London

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

LONDON, on the first visit, gave me little pleasure, and I Was glad to leave it for the free, sweet, open country. It was overpowering. It was like going into the stifled breath of a furnace-mouth. Life is on so vast a scale, so terribly real, that one has little opportunity to think calmly, or play, or, I had almost said, pray. There is such an endless mass of human life that a man grows insignificant in his own eyes ; he loses his individuality ; he is inclined to cry, " I am a mere bubble — a speck — on this immense sea of existence ! I am worthless and insignificant in the eye of God ! " I know this feeling is foolish, especially to a genuine Londoner, than whom no one enjoys life more heartily. An English gentleman, to whom I expressed some such sentiment, remarked that one must be a difficult person to please if he could not live comfortably at the West End of London ! A second visit, and agreeable lodgings in clean and handsome St. James' Street, gave me a far more cheerful impression of London life. I was told that many London families are in the habit of renting their houses or apartments in the summer, with the furniture and table-service, and of going abroad to spend the warm weather in travel on the Continent. Thus there may be seen " Lodgings to let" in the best streets of London, and sometimes on very fine houses, reminding one of Ben Jonson's " Alchemist," and showing how English fashions do not change. To take lodgings in some neat and comfortable quarter at the West End, is by far the pleasantest way of spending a short time in Lon-don.

The tranquil, free, and wide-spread parks of London, yield one also at any time an escape from the surging current of life that rolls through the streets, — the countless trains of omnibuses, carts, carriages, men, women and children. To slip into St. James's Park by the side of the dingy old palace, you are at once removed from the presence of the heated and roaring city, and enjoying the pure air and quiet freshness of Nature. The sudden contrast is the more refreshing.

One of the most delightful spots in London is the " Botanic Garden " in Regent's Park, at the height of the season of flowers. Here you may see gathered the beauty and aristocracy of the city. Yet you cannot but be struck by the fact, that when crowds of the best and noblest London families are brought together in an afternoon promenade concert, few of these beautiful women and elegant men seem to be acquainted with each other. They are silent and unsocial. There appears to be, to a stranger, an icy reserve among the English toward each other, which all summer heats and the soft breath of flowers cannot quite melt. The London exhibitions of American shrubs, of such shrubs as our wild azaleas and rhododendrons, brought by skillful cultivation to great beauty and size, are well worth seeing. Few know the vast pains and expense taken in England, to send botanists to every part of the world, and especially into new countries, to collect every foreign species of tree, plant, and flower. Even as far back as two centuries ago, this painful and costly process was going on. Our American maple-leaved hawthorn was then introduced into England. The cedar and larch were brought in a little earlier, and the mulberry in the reign of James I. The native of every land on the globe may thus see with delight, in the public gardens of England, his own familiar home plants and flowers, and scent the breath as it were of his own hills and plains.

The literary man, too, finds London his paradise. The cosy book-shops about St. Paul's Churchyard, and other snug grazing fields, are places too tempting for any but literary nabobs, or for that insatiable hunter of books, Dr. Cogswell, to revel in. Every thing golden in antique or modern letters drops at last into these half-hidden but profound treasure-houses. When I was in London, many of Mr. Mitford's most precious books, with his neatly written and valuable marginal notes, could be purchased. Those russet-covered volumes haunt the imagination long after the poor literary epicure has come back to his small study and slender oatmeal. Mr. Mitford's books sold very cheap. A Scaliger copy of a valuable Greek author, rich in historic annotations, was bought for £1 1s. An Aldine Catullus, with four hundred notes by Professor Porson, was purchased for £8 6s.

As a central point to see London, half an hour spent on one of the brides will enable a person to impress some feeble picture of the mighty city on his mind, and to take a sweep up and down the almost unimaginable extent of London. Words-worth's sonnet on Westminster Bridge at morning, showed that he had a human heart, which some have denied him :

"Earth hath not any thing more fair;
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty.
The city now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie,
Open unto the fields and to the sky,
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, and hill ;
Neer saw I, never felt a calm so deep !
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still ! "

The poet was fortunate to see the city in this " smokeless air." A London fog has often been described, but rarely exaggerated. That yellow gloom, that " darkness that could be felt," rolling into the innermost chamber of the house, and casting a haze about the friend who sits in the opposite corner, can hardly be overdrawn. And yet three miles from the city, at the same point of time, it may be bright and clear. Another thought of quite justifiable pride cannot but occur to an American looking at the river Thames, and that is, the vast superiority of New York to London in its site as a commercial metropolis. The Thames toward its mouth is a broad river it is true, but how wonderful is the harbor of New York, with two deep arms of the sea on either side, and the magnificent bay spreading out in front !

There is a great source of historic fact and interest not always explored in the London churches. Take, for instance, St. Giles' Church, Cripplegate ; this is in an out-of-the-way corner of the old city, near Grub Street, where poor authors once starved. In this church is the tomb of Milton. There is a marble bust of him over the spot where he was buried. It represents his face in old age, meagre and deeply lined, like his picture in Pickering's edition of Milton's Works. Here also is the tomb of Fox, the martyrologist. There is an inscription in this church upon the monument of a young noble lady, that was so simple and beautiful that I copied it. " Here lies Margaret Lucy, the second daughter of Sr. Thomas Lucy of Charelcote, in the county of Warwick, Knight, (the third by immediate descent of ye name of Thomas), by Alice sole daughter and heire of Thomas Spencer, of Clareden, in the same county, Esqr. and Custos Brevium of the Courte of Comon Pleas at Westminster, who departed this life the 18th day of November 1634, and aboute the 19th year of her age ; for discretion and sweetnesse of conversation not many excelled and for pietie and patience in her sicknesse and death few equalled her ; which is the comforte of her neerest friendes, to every one of whom she was very deare, but especialie to her old grandmother, the Lady Constance Lucy, under whose government she died ; who having exspected every day to have gone before her, doth now trust by faith, and hope in the precious bloode of Christ Jesus, shortly to follow after, and be partaker with her and others, of the unspeakable and eternal joyes in his blessed kingdom ; to whom be all honor laude and praise, now and ever, Amen."

In the yard of the same old half-hidden black brick church, is to be seen a bastion of the Roman wall. The obliging and intelligent sexton of " St. Giles," was the only official that I remember in England who refused a fee. " St. Pancras in the Fields " was the last church in England whose bell rung for mass. On the register of " St. Martin's in the Fields," Lord Bacon's baptism is recorded. In one of these old London churches, Cromwell was married. Miles Coverdale was buried in " St. Bartholomew's." " Shoreditch Church " was built where popular tradition made it out that Jane Shore died in a ditch from starvation. What is now " Finsbury Circus " was then, about the limit of the city in that direction.

All English history, law, literature, religion, have met in London, and have radiated from London as from a common centre.

The following places may be mentioned as a very few such points in London, which have been made illustrious by the presence of great men and events. In the neighborhood of the Islington suburb, was the scene of Suetonius' victory over Boadicea, in which 80,000 Britons were slain. Where " Barclay's Brewery " in Southwark stands, the " Globe Theatre " stood, and Master William Shakspeare played his own dramas and " suited the action to the word." At this spot also General Haynau was well drubbed by the sturdy brewers. In Bethnall Green, still live the descendants of the French silk-weavers who fled to England after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Milton's father resided in Bread Street, Cheapside ; and in this street the poet was born. He was a true Cockney born within the " sound of Bow Bells." The same " Cheapside " it is, whose stones did rattle with the " chaise and four," and the precious burden of

" My sister and my sister's child,
Myself and children three."

At Cheapside, Tyndale's English translation of the Bible was burned in 1526. Goldsmith died at No. 2 Brick Court Temple. Benjamin Franklin lived at No. 7 Craven Street, Strand. Handel lived in Piccadilly. In King Street, Edmund Spenser died for " lack of bread." Here also Louis Napoleon lived when he acted policeman ; and rumor says, he believed it to be his destiny to die at Cheap-side. Lord Byron was born in a boarding-house on Cavendish Square. Samuel Rogers' house was No. 22 St. James's Place. William Turner was born in 1775 at 26 Maiden Lane, near Covent Garden. In the Inns of Temple Court, the memories of Goldsmith, Johnson, Mansfield, Eldon, are still fresh. In Whitehall Chapel one sees the window out of which Charles I. stepped to his execution. In the centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields, Lord William Russell was beheaded. Every one knows of that vast cemetery of Bunhill Fields near - Finsbury Square, where the best genius and piety of the old dissenters found rest from their labors.

In Smithfield Market the martyrs of the Marian persecution were burned, and William Wallace was beheaded. Here also King Richard III. had his encounter with Wat Tyler. Would one ask for the burial-place of Cromwell ? His body was disinterred and burned under Tyburn gallows, in that part of London which is now called Tyburnia," one of the most crowded thoroughfares of the city. On Temple Bar, which must soon come down like a rock in the middle of a busy river, the heads of traitors were hung. At Guildhall one may still see " Gog and Magog" in all their bearded majesty, in spite of Mr. Punch. One of the most intensely interesting places in London is Christ's Hospital, founded by pious Edward VI. for fatherless children and foundlings. This is the famous " Blue Coat School." I was told that there were eight hundred now belonging to the school. Here Stillingfleet Richardson, Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and " the inspired charity boy," Coleridge, went to school. A frisk nerd of boys just let out careered through the yard in front of the hall bare-headed, many of them with their long blue coats tied up around them in front, and their spindle shanks and yellow stockings making a great display.

I visited a spot where the memory of one " gentle " spirit still lingers, and makes the most unromantic place in the world attractive. Set down in front of a sombre row of columns, and a low dingy pile of buildings, one could hardly conceive that this was the seat of that company of merchants who once ruled a vast empire with absolute sway, the East India House in Leadenhall Street. An apartment up one flight of stairs toward the back of the building, was where Charles Lamb used to write. There I was introduced to a courteous white-haired gentleman, who told me (though I know nothing more of him) that he was a fellow-clerk with Lamb, and occupied the next desk to his. He showed the place where Lamb's desk stood, under a window which looked out on the blank brick wall of a house. He spoke of him whom he was proud to call a friend, with enthusiasm. He said he was the best-hearted man in the world. Sometimes he would say to him, " Now you, who live in the country, go and spend a day at home with your family, and I will take care of your books." He had tremendous fits of work, and would accomplish three men's tasks in a day. At other times he would keep them all merry with his stories, and fill his pages with the oddest scrawls and etchings. This called to mind Lamb's boyish delight, which he speaks of in one of his letters, when he had learned to make " flourishes' and (poor Elia) " corkscrews, the best he ever drew." Among other pleasant things and sayings which this old gentleman related, I recall but this : " One day a wealthy London merchant was ushered into the room, and introduced to Lamb as ' Mr So-and-So, a distinguished spice merchant.' ' Oh yes,' said Lamb, quick as lightning, 'I 'm happy to see you, sir ; I smelt you coming."

The India House Library forms a rich and splendid collection of some 24,000 Oriental works, 8000 of these being still in manuscript. Among them is the famous "Koran," copied on vellum by the Caliph Othman III. A. D. 655.

Let us now turn to quite another theme and quarter of the city, and glance at the English " House of Commons."

Ascending the noble staircase leading up from old " Westminster Hall," one passes into an avenue or corridor, connecting with the new " Houses of Parliament." This superb avenue is called " St. Stephen's Hall." Along its sides are ranged full-length statues of Hampden, Falkland, Selden, Chatham, Burke, Pitt, Fox, and others of the great Commoners of England. This hall leads into a vestibule highly decorated and gilded, by which one enters immediately into the " House of Commons " on the one side, and the " House of Lords " on the other. Let us enter the House of Commons. We go up a flight of stairs, and sea.

ourselves in what is named the " Reporters' Gallery." Opposite us are the reporters' desks, at which you see anxious-looking men seated, who, after writing a little time with intense application, get up and go out, being relieved of their severe toil by others. The House of Commons is almost as gorgeous as wrought gold, fine brass, oak-wood carving, rich frescoes, and stained-glass windows can make it. I say " almost," for the House of Lords, though of the same general architectural character, is still more elaborate in its finish and ornament. It blazes in crimson and gold.

After having looked around and above, and sated our eyes with richness, and studied out the Tudor rose and portcullis ornaments, and other historic emblems, then look down and see what this magnificent house of the gods contains. Are they gods or men ? They are truly but men ; and they are men who all have their hats on as at a Quaker meeting. But it is no Quaker meeting , for the spirit of heavenly repose which broods over the assemblies of the saints, is not surely here. There is an anxious, angry, almost fierce spirit of debate and conflict. The only unexcited countenance is that of the Speaker, who, profoundly buried in his big gray wig, sits imperturbable as a machine, or rises at long intervals to put a vote in the shortest and driest manner.

It is odd to see the quiet, matter-of-fact way in which vast money-bills are voted upon and disposed ;of in the English Parliament. I heard money enough to set up a small government appropriated in about five minutes, all the members voting in favor of it, though there had been a protracted and violent debate upon it, in which it seemed as if the tottering government must give way. The real business goes on by machinery. Discussion is like a dance on the mill-floor while the great wheel goes steadily round. The cold, firm will of the governing class, sovereign in the House of Commons as in the House of Lords, allowing little possibility of popular interference, manages every thing in its own way. A long, green table stands in the centre of the room, at one end of which two bewigged clerks are seated, and at the other end hangs the ponderous " mace." The Government party occupy seats on one side of this table, and the Opposition on the other.

There is an impression now prevailing in England, that the business of the nation has become so gigantic and complicated that Parliament is really not equal to its transaction. I have certainly rarely seen a more wearied and fagged-out set of men than the Government bench at that time presented. The brilliant gas-light streamed down on care-worn, haggard faces. They were then, it is true, in a state of siege, and brought by a powerful and unrelenting opposition into the most desperate condition. Lord Palmerston, however, carried a bold air. In the broad and racy expression of his face he looked the born Irishman. He seemed to bave the elasticity of immortal youth. It was highly interesting to hear this inimitable veteran debater roll off his easy and stereotyped phrases of defense, now rising into stately rhetoric, now getting up an immense indignation, now casting him-self back on his official dignity, and now darting a fatal thrust of mingled ridicule and power into the weak place of his opponent's harness. His venerable compeer, Lord John Russell, had a pompous way of speaking for a small man, but was ingenions in gliding oilily around a difficulty ; and when he could not answer it, had an imperious way of trampling it down. It was wonderful to see these old men sustaining these severe midnight debates; for the sessions of Parliament begin at five or six in the evening, and last sometimes until three o'clock in the morning.

Confessedly the most polished and fluent speaker in Parliament is Mr. Gladstone ; but, as a rough Englishman said to me, " He is too eloquent to be honest ; " not that this is in any way true, but with English people too great facility is looked upon with suspicion. I was fortunate to hear Mr. Bright speak, although but briefly. He had a round, full forehead, and a large, resolute mouth, but the expression seemed to me gentler and more refined than I had imagined of this strong popular tribune. He looked like a good man — a man whose heart, whose moral nature, predominates over and sub-ordinates his intellect. You get just the reverse of this idea, I think, from the face of Gladstone, who is pure intellect, though he has shown that he possesses a great heart. Bright's speech was characterized by straightforward plainness, and also by singular force of condensed scholarly expression. There was none of the drawling mannerism of the other speakers, but a marching right on in a free, fresh, direct current of remark. There seemed to me a consciousness that he was the leader of a growing power in the State, and was bound to say something "telling" and strong. He stands on his own legs, and not on prescriptive reputation, opinions, or policies. He was at that moment the grandest figure, the foremost man in England. He seemed to me, morally, to tower immeasurably above all the nobles and distinguished men about him. He was indeed a dangerous man. He goes rather too fast for John Bull. " Still," as one of my English friends said to me, " England will and must have substantial reforms, it matters not what minister may be in power." The most striking-looking man in the House of Commons was Disraeli. I did not hear him speak. His head, from the distance where I sat, appeared not unlike Rufus Choate's, though of less massive mould; perhaps it was his saturnine complexion and imperturbable countenance that gave me this impression. His dark features and black hair, his contemplative and even sombre expression, singled him out among all. He was a stranger there. Although his spirit may have been Oriental, and his eloquence was often more brilliant than sound, he had dared to rise above the dead level practical standard of English debate into a new world of ideas and principles, and to discuss subjects in a more comprehensive and philosophical way. The best speech I heard on the whole, for its vigorous English and manly thought, was from Sir T. Baring. Judge Haliburton (Sam Slick) delivered a long, gossiping discourse with no particular point. With no lack of point was Mr. Roebuck's attack on the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He spoke deliberately and in a low voice, but with that distinct whisper, or hissing tone, that makes every word tell. His keen shafts, drawn firmly to the head, were sent twanging home with no reservation of human feebleness or pity. Chaucer must have written prophetically of him :

" The arwes of thy crabbed eloquence
Shall perce his crest and eke his aventayle."

Although seated on the lower tier of benches opposite the reporters' desks, it was some time before I could begin to understand a word that was said. The thick articulation, and the broken, jerking way of speaking, made the English language sound like another tongue. Even Lord Palmerston at times got floundering and gasping in a painfully prolonged course of barren " eh-eh-eh's."

In the House of Lords, the dull and drawling style of oratory was still more pronounced. Lords Normanby, Clanricarde, Waters, De Canning, Brougham, and others spoke. Some of the noble lords actually went to sleep with folded arms beneath their broad-brimmed hats. Lord Brougham had still the lionlike look and the energetic sweep of the arm ; but the silver hair, bent back, and, above all, failing voice, told of the decay of physical force. In the remarks that he made there was no lack of mental vigor and of downright crushing common sense. He made the impression of greater genuine oratorical power than any other speaker whom I heard in England, though it was power on the wane, and the old fire but faint. Sir Stratford de Canning, who had done a great work as a diplomatist, wielding the influence of England on the side of humanity and Christian civilization, was certainly no speaker, judging by the effort which I heard. His place was not in the stirring field of debate. He delivered an elaborate speech that read remarkably well in the " Times," but he nearly broke down twice in doing it.

The best way for a young man to see Lon-don is to take a good pocket map of the city, which accurately delineates the principal streets, squares, and public places, and which distinctly denotes what buildings and institutions are worthy of being visited on both sides of every street, and then to see London by walking. In this way he is independent of valets and cabmen, loses nothing that is memorable, and gains some, it may be tiresome, personal experience of the incredible vastness of the city.

An American need not be reminded to visit Westminster Abbey, the Tower, St. Paul's Cathedral, the National Gallery, and the British Museum. His national instincts will probably lead, him to the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street. The British Museum comprehends a square in the heart of London. To go through it is like walking through the avenues of a dead world. It is a pleasant toil, but toil it certainly is. By going day after day, or rather week after week, it may be slowly conquered. When in visiting Athens I saw the holes in the frieze of the Parthenon out of which the Elgin marbles had been torn, it was with a feeling of indignation and sorrow ; but as one reflects that it was by this means that the sculptures were probably saved from the destruction of war, or from being ground into lime by the Turks, and that they have been the instrumentality of regenerating modern Art, he is reconciled to the change ; and perhaps, hereafter, when Greece becomes a nation worthy of the name, some " Great Eastern " will transport the marbles back again, and they will take their old place in the entablature of the temple. In passing the case that contains the " Codex Alexandrinus," one is inclined, like my genial and accomplished friend Mr. Henry Stevens, the librarian of the American department of the library — to take off his hat. This version, according to Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Alexandria, was copied by an Egyptian woman named Thecla, in the fourth century ; and it bears evident marks of female chirography. Tischendorf and other modern scholars, however, assign it to the fifth century. It stands next in value after the Vatican and Sinaitic versions. It was a gift front Cyril to Charles I., in 1629.