A Year in Europe
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Title: A Year in Europe
Author: Walter W. Moore
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A YEAR IN EUROPE ***
A YEAR IN EUROPE.
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY--JERUSALEM CHAMBER TO THE RIGHT.]
A YEAR IN EUROPE.
_By_
WALTER W. MOORE, D. D., LL. D.
President of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia
THIRD EDITION
[Illustration]
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
The Presbyterian Committee of Publication
1905
COPYRIGHTED
BY
WALTER W. MOORE,
1904.
PRINTED BY
WHITTET & SHEPPERSON,
RICHMOND, VA.
TO
My Traveling Companions
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
AS A MEMENTO
OF HAPPY DAYS IN THE OLD WORLD.
FOREWORD.
The only excuse I have to offer for the publication of these desultory
and chatty letters in this more permanent form is that a number of my
friends have requested it. Many of the letters have already appeared in
the columns of _The Children's Friend_, for which they were originally
written, at the instance of the Presbyterian Committee of Publication;
but I have included in the volume several letters which were written
for other periodicals, and a considerable number which have not been
published anywhere till now. Some of them were written hastily, and, as
it were, on the wing, others with more deliberation and care. Some were
intended for young readers, others for older people. This will account
for the differences of style and subject matter which will strike every
one, and which will be particularly noticeable when the letters are
read consecutively.
In some cases I have drawn the materials, in part, from other sources
besides my own observations, the main object at times being not
originality, but accuracy and fullness of information. In such cases I
have endeavored to make full acknowledgment of my indebtedness to other
writers.
As most of the letters were written for a denominational paper, they
naturally contain a good many references to notable events in the
history of the Presbyterian Church, and to some of the differences
between that church and others in matters of doctrine, polity and forms
of worship. But I trust that in no case have I felt or expressed a
spirit of uncharitable sectarianism. If any reader should receive the
impression that I have done so in one or two instances, I request him
to suspend judgment till he has read all the references to such matters
contained in the letters. It will then be seen that if I have had
occasion to make some strictures upon the Anglican and Roman Catholic
Churches, I have not hesitated to make them upon my own church also,
when I have observed, in her worship or work, things which seemed to
argue that she was untrue in any measure to her principles; and that
if I have criticised the Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic systems as
erroneous, I have recognized thankfully the great evangelical truths
embedded in the heart of Anglican, and even Romish theology, though
so sadly overlaid, and have rejoiced to pay my tribute of praise to
the saintly characters that have been developed within those bodies in
spite of their errors.
RICHMOND, VA., _June 1, 1904_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
A COLD SUMMER VOYAGE.
A Pleasant Memory.--A Depressing Start.--Discomforts at
Sea.--Life on a German Steamship.--The Unification of
the World.--All's Well that Ends Well.--Arrival at Southampton, 9
CHAPTER II.
A VISIT TO THE TOWN OF DR. ISAAC WATTS.
A Sheltered Harbor with Double Tides.--Historical Interest
of Southampton: Canute, William the Conqueror, William Rufus,
Richard Lion Heart, the Pilgrim Fathers.--The Chief Distinction of
the Town.--Statue of Dr. Watts.--Sketch of the great hymn writer, 16
CHAPTER III.
SALISBURY, SARUM, AND STONEHENGE.
A Fascinating Cathedral Town.--Rural Scenery in Southern
England.--Impressiveness of Stonehenge.--Other Things of Interest
About Salisbury.--What the Bishop Said About the Presbyterian Form
of the Early Church, 21
CHAPTER IV.
WINCHESTER WORTHIES: ALFRED THE GREAT, IZAAK WALTON, THOMAS KEN.
Memorials of Kings Good and Bad.--Memorial of the Gentle
Fisherman.--Wit in Winchester College.--A Lovely Churchman.--Ken's
Defiance of James II., 28
CHAPTER V.
THE UGLINESS AND THE CHARM OF LONDON.
A Vast and Dingy Metropolis.--The Æsthetic Value of Soot.--Brick
versus Stone.--Scotch Cities' Stately, but Gloomy.--Brightness of
Paris.--Immensity and Multitude.--The Body is More than Raiment, 34
CHAPTER VI.
THE ENGLISH VIEW OF THE FOURTH OF JULY.
Ambassador Choate's Reception.--Increasing Friendliness Between
America and England.--How the English Now View the American
Revolution.--A Fair Statement of the Question and the
Conflict.--What England Learned from Fighting Against Her Own
Principles.--The Monument of Washington in St. Paul's
Cathedral.--The Possible Union of Canada and the United States, 41
CHAPTER VII.
HOW THE ENGLISH REGARD THE AMERICANS.
Former Prejudices Passing Away.--The English Admit that America
Holds the Future.--English Candor and English Inconsistency.--A
Sectarian Measure in Parliament.--What Scotchmen Think of the
Education Bill.--Passive Resistance of the Nonconformists, 49
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRITISH REPUBLIC AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The Real Ruler of the British Empire.--The House of
Parliament.--Getting into the Lower House.--The Debate and the
Debaters.--Harcourt, Bryce, Campbell-Bannerman, Lloyd-George, John
Dillon, Arthur Balfour.--The Incongruity of a Presbyterian Prime
Minister.--English and American Oratory, 55
CHAPTER IX.
CAMBRIDGE AND HER SCHOOLS.
The Cathedral Route.--The Two University Towns.--Cambridge More
Progressive than Oxford.--The Presbyterian Element.--The Two
Most Learned Women in the World.--Westminster College.--The Same
Difficulties About Candidates for the Ministry, 63
CHAPTER X.
FROM ENGLAND TO SCOTLAND--THE EASTERN ROUTE.
The Land of the Mountain and the Flood.--Melrose, Abbotsford,
and Dryburgh.--The Wizard of the North.--Edinburgh.--Temporary
Residence in Auld Reekie.--Public Worship in Scotland.--Organ,
Choir, and Congregation.--Bibles in the Churches, 68
CHAPTER XI.
SOME ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS.
Dean Farrar in Westminster Abbey.--Mr. Haweis and Dr.
Wace.--Spurgeon, Parker, and Hughes.--Moravian Mission
House.--General Booth.--Scottish Mind and Scottish Heart.--Dr.
Marcus Dods.--Dr. George Matheson.--Dr. Whyte and Mr.
Black.--Interview with Professor Sayce.--The Inevitable Subject, 75
CHAPTER XII.
ECHOES OF A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND.
A Unique Prayer for Prince Charlie.--Church-Going in
Edinburgh.--The Bibles, the Sermons, the Prayers, the Music.--Jenny
Geddes and her Stool.--The Disruption in 1843.--A Sermon-Taster
with a Nippy Tongue.--Scottish and American Repartee, 87
CHAPTER XIII.
IS THE SCOTTISH CHARACTER DEGENERATING?
"Mine Own Romantic Town."--The Seamy Side of Edinburgh.--The
Cause of Her Wretchedness.--Not Lack of Native Ability, nor
Disregard of the Sabbath, but the Curse of Strong Drink.--Appalling
Statistics.--A Lesser Menace, 100
CHAPTER XIV.
STIRLING, THE LAKES, AND GLASGOW.
The Wallace Monument.--Memorials of the Martyrs.--Margaret
Wilson.--The Covenanters.--The Author of "The Men of the
Moss Hags."--Aberfoyle, The Trossachs, Loch Katrine, Loch
Lomond.--Lord Overtoun's Garden Party.--Rev. John McNeill.--Scotch
Humor.--Glasgow.--The Cathedral.--Lord Kelvin, 107
CHAPTER XV.
OBAN, IONA, AND STAFFA.
Rude Seas off the West Coast.--A Difficult Landing.--The Presbyter
Abbot, Columba.--The Evangelization of Scotland from Iona.--The
Burial Place of the Scottish Kings.--The Basaltic Columns of
Staffa.--Fingal's Cave.--Nature's Cathedral.--The Caledonian
Canal, 119
CHAPTER XVI.
INVERNESS AND MEMORIES OF FLORA MACDONALD.
A Clean and Comely City.--The Statue of Flora Macdonald.--The
Career of a Royal Adventurer.--A Fugitive in the Hebrides.--A
Woman to the Rescue.--Feminine Courage and Resource.--Flora
Macdonald as Prisoner.--Her Marriage.--She Entertains Dr. Johnson
and Boswell.--Moves to North Carolina.--Misfortunes in the New
World.--Her Return to Scotland and her Last Days, 124
CHAPTER XVII.
FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND--WESTERN ROUTE.
In and Around Perth.--Quhele, Shoe Heel and Maxton.--Crieff and
Drumtochty.--Loch Leven.--Ayr and Robert Burns.--Dumfries,
Keswick, Skiddaw.--The English Lakes.--Chester.--Lichfield and Dr.
Samuel Johnson.--The Shakespeare Country.--The American Window at
Stratford.--The English Language as Spoken in the Birthplace of
Shakespeare and Elsewhere, 133
CHAPTER XVIII.
A VISIT TO RUGBY AND A TRAMP TO THE WHITE HORSE HILL.
Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby.--The Rugby of To-day.--Our
Expedition to Tom Brown's Birthplace.--The Highest Horse we
Ever Mounted.--The Roman Camp.--King Alfred's Defeat of the
Danes.--The Manger and the Dragon's Hill.--The Blowing Stone.--The
effect upon our Appetites.--The Tea we did not Drink.--Return to
Oxford.--London Once More, 142
CHAPTER XIX.
THE MOST INTERESTING BUILDING IN THE WORLD.
The Birthplace of the Shorter Catechism.--The Coronation
Postponed.--Westminster Abbey Still Closed.--The Assembly
of Divines.--The Two Places of Meeting.--The Two Types of
Worship.--Interior of the Jerusalem Chamber.--Exterior
of the Jerusalem Chamber.--Connection of Henry IV., Sir
Thomas More, Joseph Addison, and Sir Isaac Newton with the
Jerusalem Chamber.--Architectural Glory of Westminster
Abbey.--Its Historical Interest.--Coronations.--The Stone of
Scone.--Burials.--Monuments.--Pagan Sculptures in a Christian
Church, 151
CHAPTER XX.
THE ROYAL CHAPELS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
A Hard-Hearted Verger.--A Courteous Sub-Dean.--The Wax
Effigies.--Mutilated Monuments.--Monuments Denied to Notable
Persons.--The Objection to Milton.--General Meigs and President
Davis.--The Vindication of Cromwell.--Treatment of his Dead
Body.--History of his Head.--His Statue at Westminster, 168
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CATHEDRALS VERSUS THE GOSPEL.
Original Significance of the Cathedrals.--Their Æsthetic
Influence.--Their Romanizing Tendency.--Their Charm for the
Greatest of the Puritans.--A Half-Reformed Church.--Relics of
Romanism.--Effect of Cathedrals on Presbyterian Worship.--Superior
Impressiveness of Protestant Simplicity, 177
CHAPTER XXII.
SOME THINGS FOR HIGH CHURCHMEN TO THINK ABOUT.
The Use of Written Prayers.--The Huguenot Presbyterians in
Canterbury Cathedral.--Scuffle Between the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York.--The Concomitants of Anglican Worship.--The
Intoning.--Canon Henson at St. Margaret's.--His Remarks on Anglican
Narrowness.--What he Could See in Virginia.--Decreasing Attendance
in the Anglican Churches in London.--An Episcopalian Estimate of
Presbyterian Preaching, 186
CHAPTER XXIII.
PARIS AND MEMORIES OF THE HUGUENOTS.
The English Channel as a Health Resort.--The External Beauty of
the French Capital.--What we Did Not Like About Paris.--The Louvre
and its Treasures.--The Boer Generals.--The Huguenot Name and the
Huguenot Character.--Palissy the Potter.--Other Huguenot Heroes
and Heroines.--A Roman Catholic's Condemnation of Roman Catholic
Persecutions.--France's Loss the World's Gain.--What we Owe to the
Huguenots.--The Huguenot Strain in Virginia.--The Present Huguenot
Revival in France.--Brussels and Waterloo, 199
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MAKING OF HOLLAND.
Unique Interest of Holland.--A Land Below Sea-Level.--Water as
an Enemy.--Dykes as Protectors.--How Dykes are Made.--Sand
Dunes.--Canals.--Wind-Mills.--Polders.--Entering Holland.--The
Scenery and the Scenes.--Rotterdam and Erasmus.--Delft and
William the Silent.--The Hague.--Rembrandt's "School of
Anatomy."--A Presbyterian Queen.--A Presbyterian Preacher as Prime
Minister.--Unpresbyterian Church Buildings.--Would the Destruction
of all the Cathedrals have been a Loss or a Gain? 212
CHAPTER XXV.
LEYDEN'S UNIVERSITY, HAARLEM'S FLOWERS, AND AMSTERDAM'S COMMERCE.
The Great Siege.--A University as a Reward of Valor.--John
Robinson and the Pilgrim Fathers.--Horse Flesh as Food.--Haarlem
and the Flower Boom.--Amsterdam's Islands and Canals.--A City
Built on Stakes.--Business of Amsterdam.--President Kruger
at Utrecht.--Queer Customs in Holland.--The Dutch Mania for
Cleanliness.--Mr. Edward Bok on "The Mother of America," 222
CHAPTER XXVI.
UP THE RHINE AND OVER THE ALPS.
Cologne and Coblentz.--The Vintage of the Rhine Valley.--Wiesbaden
and the German Woods.--The Luther Monument at Worms.--Wintry
Weather at Heidelberg.--Strasburg's Cathedral and
Clock.--Switzerland in Winter-time.--The Lion of Lucerne.--A Cold
Day on the Lake.--Over the Alps.--Snow in Italy.--Milan, 238
CHAPTER XXVII.
VENICE, BOLOGNA, FLORENCE, AND PISA.
The Queen of the Adriatic.--The Fallen Campanile.--Fra Paolo
Sarpi, the Greatest of the Venetians.--Busy Bologna.--The Leaning
Towers.--The Colonnades.--The Oldest University.--Galvani and his
Frog.--The Flower of Fair Cities.--Art Treasures of Florence.--The
Reformer Before the Reformation.--Martyrdom of Savonarola.--Pisa's
Four Monuments, 245
CHAPTER XXVIII.
SOME LITTLE ADVENTURES BY THE WAY.
Letter-Writing Under Difficulties.--An Exemplary Traveller.--A
Mild Sensation in Leyden.--A German Baby-Cart out of its
Element.--Something New in Venice.--No Place for Wheels.--Gondolas
and Gondoliers.--Wonderful Dexterity with a Single Oar.--A
Scattering of Baggage on the Streets of Cologne.--Disastrous
Descent of a Baby-Cart from the Top of an Omnibus.--Extortion and
Fraud in Sacred Places, 254
CHAPTER XXIX.
RELICS IN GENERAL AND THE IRON CROWN OF LOMBARDY IN PARTICULAR.
Mark Twain's Animadversions.--The Palladium of Venice.--The Gift
of Leo XIII. to London.--The Blood of St. Januarius.--The House of
the Virgin at Loretto.--The Wonder-Working Bones of St. Anne in
Canada.--The Iron Crown of Lombardy.--A Winter Trip to Monza.--The
Treasury of the Cathedral.--The Chapel of the Great Relic.--Why
the Crown is so Sacred.--How it was used by Charlemagne and
Napoleon.--Rome Caps the Climax.--Do American Roman Catholics
Believe in the Relics? 259
CHAPTER XXX.
ROMAN CATHOLIC RELICS AT ROME.
The Miraculous Snow in Summertime.--The Holy Cradle.--The Little
Doll that Owns a Large Carriage.--The Wealth and Power of the
Miraculous Bambino.--The Communion Table Used by Christ.--The
Holy Stairs from Pilate's Palace.--The Man who Crawled Up
and Walked Down.--The Miraculous Portrait and the Shoes of
Christ.--The Inscription on the Cross and the Finger of Thomas.--A
Bottle of the Blood of Christ.--Exclusion of Women from Holy
Places.--The Hardness of St. Peter's Knees.--The Hardness of St.
Peter's Head.--What the Head of St. Paul Did.--St. Paul's Use
of Plautilla's Veil.--The Footprints of Christ in Stone.--The
Chains of St. Peter.--The Column Against which Christ Leaned in
the Temple.--The Chair of St. Peter.--The Lance that Pierced the
Saviour's Side.--The Napkin of St. Veronica with the Miraculous
Impression of our Lord's Face.--The Head of the Apostle Andrew, 273
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE LEGENDS, THE POPES, AND THE PASQUINADES.
The Manufacture of St. Philomena.--The Canonization of Buddha.--The
Courteous Spaniard.--The Miracles of St. Dominic.--Miracles
Wrought by Other Saints and Images.--How the Papal Treasury was
Filled, and How it was Emptied.--Some Ugly Passages in Papal
History.--Pasquino's View of the Pope.--What the Italians Now
Think About it.--Few Men and Many Women at the Confessional.--Lord
Macaulay, Charles Dickens, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. McCarthy and
Nathaniel Hawthorne on the Influence of Romanism.--The New Pope a
Good Man, 293
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE OLD FORCES AND THE NEW IN THE ETERNAL CITY.
An Audience with the Pope.--"Long Live the Pope-King!" The
Pope's Last Jubilee in St. Peter's.--Our Quarters on the Pincian
Hill.--The Sweep of History Seen from the Janiculum.--The Colosseum
and the Baths of Caracalla.--The Papal Passion for Terrestrial
Immortality.--The Building Boom Under the New Government.--Can the
New Government Maintain Itself Against the Priests? 315
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE TWO TYPES OF RELIGION IN ROME.
The Cappucin Cemetery.--Some Differences Between America and
Italy.--The Playful Inquisition.--The Relative Rank of the Deities
Worshipped in Rome.--The Fee of the Visitor More Important than
the Soul of the Worshipper.--Sensuality versus Spirituality
in Art.--The Kind of Character Produced.--The Other Type.--An
Apostolic Preacher in Rome.--A Wise and Loving Pastor, 328
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE INEXHAUSTIBLENESS OF ROME.
The Most Interesting City in the World.--The Embarrassment of
Riches.--Boundless Wealth of Materials.--The Appian Way, the
Catacombs, the Ecclesiastical Statues.--The Remains of Classical
Rome: The Arches, the Columns, the Tombs, the Statues.--The
Masterpieces of Sculpture and the Masterpieces of Painting in
Rome.--The Best Books About Rome.--Lord Mahon and Professor
Lanciani on the Last of the Stuarts.--Ave Roma Immortalis, 341
CHAPTER XXXV.
NAPLES, CAPRI, VESUVIUS, AMALFI, AND POMPEII.
Beauty and Filth.--Danger and Indifference.--Street Scenes in
Naples.--The Blue Grotto of Capri.--The Ascent of Vesuvius.--A
Stream of Liquid Fire.--Hard Climbing Through Cinders.--Driven Back
from the Crater by Sulphur Fumes.--The Most Beautiful Drive in the
World.--The Loveliness of Amalfi.--The Ruins of Pompeii.--Story of
the Catastrophe.--The Work of Exhumation.--The Return Voyage by
Gibraltar and the Azores.--There is no Place Like Home, 346
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Westminster Abbey and Jerusalem Chamber, _Frontispiece._
The House of Parliament, London, 56
Clare College and King's Chapel, Cambridge, 62
Sir Walter Scott's Seat in Melrose Abbey, 69
Drill of Highlanders, Edinburgh Castle, 88
Princes Street, Edinburgh, 101
Monument to Margaret Wilson, Stirling, 108
Statue of Flora Macdonald, Inverness, 125
Magdalen College, Oxford, 150
Poets Corner, Westminster Abbey, 164
A Stranger in Leyden, 223
The Lion of Lucerne, 242
The Doge's Palace, Venice, 247
The Bambino, 276
Scala Santa, Rome, 279
Kings of England and Italy in Rome, 319
Panorama of Naples, 346
A Windy Day on Mount Vesuvius, 350
On the Road to Amalfi, 352
Colonnade of Hotel Cappuccini, 354
Pompeii, 357
A YEAR IN EUROPE.
CHAPTER I.
A COLD SUMMER VOYAGE.
SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND, _June 28, 1902_.
[Sidenote: A Pleasant Memory.]
An American traveller says that a sea voyage, compared with land
travel, is a good deal like matrimony compared with single blessedness:
either decidedly better or decidedly worse. With me, on my first voyage
to Europe a few years ago, it was, like my own venture in matrimony,
decidedly better. We sailed from New York on a brilliant day, and
nearly all the way over the weather was bright, bracing, buoyant, with
blue sky above, blue sea beneath, and just enough motion of the water
to give it all the fascination of changing beauty. Only once or twice
did even our least seasoned passengers need "some visible means of
support," on account of the rolling of the ship, and when we struck
the Gulf Stream, deep blue and warm, it was pleasant on deck even
without wraps, and I remember the captain's telling me he had seen the
temperature of the water change thirty-one degrees in two minutes,
when he would pass from the Gulf Stream into a colder current, though
we ourselves had no such experience then. Day after day we lounged on
deck restfully, or walked about comfortably, taking deep and leisurely
inhalations of the pure ocean air, and having frequent opportunity
to learn the meaning of "Cat's Paw" as applied to winds, when, under
the gentle dips of air, the placid ocean took on a pitted appearance
exactly like the tracks made by cats' feet in soft snow.
[Sidenote: A Depressing Start.]
Our present voyage has been very different, and I fear that some of
the young people with me, who are familiar with my impressions of
the former passage, have felt some disappointment with the ocean.
The circumstances of our start were depressing, notwithstanding the
animation of the scene at the North German Lloyd Pier, with its throng
of carriages, baggage wagons, trucks, trunks, tourists' agents,
passengers, and friends who had come to see them off, and who waved
their handkerchiefs and shouted farewells and sang German songs, while
the band on the _Bremen_ played inspiring airs, and her own hoarse
whistles capped the climax of the din, as the tugs pulled the great
ship out into the river, and turned her prow towards the ocean, and her
ponderous engines began to throb. It was all in vain. Nothing could
make it seem cheerful. The rain was pouring steadily and heavily from
leaden skies, and just outside the harbor we ran into an opaque fog
that shrouded all the beauty of the sea, and made it necessary for the
fog horn to sound its prolonged, mournful, ominous, and nerve-racking
blast every minute through the rest of the day and night, to avoid
collision with other vessels groping through the deep. It was a comfort
to recall the hymn we had used in the family circle the morning we
started from home--
"Let the sweet hope that thou art mine
My life and death attend,
Thy presence through my journey shine
And crown my journey's end"--
and to commit ourselves to the care of him who hath measured the waters
in the hollow of his hand, and to whom the darkness and the light are
both alike, and to whom the night shineth as the day.
[Sidenote: Discomforts at Sea.]
For several days the sea was "a gray and melancholy waste," and, when
at length the weather cleared, a cold wind--very cold and cutting
and persistent--blew hard from the northwest, making our side of
the deck intolerable, even with our heaviest winter clothing and a
great profusion of wraps, so that it was hardly a surprise to us,
when about half way over, to see in the distance what we took to be
an iceberg glistening cold against the horizon--very interesting, of
course, as compared with the steamships, sailing vessels, and schools
of porpoises, which are the usual variations of the monotony of the
waterscape--but also very uncomfortable. Moreover, the wind made the
sea so rough at times that the tables in the dining saloon were more
than once quite "sparsely settled," not a few people "wanted the
earth," and longed for _terra firma_--less terror and more firmer, as
a friend of mine once put it. One or two even of our own party, who,
though good "tar heels," are not equally good "tars," paid reluctant
tribute to Neptune. Reluctant, did I say? Yet it was done eagerly, as
though the persons in question "could not contain themselves" for joy,
or novelty, or some other emotion. I find it difficult to write of this
curious little malady, which baffles the skill of all physicians, with
sufficient plainness, and, at the same time, with sufficient reserve.
The most delicate reference to it on record was that of a Frenchman,
who, pale and miserable, was greeted by a blooming Englishman with
"Good morning, monsieur, have you breakfasted?" and replied, "No,
monsieur, I have not breakfasted. On the contrary." Three or four of
our immediate party, however, did not miss a meal on the whole voyage,
but "held their own" throughout, and were able to "navigate" every
day. Moreover, while the rude seas robbed us of the exhilaration
which I had always heretofore associated with an ocean voyage, we
had on board many bright and attractive things which went far to
counterbalance the effect of the chilly and depressing weather.
[Sidenote: Life on a German Steamship.]
The _Bremen_ is a staunch and comfortable ship; not one of the Atlantic
greyhounds, which are built slender and comparatively light in order
to great speed--but all the better for that, as her vast bulk and
heavy cargo give her a degree of steadiness unknown to the express
steamers, and her appointments are in every way equal to those of
the fastest ships afloat. She takes nine days for the trip from New
York to Southampton, and in ordinary weather that is none too long
for the average passenger. It was no fault of hers that our journey
was not a comfortable one throughout. It could not have been so in
any ship with such weather as we had the misfortune to encounter. Of
course, everything on board is German. The stewards can speak enough
English for all necessary purposes, though one of them, when asked a
question by a member of our party, made the naive reply, "I do not
hear well in English." One is soon initiated into the mysteries of
marks and pfennigs, and begins to pick up sundry guttural German words
and phrases. Being German, of course the ship has plenty of music, a
cornet band discoursing lively airs on deck about the middle of every
forenoon, and a string band playing during the dinner hour in the
saloon, while the passengers munch in unison. The catering department
is organized on the assumption that the chief occupation of people
on shipboard is eating, sandwiches and hot beef tea being served on
deck in the forenoon, and tea and biscuits of various kinds in the
afternoon, in addition to the three very elaborate set meals in the
saloon, the lavish abundance of which is provoking to the squeamish
passenger. A Teutonic bugler, with fully developed lungs, gives the
signals for the meals. On Sunday morning the passengers are wakened by
the strains of Luther's "Ein feste burg ist unser Gott." The management
of the ship throughout is characterized by German thoroughness, and the
organization and discipline are perfect.
Shuffle board, ring pitching, and other deck games, and letter-writing,
chess, and other amusements indoors, more or less innocent, serve to
while away part of the time. Ordinarily, reading is my main resource
in this way, but the cold weather and searching draughts, making it
impossible to find a reasonably comfortable spot to sit down in with a
book, reduced my reading on this trip to a minimum.
[Sidenote: The Unification of the World.]
Various nationalities were represented in our ship's company, the
Anglo-Saxon predominating. This reminds me of the fact that the
ocean has played no small part in the unification of the world as
thus far accomplished. Nothing, perhaps, distinguishes the modern
world more sharply from the ancient than its views of the ocean. To
the ancients the sea was a mystery and a terror; it was a barrier,
it separated men. To the moderns the sea is a highway, a means of
communication, it unites men. The nearest approach to a unification of
the race in ancient times was effected by the law of the Roman and the
language of the Greek. The unifying force to-day is the Anglo-Saxon,
who to the genius of the Roman for conquest and government, and to
the genius of the Greek for letters and art, has added the genius
of the Ph[oe]nician for commerce and the genius of the Hebrew for
religion. Here we touch the secret of his ascendancy. The Anglo-Saxon
civilization is _Christian_. His language is becoming the universal
language. His institutions are becoming the universal institutions.
His ships carry the passengers and produce of the world. His capital
dominates commerce. London is the clearing-house of the world. Will
this unification continue? Will it endure? It will if the religion to
which the Anglo-Saxon owes his preëminence remains preëminent in his
civilization. The brotherhood of man--how else shall it ever be fully
and permanently brought about, except through men's knowledge of the
Fatherhood of God? And how can the Fatherhood of God ever be known
except through him who taught us to say, "Our Father," and of whom the
Father said, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear
ye him?" It is no accident that the nations which have most reverently
heeded this divine command, the nations which are most truly Christian,
are the nations which have hitherto stood in the forefront of the
foremost civilizations of mankind, and are the nations which now hold
the future.
"Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Does his successive journeys run,
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore
Till moons shall wax and wane no more."
The force which will bind all men in a real and permanent union is no
mere knowledge of navigation, nor is it Anglo-Saxon commerce, laws, or
language; it is the Christian religion.
[Sidenote: All's Well That Ends Well.]
The latter part of our voyage was less trying than the earlier, and the
days were generally brighter, though still cold. Yet all were glad when
one night, about nine o'clock, the intermittent gleam of the lighthouse
on the Scilly Islands came into view, assuring us that the voyage would
soon be ended. Next morning we were steaming along the picturesque
south coast of England, with the white chalk cliffs and velvety green
downs in plain view through the tender blue haze, the water was quieter
and the weather warmer, and in a few hours more we entered The Solent,
passing on our right, almost within a stone's throw, "The Needles,"
three white, pointed rocks of chalk, at the western extremity of the
Isle of Wight, which rest on dark colored bases and spring abruptly
from the sea to a height of a hundred feet, and which are in striking
contrast with the vertically striped cliffs of red, yellow, green, and
grey sandstone behind them.
At last the great engines cease their throbbing for the first time in
nine days, the tender comes alongside for the passengers bound for
Great Britain, and in another half hour we set foot on the soil of
England, in the ancient city of Southampton.
CHAPTER II.
A VISIT TO THE TOWN OF DR. ISAAC WATTS.
SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND, _June 28, 1902_.
Southampton, the ancient seaport at which travellers to Europe by
the steamships of the North German Lloyd line first set foot on
British soil, is a place of considerable interest at any time, but
was especially attractive to us after a cold and uncomfortable voyage
across the Atlantic. The day of our arrival was fine, with blue sky
and genial sunshine, the water of the Solent, between the Isle of
Wight and the mainland, was free from the ocean swell, and Southampton
Water was quieter still, so we landed with thankful hearts and rising
spirits. The city, which is a place of some 70,000 inhabitants, owes
its importance to its sheltered harbor and to the phenomenon of double
tides, which prolong high water for two hours.
[Sidenote: Historical Interest of Southampton.]
This mention of the tides reminds me to say that Southampton is the
place where Canute the Dane is said to have given his famous rebuke to
his flattering courtiers. All the children who have read any English
history will recall the story.
They are familiar, too, with the hard-hearted action of William the
Conqueror in laying waste an area of one hundred and forty square
miles in this neighborhood for the purpose of making a hunting ground,
which has ever since been known as the New Forest, and which still
stretches westward from Southampton Water. It will be remembered that
the Conqueror's son and successor, William Rufus, met his death here,
being found one day in these woods with an arrow through his heart.
That arrow may have been shot by one of the many peasants who had
been driven from their homes when the New Forest was made, though most
writers attribute the deed, without sufficient proof, to a gentleman
named Walter Tyrrell. At any rate, here William Rufus was killed, and
at Winchester, thirteen miles from Southampton, he was buried under the
floor of the cathedral, "many looking on and few grieving," as the old
chronicler says.
Of still more interest to young readers, especially boys, who are
familiar with Sir Walter Scott's stories, _The Talisman_ and _Ivanhoe_,
is the fact that the Crusaders under Richard the Lion Hearted, sailed
from Southampton for the Holy Land. That was in 1189.
In the summer of 1620, however, a far more important expedition, though
far less spectacular, was fitted out at Southampton by the hiring of
a ship here called the _Mayflower_, in which shortly afterwards the
Pilgrim Fathers sailed for the New World.
It will be seen, then, that Southampton is a place of no small
historical interest, to say nothing of its associations with Edward
III., Henry V., and Charles I., or its being the birthplace of Sir
John E. Millais, the artist, or of its having fine statues of Lord
Palmerston and "Chinese" Gordon.
[Sidenote: Chief Distinction of the Town.]
But it was not on account of any of these things that we determined to
give to this place the first few hours we were to spend in England.
The special reason for our interest in Southampton is that it was the
birthplace and residence of the greatest hymn writer that ever lived,
a man of totally different physique, character, gifts, and influence
from the able, but bloody kings with whose names the earlier history of
the place is associated, a small, delicate, scholarly, Christian man,
of lovely spirit, who, by exactly antipodal methods, has established
a wider, more real, more beneficent, and more lasting reign over human
hearts than William or Richard were able to achieve--the Rev. Isaac
Watts, D. D., whose simpler pieces for children have become household
words throughout the English-speaking world, such as, "Hush, my dear,
lie still and slumber," "Let dogs delight to bark and bite," "How doth
the little busy bee improve each shining hour," etc., and who, as even
a supercilious and grudging critic like Matthew Arnold admitted, wrote
the finest hymn in the English language, "When I survey the wondrous
cross," and very many others of scarcely inferior merit.
He was the author of various able treatises on philosophy and theology,
but it was the thought of what he had done for the world by his hymns
that caused us to stop at Southampton. So, mounting the winding
stairway to the top of the "double-decker" electric tram car, much
better adapted to sightseeing than our single-story street cars in
America, we were carried smoothly and quickly up the bright and busy
High Street, gaily decorated for the Coronation, and in a few minutes
passed under the great stone arch of the Bar Gate, the most interesting
portion of the ancient city wall. The modern city, of course, stretches
far beyond the walls, street after street of clean and attractive
houses, with a profusion of brilliant flowers and neatly trimmed
greenery, shut in from the street, in many cases, by high stone walls,
over which, however, we can easily see from our elevated position.
[Sidenote: Sketch of the Great Hymn-Writer.]
Presently, in the centre of a small park, which opens on the left
with velvety grass and fine trees, we see the object of our search, a
marble statue of a very small and wizened man, of benevolent face and
venerable appearance, with a Bible in his hand, and on the pedestal
in bold letters the name, "REV. ISAAC WATTS, D.D." He was born in
1674, was devoted to books from his infancy, and began to learn Latin
when four years old. Afterwards, as a youth he became so proficient
at school that friends proposed to provide for his support at the
university (he was the eldest of nine children, and the family, while
not indigent, was not rich), but he declined the offer because he could
not conscientiously belong to the Church of England. He cast in his lot
with the Dissenters, and became one of the promoters of that mighty and
beneficent force in English religious and political life known as "the
Nonconformist Conscience." That his education did not suffer from the
choice he then made is clear from his later work. Dr. Samuel Johnson,
who was a stiff Churchman, with no love for Dissenters in general, is
constrained, in his work on _English Poets_, to pay a warm tribute to
Dr. Watts' remarkable attainments, and says it was with great propriety
that in 1728 he received from Edinburgh and Aberdeen an unsolicited
diploma, by which he became a doctor of divinity. Dr. Johnson adds
a remark, which is commended to the earnest attention of American
colleges, which have done so much to bring honorary degrees into
contempt by their promiscuous bestowment, "Academical honors would have
more value, if they were always bestowed with equal judgment." He says
further that Dr. Watts was one of the first authors that taught the
Dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. "Whatever they
had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly
obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He showed
them that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished
diction."
Of his talents in general the same discriminating writer says that
"perhaps there was nothing in which he would not have excelled if
he had not divided his powers to different pursuits," and of his
character, that he admired Dr. Watts' meekness of opposition and
mildness of censure in theological discussion (qualities which no one
could attribute to Dr. Johnson himself), and that it was not only
in his book, but in his mind, that _orthodoxy_ was _united_ with
_charity_. Dr. Johnson concludes his appreciation of him with this
remark, "Happy will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his
verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his nonconformity,"
which shows both his exalted estimate of the man and his amusing
dislike of the Dissenter. But in nothing was the greatness of Dr.
Watts' character more clearly shown than in his nonconformity; and
his countrymen have continued to take his view of that matter in
ever-increasing numbers, so that now more than half of the English
people are nonconformists. But of that I shall have something to say at
another time.
CHAPTER III.
SALISBURY, SARUM, AND STONEHENGE.
SALISBURY, _June 30, 1902_.
For one who visits England as a student of history there is hardly
a better starting point than Southampton, as the most impressive of
the Druidical and Roman remains in Great Britain are less than forty
miles away, the capital city of Alfred the Great is only twelve miles
distant, the whole surrounding region is closely associated with the
Saxon, Danish, Norman and Plantagenet kings, and two of the most
interesting cathedrals in England are within easy reach by rail. One of
these cathedral towns, Salisbury, we selected as a suitable place in
which to spend quietly our first Sunday in the Old World, having landed
at Southampton Saturday afternoon. So, after we had given a few hours
to the principal sights of Southampton, we took a train for Salisbury,
twenty-nine miles distant, and, after a short and delightful journey
through the tranquil rural scenery, which is characteristic of Southern
England, reached our destination refreshed rather than wearied by our
experiences since leaving the ship.
[Sidenote: A Fascinating Cathedral Town.]
We recognized the place, even before our train stopped, by the
cathedral spire, which is 406 feet high, the loftiest in England, and
which dominates all views of the town. This richly adorned spire is one
of three things which entitles this cathedral to special attention,
the other two being, first, its lovely close, unsurpassed in size and
beauty, a glorious expanse of velvety sward, shaded by lofty trees;
and secondly, the uniformity and harmony of its architecture, making
it the most symmetrical and graceful of all English cathedrals. The
interior is less interesting, having no wealth of monuments like
Winchester, Westminster, and St. Paul's, and no profusion of stained
glass windows like York.
On Sunday we attended service in the cathedral, and found it formal,
cold and unsatisfying. I yield to no man in my admiration of the beauty
of these vast and venerable cathedrals, but they have been in some
respects a hindrance to vital religion, as I shall endeavor to show in
a later letter. This one at Salisbury was erected in the middle of the
thirteenth century, so that for six hundred and fifty years it has been
used continuously as a place of Christian worship, first Romish and now
Anglican.
But on Monday we made an excursion which took us back to a still more
remote antiquity. One mile to the north of Salisbury at Old Sarum (a
name well known to students of English politics as that of the "rotten
borough," which till 1832 had the privilege of sending two members
to Parliament, though without a single inhabitant), crowning a great
hill which commands the surrounding country for miles, stands the
vast, grass-clad earthworks of an ancient Roman fortress, the largest
entrenched camp in the kingdom. That is old, but we are bound for
something older still, and so we continue our drive northwards.
One great charm of the summer in Great Britain is the cool weather. The
English people never have to endure the withering heats to which we
are subjected in America. This year it has been much cooler even than
usual. So, as we drive on through the June day, although the sun is
shining brightly, the air is bracing and exhilarating.
[Sidenote: Rural Scenery in Southern England.]
Another marked difference between this country and most parts of
ours is the extraordinary finish of the landscape, due to scantiness
of forests, absence of undergrowth, thoroughness of tillage, and
especially the luxuriance and smoothness of the turf. The quiet beauty
of rural England has a perpetual charm. When I was here some years ago
it was May, the hawthorn hedges were in bloom, and the whole country
was robed in tender green. Before landing this time I felt some regret
that we should not see it in the same lovely attire, thinking of the
difference between early May and late June in America. But I find it
even more beautiful than when I first saw it. The farmers were cutting
the lush grass in some places, impregnating the air with the delicious
fragrance of new-mown hay. In other fields the wheat was standing
thick, with here and there a blaze of scarlet poppies, sometimes an
acre or two in extent, a solid mass of brilliant red, no green or other
color visible at all. Still prettier, if possible, are the scattered
poppy blooms in a field of half ripe grain, looking like ruby bubbles
on a gently moving, sunlit sea.
The youngsters in our party are interested to see horses hitched tandem
to the wide hay wains in the fields, and to observe that when we meet a
double team in the road, instead of being harnessed as two horses are
with us, on each side of a tongue, here each of the two horses is in
his own pair of shafts. Nor are they slow to observe that teams always
turn to the left in passing each other, instead of to the right as with
us, and the same rule is observed in the running of trains on a double
track railway.
No frame houses are to be seen in town or country. We have not seen a
wooden house since we landed. All are of brick or stone, though many
of them in the country are covered with thatch, sometimes with clay
tiles. But slate is more and more superseding these old-fashioned
materials. This does not promote the cottager's comfort. Slate roofs
are hotter in summer and colder in winter than those of straw, and, of
course, too, they are far less picturesque. I observe that many farmers
thatch even their stone and brick fences to prevent the water from
coming in and freezing, to the injury of the masonry. No wooden fences
are seen, and few of wire. They are either living hedges of thorn or
privet or the like, or they are walls of stone or brick. In short, the
improvements look more substantial than ours, the agricultural methods
more thorough, the country more finished, and, I should think, more
comfortable to live in, in the material sense. Very striking is the
universal love of flowers. Every little village yard, if but three or
four feet wide, and every cottage window, however humble, has its rows
of brilliant geraniums, and other ornamental plants.
[Sidenote: Impressiveness of Stonehenge.]
And now, after a drive of nine miles, we reach Salisbury Plain, a name
familiar to me from early boyhood from the title of a little book that
used to be read in many homes, _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_. As
we came up, sure enough, there was a shepherd on one of the green
slopes, with his flock and his shepherd dog. We give them but a glance,
however, for our attention is instantly claimed by the object which we
have come so far to see, Stonehenge, "the most imposing megalolithic
monument in Britain," a group of great stones which seem originally to
have been arranged in two concentric circles enclosing two ellipses,
but some are now fallen. Of the outer circle, which was one hundred
feet in diameter, seventeen stones are still standing, with six of the
great cap-stones over them. The largest uprights of the whole group,
those near the centre of the circle, were twenty-two and a half feet
high, and the transverse blocks were three and a half feet thick. These
are, therefore, quite large stones, but it is not their size that gives
them their interest. The ancient Egyptians handled much larger stones
than these. It is their antiquity, and the mystery, still unsolved,
as to the purpose for which they were erected. Were they placed here
by the Druids? If so, for what purpose? The name does not help us,
_Stonehenge_ being but a corruption of the Saxon name, meaning "hanging
stones." Were they intended for a temple of the sun, or a calendar in
stone for the measurement of the solar year, or a huge gallows on which
defeated enemies were hung in honor of Woden, or a sepulchral circle
connected with the burial of the dead? No positive answer can be given,
but the last mentioned view is now regarded as the most probable,
and is confirmed by the existence in the immediate vicinity of great
turf-covered barrows, or burial places. These barrows are of the Bronze
Age, and to this same remote period Stonehenge itself is referred by
the best authorities.
The present owner of Salisbury Plain has recently enclosed Stonehenge
with a wire fence and charges an admission fee of a shilling. The
public resents this in the case of a unique and world-renowned
monument, which for ages has stood in the open, freely accessible to
all, and there was not a little satisfaction at finding that, as a sort
of road ran along within a few feet of it, and as the closing or moving
of this thoroughfare could not be permitted by the county authorities,
the fence in question had to run so close to the famous cromlech, after
all, that the proposed exclusion of the public without payment of a fee
has amounted to very little. Visitors can come so near, and can get so
good a view of all that is to be seen that but few pay the fee and go
inside the enclosure.
[Sidenote: Other Things of Interest about Salisbury.]
We return to Salisbury by a different road, which takes us for miles
through the meadows of one of those "sweet and fishful rivers," which
add so much to the quiet charm of the scenery, placid and clear,
flowing softly not only between grassy banks but over grassy beds,
the grass growing luxuriantly from the bottom, and being cut from the
stream by the hay harvesters, as though it were on the open meadow.
On reaching the town, I went to the Market Square to see the bronze
statue of a man for whom I had always felt respect and admiration since
studying his work on Political Economy when I was a student in college,
Mr. Fawcett, a talented native of this place, who, though he had the
misfortune to lose his sight early in life, by the accidental discharge
of a gun in the hands of his own father, nevertheless became a student,
a professor, an author, a man of affairs, a member of Parliament, and
Postmaster-General of Great Britain--a fine example of the triumph of
character and will over grievous limitations.
It added to the interest of our visit to Salisbury, and especially of
our walk through the lovely grounds of the Bishop's Palace, to see
this dignitary of the Church of England in his clerical garb, with
apron, knee breeches, and all, except that he was bareheaded, romping
delightedly on the lawn with a little girl, probably his granddaughter,
and to recollect that the Bishop of Salisbury, after bringing the
wealth of his undoubted scholarship to his recent book, _The Ministry
of Grace_, had declared, like Dean Stanley, Bishop Lightfoot and
Dean Milman, that "throughout the early church, even at Rome, and
Alexandria, down to the third century, the government of the church
was Presbyterian," thus going even farther than Stanley, who says that
"nothing like modern Episcopacy existed before the beginning of the
second century."
It interested us also to recall that Addison, Fielding, and Bishop
Burnet had resided here. So, considering these things, and those above
mentioned, we all left Salisbury reluctantly, declaring with one accord
that it was an exceedingly interesting place, and wondering whether
even Winchester could equal it.
CHAPTER IV.
WINCHESTER WORTHIES: ALFRED THE GREAT, IZAAK WALTON, AND THOMAS KEN.
WINCHESTER, _July 2, 1902_.
[Sidenote: Memorials of Kings, Good and Bad.]
Unquestionably the most interesting town in the south of England to
a student of history is Winchester. It was the ancient capital of
the kingdom, and teems with memories of Alfred the Great, Canute,
William the Conqueror, and many of their successors. Thorneycroft's
fine bronze statue of Alfred stands in the middle of the High Street,
and instantly catches the eye of any one looking up or down this
central thoroughfare. As we paused in front of it for a few moments,
I had the pleasure of hearing two little boys from America, who are
travelling with me, recall Alfred's diligence as a student, and his
winning of the book offered by his mother as a prize; his invention
of a candle chronometer, and of the lanthorn, as well as the familiar
incident of the scolding given him by the neatherd's wife for his
negligence in allowing her cakes to burn. The purity of his character,
his self-sacrificing labors for his people, and the righteousness and
prosperity of his reign have caused him to shine like a star in the
long succession of English kings, who have too often been selfish,
grasping, licentious or tyrannical.
For example, in Winchester Cathedral, close at hand, lie the remains of
Hardicanute, the last Danish monarch, who died of excessive drinking.
The fact that a man is buried in a cathedral argues nothing here as to
his piety. If he wore the crown, or won battles, or wrote poems, he is
given a place in God's house, regardless of his character.
But, besides men like Hardicanute or William Rufus, Winchester
Cathedral boasts the possession of mortuary chests containing the bones
of Canute, Egbert, Ethelwulf, and other kings. There is a monumental
brass on the wall in memory of Jane Austen the novelist, who is buried
under the pavement.
[Sidenote: Memorial of the Gentle Fisherman.]
But by far the most interesting thing of this kind in the cathedral,
is the floor slab which marks the resting place of Izaak Walton, the
Prince of Fishermen (1593-1683), and the author of _The Compleat
Angler_, concerning which it has been truthfully said that Walton
"hooked a much bigger fish that he angled for" when he offered
his quaint treatise to the public. There is hardly a name in our
literature, even of the first rank, whose immortality is more secure,
or whose personality is the subject of a more devoted cult. Not only
is he the _sacer vates_ of a considerable sect in the religion of
recreation, but multitudes who have never put a worm on a hook--even on
a fly-hook--have been caught and securely held by his picture of the
delights of the gentle craft and his easy, leisurely transcript of his
own simple, peaceable, loving, and amusing character." When, on the
outbreak of the civil war, he retired from business as milliner for
men in London, he went to a place in the country which he had bought,
but we are told that he spent most of his time "in the families of
the eminent clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved." He
married twice, both wives being of distinguished clerical connection,
the second, Anne Ken, sister of Thomas Ken, afterwards Bishop of Bath
and Wells. Of Thomas Ken we shall have something in particular to
say presently. As we strolled, after supper, along the banks of the
Itchen, from whose clear and grassy waters Walton himself had drawn so
many fish, it was interesting to come upon anglers plying his beloved
vocation. By the way, long before the time of Walton, there were
people at Winchester who were fond of fish, and oysters, too. We read
that, before the Reformation, the monks of Netley Abbey, twelve miles
distant, were wont to keep their brethren at Winchester supplied during
Lent with oysters from Southampton Water, they in return receiving
forty-two flagons of ale weekly.
Enough has been said above to show that no church in Great Britain,
outside of London, is richer in monuments than Winchester Cathedral.
It has also the distinction of great size, being 556 feet long,
the longest nave in England. But the exterior is heavy, without a
suggestion of the symmetry and grace of Salisbury.
[Sidenote: Wit in Winchester College.]
The other "lion" of Winchester, also, has a very uninviting and even
forbidding exterior. This is the ancient College, a school for boys,
where Alfred himself is said to have been educated, though William of
Wykeham refounded it in 1382. The front of it looks like a prison,
but within the quadrangles, and stretching far back to the river, are
lovely grounds covered with grass as green and smooth as a velvet
carpet. The best thing I saw here was the following inscription on the
walls of a school-room, accompanied by the painted emblems which I
mention below in brackets:
_Aut disce._ [A mitre and crosier, as the expected rewards of
learning.]
_Aut discede._ [An inkhorn and sword, the emblems of the civil and
military professions.]
_Manet sors tertia caedi._ [A rod.]
Which may be freely translated, "Either learn, or depart hence, or
remain and be chastised," though the pithy, alliterative rendering in
vogue among the boys is better, "Work, or walk, or be whopped" (_h_
silent in the last word). American boys would probably have rendered
it, "Learn, or leave, or be licked."
The school has revenues of nearly $100,000 per annum. There are 420
pupils. A number of them were having their supper as we passed through
the dining-hall, eating from square beech-wood trenchers instead of
plates, talking in shrill tones, and nudging and pushing each other
just like American boys, unimpressed by the fact that the heavy, narrow
tables from which they were eating were five hundred years old. How
like boys it was to call the water pipe in the quadrangle, at which
they wash their hands and faces, "Moab," and the place where they
blacked their shoes, "Edom," because in Psalm lx. 8, it is said, "Moab
is my wash-pot, I will cast my shoe over Edom."
[Sidenote: A Lovely Churchman.]
As we walked through the ancient cloisters we came upon another
characteristically boyish thing, a name cut on one of the stone pillars
in clear, strong letters--"Tho Ken 1665"--and hardly anything in
Winchester interested me so much as this, for the boy who cut it there,
nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, became afterwards the author
of what we call "the long metre doxology," four lines which have been
sung more frequently than any other four lines in the English language,
and which for generations to come will express the praise of increasing
millions. This doxology was written by Ken as a concluding stanza to
his famous Morning, Evening and Midnight Hymns, the best known of
which, perhaps, is his evening hymn, "Glory to thee, my God, this
night."
But there are other reasons why it was a pleasure to be vividly
reminded of Ken at Winchester. He was a man of singularly modest,
sweet, and lovable disposition. Macaulay says that his character
approached, "as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal
perfection of Christian virtue." Yet he was no weakling, and on two
notable occasions he showed that, mild and gentle as he was, he was
also firm and fearless.
When the profligate Charles II. was at Winchester, waiting for the
completion of his palace there, he requested Ken, then prebendary at
Winchester, to lend his house temporarily to the notorious Nell Gwynn,
the King's mistress. Ken refused to let such a person have his house.
Charles does not seem to have resented the affront, for he afterwards
made Ken Bishop of Bath and Wells. It is one of the abominations of
the English union of Church and State, that a thoroughly depraved man
like Charles II., if he succeeds to the throne, becomes _ipso facto_
the head of the Church of England. By the way, the altar books in black
letter in Winchester Cathedral were presented to the church by this
same graceless Charles II. Things get badly mixed under such a system
as that of the Church of England.
[Sidenote: Ken's Defiance of James II.]
The second occasion on which Ken showed that, notwithstanding the
infelicities of the national church, she does have men who will stand
for God against the King when necessity arises, was when James II.,
without calling Parliament, issued what he called a declaration for
liberty of conscience, the real aim of which was to put England again
under the yoke of Romanism, and ordered that this declaration should
be read in every cathedral and church in the kingdom. Ken and six
other bishops refused, and they were arrested, and committed to the
Tower of London. Instantly a blaze of popular indignation burst forth.
Enormous crowds assembled to see the seven bishops embark, the shore
was covered with crowds of prostrate spectators, who asked their
benediction, as did also the very soldiers sent to arrest them. The
bishops bore themselves well throughout, and, a few days after, when
they were tried in Westminster Hall, and the verdict "Not guilty" was
brought in, there was a tumultuous outburst of joy. Thus Ken bore his
bold and manly part in the revolution, which finally swept the Stuarts
from the throne, and delivered England, for the time, from the menace
of Romish domination.
Winchester, then, with her ancient cathedral and her ancient school,
with her Alfred the Great, her Izaak Walton, and her Thomas Ken, with
her wealth of heroic, and gentle and saintly memories, has given us two
of the most profitable days of our sojourn in Southern England.
CHAPTER V.
THE UGLINESS AND THE CHARM OF LONDON.
LONDON, _July 3, 1902_.
Vastness and dinginess are the two features of London which make the
deepest impression upon the visitor from America. Byron's description
is exact--
"A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping,
Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye
Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping
In sight, then lost amid the forestry
Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peeping
On tip-toe through their sea-coal canopy;
A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown
On a fool's head--and there is London town."
Up to the time of Sir Richard Whittington, in the sixteenth century,
the burning of coal in London was considered such a nuisance that it
was punished by death. A dispensation to burn coal was first made in
favor of Whittington, and this innovation on his part has affected the
great city, of which he was four times Lord Mayor, infinitely more than
the success of his celebrated venture in bringing up and selling a cat,
which enabled him to lay the foundation of other investments. Yet the
story of the cat is known to boys and girls the world over, while the
story of the coal is known to comparatively few, even of their elders.
Coal serves the same purposes in London that it does elsewhere, of
course. But, while elsewhere it warms only thousands of people,
and makes steam for only thousands of factories, locomotives, and
steamboats, here it warms and works for more than five millions.
The output of smoke from this unparalleled consumption of coal is,
of course, something enormous, and when we consider that the weather
itself is frequently, perhaps I may say generally, dull, heavy and
thick, with an amount of clouds and rain unknown to our brilliant
American climate, it is not strange that the fogs of London are the
thickest and most dangerous in the world, sometimes producing complete
darkness at midday, and necessitating the lighting of the gas, as
though it were midnight, and at other times producing a peculiar
gloom, which is so impervious to light itself that the traffic of the
streets has to be stopped for hours. Nor is it strange that the city is
begrimed to an extraordinary degree from one end to the other.
[Sidenote: The Æsthetic Value of Soot.]
I have a friend in America, whom I sometimes jestingly call an
"Anglomaniac," because he admires Great Britain and her belongings so
much. I once accused him of trying to convince me that the sky was
bluer and the grass greener in Canada than in the United States--and
who speaks of the blackness of the London buildings as "richness." It
is interesting to find that he is supported in this view by some of
the best writers on London. Hare, for instance, in speaking of St.
Paul's Cathedral, emphasizes this point, "Sublimely impressive in its
general outlines, it has a peculiar sooty dignity all its own, which,
externally, raises it immeasureably above the fresh, modern-looking St.
Peter's at Rome. G. A. Sala says, in one of his capital papers, that it
is really the better for 'all the incense which all the chimneys since
the time of Wren have offered at its shrine, and are still flinging up
every day from their foul and grimy censers.' Here and there only is
the original grey of the stone seen through the overlaying blackness."
Nathaniel Hawthorne, too, says, "It is much better than staring
white; the edifice would not be nearly so grand without this drapery
of black." By the way, the whole cost of St. Paul's, which was nearly
four million dollars, was paid by a tax on every chaldron of coal
brought into the port of London, "on which account it is said that the
cathedral has a special claim of its own to its smoky exterior."
Whatever one may think of these views, as to the æsthetic value of soot
on great stone buildings like St. Paul's, it must be admitted by all
that London, as a whole, is intensely ugly. Henry James, speaking of
one of the fashionable quarters of the city, says, "As you walk along
the streets, you look up at the brown brick house-walls, corroded
with soot and fog, pierced with their straight, stiff window-slits,
and finished, by way of cornice, with a little black line resembling
a slice of curbstone. There is not an accessory, not a touch of
architectural fancy, not the narrowest concession to beauty." In the
indictment thus brought against one quarter of the city, it will be
observed that there are other counts besides the soot, such as the
monotony and plainness of the architecture and the character of the
building materials, and in both particulars London does compare very
unfavorably with some other cities.
[Sidenote: Brick vs. Stone.]
There are, of course, some very handsome stone buildings, such as the
British Museum, the new Parliament Buildings, many of the churches,
and some of the government offices and private residences, but most of
the houses are constructed of ugly brownish yellow brick, and capped
with rigid rows of chimney pots. The same thing is true of English
towns in general, and is one of the most obvious points of inferiority
on their part to the cities and towns of Scotland. Of Glasgow as it
was in the eighteenth century, then, of course, but a small place
in comparison with its present size, Sir Walter Scott wrote, in _Rob
Roy_, "The principal street was broad and important, decorated with
public buildings of an architecture, rather striking than correct in
point of taste, and running between rows of tall houses, built of
stone; the fronts of which were occasionally richly ornamented with
mason-work--a circumstance which gave the street an imposing air of
dignity and grandeur, of which most English towns are in some measure
deprived, by the slight, unsubstantial, and perishable quality and
appearance of the bricks with which they are constructed." Of the
later Glasgow of his time, Hawthorne said, "It is the stateliest city
in the kingdom." The adjective was well chosen. Those solid, strong,
stone-built Scotch cities, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and others,
are stately, as no English cities of brick are or can be; though there
is also a suggestion of sombreness or severity about them, which seems
to belong to that dour, grey land of the North; so that, after all,
the Scottish cities do not afford the strongest contrast to London's
dingy masses of brick. To find that, we must look to some of the cities
of the Continent, especially Paris, the cleanest, brightest, and most
beautiful of all the great capitals of the world. The Parisian climate
is clearer, there is less fog and smoke, the houses are built of a
white stone that gives the city a singular fairness to the eye, quite
different from the rather gloomy greyness of the Scottish cities, and,
of course, antipodal to the brick and grime of London. Moreover, the
streets of Paris, driven this way and that through squalid tenement
districts by Baron Hausmann, in his renovation of the city thirty or
forty years ago, are broad and splendid thoroughfares, abounding in
pure air, bright sunlight and green trees, all as different as possible
from the cramped and tortuous streets and alleys of the British
metropolis. "London has had no aedile like Hausmann." Few things add so
much to the attractiveness of great cities as handsome streets along
the water fronts. In Paris, on both sides of the Seine throughout its
entire course in the city, are broad, well-paved, and well-shaded
_Quais_, flanked by noble rows of stone buildings, while in London the
Victoria Embankment is almost the only worthy improvement along the
Thames. This Embankment is unquestionably a fine work, but as one walks
along the broad stone pavement of it, the view he gets on the other
side of the river is made up principally of dirty wharves and hideous
warehouses.
In many respects, also, London is untidy. Orange peel, paper and trash
are much in evidence. Why should there not be street scavengers like
those who keep even the small towns in France and Germany quite free
from that kind of litter?
[Sidenote: Immensity and Multitude.]
Strictly speaking, London is not a city, but, as Madame de Stael called
it, "a province of brick," and it looks as though it might become a
continent, for, though there are already more people in it than in
the whole of Scotland, and more than twice as many as in the whole of
Norway, it is still growing rapidly. It has more than three thousand
miles of streets. In spreading thus, the great city has reached out to,
and absorbed, many towns that once stood around it. By the way, this
accounts, to some extent for the fact that so many streets in London
have the same name. I venture to think that the most preposterous and
vexatious system of nomenclature ever in vogue is that which has been
employed for the streets of London. Until quite recently there were 166
different streets in this city bearing the name of New, 151 Church, 129
Union, 127 York, 119 John, 109 George, and so on. Of late some part
of this infuriating ambiguity has been removed by certain changes, but
enough of it still remains to baffle and puzzle the visitor, and to
cause him the loss of much valuable time and some temper.
[Sidenote: The Body is More than Raiment.]
I have not flattered London. The picture drawn above is repulsive.
Perhaps some of my readers are ready to ask whether such a place can
be attractive. Yes. Bulwer says of it, in _Ernest Maltravers_, "The
public buildings are few, and, for the most part, mean; the monuments
of antiquity not comparable to those which the pettiest town in Italy
can boast of; the palaces are sad rubbish; the houses of our peers and
princes are shabby and shapeless heaps of bricks. But what of all this?
The spirit of London is in her thoroughfares--her population! What
wealth--what cleanliness--what order--what animation! How majestic,
and yet how vivid, is the life that runs through her myriad veins!"
Externally, Paris is incomparably more beautiful than London, but the
fundamental characteristics of the French people are not to be named
with those of the British. The charm of London is deeper than that of
Paris; it wears better; it lasts longer.
"Sir," said Dr. Johnson to Boswell, as they sat in the Mitre Tavern,
in the centre of the city, "the happiness of London is not to be
conceived, but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say
there is more learning and science within the circumference of ten
miles from where we sit than in all the rest of the kingdom." And
again, "He who is tired of London is tired of existence."
It is the history of the city and the character of the people, rather
than the shape and color of their houses, that give London her abiding
charm. And, with her vast treasures of literature, science, and art,
what a paradise the great smoky city is to all readers and students,
in spite of her wretched climate, and her oppressively dingy _tout
ensemble_!
It is only fair to add that the famous French sculptor, M. Rodin,
has recently been expressing his admiration for the smoky British
metropolis, declaring that "nothing could be more beautiful than the
rich, dark, and ruddy tones of London buildings, in the grey and golden
haze of the afternoon."
CHAPTER VI.
THE ENGLISH VIEW OF THE FOURTH OF JULY.
LONDON, _July 4, 1902_.
It is the custom of the American Ambassador to England to give a
reception every year, on the Fourth of July, to any of his countrymen
who may be sojourning in the British metropolis. Being in London
on the recurrence of that memorable date in 1902, we made it our
special business to attend this reception. It did not differ from
the conventional affair of this kind. Mr. and Mrs. Choate and their
daughter received their guests with gracious cordiality. The house
is a large one, well furnished, and worthy to be the home of the
representative of the greatest nation in the world. All the great
halls, wide stairways, and spacious parlors were thrown open as well
as the large dining-room, on the first floor, where refreshments were
served, and a wide spreading marquee on the terrace in the rear, where
lively music was discoursed and these were all filled with people, well
dressed, and, for the most part, well-bred ladies and gentlemen, the
ladies predominating a company so numerous as to give one a very strong
impression of the number of Americans visiting London in the summer.
This season may, indeed, have been exceptional, as the coronation of
the King had been expected to take place in the latter part of June.
But apart altogether from that, it would have been a large crowd, and
it is certain that, under ordinary conditions, the number of our people
visiting London steadily increases year by year, and that they feel at
home there, as among their own kith and kin, to a degree unknown in any
other of the European capitals.
[Sidenote: Increasing Friendliness between America and England.]
Speaking by and large, I believe that we like and trust the British
people, and that they like and trust us. A marked change has come over
the feelings of both peoples within the last quarter of a century. I
remember well that when I was a boy, the school histories of the United
States had the effect of making all the American boys hate the English.
They were not informed that many of the English people, including some
of their greatest statesmen, deprecated earnestly the oppressive acts
of the British government which led to the American Revolution, and
that now the people of Great Britain are practically unanimous in the
opinion that their government was wrong, and the Americans right in
that great conflict. If any reader doubts this, I beg leave to call his
attention to some statements found in a pamphlet called "Pictures from
England's Story," which I bought at a London news stand. It belongs to
a series of such works called "Books for the Bairns," which are written
by English authors for the instruction of English children, and which,
though well printed, in clear, bold type, and copiously illustrated,
are sold at the almost incredibly small price of one penny apiece.
[Sidenote: How the English now View the American Revolution.]
"Most of the pictures which you will find in this book are pictures of
English victories, but there is one picture, and that one of the most
significant of all, of an English defeat. This is the picture of the
battle of Bunker's Hill, that was fought in America. I want you to take
particular notice of that picture, because, although the English were
defeated, it was much better for them to be defeated than it would have
been for them to have been victorious. You will often be told that
you must always be glad when your country is victorious, but that is
not true, for justice and right are greater than your country. When
your country fights against justice, and against right, and against
liberty, it is fighting against God, and even if it succeeds for the
time being, it will always suffer in the long run. In the war which
began with the battle of Bunker's Hill, England was in the wrong. Every
one admits that now, but at the time when it was fought, the King and
his ministers, and most of the people of England, believed that they
were in the right, because it was the cause of England, and England was
the home of liberty, and it seemed to them quite absurd to think that
the American farmers could have right on their side. But the American
farmers were in the right. They were few, they were poor, they had
no army, they had no king, and they had no parliament, and it seemed
quite impossible to our forefathers of those days to think that such a
small people could possibly stand up against the armies and the navies
of Great Britain. But Great Britain was in the wrong. The Americans
were the English people who had gone across the sea to make new homes
for themselves in another country, where they could be free to govern
themselves in their own way, without interference from the British
government. They were good people, honest, hard-working, pious folk,
who had carried with them across the sea the English love of liberty
and self-government.
[Sidenote: A Fair Statement of the Question and the Conflict.]
"The English in England had been victorious in their war against
France. They were governed by a German king, who was much less in
sympathy with English ideas than were the Americans, and he believed,
and the majority of the English in England agreed with him at the time
that the Americans ought to be content to be governed by governors
sent out from England, and should be willing to pay the taxes, which
the English Parliament ordered them to pay. Now the English have
always maintained that no king or government has a right to compel the
people to pay any money for the support of the government unless the
people consent to pay it. Taxation without representation is tyranny,
and the Americans said, that as they had no voice in the election of
the English Parliament, which made the taxes, they were not bound
to pay them. The English said, that whether they liked it or not,
the Americans must pay them. The Americans said they would not. The
English said they would make them, and they sent an army to America
to compel the Americans to pay the taxes, and to obey the King and
Parliament. In doing this they were sinning against the first principle
of English liberty, and the Americans took up arms to defend their
liberty against the English soldiers. They met at Bunker's Hill, and,
to the astonishment of every one, the undrilled farmers, who knew how
to shoot, met and defeated the disciplined troops of England. England
sent thousands upon thousands of men across the Atlantic; they defeated
the Americans again and again; they burned their houses; they ravaged
their country; they captured all their cities; but still the Americans
went on fighting, because they were of the true English breed, and
they would rather lose their lives than give up the independence of
their country. They were not independent at first, they were British
colonists; but when they found themselves attacked by the British, they
declared their independence, and formed themselves into a republic,
without a king, or a House of Lords, or an Established Church.
[Sidenote: What England Learned from Fighting against her own
Principles.]
"The war went on for long years; it cost England a hundred millions of
money, and thousands upon thousands of brave soldiers; but the English
were fighting against their own English principles, which were defended
by George Washington and the Americans with such bravery and heroism
that at last the English, notwithstanding all their pride, and their
wealth, and their power, had to give in, and own themselves beaten....
Fortunately, we were defeated, and from our defeat we learned a great
lesson, which we did not forget for nearly a hundred years. That lesson
is that it is impossible to govern a white, freedom-loving people
except by their own consent. We took that lesson to heart so much that
for nearly a hundred years we never again attempted to compel our
colonists to do anything they did not want to do. We gave them freedom,
and let them govern themselves upon the true English principles which
George Washington fought for, and which George III. fought against.
The British Empire, of which we are so proud to-day, exists because
the principles of George III. were knocked on the head at the battle
of Bunker's Hill, and in the long war which followed it.... The United
States of America are now a great nation, which is more numerous and
more powerful than Great Britain."
This candid and manly statement, made by an English author and
published broadcast for the instruction of English children, is one of
the most interesting things I have encountered in England, and I have
thought it worth while to quote it here in the interests of a still
better understanding between the two great nations of the same stock,
and the same speech, and the same political ideals.
A slighter indication of the same English breadth of view in regard
to this question was given by the good ladies who have charge of the
pleasant boarding house, on Torrington Square, which we have made
our home on all our visits to London, and who, on the morning of the
Fourth of July, thought of it themselves, and had a tiny firecracker
lying by the plate of each young American in our party when we
came down to breakfast, besides other indications later in the day
of their readiness, though themselves staunchly British, to enter
sympathetically into the enthusiasm with which Americans celebrate the
natal day of our nation.
A movement has been started in London to erect a statue of George
Washington. It was decided that the subscriptions should be confined to
British subjects. Archdeacon Sinclair, in submitting the plan to the
(Puritan) Society, said:
"Englishmen have at last fully recognized the great qualities of
Washington. I feel assured that nothing will be more popular in this
country than such a tribute to that great man of English birth, who has
done so much for the world's history, not only for the young nation
across the sea, but for Great Britain as well."
Archdeacon Sinclair announced that he was authorized to offer a place
for the statue in St. Paul's Cathedral.
But now I find that I have become so much interested in the statement
of this reversal of British sentiment concerning the American struggle
for independence, that I have left myself no space to speak of the
burning question in England just now, in regard to which the government
has taken a position, extraordinary as this may seem, which violates
the same principles of liberty for which the Americans fought, and so I
must reserve that for another letter.
_P. S._--Since my return to America I have seen an interesting
statement by the Rev. R. J. Campbell, of London, in regard to the
steady increase of the pro-British feeling in the United States. He
says that a book has just been published by an American barrister
named Dos Passos, called _The Anglo-Saxon Century and the Unification
of the English-Speaking People_. This gentleman, although of Spanish
origin, is of American birth, and his interest in the future of his
own country had led him to examine that of ours. He believes that the
twentieth century is to be the Anglo-Saxon century, even more than the
nineteenth, and the conditions of an alliance, as advocated by him, are
as follows:
1. The Dominion of Canada voluntarily to divide itself into such
different States, geographically arranged, as its citizens desire,
in proportion to population, and each State to be admitted as a full
member of the American Union, in accordance with the conditions of the
Constitution of the United States.
2. To establish common citizenship between all citizens of the United
States and the British Empire.
3. To establish absolute freedom of commercial intercourse and
relations between the countries involved, to the same extent as that
which exists between the different States constituting the United
States of America.
4. Great Britain and the United States to coin gold, silver, nickel,
and copper money, not necessarily displaying the same devices or
mottoes, but possessing the same money value, and interchangeable
everywhere within the limits covered by the treaty, and to establish a
uniform standard of weights and measures.
5. To provide for a proper and satisfactory arbitration tribunal to
decide all questions which may arise under the treaty.
Much of this may seem chimerical and unsound, but there is certainly a
feeling in this country which is influencing things in the direction of
a better understanding, and a consciousness of a common destiny between
the British Empire and the United States. In private one is constantly
meeting with expressions of it, and I may as well add that nothing
has caused me more surprise than this one fact. One frequently hears
the hope expressed that a common citizenship may one day be possible
without any interference with the constitution of either country. This
is a new idea to me, and may be a fruitful one some day.
CHAPTER VII.
HOW THE ENGLISH REGARD THE AMERICANS.
LONDON, _July 10, 1902_.
There are many indications of a better understanding, and an increasing
confidence and regard between the two great English-speaking nations on
either side of the Atlantic. One such indication is the marked change
of tone on the part of English writers in their references to their
American cousins. The time was when, in British books and newspapers,
Americans were uniformly represented as coarse and loud. There are
still too many Americans, at home and abroad, who deserve to be so
described, but the old contemptuous tone towards Americans in general
is found only in an occasional writer who lives chiefly in the past.
For instance, Mr. Hare, the author of some of the best guide books for
reading people that have ever appeared, such as his _Walks in London_,
and his _Walks in Rome_, seems still to regard the average American
as the embodiment of bad taste and crass ignorance. In his book on
Florence, after speaking of various other hotels, and their picturesque
locations, he says, "Americans may possibly like the Savoy Hotel in the
horrible Piazza Vittorio Emanuele"; and in his book on Rome he says it
is depressing to hear Americans, when asked their opinion of the Venus
de Medici, say, "they guess they are not particularly gone on stone
gals." But Americans only smile as they read these things, remembering
that Hare is the same man who bewails the downfall of the papacy as a
temporal power, and who believes that the emancipation and unification
of Italy by Victor Immanuel was a calamity, notwithstanding the
steadily increasing prosperity of the people, and the steadily rising
financial credit of the nation, and notwithstanding the fact that every
unprejudiced observer acknowledges that the chief hindrance to still
more rapid progress is the swarm of fat priests and monks who still
infest Italy, and in the interest of the papacy oppose the new and
enlightened government at every turn.
[Sidenote: The English Admit that America Holds the Future.]
In short, Hare's view of the average American is now such an
anachronism as to entitle him fairly to be called a freak. He certainly
does not represent his countrymen of to-day in their view of the
spirit and culture of the American people. The usual tone of English
reference to them is not only not contemptuous, but respectful and
friendly, and in the case of the industrial and commercial enterprise
of the Americans there is even a tinge of fear in the tone in which
the English refer to them. For example, a very able and candid English
editor, in speaking of Mr. Andrew Carnegie's address as Rector of St.
Andrews University, last October, which he pronounces one of the most
remarkable addresses ever delivered in Great Britain, practically
admits that America has outstripped the mother country in this respect
at least. He says, "Mr. Carnegie is a personage. A man who has risen
from nothing to the summit of American finance is a man to be reckoned
with. Mr. Carnegie is also a Scotchman, and a devout lover of his
country. It is no pleasure to him to contemplate the decadence of
Great Britain. He is anxious to say the best he can for our country,
and yet the one thing to be noted in his address is his immense,
overpowering faith in America.... She has such resources, and is
increasing so rapidly that nothing can stand against her. Britain's
employers are wanting in energy and enterprise, and the employed think
too much of how little they need do, and too little of how much they
can do. Britain may maintain her present trade, but America will in
the lifetime of many people have a population equal to that of Europe
to-day, excluding Russia. America is not an armed camp, as Europe is.
It is one united whole at peace with itself, and enjoys immunity from
attack, while in machinery its position is far ahead of others....
That a man so shrewd, successful and experienced as Mr. Carnegie, and
so well disposed towards Britain, should have come reluctantly to the
conclusion that for Britain there is no future, and for America there
is the future of the world, is a fact of first-rate significance, and
we should like to see how he is to be answered." This is a remarkably
candid statement.
[Sidenote: English Candor and English Inconsistency.]
In my last letter I said that the English people now frankly
acknowledge that their forefathers were wrong in the war they waged
against the American colonies, and openly rejoice in the victory
achieved by Washington and his associates on behalf of the principle of
no taxation without representation, and I referred in closing to what
seems to be a strange inconsistency on the part of many of the English
people in upholding a policy at the present time, which involves a
violation of the same principle. The thing referred to was the new
Education Bill, perfidiously introduced into Parliament by the Tory
party, at the instigation of certain leaders of the Anglican Church,
at a time when that party had an overwhelming majority in the House of
Commons, a majority given it by the country for the specific purpose
of bringing the war in South Africa to a speedy and successful close,
and when the electors never dreamed of that majority being used to
promote sectarianism, and to oppress the consciences of a great body
of the people. The object of the bill is to tax the whole population
of England for the support of schools which are controlled, not by the
people, but by the ritualistic clergy of the Anglican Church, or, as an
evangelical clergyman of that church himself puts it, the intention of
the measure is "to hand the education of the coming generations over to
the Romanizing priesthood of the Anglican Church." The mere suggestion
of public support without public control ought to rouse the indignation
of a free people. But the bill proposes a worse thing even than this,
so far as the Nonconformists are concerned, for they are not only to be
asked to pay for the support of a religion they do not believe in, but
also to hand over their children to its teachers, in order that they
may be perverted. In other words, they are to be asked to pay for the
destruction of their own religion.
However apathetic some Englishmen may be in the face of such proposals,
that is the sort of thing that never fails to rouse liberty-loving
Scotland, and so, along with the earnest denunciations of the bill by
various organizations of English Free Churchmen, it has been heartily
condemned by all the great religious bodies of Scotland.
[Sidenote: Scotchmen and the Education Bill.]
_Saint Andrew_, as the weekly organ of the Church of Scotland is
called, says as to the origin, spirit and purpose of the measure,
"There is no real meaning in calling the party in the English Church,
which is at present the most indefatigable, the 'High Church' party.
The party is Romanist, pure and simple; and it is devoting itself to
the uprooting of the Protestantism of the young people of England....
Can we wonder at the intelligent Nonconformist revolting against
his children being brought under the fatally sinister influence
here referred to, and knowing the close connection between church
and school, resolving that he will resist, with all his might, the
perpetuation of a system in which general control of the public schools
shall be in the hands of men who openly inculcate the doctrine of the
corporeal presence, baptismal regeneration, prayers for the dead,
the duty of confession, adoration of the cross; and who beguile the
children of their schools to attend 'the sacrifice of the mass,' with
the incense and candles, and all the other paraphernalia under which
they have disguised the Lord's Supper?"
The folly of the Anglicans in this matter will hasten the fall of the
Established Church of England. And in any case the Nonconformists
will not have long to wait, for they are steadily and rapidly gaining
ground. In 1700 Dissenters were, in comparison with Churchmen, one
to twenty-two, in 1800, one to eight, and in 1900, one to one. That
shows that the day is not distant when real religious liberty shall
be established in England, and all such bigoted legislation as this
present Education Bill shall be swept from her statute books. Meantime,
it is certain that it will go on the books, notwithstanding its glaring
injustice. There is not a doubt that Mr. Balfour's government will push
the measure through, by means of the votes of its great war majority.
The consequence will be that thousands of Nonconformists will refuse
to pay the rates, then the King's officers will seize and sell some
of their property, and perhaps numbers of them will see the inside of
prison walls before all is over. But they will make history in England.
For, when men are sold out and imprisoned for the sake of conscience
and religious liberty and a historic English principle, viz., that of
public control of public funds--when these things occur, an idea will
begin to penetrate to the average English mind, the English sense of
fair play will be roused, and the English zeal for liberty kindled
anew, to say nothing of the English instinct of self-preservation--and
then the day of reckoning will have come.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BRITISH REPUBLIC AND THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
LONDON, _July 15, 1902_.
The nominal ruler of the British Empire is His Majesty, Edward VII.
The real ruler is the House of Commons. Though I was in Great Britain
at the time of the coronation, and saw something of the pomp with
which it was celebrated, I have not thought it worth while to occupy
the time of my readers with descriptions of it, since it is only one
of those glittering fictions which the English people see fit to
preserve, notwithstanding their general good sense--a somewhat childish
observance of outworn mediæval ceremonies, a foolish and expensive
form. But certainly I ought not to quit the subject of the political
ideas suggested by a sojourn in London, and especially by repeated
visits to that most interesting portion of it, Westminster, without
some reference to the part it has played in developing the model
of all the free governments of the world. For, as a British writer
has truly said, Westminster is historically the centre of politics,
not for London and Great Britain only, but for the civilized world.
"All civilized nations, both in Europe and America, as well as all
the British colonies, have now adopted the constitution which was
here founded and developed, with a single head of the State and two
chambers; though, with regard to the headship of the State and the
upper chamber, the elective has, in the most advanced politics, been
substituted for the hereditary principle, while in the cases of the
United States and Switzerland there is a federal as well as a national
element. The Roman imposed his institutions with arms upon a conquered
world; a willing world has adopted the institutions which had their
original seat at Westminster. But the British Constitution now means
little more than the omnipotence of the House of Commons. The immense
edifice is still styled the palace; but the King who now dwells in the
palace is the sovereign people."
[Sidenote: The Houses of Parliament.]
For this reason it is more common now to speak of the Palace of
Westminster as the Houses of Parliament. It is a vast and costly
pile, one of the largest Gothic buildings in the world, erected about
fifty years ago, in the Tudor style, at an outlay of fifteen million
dollars. The extremely florid exterior is constructed of a limestone so
perishable that already it costs ten thousand dollars a year to keep
it in repair. Tastes differ as to the merit of the architecture. Some
pronounce the building majestic and imposing. Others say that at a
little distance the river front looks like a large modern cotton mill.
All agree that there is too much elaborate ornamentation.
This is true of the interior, as well as the exterior, and, as some one
has said, it is interesting to observe the attempt made to preserve a
constitutional fiction by decorating with special gorgeousness that
Chamber of the House which has been stripped of all its power, viz.,
the House of Lords. It is resplendent in the vivid red leather which
covers the seats and backs of the straight benches, rising in tiers on
the opposite sides, and in the sumptuous frescoes of the walls, the
rich stained glass of the windows, and the excessive gilding of the
ceiling. The leather on the benches in the House of Commons is black,
and there is less of magnificence in general than in the Chamber of the
Peers, though it also is a rich interior.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT, LONDON.]
Yet neither of them makes an impression of spaciousness and
grandeur, and, to one who has seen the noble halls in which our
Senate and House of Representatives sit at Washington, both of these
legislative chambers of Britain seem small and cramped. They are also
mean and uncomfortable in their arrangements as compared with those
of our Congress. At Washington each member has his own chair, and
a desk for his books and papers. But here there are no desks, only
rigid benches, upon which the members sit or loll, facing each other
across the narrow chamber, the supporters of the government on the
Speaker's right, and the opposition on his left. Worst of all is the
fact that, though the combined science of the country was employed in
the construction of these halls of session and debate, they are both
wretched failures as to ventilation and acoustics, the House of Lords
being so bad in the latter particular that it used to be said that
members went out to buy an evening paper in order to learn what the
debate was about.
[Sidenote: Getting into the Lower House.]
As the House of Commons is King, we looked forward with eager interest
to a visit to that potent body. At the instance of our good friend,
Dr. Kerr, Sir James Campbell, a Presbyterian member of the House from
Scotland, wrote us an invitation to visit the Commons in session, but,
when we reached the door, at the appointed hour, and sent in our cards
through the line of policemen and doorkeepers, there was no reply.
When we had waited some time, a gentleman in the crowd at the entrance
accosted us, and asked if we were not Americans, and if we did not wish
to get into the House, both of which polite inquiries we answered with
an eager affirmative. He said he thought he could arrange it for us,
and, handing us his card, from which we learned that he was the London
correspondent of a great American newspaper, he left us for a minute,
and soon returned, accompanied by a friend of his, one of the Irish
members of the House, to whom we were introduced, and who promptly
procured us permission to enter the visitors' gallery. At Washington,
any one who chooses can go into the visitors' gallery, and listen to
the debates, but here there is a good deal of red tape. You must even
register your name and address, besides being introduced by a member,
before you can pass the turnstile and go in.
[Sidenote: The Debate and the Debaters.]
We soon discovered that we were very fortunate in gaining admission
just when we did, as the greatest question of the whole year, and,
indeed, the greatest question that has been before the House for many
years, was up, viz., the Education Bill, the object of which is to put
the schools of England, for the support of which the whole population
is taxed, under the control, not of the representatives of the public,
but of the ritualistic clergy of the Church of England; and in the
course of this very afternoon nearly every prominent man in both of the
great political parties was drawn into the discussion. When we entered,
Sir William Vernon Harcourt, the veteran Liberal statesman, had the
floor. Among others who followed him on the same side of the House were
Mr. James Bryce, the well-known author of _The Holy Roman Empire_ and
_The American Commonwealth_, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the leader
of the Liberal party in the House, and Mr. Lloyd George, who has made
the most active and brilliant opposition to this treacherous, sectarian
measure. The Irish Roman Catholics, who, of course, have voted steadily
and solidly with the Anglican High Churchmen for this iniquitous bill,
which strikes at the root of the fundamental republican principle of
public control of public funds, were represented in the debate by John
Dillon. Of the others who spoke in support of the bill, the two who
interested me most were Lord Hugh Cecil, the special patron of the
measure, and his gifted cousin, Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, the government
leader of the House. The former, who, I believe, is the son of the
veteran Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, is a slender, pale, nervous
young man, who advocates very narrow views in very good language,
nervously pressing or wringing his slim fingers the while, and who is
the special champion of the ritualists and reactionaries. Far more able
and far more interesting in every way is his accomplished kinsman,
Mr. Balfour, who, a few days later, was appointed Prime Minister. He
is a tall, ruddy, handsome Scotchman, with a rare grace and charm of
manner, and an exceptional air of high breeding, who speaks in a manly,
straightforward way, with no trace of the bitterness, or even the heat
so common in political discussions. When one notes the clearness of his
mind, and the attractiveness of his address, it gives a keener edge
to the regret that such a man should be on the wrong side of a great
question like this. Mr. Balfour is well known to the sporting world as
a golf player, and to the reading world as the author of a thoughtful
book on _The Foundations of Religious Belief_.
It will interest the readers of this paper to know that he is a
Presbyterian, as Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the leader of the
Opposition, also is. So that the leaders of both the great parties in
the House of Commons are Scotchmen and Presbyterians.
One of the interesting consequences of Great Britain's having a
Presbyterian Prime Minister is, that under their system of the union
of church and state, a Presbyterian will appoint the bishops and
archbishops of the Church of England to the vacancies of those offices
which occur during his premiership. This must be a very bitter pill for
the extreme High Churchmen.
[Sidenote: English and American Oratory.]
The failure of our arrangement with Sir James Campbell turned out to
be the result of a misunderstanding, so he courteously renewed it for
the following day, when his friend and fellow-member, Mr. Maxwell, who
is also a Scotch Presbyterian, met us at the door, in the absence of
Sir James, and, after showing us again everything of interest about the
Houses, including the restaurant, and the wide and spacious terrace,
running nearly the whole length of the building alongside the Thames,
where the members come, on fine afternoons, to drink their tea, ushered
us into seats "under the gallery" of the House, which are regarded as
the most desirable for visitors, since there the spectator is on a
level with the speakers.
The Education Bill was still under discussion, and we heard some good
speaking, but not so good as I have heard at Washington, and in the
Constitutional Convention at Richmond. The matter was generally good,
but the manner was in most cases constrained, if not hesitating, and
nearly all the members, including Mr. Balfour himself, have a habit
of grasping the lapels of their coats, "taking themselves in hand,"
as some one has described it. In short, the speaking itself lacks the
ease, freedom, fluency and force of our better American oratory.
However, it is only fair to give, before closing, the estimate of a
Canadian writer, who is familiar with both London and Washington, and
who says:
"The average of speaking is not so high in the House of Commons as
in Congress; but the level of the best speakers is higher. American
oratory almost always savors somewhat of the school of elocution, and
has the fatal drawback of being felt to aim at effect. The greatest
of English speakers, such as John Bright, the greatest of all, or
Gladstone, create no such impression; you feel that their only aim is
to produce conviction."
One of the most striking things about the House of Commons to the view
of an American visitor is the well-groomed appearance of the members.
They are invariably attired in faultless Prince Albert coats, often
with a boutonniere on the lapel, and they all wear silk hats, which, by
the way, they are not expected to take off during the sittings, except
when addressing the House. It is said to be the best-dressed assembly
in the world, and is in sharp contrast with the more democratic and
unconventional, not to say slovenly, mode of dressing which obtains in
our House of Representatives, where the ordinary costume is a long,
loose frock coat--sometimes even a sack--and a derby or felt hat.
CHAPTER IX.
CAMBRIDGE AND HER SCHOOLS.
CAMBRIDGE, _July 21, 1902_.
The Cathedral route from London to Edinburgh takes one through an
interesting stretch of eastern England, part of which is as flat as
Holland, with fens and canals and windmills, yielding, however, in the
north to a more rolling country, vestibule, as it were, to the hills
of Scotland. As its name indicates, this route affords the opportunity
of seeing in rapid succession the great cathedrals at Ely, Lincoln,
York, and Durham, not to speak of others. But nothing on this side of
England equals in interest the university town of Cambridge, with its
twenty colleges and three thousand students, its venerable collegiate
buildings, its far-famed "backs" (that is, the lovely lawns and stately
avenues behind the colleges), its clear and placid little river, and
its memories of great men and great causes. It is an exceptionally
clean town, of some forty-five thousand inhabitants.
[Illustration: CLARE COLLEGE AND KING'S CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE.]
[Sidenote: The Two University Towns.]
Oxford, farther west, is a somewhat larger city (about fifty-three
thousand), with twenty-three colleges and about three thousand
students, contains an unparalleled collection of picturesque academic
buildings, and has some single features which are not surpassed
anywhere, such as Magdalen (pronounced Maudlen) College, "the loveliest
of all the homes of learning," Addison's Walk, The Broad Walk, and the
"streamlike windings of that glorious street," to which Wordsworth
devoted a sonnet. But Cambridge, too, has some features which cannot
be paralleled, even in Oxford. For instance, Cambridge has, in
Trinity, the largest college in England. It has, in the chapel of
King's College, a building of marvellous beauty; Oxford cannot match
it, nor can it be matched anywhere in England save by that "miracle of
the world," the Chapel of Henry VII., in Westminster Abbey. The roll
of Cambridge's alumni is illustrious to a degree, having such names as
Bacon, Erasmus, Newton, Milton, Cromwell, Macaulay, Byron, Thackeray,
Tennyson, Wordsworth, Harvey (discoverer of the circulation of the
blood), Darwin, and many, many others equally well known.
[Sidenote: Cambridge more Progressive than Oxford.]
But the chief difference between Cambridge and Oxford is in the spirit
and influence of the two upon the nation and the world, and here the
glory of Cambridge excelleth. It used to be said in the fourteenth
century, "What Oxford thinks to-day, England thinks to-morrow."
But, as a matter of fact, it is Cambridge which has represented the
true progress of England and her modern political and intellectual
development, in such men as Milton and Cromwell, Isaac Newton and
William Pitt, Darwin and Tennyson. Oxford has stood chiefly for the
reactionary ideas of the High Church Anglicans.
The difference was sharply marked in the great testing time of the
seventeenth century, when the East supported the Parliament, and the
West supported the king. London and Cambridge were the centres of the
Puritan strength, Oxford was the capital of Charles I. Cromwell's
home was but a short distance from Cambridge, and he was a student at
Sidney-Sussex College, where we had the pleasure of seeing his rooms,
and the celebrated crayon portrait of him in the college hall. Roughly,
we might say, Cambridge has stood for the Parliament and the people,
Oxford for the king and the priests. At least, there has been more of
the spirit of freedom, democracy and progress at the eastern university
town than at the western.
[Sidenote: The Presbyterian Element.]
That the same difference still exists was indicated to us by a simple
fact. When we inquired at Oxford for a Presbyterian church, the
maid-servant said, "That is Protestant, isn't it?" She was evidently
a Romanist, but it is likely that most of the Church of England
people resident in Oxford never heard of Presbyterians, though our
denomination is so much larger than theirs. Oxford is the head centre
of Anglicanism, and there is no Presbyterian church there, though the
Congregationalists and Wesleyans are represented. But at Cambridge we
found a flourishing, though not yet a very large, church of our faith
and order, under the pastoral care of a gifted and earnest man, the
Rev. G. Johnston Ross, whose addresses at the Winona Conference, in
Indiana, this summer, gave so much satisfaction. We had the pleasure
of meeting him, and many of his people, at a pleasant garden party, to
which all the Presbyterians of Cambridge were invited.
By the way, we saw a thing in that church which we had never seen
before. When the minister read the Scripture lesson from the Old
Testament, in the English Version, the two ladies in whose pew we were
sitting opened the Hebrew Bible, and followed the reading in that,
and, in like manner, when the New Testament lesson was read, they
followed in the Greek text. To these two ladies whose learning has
been recognized by the Universities of St. Andrews and Heidelberg, in
the bestowment upon them of the degree of LL. D., and whose services
to the cause of biblical learning, in the discovery and editing of
the old Sinaitic Syriac manuscripts of the New Testament, have made
them famous throughout the world of scholars,[1] we had a letter of
introduction from a relative of theirs in Virginia, who is a kind
friend of ours. And thus we had the pleasure of meeting at their table
some of the choice spirits of the University, including the professors
in Westminster College, which is the theological seminary of the
Presbyterian Church in England.
[Sidenote: Westminster College.]
It was largely through the munificence of Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson,
the two elect ladies referred to above, that this institution was
transplanted from its former undesirable location, and established in
the city of Cambridge, thus bringing the Puritan theology back to its
original home in England. The financial agent who canvassed the English
Presbyterian Churches for the supplementing of the donation of these
two large-minded and large-hearted ladies was the Rev. Dr. John Watson,
of Liverpool, better known to the general reader as "Ian Maclaren,"
author of _Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush_, and other popular works; and
for special reasons it was with no ordinary interest that I examined
the result of his toils in the outfit with which the institution has
been provided. It is admirable. The location, indeed, is not so good or
so beautiful as that of Union Seminary, in Richmond, with its breezy
sweeps of green campus, and the building, which is of red brick like
ours, is not nearly so imposing as the handsome group at Richmond.
Everything, in fact, is on a much smaller scale, naturally so, as the
English Presbyterian Church is a much smaller body than our Southern
Church. But, on the other hand, there are some features that are
superior, _e. g._, the stairways are of stone, not of wood as with us.
The dining-hall is spacious, comely, cool, inviting, with ornamental
windows, and walls hung with portraits of Presbyterian worthies, and
the tables are heavy and handsome, of hard wood. No seminary in our
Southern Church, or in the Northern, has a sufficiently attractive
refectory. The one at Union Seminary is better than most of them, but
it, too, is below the mark. Some benevolent person can do a great work
for our future ministry by presenting that institution with a properly
equipped refectory building.
The rooms occupied by the students at Westminster are much smaller
than ours at Union, and seem in some cases cramped, but there is a
bath-room for every four students. I fear this will seem almost a
sinful degree of cleanliness to those brethren who a few years ago were
so much opposed to the introduction of any bath-rooms and other modern
conveniences into our seminary.
There are three professors at Westminster College, Cambridge: Principal
Dykes, Dr. Gibb, and Professor Skinner; and twenty-three students, a
slightly smaller number than last year.
[Sidenote: The same Difficulties about Candidates.]
The churches here are facing the same problem that confronts those in
America as to an adequate supply of ministers. The number of candidates
is decreasing rapidly in Scotland. Some attribute this decline to
the stagnant spiritual condition of the churches throughout Europe
and America, and connect it with the spread of devitalizing critical
theories concerning the Scriptures. But the zeal and activity of the
churches do not seem to be deficient in other particulars. It is not a
question to discuss here, but it is one for Christian people to think
about and pray over.
The identity of our difficulties in America and Britain may be
seen again in the fact that here also the theological schools are
complaining that the universities are graduating men with the degree of
A. B. who have never studied Greek. How can a man without Greek master
the New Testament in the original? Is it not clear that no man can be
a thoroughly furnished minister who has not studied Greek? Yet some of
our own colleges in America, conducted under Presbyterian auspices, are
encouraging this crippling omission by offering an A. B. course without
Greek.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Of the value of this find Prof. Adolf Harnack says: "As the text is
almost completely preserved, this Syrus Sinaiticus is one of the most
important witnesses; nay, it is extremely probable that it is the most
important witness, for our gospels."
CHAPTER X.
FROM ENGLAND TO SCOTLAND--EASTERN ROUTE.
EDINBURGH, _August 23, 1902_.
[Sidenote: The Land of the Mountain and the Flood.]
Soon after leaving Newcastle-on-Tyne, the marked change in the scenery
of the country through which we were passing apprised us of the fact
that we had crossed the border, and were now in Scotland. Instead of
the level or gently undulating fields tilled like gardens, and the fine
oaks and other trees here and there, giving the country a park-like
aspect, there were bold hills on every hand, intensely green, without a
tree as far as the eye could reach, and dotted only with white sheep.
And, instead of the tame rivers, winding lazily through wide meadows,
such as we had seen everywhere in England, there were brawling brooks
dashing down the ravines with an energy that made them fit symbols of
the strenuous activity of the race whose land we were entering. Nothing
in a Scottish landscape is more striking to the American eye than the
uniform absence of trees on the hills and mountains. There are some
forest-clad mountains and ravines, The Trossachs, for instance, as
readers of Scott will remember, but in most cases there are only grass,
ferns, and heather. This has the effect of throwing the shape of the
mountains into much sharper outline to the eye than is the case with
our American mountains, with their dense forests.
If we had had the choosing of the conditions under which we should
enter Scotland, we would not have changed them in any particular.
The afternoon sun was pouring golden light over the hills. The sky
was as blue as that of Italy, save occasional masses of snow-white
clouds towards the horizon--what one of our party calls "Williams'
shaving soap clouds"--and the air, with its abundance of ozone, had an
exhilarating and tonic effect such as I have never known anywhere else
in midsummer.
[Sidenote: The Wizard of the North.]
When we left the train at Melrose, and took up our quarters in the
Abbey Hotel, we found that our good fortune continued, as our rooms
looked right down upon the lovely ruins, and, as we sat watching them,
the moon rose slowly over the Tweed, so that we had the opportunity to
obey literally the poet's counsel in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_--
"If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight."
To one who, like myself, regards Sir Walter Scott as the greatest
novelist that ever lived, the opportunity to visit his home at
Abbotsford, and his grave at Dryburgh a second time, and to drink in
the exquisite beauty of the Tweed Valley at this point, is one to be
thankful for indeed.
[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT'S SEAT IN MELROSE ABBEY.]
Scott was a reactionary and a royalist, a Tory politically, and a toady
socially. He had an unreasoning reverence for kings and courts. He
never was in sympathy with his countrymen in their long and bloody,
but finally successful, struggle against the tyranny of the church
and the state. In _Old Mortality_, and elsewhere, he slandered the
heroic Covenanters, who won the freedom of Scotland. In _Woodstock_ and
elsewhere, he caricatured Cromwell and the heroic Puritans, who won
the freedom of England. But, with all this, he never wrote anything
dirty or degrading, like so much of our latter day fiction. He
uniformly exalted bravery, and purity, and honor. Nor should it ever be
forgotten that towards the close of his life, when he was overwhelmed
by the disaster that befell the publishing house with which he was
connected, and when he was thus plunged from independence and affluence
into poverty and debt, he gave the world a splendid object lesson of
personal honesty, by setting to work, in his old age, to discharge his
obligations by continuous, laborious, exhausting work with his pen.
He succeeded, but the effort cost him his life. He has given a larger
amount of innocent and wholesome pleasure to the reading world than
any other writer that ever lived. The unceasing stream of pilgrims to
his home at Abbotsford is but one of many indications of his unwaning
popularity.
[Sidenote: Temporary Residence in Auld Reekie.]
Edinburgh at last! No. 4 Atholl Crescent. It was delightful to settle
down here, in our rented apartments, after long toil at home and
long travel abroad, for a real rest, with just enough walking and
hill-climbing daily in and around the city to give us a keen appetite
for our meals. Round the bowl of yellow Scotch earthenware, in which
our oatmeal porridge was served every morning, ran these lines from
Burns:
"Some hae meat that canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it.
But we hae meat an' we can eat,
So let the Lord be thankit."
And, as our appetites sharpened more and more, with the snell air of
the German Ocean, and the abundant exercise on the heath-clad hills,
and the exemption from wearing responsibilities, we entered more and
more fully into the sentiment.
By the way, the famous definition given by Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his
Dictionary, runs thus, "Oats: A grain, which in England is generally
given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." "Aye," said a
Scotchman, when he heard it, "and see what horses they have in England,
and what men we have in Scotland." Dr. Johnson, who, by the way, owes
his immortal fame to a Scotchman, affected a dislike for Scotland, and
said, among other uncomplimentary things, that the only good road in
Scotland was the road that led to England.
Our feeling is exactly contrary to that, and we are so charmed with
what a good friend of mine calls "God's country north of the Tweed,"
its wonderful beauty, its matchless romance, its heroic history,
the thronging memories of its unsurpassed services to the causes of
religion, liberty, and letters, that we shall find it difficult to tear
ourselves away, and take the road to England at all.
But before undertaking to say anything of the vast and fascinating
themes just mentioned, let me set down, in the remaining space of this
letter, my impressions of certain features of the present-day customs
of the Scottish people in their public worship.
[Sidenote: Public Worship in Scotland.]
In a number of particulars the church usages among Presbyterians in
England and Scotland differ from ours in America. It is the universal
custom, when entering a pew at the beginning of the service, to
bow for a moment or so in silent prayer. Likewise, at the close of
the service, when the minister pronounces the benediction upon the
standing congregation, all the people bow again in silent prayer before
leaving the church. They then rise, and withdraw in a quieter and
more reverential manner than is usual with us. In America it is not
infrequently the case that the moment the minister says "Amen," at the
close of the benediction, the organist pulls out all the stops of his
instrument, sweeps the keyboard with might and main, and fills the
building with a crashing tempest of sound, apparently a very lively
march, not to say a waltz, to the jubilant strains of which the people
move down the aisles, while, instead of the subdued greetings that seem
more suitable to the sanctuary, they are straining their voices to make
themselves heard over the uproar of the music.
[Sidenote: Organ, Choir and Congregation.]
Even in Scotland, however, the custom of a rather lively postlude
from the organ as the people are retiring is growing, as in Free
St. Georges, Edinburgh, which has the best organist I have heard in
Great Britain, Mr. Hollins. He is blind, but I have never heard a man
pour such melody from an organ, or lead a singing congregation more
judiciously and effectively with an instrument. At times he leaves
the organ quite silent in the midst of the hymn, beating time with
his hand, and throwing out the voices of the people themselves. The
organ, as he uses it, is not a crutch for a lame congregation to lean
on, but a vaulting pole for an active one to spring with. And the
singing is magnificent. Happy the church with two ministers such as
Dr. Alexander Whyte and the Rev. Hugh Black, and an organist such as
Mr. Hollins! Little wonder that the great building is crowded to the
doors at every service, and that if one wishes to be sure of a seat he
must come a half hour before the time for the service to begin. This
is quite easy for us to do, as the apartments which we have occupied
for a month are but a few doors above the church. The church music
in Scotland is generally far superior to ours in America. Solos and
quartettes are almost unknown. The choirs are large, and sit in front
of the congregation, just under the pulpit, and regard it as their
business, not so much to display their talents in rendering difficult
choir pieces as to lead the congregation in this important part of the
worship of God. And the people sing, generally and heartily, rolling
up to heaven a great volume of praise. I am struck with the fact
that the Scotch Presbyterians have continued to use some of the most
majestic and uplifting of the ancient hymns, such as the Te Deum, which
we in America have in many places ceased to use, substituting for these
great hymns of the ages the ephemeral jingles which make up too large a
part of our so-called "Gospel Hymns." There is more both of dignity and
variety of the right sort in the Scottish church music, secured by the
free use of close metrical versions of the Psalms, paraphrases of other
parts of Scripture, and anthems of the best type--all sung, mark you,
by the whole congregation, and not by the choir only.
[Sidenote: Bibles in The Churches.]
There is another thing about the Scotch churches that I would like to
see introduced into every church in America, and that is the use of
the Bible by the people. A book-board is affixed to the back of every
pew, running the whole length of it, and on this are laid a sufficient
number of hymn-books and Bibles for all the people in the pew behind.
When the preacher is about to read his Scripture lesson (there are
always two at the morning service, one from the Old Testament, and one
from the New), he announces the book and chapter, then pauses a minute
while the people turn to the place, and, as he reads, they follow. So,
too, when he announces his text. It is an excellent custom. It would be
difficult to overstate the value of it. It is not unconnected with the
fact that the Scotch people, as a whole, know more about the Bible than
any other people in the world.
The International System of Sunday-school Lessons has done more
to promote knowledge of the Bible than any other system ever
generally used since the modern Sunday-school came into existence,
notwithstanding the sweeping and indiscriminating strictures made
upon it by some good brethren of late. But that system is certainly
capable of improvement. One of the unfortunate results charged to the
use of the lesson sheets of the International series is the neglect of
the Bible itself. The children, it is said, do not bring their Bibles
with them, and do not become familiar with them, as a whole, in the
Sunday-school. It is too true in many cases. But are not their seniors
equally indifferent about having Bibles in the regular service? How
can ministers expect to bring about the desired revival of expository
preaching unless they can get Bibles into the hands of the people
during the service? Suppose that, like the Scotch, we had an adequate
supply of Bibles as a regular part of the equipment of our churches
and Sunday-schools, would not this difficulty about the neglect of
the Bible, which so many charge to the use of the lesson leaves, be
effectually met? Why should there not be at least as good a supply of
Bibles in a church as of hymn-books? Never were Bibles so cheap as now.
CHAPTER XI.
SOME ENGLISH AND SCOTCH PREACHERS.
EDINBURGH, _August 25, 1902_.
[Sidenote: London Preachers.]
I once received a letter from the late Rev. Dr. William S. Lacy,
saying that he had been trying to make use of a certain work in one of
the departments of theological study, and asking if I could suggest
something "less fearfully jejune," an expression which I have ever
since regarded as a masterpiece of characterization. The first sermon
I heard in Europe, preached in a cathedral, in 1896, by a clergyman
of the English Church, reminded me of it, for it gave me an intense
craving for something "less fearfully jejune." One of my ministerial
companions remarked that it was about such a discourse as one would
expect from a member of the junior class in Union Seminary, which I
thought was rather hard on the juniors. The other five sermons that
I heard from ministers of the Church of England that year, preached
respectively by Canon Holland, Dean Farrar, Dr. Wace, Rev. H. R.
Haweis, and Mr. Gray, of Heidelberg, were certainly not jejune,
whatever else may be said of them. At Heidelberg we had the good
fortune to meet Prof. Gildersleeve, of Baltimore, who is quite at home
in the German university towns, and who was very kind to us in every
way. He took us to the English Church there. Mr. Gray is a quiet,
thoughtful, and edifying preacher--the right kind of man, I should
say, for a community of that sort. Canon Holland--a man of far more
freshness and vigor--preached in St. Paul's, and, though powerfully
built, and with a resonant and well-managed voice, could be heard by
only a small portion of the large congregation. It is said that the
late Canon Liddon, the foremost preacher of the English Church in his
time, broke himself down prematurely by the extraordinary exertions
he made to project his voice to the limits of the great crowds which
gathered in that vast building to hear him. I have an eccentric friend
in New England who calls the cathedrals "Gothic devils," because they
hinder the preaching of the gospel. St. Paul's is not Gothic, of
course, but it is worse, perhaps, in point of acoustics than any Gothic
church whatsoever.
[Sidenote: Dean Farrar.]
We had the singular good fortune, in 1896, to hear Dean Farrar one
evening in Westminster Abbey in a discourse which displayed, to the
best possible advantage, the exceeding opulence of his rhetoric. He
was trying to raise money for the restoration of Canterbury Cathedral
in a manner worthy of its approaching thirteen hundredth anniversary,
and his discourse was a review of the work of the English Church and
the English nation during these thirteen centuries. What a combination
of man and subject and place that was! The most rhetorical eminent
preacher of the day, discussing with all the exuberance of his splendid
diction such a subject as "England," ecclesiastical and civil, for the
last thirteen hundred years, in such a place as Westminster Abbey,
surrounded by the tombs and statues of England's mighty dead, the
wearers of her crown, and the possessors of her genius, her soldiers,
and sailors, and statesmen, her painters, and poets, and philosophers,
and preachers--
"Those dead but sceptered sovereigns
Whose spirits still rule us from their urns."
The rich music, the soft light, the dim arches, the white statues, the
stirring theme, the sympathetic voice, the luxuriant rhetoric--as the
preacher referred, for instance, to "the sea which England has turned
from an estranging barrier into an azure marriage ring for the union of
the nations"--all conspired to make a unique impression. Dean Farrar's
ornate style cloys on the taste sometimes when one reads his books, but
when listening to his sermons it was not so. He was a very effective
preacher, and, in the notable discourse to which I have just referred,
he did not once overlay his thought too thickly with glittering
verbiage. As for the other parts of the service I have only to say
again that it is an unspeakable pity that a noble service like that of
the Church of England (in which, as to its essence, all evangelical
people can heartily unite) should be so commonly made a mere matter of
mechanical routine, and artificial and absurd recitation.
[Sidenote: Mr. Haweis and Dr. Wace.]
Mr. Haweis looked like a small edition of the late Henry Ward
Beecher--long hair, smooth face, large mouth, but with a peculiar,
penetrating voice, and an abrupt, jerky manner. He was unconventional
and racy to the last degree, and cut a good many "monkey shines" in
the pulpit, which were all the more startling because of his elaborate
white clerical vestments--such as resting his elbow on the desk, with
his chin in his hand, for the space of five minutes, talking all the
time as fast as Phillips Brooks, except for the peculiar "ah! ah!"
which he interjected between sentences from time to time, as if unable
to find the word he wanted--then letting himself down, and hanging over
the pulpit on his armpits, with his arms in front and his body behind.
His sermon didn't have anything to do with his text, so far as I could
see. He was a Broad Churchman, as broad as Dean Stanley. In fact, he
was like the dog of which the train man said, in answer to an inquiry
as to the dog's destination, "I don't know, an' 'ee don't know, an'
nobody don't know. 'Ee's et his tag."
Dr. Wace, in whom I was interested as one of the stoutest knights who
have recently measured lances with the agnostics, preached a well
written sermon, in a dull and lifeless way, to a handful of people at
Lincoln's Inn Chapel. But we should not forget that there are many
Presbyterian ministers who, as one of our secretaries of foreign
missions once said, "carry a load of dogmatic theology into the pulpit,
and dump it on the people, laboring all the time under the delusion
that in so doing they are preaching the gospel."
[Sidenote: Spurgeon, Parker and Hughes.]
Some years ago a child was asked, "Who is the Prime Minister of
England?" and replied, not unnaturally, "Mr. Spurgeon." That Spurgeon
has been called up still higher, but in the great Metropolitan
Tabernacle, which he built in London, thousands of people still
gather Sunday after Sunday to hear the gospel preached by his son and
successor, the Rev. Thomas Spurgeon. Of course, he cannot bend the
bow of Ulysses. But, for that matter, there is no preacher living who
can. Still he is a clear, earnest, effective preacher. We were at the
opposite end of the church from him, but heard every word distinctly.
Another dissenting minister, who continues to draw great crowds in
London, is Dr. Joseph Parker, and he is probably the ablest preacher
in the city, though on the day I first heard him, in 1896, he was so
indistinct in his utterances at times that I found it almost impossible
to follow him. There was an air of self-importance about him which I
trust was only apparent. We heard him again the other day, when he
occupied his pulpit for the first time after a long illness. He was
quite feeble, and there were only occasional brief flashes of the
volcanic fires which used to flame and thunder through his preaching.
I heard the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes also, the leading Methodist preacher
of London, in a faithful and striking exposition of Haggai, an
excellent expository sermon, just what I did not expect from him, as he
has at times been charged with sensationalism.
The Moravians, as is well known, lead the whole Christian world in
zeal and liberality in the cause of Foreign Missions. At the Moravian
chapel in Fetter Lane we heard a clear and helpful sermon from Mr.
Waugh, the minister in charge. After the service he kindly showed us
all through the Mission House, the centre of that unique propaganda
which, with comparatively small resources, has given the pure gospel to
so many remote and needy portions of the globe, and set the pace for
all the churches in the work of carrying out the Great Commission. This
chapel has some associations with John Wesley; and, remembering the
obligations under which he lay to these earnest, evangelical Christians
of the Unitas Fratrum, and the part since played by the great Methodist
Church in the evangelization of the world, we felt that the Moravian
Mission House was an appropriate place in which to recall the character
and services of that rightly venerated epoch-maker and man of God who
said, "My parish is the world."
I heard a number of rich sermons from Dr. John Hunter, Gipsy Smith, Dr.
Thornton, Rev. R. J. Campbell, and Mr. Connell. But the strongest, most
spiritual and most comforting sermon I heard in London was preached by
the Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D. D., pastor of St. John's Wood Presbyterian
Church. That also was an expository sermon, as the best preaching so
often is.
[Sidenote: General Booth.]
The only other man of mark whom I heard in the metropolis was General
Booth, organizer, leader, and absolute monarch of the Salvation Army,
an old man of spare frame, with shaggy, grisled hair and beard. His
voice is not a good one, but he commands perfect attention, and his
sermon, which was evidently well thought out, and which, if I remember
aright, had but one undignified remark in it, showed the true nature
of sin, and laid hold of the conscience with power. When we entered
Exeter Hall, which was already nearly full of people, we saw on the
platform a band of sixty musicians, in scarlet uniforms, leading the
multitude with violins, cornets and drums, in a hymn sung lustily to
the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." When the General came on the platform
a few minutes later, they received him with a cheer. His sermon was
followed by the usual uproarious proceedings. With these, of course, I
have no sympathy, nor with the absolute despotism of General Booth, but
the Salvation Army has done a vast deal of good among "the submerged
tenth." The census taken this year by the _London News_ shows, however,
that the Salvation Army is on the decline in that city, and the reason
assigned for it is the lack of a body of trained preachers.
But Scotland is the land of preachers. The greatest Scotchman that ever
lived was a preacher, and to him, John Knox, Scotland is more indebted
for what she is to-day than to any other man.
[Sidenote: What Sir Walter Said.]
"The Scotch, it is well known, are more remarkable for the exercise
of their intellectual powers than for the keenness of their feelings;
they are, therefore, more moved by logic than by rhetoric, and more
attracted by acute and argumentative reasoning on doctrinal points
than influenced by the enthusiastic appeals to the heart and to the
passions, by which the popular preachers in other countries win the
favor of their hearers." So wrote Sir Walter Scott, and no doubt there
is truth in it; but we must not underestimate the quickness and depth
of their feelings. It was an apparently hard-natured Scotchman of our
own day who wrote the following more balanced estimate, "It's a God's
mercy I was born a Scotchman, for I do not see how I could ever have
been contented to be anything else. The little, plucky, dour nation,
set in her own ways, and getting them, too, level-headed and shrewd,
and yet so lovingly weak, so fond, so led away by song or story, so
easily touched to fine issues, so real, so true." Carlyle said Burns
was the æolian harp of nature against which the rude winds of adversity
blew, only to be transmuted in their passage into heavenly music. But
no people without tender and strong feelings could have produced or
appreciated such a poet as Burns. (By the way, I was astonished to
discover, in 1896, that there were more than thirty thousand visitors
annually to the birthplace of Burns, as against only twenty thousand to
the birthplace of Shakespeare.) Moreover, no people without the right
kind of feeling, and plenty of it--aye, and of enthusiasm, too--could
have accomplished what Scotland has done. With a rigorous climate and
a small country, much of it wild and untillable mountain and moor, and
with fewer people in the whole country than in the city of London,
Scotland--
"On with toil of heart and knees and hand,
Through the long gorge to the far light hath won
Her path upward and prevailed,"
and to-day she wields an influence in the world out of all proportion
to her population and resources. In fact, the Scotch are in many
respects the greatest people of modern times.
[Sidenote: Dr. Marcus Dods.]
But I have wandered from my subject, which was Scotch preaching and
preachers. I heard four eminent men in Edinburgh, on my first visit
there six years ago--Prof. A. B. Davidson, Prof. Marcus Dods, Dr.
Alexander Whyte, and Dr. George Matheson. Prof. Davidson's voice,
manner and style were much better adapted to a small class-room,
with its detailed linguistic and exegetical methods, than to popular
preaching in a large church. But if there was some disappointment
in regard to the preaching of the learned and famous author of the
Hebrew grammars, and the father of the whole liberal, not to say
radical, movement in Biblical Criticism, which has swept all Scotland
into its vortex, there was none in regard to that of his brilliant
colleague, Dr. Dods. Many of my readers are familiar with the late Dr.
Henry C. Alexander's high estimate of Dr. Dods' work on New Testament
Introduction, which he used as a textbook in Union Seminary, and with
the general excellence of his luminous and suggestive commentaries,
though some of them are unfortunately marred by the obtrusion of views
which are not altogether satisfactory. But probably few readers, even
of his best books, would have expected from him a sermon so sane, and
sound, and spiritual as that which I heard from him. It was fully
written, and very quietly read, with absolutely no action, and with
a modest and even diffident manner, but before he had uttered half
a dozen sentences, the originality and power of the thought, and
the freshness and vigor of the language, laid the hearer under the
spell of a master, and, as he proceeded, first with keen analysis and
irrefutable argument, and then with those considerations which can
never be adduced save by a man who has had _experience_, who knows sin,
and struggle, and salvation, your sense of the preacher's power was
succeeded, or rather accompanied, by a sense of his sympathy, and you
were ready to accompany him to his high practical conclusion, and left
the church assured that he had, under God, given you a real and abiding
spiritual uplift.
[Sidenote: Dr. George Matheson.]
The only other man who impressed me deeply, on my former visit to
Edinburgh, was Dr. Matheson. He is antipodal to Prof. Dods in his
style of preaching. He is blind, as you know, and was led in from
the vestry to the pulpit, a large man, with gray hair and beard, and
a ruddy and radiant face, despite his sightless eyes, as though he
walked continually in the white vision of the Invisible. His short,
fervent, pointed prayers seemed to put every earnest hearer into
sensible communion with the Father of our spirits, and his sermon on
the great disappointments and mysteries of life was most satisfying
and comforting, and was delivered with rare animation and unction,
the rich fancy and glowing language justifying the remark made to me
afterwards by an eminent Scotchman, that Matheson was a poet as well
as a preacher. I must add that some of my friends who went to hear
him afterwards, on the ground of my enthusiastic recommendation, were
disappointed, saying that his exegesis was illegitimate, and that he
treated his text after the manner of Origen and the Allegorizers. But
we must remember that even Spurgeon was often guilty of that. This does
not excuse it, of course. It only shows that a man may sometimes do it,
and yet be a great preacher.
[Sidenote: Dr. Whyte and Mr. Black.]
Dr. Whyte, of Free St. George's, is reckoned by many the ablest
preacher in Edinburgh. I was in his church on my former visit to
Scotland, when he preached a deeply moving sermon in connection with
a communion service. Unfortunately for us, he was absent from the
city during the whole of our stay this time. But his brilliant young
associate, the Rev. Hugh Black, leaves one no ground for complaint as
to the quality of the preaching in Edinburgh in the summer. He is a
very highly cultivated man, and an original and suggestive preacher,
but with no special advantages of manner. He is slender, pallid,
nervous, with a rather pleasing voice in its lower tones, but of
limited range, breaking if he attempts to raise it. This shuts him
out from some of the best oratorical effects. But what he lacks in
voice and manner he makes up in richness of matter, and finish of
style. He is well known as the author of _Friendship_ and _Culture and
Restraint_, two books which have had a wide circulation in America. We
have made his church our regular place of worship, and have been drawn
away from it only occasionally by the desire to hear such well-known
veterans as Dr. McGregor, of St. Cuthbert's Established Church, and Dr.
Hood Wilson, the retiring pastor of Barclay Free Church. This last, by
the way, is a curious, but rather striking stone building, with the
most hideous interior I have ever seen. It is a night-mare of bad taste.
We have heard at other times Prof. Orr, author of various works of
value in the department of Dogmatic Theology, the Rev. P. Carnegie
Simpson, of Glasgow, author of _The Fact of Christ_, and the Rev.
Thomas Burns, F. R. S. E., author of a unique and sumptuous work on
_Old Scottish Communion Plate_.
[Sidenote: The Inevitable Subject.]
To Mr. Burns I am indebted for an introduction to Prof. Sayce, of
Oxford, and for a delightful hour at tea with the famous archæologist
and author in his house at Edinburgh, where he spends most of the
summer. He generally lives on a houseboat on the Nile in winter, and
the weather in Edinburgh this summer has been such as to make him long
for that houseboat, and that soft Egyptian climate more than ever.
When we reached the city a month ago, we found much the same kind of
weather that greeted Mary Queen of Scots on her return from France,
and of which John Knox wrote as follows, "The very face of heaven did
manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this country with hir--to
wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety--for in the memorie of
man never was seen more dolorous face of the heavens than was at her
arryvall ... the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie man espy
another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days befoir nor two days
after." We had mists a plenty, but it was the cold weather and the
rain that interfered most with our plans. It actually did rain nearly
every day, and often four or five times a day, not mere showers, but
drenching rains. In fact, the kind of weather we had nearly all the
time, not only in Edinburgh, but throughout Scotland and England, gave
us a keen appreciation of the following story of the London weather
which we find in the Manchester _Guardian_:
"The scene was a Strand omnibus. A leaden sky was overhead, the
rain poured down uncompromisingly, mud was underfoot. A red-capped
Parsee, who had been sitting near the dripping driver, got down as
the conductor came up. 'What sort o' chap is that,' asked the driver.
'Don't yer know that,' answered the conductor. 'Why, that's one o' them
Indians that worship the sun!' 'Worships the sun?' said the shivering
driver. 'I suppose 'e's come over 'ere to 'ave a rest!'
"This recalls the reply given on one occasion by an Eastern potentate
to Queen Victoria, who asked him whether his people did not worship
the sun. 'Yes, your Majesty,' said the Oriental, 'and if you saw him
you would worship him also.'"
However, if I begin to write about Scotch weather, I shall never get
back to my proper subject, which is Scotch preaching.
CHAPTER XII.
ECHOES OF A SPICY BOOK ON SCOTLAND.
EDINBURGH, _August 26, 1902_.
[Sidenote: Unique Prayer for Prince Charlie.]
The mention of St. Cuthbert's, where we heard an excellent coronation
sermon by Dr. McGregor, reminds me of the prayer offered in St.
Cuthbert's by the Rev. Neill McVicar, in 1745, just after the Young
Pretender had won the battle of Prestonpans. A message was sent to the
Edinburgh ministers, in the name of "Charles Prince Regent," desiring
them to open their churches next day as usual. McVicar preached to a
large congregation, many of whom were armed Highlanders, and prayed
for George II., the reigning monarch, and also for Charles Edward, the
Young Pretender, in the following terms, "Bless the king! Thou knowest
what king I mean. May the crown sit long upon his head! As for that
young man who has come among us to seek an earthly crown, we beseech
thee to take him to thyself, and give him a crown of glory!"
One of our pleasant excursions, of which we have made many since
coming to Edinburgh, was to the field of Prestonpans, where the Young
Pretender won his delusive victory, a field made familiar to many by
the vivid description in _Waverley_. An aged tree, now supported and
braced by iron rods and wires, is pointed out as that under which the
Pretender stood during part of the engagement. Under this tree, in the
tall wheat, overlooking the peaceful fields and the shining sea, our
photographers insisted that a picture should be taken of some of the
party, weary and dusty, and I fear untidy as we were. Half a mile
away, and within a few feet of the railway, stands the monument to Col.
Gardiner, who was killed in this battle, and of whom Scott gives such a
striking account in the first of his immortal romances.
[Sidenote: Church-going in Edinburgh.]
But there I go again, instead of finishing the subject of church
services. In Kate Douglas Wiggin's sparkling volume, entitled
_Penelope's Progress_, there is an amusing description of the
perplexity of a young woman from America, on noticing from her
window the great crowds of people on the streets of Edinburgh on
Sunday morning, her speculations as to the cause--"Do you suppose
it is a fire?"--and her amazement at discovering that they were all
going to church. And truly the Scotch people are great church-goers.
Nothing like it is ever seen on our side of the ocean, except in the
predominantly Scotch cities of Canada.
"I have never seen such attention, such concentration, as in these
great congregations of the Edinburgh churches. As nearly as I can
judge, it is intellectual rather than emotional; but it is not a
tribute paid to eloquence alone, it is habitual and universal, and is
yielded loyally to insufferable dullness when occasion demands.
[Sidenote: The Bibles.]
"When the text is announced, there is an indescribable rhythmic
movement forward, followed by a concerted rustle of Bible leaves; not
the rustle of a few Bibles in a few pious pews, but the rustle of all
of them in all the pews--and there are more Bibles in an Edinburgh
Presbyterian Church than one ever sees anywhere else, unless it be in
the warehouses of the Bible Societies.
[Illustration: DRILL OF HIGHLANDERS, EDINBURGH CASTLE.]
"The text is read twice clearly, and another rhythmical movement
follows, when the books are replaced on the shelves. Then there is a
delightful settling back of the entire congregation, a snuggling
comfortably into corners, and a fitting of shoulders to the pews--not
to sleep, however; an older generation may have done that under the
strain of a two-hour 'wearifu' dreich' sermon, but these church-goers
are not to be caught napping. They wear, on the contrary, a keen,
expectant, critical look, which must be inexpressibly encouraging to
the minister, if he has anything to say. If he has not (and this is a
possibility in Edinburgh, as it is everywhere else), then I am sure it
is wisdom for the beadle to lock him in (the pulpit) lest he flee when
he meets those searching eyes.
[Sidenote: The Sermon.]
"The Edinburgh sermon, though doubtless softened in outline in these
later years, is still a more carefully built discourse than one
ordinarily hears outside of Scotland, being constructed on conventional
lines of doctrine, exposition, logical inference, and practical
application. Though modern preachers do not announce the division of
their subject into heads and subheads, firstlies and secondlies and
finallies my brethren, there seems to be the old framework underneath
the sermon, and every one recognizes it as moving silently below the
surface; at least, I always fancy that as the minister finishes one
point and attacks another the younger folk fix their eagle eyes on him
afresh, and the whole congregation sits up straighter and listens more
intently, as if making mental notes. They do not listen so much as
if they were enthralled, though they often are, and have good reason
to be, but as if they were to pass an examination on the subject
afterwards; and I have no doubt that this is the fact.
[Sidenote: The Prayers.]
"The prayers are many, and are divided, apparently, like those of the
liturgies, into petitions, confessions, and aspirations, not forgetting
the all-embracing one with which we are perfectly familiar in our
native land, in which the preacher commends to the Fatherly care every
animate and inanimate thing not mentioned specifically in the foregoing
supplications. It was in the middle of this compendious petition, 'the
lang prayer,' that rheumatic old Scotch dames used to make a practice
of 'cheengin' the fit,' as they stood devoutly through it. 'When the
meenister comes to the "ingatherin' o' the Gentiles," I ken weel it's
time to change legs, for then the prayer is jist half dune,' said a
good sermon-taster of Fife.
[Sidenote: The Music.]
"The organ is finding its way rapidly into the Scottish kirks (how can
the shade of John Knox endure a 'kist o' whistles' in good St. Giles?),
but it is not used yet in some of those we attend most frequently.
There is a certain quaint solemnity, a beautiful austerity, in the
unaccompanied singing of hymns, that touches me profoundly. I am often
carried very high on the waves of splendid church music, when the
organ's thunder rolls 'through vaulted aisles,' and the angelic voices
of a trained choir chant the aspirations of my soul for me; but when an
Edinburgh congregation stands, and the precentor leads in that noble
paraphrase--
"God of our fathers, be the God
Of their succeeding race,"
there is a certain ascetic fervor in it that seems to me the perfection
of worship. It may be that my Puritan ancestors are mainly responsible
for this feeling, or perhaps my recently adopted Jenny Geddes is
a factor in it; of course, if she were in the habit of flinging
fauldstules at Deans, she was probably the friend of truth and the foe
of beauty, so far as it was in her power to separate them."
[Sidenote: Jenny Geddes and her Stool.]
Ah! yes. Jenny Geddes. Of course, we made a point of attending service
frequently in St. Giles, where that redoubtable assailant of "the
papists and their apists" hurled her memorable missile. I trust the
story is well known to many of my readers, especially our young people,
but perhaps all are not familiar with the extremely racy version of it
written by the late Professor Stuart Blackie, one of the most brilliant
and versatile men of the age, and given to me by a kinswoman of his,
whose charming hospitality I once had the privilege of enjoying for two
weeks; so I will embody that version of it in my letter.
THE SONG OF MISTRESS JENNY GEDDES.
_Tune_: "_The British Grenadiers_."
Some praise the fair Queen Mary, and some the good Queen Bess,
And some the wise Aspasia beloved by Pericles;
But o'er all the world's brave women, there's one that bears the
rule,
The valiant Jenny Geddes that flung the three-legged stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, at them now--
Jenny, fling the stool!
'Twas the 23rd of July in the 1637,
On Sabbath morn, from high St. Giles the solemn peal was given;
King Charles had sworn that Scottish men should pray by printed
rule,
He sent a book, but never dreamt of danger from a stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, yes I trow,
There's danger in a stool.
The Council and the Judges, with ermined pomp elate,
The Provost and the Bailies, in gold and crimson state,
Fair silken vested ladies, grave Doctors of the School,
Were there to please the king and learn the virtue of a stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, yes I trow,
There's virtue in a stool.
The Bishop and the Dean cam' in, wi' mickle gravity,
Right smooth and sleek, but lordly pride was lurking in their e'e,
Their full lawn sleeves were blown and big like seals in briny pool,
They bare a book, but little thought they soon would feel a stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, yes I trow,
They'll feel a three-legged stool.
The Dean, he to the Altar went, and with a solemn look,
He cast his eyes to heaven and read the curious printed book;
In Jenny's heart the blood upwelled, with bitter anguish full,
Sudden she started to her legs, and stoutly grasped the stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, at them now--
Firmly grasp the stool!
As when a mountain wildcat springs on a rabbit small,
So Jenny on the Dean springs with gush of holy gall--
"Wilt thou say mass at my lug, ye popish-puling fool?
Ho! no!" she said, and at his head she flung the three-legged stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, at them now--
Jenny, fling the stool!
A bump! a thump! a smash! a crash! Now, gentlefolks beware!
Stool after stool, like rattling hail, came tirling thro' the air,
With "Well done, Jenny! Bravo, Jenny! That's the proper tool!
When the Deil will out and shows his snout, just meet him with a
stool."
CHORUS: With a row dow, at them now--
There's nothing like a stool.
The Council and the Judges were smitten with strange fear,
The ladies and the Bailies their seats did deftly clear,
The Bishop and the Dean went in sorrow and in dool,
And all the popish flummery fled when Jenny showed the stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, at them now--
Jenny, fling the stool!
And thus a radiant deed was done by Jenny's valiant hand,
Black prelacy and popery she drove from Scottish land,
King Charles, he was a shuffling knave, Priest Laud a meddling fool,
But Jenny was a woman wise, who beat them with a stool.
CHORUS: With a row dow, yes I trow,
She beat them with a stool.
[Sidenote: The Disruption in 1843.]
Of course, too, we visited St. Andrew's Church, in the newer part of
the city, on the other side of the great, picturesque ravine which
divides the old town from the new, because it was the scene of another
epoch-making event in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland, viz.,
the Disruption of 1843. Unable to abolish the patronage of livings,
by which certain heritors or patrons could appoint any minister they
wished to a vacant pastorate, without the consent of the congregation,
Dr. Chalmers and his party decided to take a very bold step in order
to preserve the freedom of the church. When the Assembly met in St.
Andrew's Church, in the presence of a great body of spectators, while a
vast throng outside awaited the result with almost breathless interest,
though not really believing that any large number of the ministers
would relinquish their homes and salaries for the sake of a "fantastic
principle," all expectations were surpassed when the Moderator, after
reading a formal protest signed by one hundred and twenty ministers
and seventy-two elders, left his place, and was followed first by Dr.
Chalmers, and then by four hundred and seventy men, who marched in a
body to Tanfield Hall, and there organized the General Assembly of
the Free Church of Scotland. When Lord Jeffrey was told of it an hour
later, he exclaimed, "Thank God for Scotland! There is not another
country on earth where such a deed could be done!" Well might the
Scottish minister remind his American visitor of Lord Macaulay's remark
that the Scots had made sacrifices for the sake of religious opinion
for which there was no parallel in the annals of England. Many of my
readers are familiar with the exceedingly impressive appearance of this
Disruption Assembly, from the well-known engraving, a copy of which
hangs in the Reading Room of the Spence Library, at Union Theological
Seminary, Richmond.
[Sidenote: A Sermon-taster with a Nippy Tongue.]
It would never do, when speaking of church matters in Edinburgh, to
omit Penelope's account of her landlady's breezy comments on the
different preachers.
"It is to Mrs. McCollop that we owe our chief insight into technical
church matters, although we seldom agree with her 'opeenions' after
we gain our own experience. She never misses hearing one sermon on
a Sabbath, and oftener she listens to two or three. Neither does
she confine herself to the ministrations of a single preacher, but
roves from one sanctuary to another, seeking the bread of life,
often, however, according to her own account, getting a particularly
indigestible 'stane.'
"She is thus a complete guide to the Edinburgh pulpit, and when she is
making a bed in the morning she dispenses criticism in so large and
impartial a manner that it would make the flesh of the 'meenistry'
creep were it overheard. I used to think Ian Maclaren's sermon-taster
a possible exaggeration of an existent type, but I now see that she is
truth itself.
"'Ye'll be tryin' anither kirk the morn?' suggested Mrs. McCollop,
spreading the clean Sunday sheet over the mattress. 'Wha did he hear
the Sawbath that's bye? Dr. A.? Ay, I ken him ower weel; he's been
there for fifteen years and mair. Ay, he's a gifted mon--_off an' on!'_
with an emphasis showing clearly that in her estimation the times
when he is 'off' outnumber those when he is 'on.' ... 'Ye have na heard
auld Dr. B. yet?' (Here she tucks in the upper sheet tidily at the
foot.) 'He's a graund strachtforrit mon, is Dr. B., forbye he's growin'
maist awfu' dreich in his sermons, though when he's that wearisome
a body canna heed him withoot takin' peppermints to the kirk, he's
nane the less, at seventy-sax, a better mon than the new asseestant.
Div ye ken the new asseestant? He's a wee bit finger-fed mannie, ower
sma' maist to wear a goon! I canna thole him, wi' his lang-nebbit
words, explainin' and expoundin' the gude Book as if it had jist come
oot! The auld doctor's nae kirk-filler, but he gi'es us fu' measure,
pressed down an' rinnin' over, nae bit pickin's like the haverin'
asseestant; it's my opeenion he's no sound, wi' his parleyvoos and his
clishmaclavers!... Mr. C.?' (Now comes the shaking and straightening
and smoothing of the first blanket.) 'Ay, he's weel eneuch! I mind
ance he prayed for our Free Assembly, an' then he turned roun' an'
prayed for the Established, maist in the same breath--he's a broad,
leeberal mon, is Mr. C.!... Mr. D.? Ay, I ken him fine; he micht be
waur, though he's ower fond o' the kittle pairts o' the Old Testament;
but he reads his sermon from the paper, an' it's an auld sayin', If
a meenister canna mind [remember] his ain discoors, nae mair can the
congregation be expectit to mind it.... Mr. E.? He's my ain meenister.'
(She has a pillow in her mouth now, but though she is shaking it as a
terrier would a rat, and drawing on the linen slip at the same time,
she is still intelligible between the jerks.) 'Susanna says his sermon
is like claith made o' soond 'oo [wool] wi' a' gude twined thread,
an' wairpit an' weftit wi' doctrine. Susanna kens her Bible weel, but
she's never gaed forrit.' (To 'gang forrit' is to take the communion.)
'Dr. F.? I ca' him the greetin' doctor. He's aye dingin' the dust oot
o' the poopit cushions, an' greetin' ower the sins o' the human race,
an' eespecial'y of his ain congregation. He's waur syne his last wife
sickened an' slippit awa'. 'T was a chastenin' he'd put up wi' twice
afore, but he grat nane the less. She was a bonnie bit body, was the
third Mistress F.! E'nbro could 'a' better spared the greetin' doctor
than her, I'm thinkin'.
'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away according to his good will
and pleasure,' I ventured piously, as Mrs. McCollop beat the bolster
and laid it in place.
'Ou ay,' responded that good woman, as she spread the counterpane over
the pillows in the way I particularly dislike; 'ou ay, but whiles I
think it's a peety he couldna be guidit!'"
[Sidenote: Scottish and American Repartee.]
Finally, I cannot refrain from quoting Francesca's account of the
peppery conversation she had with the young Scottish minister with whom
she was destined to fall in love. She returned from the dinner, at
which she had met him, all out of sorts:
"How did you get on with your delightful minister?" inquired
Salemina.... "He was quite the handsomest man in the room; who is he?"
"He is the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, and the most disagreeable,
condescending, ill-tempered prig I ever met!"
"Why, Francesca!" I exclaimed. "Lady Baird speaks of him as her
favorite nephew, and says he is full of charm."
"He is just as full of charm as he was when I met him," returned the
girl nonchalantly; "that is, he parted with none of it this evening. He
was incorrigibly stiff and rude, and oh! so Scotch! I believe if one
punctured him with a hat pin, oatmeal would fly into the air!"
"Doubtless you acquainted him, early in the evening, with the
immeasurable advantages of our sleeping-car system, the superiority of
our fast-running elevators, and the height of our buildings?" observed
Salemina.
"I mentioned them," Francesca answered evasively.
"You naturally inveighed against the Scotch climate?"
"Oh! I alluded to it; but only when he had said that our hot summers
must be insufferable."
"I suppose you repeated the remark you made at luncheon, that the
ladies you had seen in Princes Street were excessively plain?"
"Yes, I did," she replied hotly; "but that was because he said that
American girls generally looked bloodless and frail. He asked if it
were really true that they ate chalk and slate pencils. Was'n't that
unendurable? I answered that those were the chief solid articles of
food, but that after their complexions were established, so to speak,
their parents often allowed them pickles and native claret to vary the
diet."
"What did he say to that?" I asked.
"'Oh!' he said, 'quite so, quite so'; that was his invariable response
to all my witticisms. Then, when I told him casually that the shops
looked very small and dark and stuffy here, and that there were not as
many tartans and plaids in the windows as we had expected, he remarked,
that as to the latter point, the American season had not opened yet!
Presently, he asserted that no royal city in Europe could boast ten
centuries of such glorious and stirring history as Edinburgh. I said
it did not appear to be stirring much at present, and that everything
in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no
idea of push or enterprise until he visited a city like Chicago. He
retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of
the ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a Goethe,
Boston without its twang!"
"Incredible!" cried Salemina, deeply wounded in her local pride. "He
never could have said 'twang' unless you had tried him beyond measure!"
"I dare say I did; he is easily tried," returned Francesca. "I asked
him, sarcastically, if he had ever been in Boston. 'No,' he said,
'it is not necessary to go there! And while we are discussing these
matters,' he went on, 'how is your American dyspepsia these days--have
you decided what is the cause of it?'"
"'Yes, we have,' said I, as quick as a flash; 'we have always taken in
more foreigners than we could assimilate!' I wanted to tell him that
one Scotsman of his type would upset the national digestion anywhere,
but I restrained myself."
"I am glad you did restrain yourself--once," exclaimed Salemina.
And so on, with Francesca's characterization of the Forth Bridge as the
national idol, her inability to tell which way to turn a drawing of it
so as to make the bridge right side up, his asking her if doughnuts
resembled peanuts, and his telling her he had heard that the ministers'
salaries in America were sometimes paid in pork and potatoes, his
comments on international marriages, and her conclusion, as she retired
that night, "I doubt if I can sleep for thinking what a pity it is that
such an egotistic, bumptious, pugnacious, prejudiced, insular, bigoted
person should be so handsome!"
That is an excellent little volume to give one an idea of the kind
of international clashes that are continually occurring in Edinburgh
nowadays. But we, being more intent upon getting into the more ancient
atmosphere of Scotland, give most of our evenings to the reading aloud,
in the family circle, of _Rob Roy_, and the like, in preparation for
our proposed tour of the Highlands, while the older members of the
party acquaint themselves afresh with the _Heart of Midlothian_, _The
Monastery_, _The Abbot_, and the other works of the Wizard of the
North, whose scenes are laid at or near "Edina, Scotia's darling seat."
CHAPTER XIII.
IS THE SCOTTISH CHARACTER DEGENERATING?
EDINBURGH, _August 27, 1902_.
[Sidenote: "Mine Own Romantic Town."]
Our stay in Edinburgh has come to an end. It has been a delightful
month in spite of the weather. Claudius Clear says, "Edinburgh is so
beautiful that, for love of her face, she is forgiven her bitter east
winds," adding that "there is a keenness, a rawness, a chilliness in
the air, which you do not find in South Britain." So there is, and yet
we have been out of doors a great deal, and have threaded her streets
and closes, and climbed her heights in every direction--Arthur's
Seat, Salisbury Crags, Calton Hill, The Castle, Corstorphine, The
Braid Hills, The Pentlands--and made excursions to the Forth Bridge,
Hawthornden, Rosslyn, Duddingston (where the minister most kindly
showed us, between showers, everything of interest in and around the
little church in which Sir Walter Scott was once an elder), Craigmillar
Castle, Musselburgh, North Berwick, Bass Rock (the dungeons of which
were once filled with Covenanters, whose only offence was adhering to
the form of religion which the king had bound himself by his coronation
oath to maintain), Tantallon Castle, with its memories of _Marmion_,
and Rullion Green, with its memories of the Martyrs, and, of course,
within the city, Greyfriars Churchyard, The Grassmarket, Holyrood and
the rest. What a wealth of beauty and history and romance!
[Sidenote: The Seamy Side of Edinburgh.]
Yet there are some very criticizable things about Edinburgh, such as
the unseemly billing and cooing of lovers of the servant class in
public places, for instance the Princes Street Gardens, where they
may be seen at almost any hour of the day embracing each other in the
most unblushing manner, apparently oblivious of the passing multitude.
There may be just as much of this going on in the parks of other
cities, but the peculiar position of these lovely gardens in the great,
green hollow in the very centre of the city, in plain view of the most
crowded streets, and the most popular hotels, makes this impropriety
more obtrusive here than it is anywhere else.
[Illustration: PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH.]
But worse than this are the ever-present proofs of the poverty,
wretchedness and degradation of great numbers of the people. The slums
of Edinburgh are more constantly in evidence than those of any other
city in the world. The reason for this is not that the slums are more
populous or worse than those of other cities, but that the parts of
Edinburgh which are of the greatest interest to visitors, viz., the
High Street, from the Castle to Holyrood, and the adjacent districts,
where the great families once lived, and where the most memorable
events of the city's history occurred, the parts made familiar to
all readers by the writings of Sir Walter Scott and the historians
of Scotland, have long since been abandoned by the better classes,
and are now occupied by the poorest and most degraded. So that every
reading person who visits Edinburgh is brought face to face, day after
day, with all this squalor and misery; and it is so different from
what one naturally expects to find in Scotland, and especially in this
ancient and wealthy seat of learning, that it makes a very strong
impression upon the imagination--an impression so strong that it is
scarcely counterbalanced, even by long sojourn in the scrupulously
clean residential sections, on either side of this filthy and festering
centre.
[Sidenote: Cause of her Wretchedness.]
Why should there be such a plague spot in the heart of Edinburgh?
The explanation cannot be found in any lack of native ability on the
part of Scotchmen to overcome the conditions that bring about abject
poverty. It is universally conceded that in the qualities which make
for success in life the Scots are well-nigh unrivalled. Mr. Andrew
Carnegie is a pre-eminent example, but the thrift of Scotchmen in
general is a proverb.[2]
Nor can the explanation of the dire poverty and wretchedness seen in
Scotch cities be found in their disregard of the Sabbath rest and
the Sabbath worship, as in the case of some other European peoples,
though there seems to be of late some relaxation of their rigid
sabbatarianism. Their strictness in this matter has been the subject
of many a good story. One is told of a little girl in Aberdeen, who
brought a basket of strawberries to the minister's, very early Monday
morning.
"Thank you, my little girl, they are very nice,", said the minister;
"but I hope you did not pick them yesterday, for it was Sunday, you
know."
"No, sir," replied the child, "but," she added, with some dismay, "they
were growing all day yesterday."
A devout Scottish minister once stopped at a country inn, in the
northern part of his native land, to pass the Sunday. The day was rainy
and close, and toward night, as he sat in the little parlor of the inn,
he suggested to his landlady that it would be desirable to have one of
the windows raised, so that they might have some fresh air in the room.
"Mon," said the old woman, with stern disapproval written plainly on
her rugged face, "dinna ye ken that ye can hae no fresh air in this
hoose on the Sawbath?"
Another is related by Dr. Thomas Guthrie, in his autobiography. It
was Sunday morning, and Guthrie was preaching, away from home. After
breakfast, he asked his host for a cup of hot water to shave with.
"Whist, whist," was the response; "if ye wanted hot water for your
toddy, 'twould be all right; but if this congregation kenned that ye
called for water to shave with, there wad nae be a soul in the kirk to
hear ye."
[Sidenote: The Curse of Strong Drink.]
This last incident brings us in sight of the true explanation of
Edinburgh's misery. The great curse of Scotland is drunkenness. The
real cause of the deplorable change that seems to be taking place in
the character of her people is intemperance. Mr. Charles E. Price, of
the well-known firm of McVittie & Price, who is the prospective Liberal
candidate for the Central Division of Edinburgh, in a recent address,
made after a visit to our country, says he was struck with the general
sobriety of the American people. He did not see eight persons drunk
on the streets during his three months' tour, and he contrasts this
showing with the gross drunkenness seen on the streets of Edinburgh. He
quotes the startling figures in the letter of Lord Balfour of Burleigh,
to the Lord Provost of Glasgow, taken from the annual report of the
Commissioners of Prisons, according to which the number of commitments
during the twelve months, 1900-1901, was, for England, 571 per hundred
thousand of the population, and for Ireland, 793, and for Scotland,
1,402! That is, nearly twice as many for Scotland as for Ireland, and
nearly three times as many for Scotland as for England. "Ah!" I said
to myself sorrowfully, "whiskey again." Such was the comment of Mr.
John A. Steuart, the Scottish author and social reformer, when this
shocking official statement appeared in the newspapers; and, referring
to Lord Balfour of Burleigh's declaration, that the time has come when
it is necessary to consider whether a large new prison should not be
erected, he adds, "That is the commentary of your Secretary of State on
the morality of the countrymen of John Knox." Mr. Steuart goes on to
show that the national drink bill, direct and indirect, amounts to the
enormous sum of £300,000,000. "Three hundred millions sterling and one
hundred thousand human lives, that is the yearly expense of maintaining
the publican. The South African war cost us altogether 20,000 lives;
during the period it lasted the drink traffic cost us upwards of
250,000, that is to say, for every soldier who died in South Africa,
from wounds or disease, twelve men and women in Britain perished
miserably from strong drink. Let Christian people think of it....
Nothing is more certain than this, that religion and the drink traffic
cannot flourish together, and one of them is flourishing terribly
now.... If the church does not gird herself promptly and vigorously
to dispose of the drink traffic, the drink traffic will assuredly
dispose of the church." In an American journal I find the statement
that, in writing to Dr. T. L. Cuyler recently, sending him a generous
contribution to the National Temperance Society, Mr. Andrew Carnegie,
after expressing his deep interest in the temperance cause, added, "The
best temperance lecture I have delivered lately was my offer of ten per
cent. premium on their wages to all employees on my Scottish estates
who will abstain from intoxicating liquors."
[Sidenote: What Mr. Carnegie Thinks.]
Speaking still more recently, at an entertainment at Govan, Scotland,
Mr. Carnegie said "he wished his countrymen would take to their
hearts that the one blot upon the people of Scotland was that they
often fell from true manhood through the use of intoxicating liquor.
There was a saying in America that a totally abstaining Scotsman could
not be beaten, and wherever a Scot has fallen, it was, in ninety-nine
cases out of the hundred, the result of intemperance. Every Scotsman
at home or abroad had in his keeping part of the honor of Scotland,
and Scotland having so much more honor per man than other lands, it
followed that every Scot carried a greater load of honor than the man
of other lands. He wished that every word of his to workmen in Scotland
would cause them to reflect upon that, and to resolve that henceforth
they would never disgrace either themselves or the land that gave them
birth. The only defect of the Scot, compared with the man of other
lands, was that of intemperance, which, however, he rejoiced to know,
was steadily decreasing."
[Sidenote: A Lesser Menace.]
One other ominous feature of present day conditions in Scotland I find
referred to in the following clipping from a British journal:
"In Edinburgh of late the Jesuits have been showing unwonted activity.
Owing partly to the unsettling effect of Biblical criticism upon the
average mind, and partly to some utterances by some of the leading
ministers in the Scottish churches, the Society has evidently deemed
the moment opportune for pressing the claims of Rome upon the Scottish
people. In their spokesman, Father Power, who addresses a great
gathering every Sabbath evening in the open, they have an instrument
well fitted for their purpose. Of fine presence, manifest learning, and
no mean orator, he is bound to make an impression on some minds. Here
is one sentence from his last lecture. After referring to the utterance
of a noted Scottish divine in the General Assembly, reflecting on
some passage in the Confession of Faith, he said, 'So that fundamental
basis being removed (the Confession), the Presbyterian Church collapsed
like a house of cards. And hence I say that the Catholic Church has an
opportunity, let us hope a God-given one, for entering the field once
occupied by our late lamented sister.'"
But he would be a sanguine man, indeed, who could believe that the
people of Scotland generally would ever become Roman Catholics. For one
thing, there is too much printing there. For the Vicar of Croyden was
a true prophet when he said, in the early days of the Reformation, "We
must root out printing, or printing will root out us."
FOOTNOTE:
[2] _December, 1903._--The Prime Minister of the British Empire is a
Scotchman. The leaders of both parties in the House of Commons are
Scotchmen. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York, the
two heads of the Church of England, are Scotchmen. These are specimen
facts.
CHAPTER XIV.
STIRLING, THE LAKES, AND GLASGOW.
GLASGOW, _September 1, 1902_.
From Stirling Castle we revelled in the view which many consider the
finest in Scotland, embracing, as it does, both Lowland and Highland
scenery. We drove to the towering, but rather top-heavy Wallace
Monument, on Abbey Crag, and climbed its winding stone stairway, for
the sake of another look at that smiling landscape, and a nearer view
of the scene of Wallace's victory over Surrey at Stirling Bridge, in
1297. In one of the rooms of this great monument we gazed reverently
on the hero's sword with a thrill of our boyhood enthusiasm over
_Scottish Chiefs_, remembering that "the sword which looked heavy for
an archangel to wield was light in his terrible hand." The statue of
Wallace in front of the building looked like an old friend, because of
our familiarity with the replica of it in Druid Hill Park, presented
to the city of Baltimore by Mr. William Wallace Spence. Of course, we
drove, too, to "Cambuskenneth's fane," and the field of Bannockburn,
where the "bore stone" may still be seen.
[Sidenote: Memorials of the Martyrs.]
But the place that interested us most at Stirling was the Old
Greyfriars Churchyard, adjoining the Castle, with its monuments of
John Knox, Alexander Henderson, Andrew Melville, and especially James
Renwick and Margaret Wilson. During our stay in Edinburgh we had read
and talked much of the martyrs of Scotland, those glorious men and
women who had died for Christ's crown and covenant in "the killing
time,"--those heroic ministers, nobles, and peasants, male and
female, who to the number of eighteen thousand had laid down their
lives rather than submit to the tyranny and popery of the Stuarts. We
had visited repeatedly Greyfriars Churchyard at Edinburgh, where the
Covenant was signed, and where many of the martyrs who were beheaded
in the adjoining Grassmarket are buried. The last of those who "kissed
the Red Maiden" here was the youthful and gifted James Renwick. His
statue at Stirling represents a mere stripling indeed. Not far from
Renwick's statue stands the most beautiful of all the monuments of the
Covenanters, the snow white group of Margaret and Agnes Wilson, and the
figure of an angel standing by them. The inscription is as follows:
MARGARET,
Virgin Martyr of the ocean wave, with her
likeminded sister,
AGNES.
Love many waters cannot quench.
God saves His chaste impearled one in Covenant true.
O Scotia's daughters! earnest scan the page,
And prize this flower of grace--blood-bought for you.
PSALM ix: 19.
Through faith Margaret Wilson, a youthful maiden, chose rather
to depart and be with Christ than to disown His holy Cause and
Covenant, to own Erastian usurpation, and conform to prelacy
enforced by cruel laws. Bound to a stake within flood mark of the
Solway tide, she died a martyr's death on 11th May, 1685.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO MARGARET WILSON, STIRLING.]
I had had the satisfaction, on my former visit to Scotland, of seeing
many of the places around which the heroism of the Covenanters has
thrown imperishable renown, Bothwell Bridge, Drumclog, Ayrsmoss,
Wigtown (where a noble monument to Margaret Wilson and Margaret
McLachlan crowns the highest hill and overlooks the sad sands of
Wigtown, which all readers of _The Men of the Moss Hags_ will
remember), also the little Duchrae (where, by the way, Mr. S. R.
Crockett was born), and Earlstoun Castle on Ken Water, and Sanquhar.
At Dumfries one morning, I had eaten my breakfast in the room where
Charles Edward, the Pretender, the last of the Stuarts to curse and
trouble the united kingdom, had dined with his staff, the night before
his final withdrawal northward; and at Sanquhar, in the afternoon of
the same day, I had eaten my dinner close to the granite shaft which
marks the spot where Richard Cameron and the other twenty heroes
sat their horses on that memorable day, when they unfurled the blue
silken banner, with its inscription in letters of gold "For Christ's
Crown and Covenant," and flashed their swords in the sunlit air,
and declared themselves independent of the tyrannical and perjured
house of Stuart--one of the sublimest actions in the history of human
freedom--and the twenty men won, though they themselves perished in the
conflict. As I thought of it all, and how much it meant for the civil
and religious liberty of our own country, I had taken off my hat, and,
standing there in the street, had silently thanked God for the gift
to Scotland and the world of such men as Richard Cameron and William
Gordon and James Renwick.
I had a very pleasant note the other day from Mr. S. R. Crockett, the
novelist, in which he was kind enough to say, "If you are in Galloway,
I shall be glad indeed to see you," and in which he expressed a lively
interest in the work of the "Covenanters" in our church. In speaking of
_The Men of the Moss Hags_, he says, "I put a great deal of faithful
work into it, but that very quality somewhat marred the dramatic
element. I think of trying again with a book on _Peden_--a red-hot one
this time--not trying to hold the balance, but going straight for all
persecutors and sitters-at-ease in the Covenant Zion."
[Sidenote: The Lake Scenery of Scotland.]
Those who go to The Trossachs by way of Callander, as most tourists
do, and as I did on my former visit, miss the finest scenery of this
region. Readers of _The Lady of the Lake_ naturally wish to go by
Coilantogle Ford, Clan-Alpine's out-most bound, but by doing so they
miss not only the finest mountain views of the district, but also the
scenes of _Rob Roy_, on the upper waters of the Forth. So this time
we went by rail from Stirling to Aberfoyle, spent the night at the
delightful Bailie Nicol Jarvie Hotel, antipodal in every respect to the
wretched inn of the clachan described by Sir Walter, and took the coach
over the mountains next morning for the Trossachs and Loch Katrine.
The beauty of the mountains, seen in this way, with their rocks and
ferns and heather all around us, and the glittering lakes far below
us, was a revelation even to one who had been through the district on
the other route. At the Loch Katrine pier we took the little steamer
_Sir Walter Scott_, and passing Ellen's Isle, were soon favored with
another memorable view. Surely Ben Venue was never lovelier than it
was that day, with the sunlight and shadow alternating on its rugged
sides. The Stronachlachar Hotel, at the foot of the lake, is another
excellent place of entertainment. We could not tear ourselves away at
once, so after luncheon we rowed on the lake, and climbed on the rocks,
and gathered the heather till late in the afternoon. Then we took coach
for Inversnaid. We thought we had seen it rain in Scotland. We had not.
Those downpours which had so often drenched us in and around Edinburgh
were mere showers compared to the floods which fell upon us on that
drive to Inversnaid. The best opportunity I ever had to observe, in
perfect comfort, the effect of a heavy rain on Highland scenery was on
a steamboat ride up Loch Tay some years ago. From the windows of the
saloon we could see everything on both sides. All the trickling burns,
swollen by the rain, had become full and foaming streams, and, dashing
down the mossy mountains, gave them the appearance of immense slopes of
green velvet, striped from top to bottom with ribbons of silver. But on
this drive from Stronachlachar to Inversnaid we were too busy trying
to keep ourselves dry to take account of the effect of the rain on the
scenery. We were much more concerned about its effect upon ourselves.
But on reaching the hotel we hung up our dripping wraps, and were quite
comfortable again in a few minutes. Next morning was fine. We walked to
Rob Roy's cave in the tumbled rocks overlooking the water. We climbed
the hills above Inversnaid Falls. Some of the party rowed across the
lake to the Arrochar mountains. From every point of view we were
enchanted with the loveliness of Loch Lomond. It is the largest and
most beautiful of the Scottish lakes. We left Inversnaid reluctantly,
after a too brief stay of a day and a half, and steamed down to
Balloch. Taking the cars there for Glasgow, we soon came in sight of
the gray stone mansion of Lord Overtoun, standing high and clear to the
view on our left. The sight of it rendered the senior member of the
party reminiscent again, and he told the others of the garden party
given there to the Pan-Presbyterian Council in 1896.
About 850 people had come by rail from Glasgow to Dumbarton on a
specially chartered train, and were conveyed the two or three miles
from there to Overtoun in breaks, thirty-five in number. Over the
door of the mansion ran the chiselled words, "Let everything that
hath breath praise the Lord." The host and Lady Overtoun received the
delegates in the hall. After passing through the elegant apartments on
the first floor, they dispersed over the beautiful grounds where ices
were served at various places, and ten pipers of the celebrated Black
Watch, in their picturesque Highland costume, marched up and down the
lawn, playing their national instrument, one which, with its "tangled
squeaking," as Hawthorne calls it, has always seemed to me more
picturesque than musical. At four o'clock the guests, to the number of
nearly one thousand, all assembled in the great marquee which had been
erected on the lawn, and were seated at tables for refreshments, after
which they were welcomed by Lord Overtoun in a most cordial speech, to
which responses were made by Dr. Roberts, Dr. Blaikie, Dr. Hoge, Rev.
John McNeill and others, and at about six o'clock we all went back to
Glasgow, fully agreed that this was far and away the most elaborate and
elegant entertainment we had ever seen.
One of the raciest men I met at Glasgow, on that occasion, was the
Rev. John McNeill. I had the good fortune, with some other friends,
to travel in the same compartment with him the day we went to Lord
Overtoun's Garden Party. Noticing the river through the car window,
he began to speak of the filth of the Clyde below Glasgow, and then
naturally enough of the Chicago river, which is probably the filthiest
ditch on this planet, and quoted the remark he had made while there,
that Peter could have walked on the Chicago river without faith. This
led him to speak of exaggerations in general, one especially in which
a local Scotch orator indulged when offering the congratulations of
his community to the owner of three or four small coasting vessels
when he was about launching another one. After "disporting himself in
the empyrean," as Dr. Alexander used to say of such sky-scrapers, this
bailie wound up with the statement that "the sails of your ships whiten
the universal seas." The local minister was the next speaker, but
after such a burst of eloquence as the foregoing, his remarks were, of
course, very tame, so much so that the bailie who had covered himself
with glory turned to another bailie sitting next to him, and said,
"Bailie, mon, some o' them that have never been to college can make a
better speech than them that have been through _the hale corrycolium_!"
Another example of unconscious Scotch humor, related, I think, in
Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, was that of the pastor of the small islands
of Cumbrae, near the mouth of the Clyde, who was accustomed to pray
that the Lord would "bless Great Cumbrae and Little Cumbrae and _the
adjacent islands_ of Great Britain and Ireland." Still another was that
of the simple Highlanders on the estates of the great Presbyterian
nobleman, the Duke of Argyll, who when the Duke's son, the Marquis of
Lorne, married the daughter of Queen Victoria, said, "The Queen must be
a great woman if her daughter could marry the son of McCallum More."
[Sidenote: The City of Glasgow.]
"Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word." From time
immemorial that has been the motto of this stately city, now the
second in size in Great Britain, numbering some nine hundred thousand
souls. It should, therefore, be no surprise that there are _two
hundred and seventy-five_ Presbyterian churches here. "Glasgow is the
largest Presbyterian city in the world, whether it be measured by the
number of churches, of communicants, or of aggressive work done in
the cause of Christ." It was in Glasgow that the first missionary
society, to send the gospel to the heathen world, was formed in
Scotland. Glasgow was also the principal scene of the great home
mission enterprise of Dr. Chalmers. Thus, as Prof. Lindsay says,
Glasgow has taken the lead in the two greatest characteristics of
modern evangelical Presbyterianism--missions to the heathen, and to the
lapsed and drifting population at home. Besides what is raised by the
churches of the city, Glasgow spends annually more than seven hundred
thousand dollars in the support of various charitable institutions.
For instance, over nine hundred orphan children are cared for in the
"homes," all the money for buildings and daily bread being sent in, in
answer to prayer. Eighty-eight services are held on Sabbath forenoons
for non-churchgoing lads and girls, superintended by two thousand
monitors and workers. The Boys' Brigade took its rise in Glasgow.
There are ten thousand young men enrolled as members of the Young
Men's Christian Association. These bare statements will give some idea
of the religious activities of this great Presbyterian city, and of
its suitableness as a rallying centre, in 1896, for the three hundred
representatives of that vast army of more than twenty million people of
God, who, in every nation under heaven, march under the blue banner,
constituting the largest Protestant Church in the world.
Glasgow is, moreover, an ancient seat of learning, and a great centre
of commerce. For five hundred years its University has shed light over
Scotland, and other countries as well. As for primary education, the
official report says, "it is a rare thing now to find a child in the
city, over ten or eleven years of age, who cannot read and write. Its
art galleries, museums, music, lectures, its magnificent municipal
buildings erected at a cost of two million six hundred thousand
dollars, its sanitary arrangements, under the influence of which the
rate of mortality is steadily decreasing, its water system, which, at a
cost of seventeen million five hundred dollars, has brought an abundant
supply of pure water from Loch Katrine through thirty-five miles of
mountainous country--all are worthy of the second city of the kingdom.
And, as everybody knows, Glasgow is the place where "the stately ocean
greyhounds" are built. Fifty-five million dollars have been expended in
"turning what was once a little salmon stream into one of the greatest
navigable highways of the world." In 1768, the Clyde, at low water, was
one foot deep, where now it is twenty-four feet. What is it that has
given this venerable Presbyterian city this proud position, next to
London? "Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the word."
[Sidenote: The Old Cathedral.]
It is said that the word "Glasgow" comes from "Glescu," gray mist. It
deserved its name when we arrived there on the 30th of August, 1902,
and it continued to deserve it throughout our stay. The fog was so
heavy and dense that one felt almost as if it could be sawn into slabs.
I can testify further that the city deserved its name also on the 17th
of June, 1896, when the delegates to the Sixth General Council of the
Reformed Churches Throughout the World Holding the Presbyterian System,
gathered in the Barony Church, and marched through a cold rain, across
the wide paved square, to the ancient cathedral, where the opening
sermon was to be preached. This majestic building, now more than
seven hundred years old, is thus described by Sir Walter Scott in the
nineteenth chapter of _Rob Roy_, "The pile is of a gloomy and massive,
rather than of an elegant, style of Gothic architecture; but its
peculiar character is so strongly preserved, and so well suited with
the accompaniments which surround it, that the impression of the first
view was solemn and awful in the extreme." As Andrew Fairservice said
to the hero of that stirring story, whom Scott represents as addressed
by Rob Roy from behind one of the pillars in the crypt, "It's a brave
kirk--nane o' yer whigmalieries and curliewurlies and opensteek hems
about it--a solid, weel-jointed mason-wark, that will stand as long
as the world, keep hands and gunpowder aff it." And, indeed, it looks
as if it would. On the crest of the hill, in the adjacent necropolis,
stands a splendid Doric column surmounted by a statue of John Knox.
[Sidenote: The Most Eminent Citizen of Glasgow.]
The Preëminence of Scotland in Theology, Philosophy, and Medicine has
long been recognized the world over. But it may not be known to all
of my readers that the most eminent scientist now living is also a
resident of this country, a citizen of Glasgow--Lord Kelvin.
In the Regalia Room of Edinburgh Castle, on my way to Glasgow in 1896,
I had the pleasure of meeting, for the first time, one of the most
intellectual young men that the South has produced since the war,
Professor Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton University, a former fellow
student at Davidson College of one of my fellow-travellers at that
time. He told us he was on his way to Glasgow, too, for the purpose of
representing Princeton in the celebration of Lord Kelvin's jubilee.
This veteran professor, who thus completed fifty years of service as a
teacher in the University of Glasgow, and who, by the way, like so many
other epoch-makers, is a Scotch-Irishman, has long been recognized as
one of the most eminent scientists of modern times, and the greatest
of all electricians. As Professor William Thomson, he first won renown
by the wonder which he wrought in annihilating space by enabling us
to telegraph across the Atlantic ocean, for it was he who solved the
difficulty which, in 1856, threatened to defeat all the plans of the
late Cyrus W. Field just as he seemed about to realize his gigantic
dream of uniting two continents. The signals passing through a long
submarine cable were found to "drag" so much as to make it practically
useless. Thomson discovered the law governing the retardation,
and invented the "mirror instrument," by which all the delicate
fluctuations of the varying current could be interpreted. "So sensitive
is the arrangement that on one occasion a signal was sent to America
and back through two Atlantic cables with the current from a toy
battery, made in a silver thimble with a drop of acidulated water and
a grain of zinc." By means of Thomson's magical apparatus, on August
17, 1858, this message was flashed from shore to shore, "Europe and
America are united by telegraph: Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace, good will toward men." For this success he was knighted.
In 1892, after many other successes, he was raised to the peerage. The
submarine telegraph is not the only invention which connects his name
with the sea. By substituting piano-forte wire for the old-fashioned
rope, he made it possible to measure quickly and a
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