sound of certain bells, which the Speaker appeared to pull; but my kind Mentor clapped me into a sort of lobby, like a closet, in the door of which was a pane of glass, through which I saw the entire performance at my ease, and quite by myself. Less fortunate visitors were entirely ejected, and then the members themselves went into the lobby, and so passed in again, their names being pricked by the tellers as they passed, and the whole operation taking but a few minutes. The Ministry had a handsome majority. Before the House rose that evening, there was another division; and it so happened that I heard most of the men of mark. Sir Charles Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hume and Bright, the amusing Colonel Sibthorp, and the Milesian Reynolds, all talked, and some of them several times. Mr. Keogh excited the significant cry of oh, oh, with laughter, and made some sport by rejoining, “the gentlemen may cry oh, but still it is true.” An allusion to the Scottish Universities brought Sir Robert Inglis to his feet, and he said a few pertinent words, in a manner worthy of himself as the best specimen in the House of a true English gentleman of the old school. Mr. Sidney Herbert spoke in a handsome manner, and Mr. Gladstone also made a very spicy little speech, which seemed to annoy his opponents not a little. The House sat till two o’clock, but I finally gave it up, and left before the end. As I came out into Old Palace Yard, and saw the towers of the Abbey in the still solemnity of the night, it seemed more strikingly majestic than before. I thought what mighty interests of Empires had been settled here, and how often Chatham, Fox, Pitt and Canning, had emerged at midnight from such scenes as I had just left, looking on the same towers, beneath which they now moulder in the dust. The sombre mass of the Abbey seemed a commentary on the hot debates from which I was retiring; a speaking monitor of the transient interests of the present, and of the eternal issues of futurity, as well as of the unchangeableness of the past.

As I walked slowly to my lodgings, I passed Whitehall. Scarce any one was in the street, and all was silence. I stopped, and gazed on the white walls of the Banqueting-room, and said to myself, ‘how strange! here I am alone on this most memorable spot, in the deep and solemn night. Can it be that here, where all is now so quiet, there stood two hundred years ago a crowd of human beings, every one of whom was experiencing, at the moment, emotions the most singularly mixed and tumultuous that ever agitated the human soul? Can it be that from this same white wall issued the figure of King Charles, and that there—just there—he knelt at the block, and in a moment was a headless corpse? Even so! Here rose that groan of a mighty multitude, sighing as one man, and there the ghastly headsman stood, holding up the royal head by its anointed locks, and crying—this is the head of a traitor!’ I almost turned about to see whether Cromwell’s troopers were not charging down upon me, so strong was the impression of the spot; but just then, the sight of a solitary policeman, patrolling beneath a gas-lamp, recalled me to myself, and I fared thoughtfully, by the statue at Charing-Cross, towards my temporary home.

The Papal aggression was still, in spite of the Crystal Palace and its wonders, an absorbing topic, and my second visit to the House of Commons had been set for an evening when a debate upon that exciting subject was to be part of the entertainment. I felt sure that such an evening in the House would be, in some measure, an historical one, and might be useful to me through life, in watching the course of religious and political events. Besides, I wanted to hear a debate that should enable me to compare, by its unity of subject, a Parliament of Victoria, with those of the Plantagenets and Tudors. I had my desire.

It seems impossible for the American mind to appreciate rightly the very grave injury which has been done to the British nation by the attempt of the Papal Court to erect Episcopal Sees, and bestow corresponding titles within the jurisdiction of the British Church, and under the shadow of the British Crown. But when it is considered that the Pope has thus attempted to exercise a power to which he could never have aspired even when England wore his yoke, and which would not now be suffered by any Popish sovereignty in Europe; when, to say nothing of the outrage to the Church of England, the direct attempt upon the allegiance of subjects is considered, and its bearings upon the future are duly weighed: no well-informed mind can hesitate a moment as to the propriety of the feelings which it so generally inflamed, or retain any other astonishment, than a profound one, at the feebleness and utter imbecility of the measures with which the advisers of the greatest Sovereign in existence have allowed her to meet the invasion. It was not a moment for hesitation, or for consulting economics; a demand should have been made upon the Pontiff for an immediate alteration of his attitude towards England, and the least attempt to palter on his part should have been responded to by a British fleet off Civita Vecchia. If France was an obstacle to such a demonstration, and if “the peace of Europe” must be kept at all hazards,—even the hazard of a speedy Armageddon to pay for it—if such be the England of 1850—alas for the extinction of the England of 1588! Is the spirit of Elizabeth past revival?

Since 1830, the whigs, laboring, as Mr. Macaulay now confesses, under a delusion as to the ameliorated spirit of the Papacy, have gradually advanced the Romanists to great power and influence. They had introduced them to parliaments; had flattered them with ecclesiastical titles; and unavailingly tried to propitiate them with gifts. Finally, hoping to secure the Pope’s aid in the management of Ireland, they had advanced, step by step, to a point from which they could not recede, and at which they ventured to go further, and actually invite him to the daring encroachment, which to their horror and amazement, set all England in a blaze. At every step of this infamous and foolish compromise with Rome, true Churchmen had protested, and pleaded, and struggled in vain; but these true men were now confounded in the disgrace of an alarming apostacy, owing to a popular misapprehension, and it was easy to turn the whole fury of the fire upon them. Lord John, detected in the very act of inviting the Pope’s attempt, had the cunning to point at them, and lay it on the “Tractarians.” The trick succeeded: the Romanizers were gratified, for they wished well to any but the friends of a Church which they meant to abandon and destroy; the Evangelicals swelled the outcry, which brought popular gales to their own canvass; and the Ministry chuckled behind their fingers. The Romanists were triumphant, since they had the Ministry in their power; and the only real sufferers by all the tumult and indignation thus aroused, were the very class who alone had contested every inch of ground with Popery and the Whigs, from the “Emancipation” of 1829, to its sequel and direct consequence, the “Aggression,” twenty years afterwards!

Such was the very just review of the existing question, which in different ways was brought before the House on the evening of the ninth of May, 1851. The debate was on a motion of Mr. Urquhart, to the effect that “the act of the Pope had been encouraged by the conduct and declarations of her Majesty’s Government; and that large expectations of remedy had been stimulated by Lord John’s letter to the Bishop of Durham, which his measures had entirely disappointed.” The member pressed his resolution (offered as an amendment to the proposed bill) by a reference to the history at which we have glanced, and by calling to mind some former passages in the political life of the Prime Minister, which it could scarcely have been comfortable for him to hear just at that moment. Sir George Grey, in a very feeble speech, replied in behalf of his friend, from the Treasury bench, and amused himself at some length, at the expense of Mr. Urquhart, without really affecting his argument. Lord John Manners retorted with not a little force, at least in his matter. He declared the proposed amendment a mere truism, and yet one of practical utility. Lord John had successfully thrown dust in the eyes of the people. Lord Powis and Mr. Dudley Perceval had in vain endeavored to place the facts before the country. Then followed a passage of pungency and truth. “The Prime Minister,” he said, “had twice encouraged the acts against which his puny and delusive legislation was now directed; had twice defeated the modest attempt of the Church of England to place Bishops of her own in the great towns now occupied by the Pope; had granted to Popish Bishops, in all the Colonies, precedence over Anglican Bishops; had yielded similar favors to the Romish titularies in Ireland; had pertinaciously resisted the fair demands of the Irish Church for Scriptural Education; and yet—after a public policy which had been one unvaried monotone of insult and wrong to the Church of England—had contrived, by one magic stroke of the pen, to place himself before the country as the champion of English Protestantism, and as the only effectual antagonist of the encroachments of the Church of Rome.” A Romish member now rose, and, while opposing the amendment, paid a singular tribute to its truth. “He was not the man to blame the noble Lord for encouraging the Pope’s measures; but he blamed him for now attempting to contend with the direct consequences of his own flattering policy.” After a rambling and incoherent speech, of tiresome length, from a Mr. Stanford, who supported the amendment, Sir Robert Inglis rose and opposed it with characteristic dignity, and with that grave and sober earnestness which, under the manifest control of taste and judgment, seems always uppermost in all his utterances. He showed that, if the amendment were passed, it would defeat the bill. However true, therefore, he must oppose it, because the bill was all that the Government had offered to do, and something must be done. He had no objection to calling on the Government to do more; he thought that Lord John might fairly be asked to meet, in full, the expectations he had excited; but he could not vote for an amendment which would effectually prevent the doing of anything to carry out the just wishes of the country.

Sir Robert, during his remarks, dropped an expression, for the first time, if I am not mistaken, which soon became familiar. He spoke of the opposition of the Irish Brigade, referring to the Romish members then sitting, and voting together, with an appearance of complete drill, and of absolute obedience to one command. The expression was repeated as a quotation by another member, and raised a laugh, as something freshly caught up, and this seemed to mark it as a hit. Finally, Mr. Reynolds, the apparent leader of the Brigade, gave it complete success by replying to it. Sir Robert, after quietly delivering his remarks, had walked round from his seat, and was conversing with a friend, (while he twirled in his hand a rose, that he had taken from his button-hole,) when Mr. Reynolds stepped into his place, with a sort of bog-trotting movement, and facetiously remarked that, it might seem strange to see him standing, as it were, in the shoes of the venerable baronet, who had just called him and his countrymen, “the Irish Brigade.” He then acknowledged that they were banded together against the bill, and “against every other, good or bad, which its author might propose.” He thus avowed their purpose, to throw their entire force against the Government, until Lord John should be driven out of power. He then went on with Irish volubility, and the no less characteristic accent of the Patlander, to belabor Lord John’s bill. He told not a little truth: called it “sham legislation;” stuck out his finger towards the Minister, and said, “If ye pass it, ye dare not put it into execution.” Here, however, he gave it the praise of being quite the thing for its purpose—“a cruel and persecuting measure—which, as such, had received the approbation of the Protestant watchdog of Oxford University.” By this epithet, significant of high fidelity, but not intended to be particularly respectful, he gave Sir Robert a Rowland for his Oliver.

The residue of this gentleman’s speech was amusing enough, as coming from a Papist. He was for liberty of conscience; couldn’t bear to think of religious persecution; and, as for the Queen, she had no subjects in the world that could compare with her Irish subjects, for the devoted affection with which they regarded her. One would think it a pity that such homage as he professed for a heretic sovereign, had not been as fashionable among his co-religionists in the days of Guido Fawkes, or of the Spanish Armada.

At last, Lord John himself rose to reply. I thought of the history of the house of Bedford, from the back-stairs of Henry VIII., when, as Burke expresses it, “the lion having gorged his share of the Ecclesiastical carcase, flung the offal to his jackal,” down to the council-chamber of Victoria, where the jackal still waits on the lion, in the shape of this insatiable devourer of the Church’s bread, and not less insatiable thirster for her blood. How should he dare lift up his voice to apologize for the brand of infamy which this evening’s debate had stamped upon his career as a Minister, or rather which it merely showed to have been already set by his own hands! Forth he stepped, like himself alone, and with the same pomposity to which I have already adverted, went through a few incantations, which ended in a fresh transformation of the diminutive conjurer before us, into a most earnest “deviser of securities for the crown and the nation.” He called the opposition “mean and shabby”—for such courtesies seem to be the seven locks of a rhetorical Samson, in his conception—and with a front of brass, only equalled by the audacity of his imputations upon true sons of the Church of England, declared “there had been nothing in the conduct of the Government which had a tendency to provoke the aggression.” He sat down, in his littleness, and was instantly pounced upon by Disraeli, from the opposite side of the table, as it were by a hungry terrier. “Is it a fact,” then, said he, “or is it not, that the First Minister of the Crown has himself in this House expressed an opinion, that he saw no harm in Romish Bishops assuming territorial titles in this realm of England? Is it a fact, or is it not, in the recollection of this House, and in the burning memory of this country? Is it a fact, or is it not, that a Secretary of State, in another place, has expressed his hope that Romish Bishops would soon take seats as Peers of Parliament in the House of Lords? Is it a fact, or is it not, that a member of the Cabinet has been sent as Plenipotentiary to Italy, and held frequent and encouraging conversations with the Pope? Is it a fact, or is it not, that the Pope condescended to intimate to said Ambassador his gracious purposes to do something that might affect England; and is it a fact, or is it not, that the Plenipotentiary thought it unnecessary to inquire what it might be?”

Lord John here rallied, and interrupted the speaker, by saying that “he had admitted the fact of a report that the Pope said so, but had also stated that Lord Minto denied having heard it.” Thus terrier seemed to have rat in his fangs, but rat could still show his teeth to terrier. It was the first impeachment to which he had ventured any reply; and, by replying to this, he convicted himself of the more grave charges, which he was obliged to hear in silence, with his hat slouched down over his criminal features. Who can feel any respect for an English patrician, caught in such a felony, and proved as truly a moral delinquent, on a gigantic scale, as ever a petty thief at the Old Bailey on a small one? Oh! for a conscience in mankind to save their sympathy for the poor wretch in the bail-dock, and to consign to merited infamy the titled and decorated offender, whose crime is unfaithful stewardship in the State, and treason to the Crown Imperial of the Most High God! I have no abstract prejudice against a peerage. For my own country only do I deprecate the idea of an aristocracy; but what are patricians worth, if they cannot present to the State, in which they are an organic part, a high and wholesome example of integrity and honour? In my heart, therefore, as I looked at this scion of the house of Bedford in his moral degradation, I felt—would that he might know the unaffected pity with which a republican looks at him from this gallery, as a man, in this great crisis of history, false to his rank, false to his sovereign, false to his country, and false to his Redeemer.

Mr. Disraeli paid no attention to his disclaimers, but, as it were, buffeted him smartly with another hit—“Is it a fact, or is it not, that the Vice-Royalty of Ireland was in indirect communication with the Pope, and expressed affection for his person, and reverence for his character?” This brought out enthusiastic cheers; and Lord John tried to emerge from beneath his hat, to look contemptuous. Ministers had a small majority. But Lord John must have felt that his time was coming, while, no doubt, Mr. Disraeli began to draw as near in fancy, to the envied bench on which he sat so little at ease. The latter had done decidedly better than when I heard him before; but, when the division was taken, I could not but say to myself—is this all that England’s Senators have to say in such a matter? I felt that there were few of them alive to the importance of the thing in hand; and that no one seemed equal to the support of old England in consistency with herself. Was this, indeed, the Senate in which Burke had uttered his voice? Was it the hall in which Chatham had rescued from the last disgrace the honour of his country? And were there to be no words, like his—burning words—living words—immortal words—to prove forever that England took not her shame in abject submission! At least no such words were spoken. There was not even a John of Gaunt there, to bewail the disgrace of “the dear, dear isle,”

and, notwithstanding the eminent exceptions to the remark, I said to myself, as I left the House after midnight—I seem to have been hearing only a “debate in the Senate of Lilliput.”

It seemed strange, before I sat at breakfast, early next morning, to take up the Times, and read, in four or five columns, a very tolerable report of the whole proceedings, and many of the words which seemed, even then, to have scarcely ceased to sound in my ear. I cannot but add the remark, that it is a great pity the amendment, which I had heard debated, failed to pass. It would have loaded Lord John with the full consequences of his own conduct, and it would have saved England from the degradation of enacting a law, devised as a mere expedient, and which affords to the enemy the darling satisfaction of defying it with impunity.

The House of Lords—Their Lordships in Session.

The new House of Lords is a superb specimen of modern art; and, in every way, is worthy of the hereditary Senate of the British Empire. Perhaps it is too small for full effect, and yet, if larger, it would hardily answer the purposes of speaking and hearing. Its dimensions, however, are symbolical of its character, as intended for the use of a very select assembly; and would seem to indicate, moreover, (to copy once more the manner of Fuller,) that the Whigs are not to reign forever, seeing that if such as my Lord John Russell should long continue in power, there would need be built a much larger hall to contain all the broken lawyers, hack politicians, Popish Bishops, and rich Jews, who might justly expect, from former examples, to be fitted up with coronets, coats of arms, and patents of nobility. The like idea seems to obtain, moreover, in the decorations of the hall, in which History is artfully blended with Religion and Chivalry; implying, if my republican comprehension can rightly interpret this writing on the wall, that to be a true patrician, one must have historical antecedents, and should represent some great fact in the annals of one’s country; and that such antecedents, to be made honourable to an individual, must be sustained by personal worth, and by that refined and sublimated virtue which is called honour. Thus, for example, a Nelson or a Wellington is a nobleman by the historic origin of his family, although of modern date; while, with respect to “all the blood of all the Howards,” it is equally true, that if devoid of corresponding traits of magnanimity and honesty, its degenerate inheritor is, after all, only fit to be hooted at as a poltroon and a villain. This principle I fully understand, American as I am. I feel that something is due to the worthy representative of a name illustrious in the annals of a great nation; but your mere Lord Moneybags, or the spiritless and unprincipled shadow of a name that was once right-honourable, are creatures with whose acquaintance I should feel it somewhat discreditable to be bored. Every man who has moral worth, and who respects himself accordingly, must entertain a degree of honest contempt for such company, somewhat akin to that of good old Johnson, in his thread-bare coat, when he wrote his inimitable letter to Chesterfield.

However, their Lordships’ House! There is the Throne; and I defy any one to look at the Throne of England without veneration. It is a gorgeous seat, over which appear the royal arms, while on its right and left are seats for the Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales. A splendid canopy overhangs the dais on which these seats are ranged, and the dais itself is covered with a carpet of “scarlet velvet pile, spotted with heraldic lions and roses.” The ceiling is ribbed with massive gilded bands, and richly bossed and set with devices in all the colours of blazonry. Between the lofty windows are niches intended to receive the bronze statues of the old Magna Charta Barons, while the windows themselves are filled with stained glass, commemorative of the Kings and Queens of England. The subordinate ornaments and furniture are all in keeping. On the right hand of the Throne, are the seats appropriate to the Bishops, where the Church “lifts her mitred front” before the Sovereign, and teaches her by whom she reigns, and how she may execute judgment. But directly in front of the Throne is the woolsack, covered with red cloth, and otherwise made suitable to “the keeper of the Queen’s conscience,” who ordinarily sits thereon. Before this are the clerks’ table and seats, and then the bar; while on either hand range the crimson benches of the Peers. At the end of the hall is the reporters’ and strangers’ gallery, of very small dimensions, from which, however, one gets the best view of the whole interior, and of the striking pictures over the Throne. These are happily chosen as to subjects, and well executed as frescoes. In the centre is the Baptism of King Ethelbert—the symbol of a truly Christian realm: on one side is the Black Prince receiving the Garter—a symbol of genuine chivalry; and on the other is Henry, Prince of Wales, submitting to imprisonment for an assault upon Judge Gascoigne—a most speaking exhibition of the time-honoured relations subsisting between British Royalty and British Law. It will be a wholesome thing for every future Prince of Wales to look at this picture, before he presumes to sit down under it. It may really have an important influence in moulding the character of future Kings. God grant it may!

In surveying this splendid apartment, the mind naturally goes forward, since it presents the fancy with no past history. What is to be its future? Is this House to be the scene of a further development of vast imperial resources? Is it to be graced by a perpetuated aristocracy, surviving every change in society and in arts, by the force of their own character, as furnishing a high example to mankind of “whatsoever things are lovely and of good report?” Is this roof to resound with the voices of high-minded men, asserting from age to age their privilege to be foremost in defence of religion and of humanity, and to do and to suffer for the good of their fellow-subjects, and the welfare of mankind? Is the British Peerage to grow brighter with high moral qualities, than with hereditary honours, and to be cherished by an enlightened spirit of public virtue as a standard of all that is honourable, and as a pattern of what is most excellent in the ideal of the true Christian gentleman? Or must the sad reverse be true, and must this House be the scene of the last act in the eventful history of England? Shall a factitious nobility be crowded into these chief seats of the realm; men devoid of ennobling antecedents, and not less so of honour and of worth? Shall the decay of a mighty Empire be marked by such a House of Lords as may facilitate the plans of the demagogue, sinking the Sovereign to a Doge, and the Church to a State hireling, and giving to the Commons the unrestrained privilege of revolution and anarchy? These are questions which a well-wisher to the British Empire cannot but suggest, in view of events which have lately taken place; and especially in view of the fact, that the House of Lords has not unfrequently of late suffered itself to be disgraced by breaches of Christian courtesy, not to say of common decency, which, if multiplied in such a conspicuous place, must tend to barbarize the world. Let us hear no more of disgraceful scenes in the American Congress, till hereditary noblemen, who have little else to do, can furnish mankind with a wholesome example of high legislative decorum! For unless noblemen will reflect upon their position, and act upon convictions of what is necessary to the credit of their rank, in a day when true gentlemen are by no means rare, outside their glittering circle, and even among plain republicans, they must not wonder if they too should become as a worn-out form, or an exploded theory. Who knows how soon this superb hall of legislation may be exhibited as the chief memorial of their existence? If the British Peerage proves untrue to the Church of England, and degrades itself to the bare responding of an Amen to every momentary Credo of Ministers and Commons, what use of such machinery? This palace shall be even as those of Venice. This gorgeous interior shall be kept under the key of the mere cicerone, and shown as a thing of the past to the staring traveller, as he marvels over tarnished gilding and faded damask, and at every tread disturbs the dust upon its floor, or breaks through cobwebs dangling from its ceiling.

When one sees, in the writings of such a man as Dr. Arnold, confessions of annoyance, if not of a sense of injury, from the existence of a privileged class, to which merit must constantly give way, where otherwise it would be entitled to precedence; and when one discovers, even in the highest seats of British intellect and piety, a certain deference to mere rank, which seems humiliating; and when one finds something of the spirit of tuft-hunting diffused through all classes alike, from the Tory school-boy to the Whig Bishop; one feels indeed that there may be arguments against the aristocratic element in society, which have never been stated in their list of grievances by political agitators. But, after all, in an old country like England, the aristocracy exists, and there is no destroying it without destroying the nation. The infernal guillotine itself cannot wholly make way with it, as France has learned to its sorrow. What then? It must be modified and perpetuated. It must be purified, and worked in with society, as its ornament, but not its fabric. This is what is done already in England. The nobility, the clergy, the gentry, the literati, the professional classes, and then the people—after all, in England they are one; “shade unperceived and softening into shade,” and joined and knit together by habits, tastes, alliances, and interests, in a wonderful order. Much yet remains to be done, and will be done, to smooth down remaining asperities between rank and rank; but the British aristocracy may be said, even now, to be a genuine one, identified with everything great and good in the nation, and, on the whole, presenting a wholesome example to other classes in the State. In all probability, so virtuous an aristocracy has never been seen elsewhere among mankind. Among them may be found specimens of human nature, whose physical and mental endowments, together with their moral worth, and intellectual accomplishments, entitle them to the highest admiration of their fellow-men. We are too well aware that side by side with such, may sit, adorned with equal rank and titles, some wretch, whose coronet has been purchased by infamy, and whose hereditary decorations are but the mockery of a character, every way pestilent and detestable. The English themselves are used to it; but it strikes a republican with amazement that such creatures should be noble, even “by courtesy.”

To see the House, as I saw it first, empty, and for the sake of its architecture and decoration, one gets a ticket by applying at the adjoining office of the Lord Chamberlain, on specified days. To attend the sessions of the House of Lords, one must possess an autograph order by a Peer. With this I was kindly supplied, not only for one night, but for four; the orders being given me in blanks, which I was permitted to fill with any dates that might best suit my convenience. It so happened that little was going on in the House of Lords while I was in London, and I did not see it to advantage. As I heard several of its most eminent members elsewhere, however, and frequently met with them in society, I had less to regret than would otherwise have been the case. In the House itself, I saw enough to familiarize me with its appearance and manners, and the rest is easily imagined, when one has before him the Times’ report of any particular scene.

Lord Truro, sitting on the woolsack, was the first object that struck me on entering—and it was by no means a majestic one. He is a Russell Chancellor, and of course no Clarendon. Shades of Somers and of Eldon, what a figure I saw in your old seat! The sight of the Bishops, in their robes, with the old Primate, in his wig, reminded me of Chatham’s appeal to “that right reverend bench, and the unsullied purity of their lawn.” Their Lordships were few in number, and among them the Bishop of Oxford was the man of mark. I doubt if he has his equal in the House for “thoughts that breathe and words that burn.” The Lords temporal were lounging about their benches, hats on or off, as chanced to be, and what little speaking I heard, was by no means such as to rouse them to particular attention. A hesitating, stuttering, and very awkward utterance would even seem to be the fashion in this noble House. I looked in vain for Lord Brougham, not because I have any great respect for him, but because one may be pardoned for trying to see such a curiosity, when it is, possibly, just under one’s nose. He has been vastly over-rated, and will soon be forgotten. In general, their Lordships looked like well-bred gentlemen, and there was about them a certain air of travel and of finish, which marks the habituated man of the world. Some of them were plainly dressed, but others were evidently men of fashion. One thing they ought to know and feel, and that is—that much is given them, and much will be required of them. No doubt every position has its qualifying disadvantages and trials; yet it must be allowed that no station in which a human being can find himself placed by his Creator, affords so many advantages, at the very outset, for usefulness and happiness in life, as that of a young English Peer of competent fortune and sound mind, with a healthful body, and a good education. What a hint for such a man is that challenge of nature’s own nobleman, St. Paul—Who maketh thee to differ from another, and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?

An incident which created some excitement in fashionable circles, shortly after the opening of the Crystal Palace, will illustrate one feature of British civilization which will not be out of place in connection with these remarks on the aristocracy. Everybody has heard of the London Police, their admirable drill, and great efficiency. Their impartial enforcement of the rules of the Great Exhibition was peculiarly illustrative of these characteristics, and also of the spirit of law and order, as paramount and inflexible in the Metropolis. No departure from these rules was allowed to any one; and carriage after carriage, all blazing with heraldic splendours, and filled with rank and beauty, was forced to change its route by the simple waving of a policeman’s finger. It so happened that a dashing young fellow, a scion of the noble house of S——, driving his own equipage through Hyde Park, ventured to disobey. On this the policeman seized the horse’s head, and backed him. The hot-blooded Jehu instantly raised his whip, and struck the policeman several violent blows over the face and head. The result was his immediate arrest; and on being carried before the Magistrate, young S—— found himself committed for ten days imprisonment, which he accordingly fulfilled with exemplary submission, wearing jail-clothes, and performing sundry penances, precisely as if he had been the humblest offender in the land. On the same day that this happened, a cabman whom I had engaged to take me, in a hurry, to a certain part of the town, drove me rapidly through St. James’s Park, and was just making his escape into the street, near Buckingham Palace, when he was stopped, in the gate, by a policeman, and ordered instantly back, with a threat of severe punishment should he again trespass where he knew that only private carriages were admitted. As my time was precious, I ventured to interpose, and exhausted every art, in vain, to induce the inexorable policeman to allow the cab to pass on. He little knew my sincere respect for him, and the real satisfaction I took in thus finding him “a brick for his principles.” Finally, I offered to alight, and discharge the cabman there; but this also the policeman respectfully forbade. “It would never do,” he said, “to allow cabmen to take such liberties; the cab must go back;” but then he advised me not to pay the fellow a single penny, as he was not entitled to anything but an arrest, for exemption from which he might be thankful. I was exceedingly annoyed, in spite of my admiration for authority, but thought it best to submit without further parley. Next day I heard of the fate of the Honorable Mr. S——, and, on the whole, felt glad that I had got off so easily. Thus it seems that law is law in London, for all classes alike; and if the stranger, in his cab, is not permitted to violate it, he may at least console himself with the fact that he would fare no better if he were a home-born aristocrat in a dashing tilbury. It is this well-defined system of society, in which every man knows his rights, and where even privilege is limited, and as absolutely held in check as license, that makes even humble life in England, in spite of all its burdens, a life of liberty and contentment. Theoretical equality may exist with far less of real independence, and we who value ourselves on self-government, are perhaps in danger of finding ourselves without government, and too jealous of authority to submit even to law.