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Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2

by Harriet Beecher Stowe · English · Gutenberg #6931 · 707,902 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe


        
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6931]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6931

Credits: Skip Doughty, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS, VOLUME 2 ***




Skip Doughty, Tiffany Vergon, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed



SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.

BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,
Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Etc.


  ..... "When thou haply seest
  Some rare note-worthy object in thy travels,
  Make me partake of thy happiness."
                           SHAKESPEARE


IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.




CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.


LETTER XIX.
Breakfast.--Macaulay.--Hallam.--Milman.--Sir R. Inglis.--
Lunch at Surrey Parsonage.--Dinner at Sir E. Buxton's.

LETTER XX.
Dinner at Lord Shaftesbury's.

LETTER XXI.
Stoke Newington.--Exeter Hall.--Antislavery Meeting.

LETTER XXII.
Windsor.--The Picture Gallery.--Eton.--The Poet Gray.

LETTER XXIII. Rev. Mr. Gurney.--Richmond, the Artist.--Kossuth.--
Pembroke Lodge.--Dinner at Lord John Russell's.--Lambeth Palace.

LETTER XXIV.
Playford Hall.--Clarkson.

LETTER XXV.
Joseph Sturge.--The "Times" upon Dressmaking.--Duke of Argyle.--
Sir David Brewster.--Lord Mahon.--Mr. Gladstone.

LETTER XXVI.
London Milliners.--Lord Shaftesbury.

LETTER XXVII. Archbishop of Canterbury's Sermon to the Ragged
Scholars.--Mr. Cobden.--Miss Greenfield's Concert.--Rev. S. R. Ward.
--Lady Byron.--Mrs. Jameson.--George Thompson.--Ellen Crafts.

LETTER XXVIII.
Model Lodging Houses.--Lodging House Act.--Washing Houses.

LETTER XXIX. Benevolent Movements.--The Poor Laws.--The Insane.--
Factory Operatives.--Schools, &c.

LETTER XXX. Presentation at Surrey Chapel.--House of Parliament.--
Miss Greenfield's Second Concert.--Sir John Malcolm.--The Charity
Children.--Mrs. Gaskell.--Thackeray.

JOURNAL.
London to Paris.--Church Music.--The Shops.--The Louvre.--Music at
the Tuileries.--A Salon.--Versailles.--M. Belloc.

LETTER XXXI.
The Louvre.--The Venus de Milon.

JOURNAL.
M. Belloc's Studio.--M. Charpentier.--Salon Musicale.--Peter
Parley.--Jardin Mabille.--Remains of Nineveh.--The Emperor.--
Versailles.--Sartory.--Père la Chaise.--Adolphe Monod.--Paris to
Lyons.--Diligence to Geneva.--Mont Blanc.--Lake Leman.

LETTER XXXII.
Route to Chamouni.--Glaciers.

LETTER XXXIII.
Chamouni.--Rousse, the Mule.--The Ascent.

JOURNAL.
The Alps.

LETTER XXXIV.
The Ice Fields.

JOURNAL.
Chamouni to Martigny.--Humors of the Mules.

LETTER XXXV.
Alpine Flowers.--Pass of the Tête Noir.

JOURNAL.
The Same.

LETTER XXXVI.
Ascent to St. Bernard.--The Dogs.

LETTER XXXVII.
Castle Chillon.--Bonnevard.--Mont Blanc from Geneva.--Luther and
Calvin.--Madame De Wette.--M. Fazy.

JOURNAL.
A Serenade.--Lausanne.--Freyburg.--Berne.--The Staubbach.--
Grindelwald.

LETTER XXXVIII.
Wengern Alps.--Flowers.--Glaciers.--The Eiger.

JOURNAL.
Glaciers.--Interlachen.--Sunrise in the Mountains.--Monument to the
Swiss Guards of Louis XVI.--Basle.--Strasbourg.

LETTER XXXIX.
Strasbourg.

LETTER XL.
The Rhine.--Heidelberg.

JOURNAL.
To Frankfort.

LETTER XLI.
Frankfort.--Lessing's "Trial of Huss."

JOURNAL.
To Cologne.--The Cathedral.

LETTER XXII.
Cologne.--Church of St. Ursula.--Relics.--Dusseldorf.

JOURNAL.
To Leipsic.--M. Tauchnitz.--Dresden.--The Gallery.--Berlin.

LETTER XLIII.
The Dresden Gallery.--Schoeffer.

LETTER XLIV.
Berlin.--The Palace.--The Museum.

LETTER XLV.
Wittenberg.--Luther's House.--Melanchthon's House.

LETTER XLVI.
Erfurt.--The Cathedral.--Luther's Cell.--The Wartburg.

JOURNAL.
The Smoker discomfited.--Antwerp.--The Cathedral Chimes.--To Paris.

LETTER XLVII.
Antwerp.--Rubens.

LETTER XLVIII.

Paris.--School of Design.--Egyptian and Assyrian Remains.--Mrs. S. C.
Hall.--The Pantheon.--The Madeleine.--Notre Dame.--Béranger.--French
Character.--Observance of Sunday.

JOURNAL.
Seasickness on the Channel.

LETTER XLIX.

York.--Castle Howard.--Leeds.--Fountains Abbey.--Liverpool.--Irish
Deputation.--Departure.




LETTER XIX.

May 19.

Dear E.:--

This letter I consecrate to you, because I know that the persons and
things to be introduced into it will most particularly be appreciated
by you.

In your evening reading circles, Macaulay, Sidney Smith, and Milman
have long been such familiar names that you will be glad to go with me
over all the scenes of my morning breakfast at Sir Charles Trevelyan's
yesterday. Lady Trevelyan, I believe I have said before, is the sister
of Macaulay, and a daughter of Zachary Macaulay--that undaunted
laborer for the slave, whose place in the hearts of all English
Christians is little below saintship.

We were set down at Welbourne Terrace, somewhere, I believe, about
eleven o'clock, and found quite a number already in the drawing room.
I had met Macaulay before, but as you have not, you will of course ask
a lady's first question, "How does he look?"

Well, my dear, so far as relates to the mere outward husk of the soul,
our engravers and daguerreotypists have done their work as well as
they usually do. The engraving that you get in the best editions of
his works may be considered, I suppose, a fair representation of how
he looks, when he sits to have his picture taken, which is generally
very different from the way any body looks at any other time. People
seem to forget, in taking likenesses, that the features of the face
are nothing but an alphabet, and that a dry, dead map of a person's
face gives no more idea how one looks than the simple presentation of
an alphabet shows what there is in a poem.

Macaulay's whole physique gives you the impression of great strength
and stamina of constitution. He has the kind of frame which we usually
imagine as peculiarly English; short, stout, and firmly knit. There is
something hearty in all his demonstrations. He speaks in that full,
round, rolling voice, deep from the chest, which we also conceive of
as being more common in England than America. As to his conversation,
it is just like his writing; that is to say, it shows very strongly
the same qualities of mind.

I was informed that he is famous for a most uncommon memory; one of
those men to whom it seems impossible to forget any thing once read;
and he has read all sorts of things that can be thought of, in all
languages. A gentleman told me that he could repeat all the old
Newgate literature, hanging ballads, last speeches, and dying
confessions; while his knowledge of Milton is so accurate, that, if
his poems were blotted out of existence, they might be restored simply
from his memory. This same accurate knowledge extends to the Latin and
Greek classics, and to much of the literature of modern Europe. Had
nature been required to make a man to order, for a perfect historian,
nothing better could have been put together, especially since there is
enough of the poetic fire included in the composition, to fuse all
these multiplied materials together, and color the historical
crystallization with them.

Macaulay is about fifty. He has never married; yet there are
unmistakable evidences in the breathings and aspects of the family
circle by whom he was surrounded, that the social part is not wanting
in his conformation. Some very charming young lady relatives seemed to
think quite as much of their gifted uncle as you might have done had
he been yours.

Macaulay is celebrated as a conversationalist; and, like Coleridge,
Carlyle, and almost every one who enjoys this reputation, he has
sometimes been accused of not allowing people their fair share in
conversation. This might prove an objection, possibly, to those who
wish to talk; but as I greatly prefer to hear, it would prove none to
me. I must say, however, that on this occasion the matter was quite
equitably managed. There were, I should think, some twenty or thirty
at the breakfast table, and the conversation formed itself into little
eddies of two or three around the table, now and then welling out into
a great bay of general discourse. I was seated between Macaulay and
Milman, and must confess I was a little embarrassed at times, because
I wanted to hear what they were both saying at the same time. However,
by the use of the faculty by which you play a piano with both hands, I
got on very comfortably.

Milman's appearance is quite striking; tall, stooping, with a keen
black eye and perfectly white hair--a singular and poetic contrast. He
began upon architecture and Westminster Abbey--a subject to which I am
always awake. I told him I had not yet seen Westminster; for I was now
busy in seeing life and the present, and by and by I meant to go there
and see death and the past.

Milman was for many years dean of Westminster, and kindly offered me
his services, to indoctrinate me into its antiquities.

Macaulay made some suggestive remarks on cathedrals generally. I said
that I thought it singular that we so seldom knew who were the
architects that designed these great buildings; that they appeared to
me the most sublime efforts of human genius.

He said that all the cathedrals of Europe were undoubtedly the result
of one or two minds; that they rose into existence very nearly
contemporaneously, and were built by travelling companies of masons,
under the direction of some systematic organization. Perhaps you knew
all this before, but I did not; and so it struck me as a glorious
idea. And if it is not the true account of the origin of cathedrals,
it certainly ought to be; and, as our old grandmother used to say,
"I'm going to believe it."

Looking around the table, and seeing how every body seemed to be
enjoying themselves, I said to Macaulay, that these breakfast parties
were a novelty to me; that we never had them in America, but that I
thought them the most delightful form of social life.

He seized upon the idea, as he often does, and turned it playfully
inside out, and shook it on all sides, just as one might play with the
lustres of a chandelier--to see them glitter. He expatiated on the
merits of breakfast parties as compared with all other parties. He
said dinner parties are mere formalities. You invite a man to dinner
because you _must_ invite him; because you are acquainted with
his grandfather, or it is proper you should; but you invite a man to
breakfast because you want to see _him_. You may be sure, if you
are invited to breakfast, there is something agreeable about you. This
idea struck me as very sensible; and we all, generally having the fact
before our eyes that _we_ were invited to breakfast, approved the
sentiment.

"Yes," said Macaulay, "depend upon it; if a man is a bore he never
gets an invitation to breakfast."

"Rather hard on the poor bores," said a lady.

"Particularly," said Macaulay, laughing, "as bores are usually the
most irreproachable of human beings. Did you ever hear a bore
complained of when they did not say that he was the best fellow in the
world? For my part, if I wanted to get a guardian for a family of
defenceless orphans, I should inquire for the greatest bore in the
vicinity. I should know that he would be a man of unblemished honor
and integrity."

The conversation now went on to Milton and Shakspeare. Macaulay made
one remark that gentlemen are always making, and that is, that there
is very little characteristic difference between Shakspeare's women.
Well, there is no hope for that matter; so long as men are not women
they will think so. In general they lump together Miranda, Juliet,
Desdemona, and Viola,

  "As matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
  And best distinguished as black, brown, or fair."

It took Mrs. Jameson to set this matter forth in her Characteristics
of Women; a book for which Shakspeare, if he could get up, ought to
make her his best bow, especially as there are fine things ascribed to
him there, which, I dare say, he never thought of, careless fellow
that he was! But, I take it, every true painter, poet, and artist is
in some sense so far a prophet that his utterances convey more to
other minds than he himself knows; so that, doubtless, should all the
old masters rise from the dead, they might be edified by what
posterity has found in their works.

Some how or other, we found ourselves next talking about Sidney Smith;
and it was very pleasant to me, recalling the evenings when your
father has read and we have laughed over him, to hear him spoken of as
a living existence, by one who had known him. Still, I have always had
a quarrel with Sidney, for the wicked use to which he put his wit, in
abusing good old Dr. Carey, and the missionaries in India; nay, in
some places he even stooped to be spiteful and vulgar. I could not
help, therefore, saying, when Macaulay observed that he had the most
agreeable wit of any literary man of his acquaintance, "Well, it was
very agreeable, but it could not have been very agreeable to the
people who came under the edge of it," and instanced his treatment of
Dr. Carey. Some others who were present seemed to feel warmly on this
subject, too, and Macaulay said,--

"Ah, well, Sidney repented of that, afterwards." He seemed to cling to
his memory, and to turn from every fault to his joviality, as a thing
he could not enough delight to remember.

Truly, wit, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. A man who has
the faculty of raising a laugh in this sad, earnest world is
remembered with indulgence and complacency, always.

There were several other persons of note present at this breakfast,
whose conversation I had not an opportunity of hearing, as they sat at
a distance from me. There was Lord Glenelg, brother of Sir Robert
Grant, governor of Bombay, whose beautiful hymns have rendered him
familiar in America. The favorite one, commencing "When gathering
clouds around I view," was from his pen. Lord Glenelg, formerly Sir
Charles Grant, himself has been the author of several pieces of
poetry, which were in their time quite popular.

The historian Hallam was also present, whose Constitutional History,
you will remember, gave rise to one of Macaulay's finest reviews; a
quiet, retiring man, with a benignant, somewhat sad, expression of
countenance. The loss of an only son has cast a shadow over his life.
It was on this son that Tennyson wrote his "_In Memoriam_."

Sir Robert H. Inglis was also present, and Mr. S. held considerable
conversation with him. Knowing that he was both high tory and high
church, it was an agreeable surprise to find him particularly gentle
and bland in manners, earnest and devout in religious sentiment. I
have heard him spoken of, even among dissenters, as a devout and
earnest man. Another proof this of what mistakes we fall into when we
judge the characters of persons at a distance, from what we suppose
likely to be the effect of their sentiments. We often find the
professed aristocrat gentle and condescending, and the professed
supporter of forms spiritual.

I think it very likely there may have been other celebrities present,
whom I did not know. I am always finding out, a day or two after, that
I have been with somebody very remarkable, and did not know it at the
time.

After breakfast we found, on consulting our list, that we were to
lunch at Surrey parsonage.

Of all the cities I was ever in, London is the most absolutely
unmanageable, it takes so long to get any where; wherever you want to
go it seems to take you about two hours to get there. From the West
End down into the city is a distance that seems all but interminable.
London is now more than ten miles long. And yet this monster city is
stretching in all directions yearly, and where will be the end of it
nobody knows. Southey says, "I began to study the map of London,
though dismayed at its prodigious extent. The river is no assistance
to a stranger in finding his way; there is no street along its banks,
and no eminence from whence you can look around and take your
bearings."

You may take these reflections as passing through my mind while we
were driving through street after street, and going round corner after
corner, towards the parsonage.

Surrey Chapel and parsonage were the church and residence of the
celebrated Kowland Hill. At present the incumbent is the Rev. Mr.
Sherman, well known to many of our American clergy by the kind
hospitalities and attentions with which he has enriched their stay in
London. The church maintains a medium rank between Congregationalism
and Episcopacy, retaining part of the ritual, but being independent in
its government. The kindness of Mr. Sherman had assembled here a very
agreeable company, among whom were Farquhar Tupper, the artist
Cruikshank, from whom I received a call the other morning, and Mr.
Pilatte, M. P. Cruikshank is an old man with gray hair and eyebrows,
strongly marked features, and keen eyes. He talked to me something
about the promotion of temperance by a series of literary sketches
illustrated by his pencil.

I sat by a lady who was well acquainted with Kingsley, the author of
Alton Locke, Hypatia, and other works, with whom I had some
conversation with regard to the influence of his writings.

She said that he had been instrumental in rescuing from infidelity
many young men whose minds had become unsettled; that he was a devoted
and laborious clergyman, exerting himself, without any cessation, for
the good of his parish.

After the company were gone I tried to get some rest, as my labors
were not yet over, we being engaged to dine at Sir Edward Buxton's.
This was our most dissipated day in London. We never tried the
experiment again of going to three parties in one day.

By the time I got to my third appointment I was entirely exhausted. I
met here some, however, whom I was exceedingly interested to see;
among them Samuel Gurney, brother of Elizabeth Fry, with his wife and
family. Lady Edward Buxton is one of his daughters. All had that air
of benevolent friendliness which is characteristic of the sect.

Dr. Lushington, the companion and venerable associate of Wilberforce
and Clarkson, was also present. He was a member of Parliament with
Wilberforce forty or fifty years ago. He is now a judge of the
admiralty court, that is to say, of the law relating to marine
affairs. This is a branch of law which the nature of our government in
America makes it impossible for us to have. He is exceedingly
brilliant and animated in conversation.

Dr. Cunningham, the author of World without Souls, was present. There
was there also a master of Harrow School.

He told me an anecdote, which pleased me for several reasons; that
once, when the queen visited the school, she put to him the inquiry,
"whether the educational system of England did not give a
disproportionate attention to the study of the ancient classics." His
reply was, "that her majesty could best satisfy her mind on that point
by observing what men the public schools of England had hitherto
produced;" certainly a very adroit reply, yet one which would be
equally good against the suggestion of any improvement whatever. We
might as well say, see what men we have been able to raise in America
without any classical education at all; witness Benjamin Franklin,
George Washington, and Roger Sherman.

It is a curious fact that Christian nations, with one general consent,
in the early education of youth neglect the volume which they consider
inspired, and bring the mind, at the most susceptible period, under
the dominion of the literature and mythology of the heathen world; and
that, too, when the sacred history and poetry are confessedly superior
in literary quality. Grave doctors of divinity expend their forces in
commenting on and teaching things which would be utterly scouted, were
an author to publish them in English as original compositions. A
Christian community has its young men educated in Ovid and Anacreon,
but is shocked when one of them comes out in English with Don Juan;
yet, probably, the latter poem is purer than either.

The English literature and poetry of the time of Pope and Dryden
betray a state of association so completely heathenized, that an old
Greek or Roman raised from the dead could scarce learn from them that
any change had taken place in the religion of the world; and even
Milton often pains one by introducing second-hand pagan mythology into
the very shadow of the eternal throne. In some parts of the Paradise
Lost, the evident imitations of Homer are to me the poorest and most
painful passages.

The adoration of the ancient classics has lain like a dead weight on
all modern art and literature; because men, instead of using them
simply for excitement and inspiration, have congealed them into fixed,
imperative rules. As the classics have been used, I think, wonderful
as have been the minds educated under them, there would have been more
variety and originality without them.

With which long sermon on a short text, I will conclude my letter.




LETTER XX.

Thursday, May 12. My dear I.:--

Yesterday, what with my breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I was, as the
fashionable saying is, "fairly knocked up." This expression, which I
find obtains universally here, corresponds to what we mean by being
"used up." They talk of Americanisms, and I have a little innocent
speculation now and then concerning Anglicisms. I certainly find
several here for which I can perceive no more precedent in the well of
"English undefiled," than for some of ours; for instance, this being
"knocked up," which is variously inflected, as, for example, in the
form of a participial adjective, as a "knocking up" affair; in the
form of a noun, as when they say "such a person has got quite a
knocking up," and so on.

The fact is, if we had ever had any experience in London life we
should not have made three engagements in one day. To my simple eye it
is quite amusing to see how they manage the social machine here.
People are under such a pressure of engagements, that they go about
with their lists in their pockets. If A wants to invite B to dinner,
out come their respective lists. A says he has only Tuesday and
Thursday open for this week. B looks down his list, and says that the
days are all closed. A looks along, and says that he has no day open
till next Wednesday week. B, however, is going to leave town Tuesday;
so that settles the matter as to dining; so they turn back again, and
try the breakfasting; for though you cannot dine in but one place a
day, yet, by means of the breakfast and the lunch, you can make three
social visits if you are strong enough.

Then there are evening parties, which begin at ten o'clock. The first
card of the kind that was sent me, which was worded, "At home at ten
o'clock," I, in my simplicity, took to be ten in the morning.

But here are people staying out night after night till two o'clock,
sitting up all night in Parliament, and seeming to thrive upon it.
There certainly is great apology for this in London, if it is always
as dark, drizzling, and smoky in the daytime as it has been since I
have been here. If I were one of the London people I would live by
gaslight as they do, for the streets and houses are altogether
pleasanter by gaslight than by daylight. But to ape these customs
under our clear, American skies, so contrary to our whole social
system, is simply ridiculous.

This morning I was exceedingly tired, and had a perfect longing to get
but of London into some green fields--to get somewhere where there was
nobody. So kind Mrs. B. had the carriage, and off we drove together.
By and by we found ourselves out in the country, and then I wanted to
get out and walk.

After a while a lady came along, riding a little donkey. These donkeys
have amused me so much since I have been here! At several places on
the outskirts of the city they have them standing, all girt up with
saddles covered with white cloth, for ladies to ride on. One gets out
of London by means of an omnibus to one of these places, and then, for
a few pence, can have a ride upon one of them into the country. Mrs.
B. walked by the side of the lady, and said to her something which I
did not hear, and she immediately alighted and asked me with great
kindness if I wanted to try the saddle; so I got upon the little
beast, which was about as large as a good-sized calf, and rode a few
paces to try him. It is a slow, but not unpleasant gait, and if the
creature were not so insignificantly small, as to make you feel much
as if you were riding upon a cat, it would be quite a pleasant affair.
After dismounting I crept through a hole in a hedge, and looked for
some flowers; and, in short, made the most that I could of my
interview with nature, till it came time to go home to dinner, for our
dinner hour at Mr. B.'s is between one and two; quite like home. In
the evening we were to dine at Lord Shaftesbury's.

After napping all the afternoon we went to Grosvenor Square. There was
only a small, select party, of about sixteen. Among the guests were
Dr. McAll, Hebrew professor in King's College, Lord Wriothesley
Russell, brother of Lord John, and one of the private chaplains of the
queen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr. McAll is a millenarian.
He sat next to C. at table, and they had some conversation on that
subject. He said those ideas had made a good deal of progress in the
English mind.

While I was walking down to dinner with Lord Shaftesbury, he pointed
out to me in the hall the portrait of his distinguished ancestor,
Antony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, whose name he bears. This
ancestor, notwithstanding his sceptical philosophy, did some good
things, as he was the author of the habeas corpus act.

After dinner we went back to the drawing rooms again; and while tea
and coffee were being served, names were constantly being announced,
till the rooms were quite full.

Among the earliest who arrived was Mr.----, a mulatto gentleman,
formerly British consul at Liberia. I found him a man of considerable
cultivation and intelligence, evincing much good sense in his
observations.

I overheard some one saying in the crowd, "Shaftesbury has been about
the chimney sweepers again in Parliament." I said to Lord Shaftesbury,
"I thought that matter of the chimney sweepers had been attended to
long ago, and laws made about it."

"So we have made laws," said he, "but people won't keep them unless we
follow them up."

He has a very prompt, cheerful way of speaking, and throws himself
into every thing he talks about with great interest and zeal. He
introduced me to one gentleman, I forget his name now, as the patron
of the shoeblacks. On my inquiring what that meant, he said that he
had started the idea of providing employment for poor street boys, by
furnishing them with brushes and blacking, and forming them into
regular companies of shoeblacks. Each boy has his' particular stand,
where he blacks the shoes of every passer by who chooses to take the
trouble of putting up his foot and paying his twopence. Lord
Shaftesbury also presented me to a lady who had been a very successful
teacher in the ragged schools; also to a gentleman who, he said, had
been very active in the London city missions. Some very ingenious work
done in the ragged schools was set on the table for the company to
examine, and excited much interest.

I talked a little while with Lord Wriothesley Russell. From him we
derived the idea that the queen was particularly careful in the
training and religious instruction of her children. He said that she
claimed that the young prince should be left entirely to his parents,
in regard to his religious instruction, till he was seven years of
age; but that, on examining him at that time, they were equally
surprised and delighted with his knowledge of the Scriptures. I must
remark here, that such an example as the queen sets in the education
of her children makes itself felt through all the families of the
kingdom. Domesticity is now the fashion in high life. I have had
occasion to see, in many instances, how carefully ladies of rank
instruct their children. This argues more favorably for the
continuance of English institutions than any thing I have seen. If the
next generation of those who are born to rank and power are educated,
in the words of Fenelon, to consider these things "as a ministry,"
which they hold for the benefit of the poor, the problem of life in
England will become easier of solution. Such are Lord Shaftesbury's
views, and as he throws them out with unceasing fervor in his
conversation and conduct, they cannot but powerfully affect not only
his own circle, but all circles through the kingdom. Lady Shaftesbury
is a beautiful and interesting woman, and warmly enters into the
benevolent plans of her husband. A gentleman and lady with whom I
travelled said that Lord and Lady Shaftesbury had visited in person
the most forlorn and wretched parts of London, that they might get, by
their own eyesight, a more correct gauge of the misery to be relieved.
I did not see Lord Shaftesbury's children; but, from the crayon
likenesses which hung upon the walls, they must be a family of
uncommon beauty.

I talked a little while with the Bishop of Tuam. I was the more
interested to do so because he was from that part of Ireland which
Sibyl Jones has spoken of as being in so particularly miserable a
condition. I said, "How are you doing now, in that part of the
country? There has been a great deal of misery there, I hear." He said
"There has been, but we have just turned the corner, and now I hope we
shall see better days. The condition of the people has been improved
by emigration and other causes, till the evils have been brought
within reach, and we feel that there is hope of effecting a permanent
improvement."

While I was sitting talking, Lord Shaltesbury brought a gentleman and
lady, whom he introduced as Lord Chief Justice Campbell and Lady
Strathheden. Lord Campbell is a man of most dignified and imposing
personal presence; tall, with a large frame, a fine, high forehead,
and strongly marked features. Naturally enough, I did not suppose them
to be husband and wife, and when I discovered that they were so,
expressed a good deal of surprise at their difference of titles; to
which she replied, that she did not wonder we Americans were sometimes
puzzled among the number of titles. She seemed quite interested to
inquire into our manner of living and customs, and how they struck me
as compared with theirs. The letter of Mrs. Tyler was much talked of,
and some asked me if I supposed Mrs. Tyler really wrote it, expressing
a little civil surprise at the style. I told them that I had heard it
said that it must have been written by some of the gentlemen in the
family, because it was generally understood that Mrs. Tyler was a very
ladylike person. Some said, "It does us no harm to be reminded of our
deficiencies; we need all the responsibility that can be put upon us."
Others said, "It is certain we have many defects;" but Lord John
Campbell said, "There is this difference between our evils and those
of slavery: ours exist contrary to law; those are upheld by law."


I did not get any opportunity of conversing with the Archbishop of
Canterbury, though this is the second time I have been in company with
him. He is a most prepossessing man in his appearance--simple,
courteous, mild, and affable. He was formerly Bishop of Chester, and
is now Primate of all England.

It is some indication of the tendency of things in a country to notice
what kind of men are patronized and promoted to the high places of the
church. Sumner is a man refined, gentle, affable, scholarly,
thoroughly evangelical in sentiment; to render him into American
phraseology, he is in doctrine what we should call a moderate New
School man. He has been a most industrious writer; one of his
principal works is his Commentary on the New Testament, in several
volumes; a work most admirably adapted for popular use, combining
practical devotion with critical accuracy to an uncommon degree. He
has also published a work on the Evidences of Christianity, in which
he sets forth some evidences of the genuineness of the gospel
narrative, which could only have been conceived by a mind of peculiar
delicacy, and which are quite interesting and original. He has also
written a work on Biblical Geology, which is highly spoken of by Sir
Charles Lyell and others. If I may believe accounts that I hear, this
mild and moderate man has shown a most admirable firmness and facility
in guiding the ship of the establishment in some critical and perilous
places of late years. I should add that he is warmly interested in all
the efforts now making for the good of the poor.

Among other persons of distinction, this evening, I noticed Lord and
Lady Palmerston.

A lady asked me this evening what I thought of the beauty of the
ladies of the English aristocracy: she was a Scotch lady, by the by;
so the question was a fair one. I replied, that certainly report had
not exaggerated their charms. Then came a home question--how the
ladies of England compared with the ladies of America. "Now for it,
patriotism," said I to myself; and, invoking to my aid certain fair
saints of my own country, whose faces I distinctly remembered, I
assured her that I had never seen more beautiful women than I had in
America. Grieved was I to be obliged to add, "But your ladies keep
their beauty much later and longer." This fact stares one in the face
in every company; one meets ladies past fifty, glowing, radiant, and
blooming, with a freshness of complexion and fulness of outline
refreshing to contemplate. What can be the reason? Tell us, Muses and
Graces, what can it be? Is it the conservative power of sea fogs and
coal smoke--the same cause that keeps the turf green, and makes the
holly and ivy flourish? How comes it that our married ladies dwindle,
fade, and grow thin--that their noses incline to sharpness, and their
elbows to angularity, just at the time of life when their island
sisters round out into a comfortable and becoming amplitude and
fulness? If it is the fog and the sea coal, why, then, I am afraid we
never shall come up with them. But perhaps there may be other causes
why a country which starts some of the most beautiful girls in the
world produces so few beautiful women. Have not our close-heated stove
rooms something to do with it? Have not the immense amount of hot
biscuits, hot corn cakes, and other compounds got up with the acrid
poison of saleratus, something to do with it? Above all, has not our
climate, with its alternate extremes of heat and cold, a tendency to
induce habits Of in-door indolence? Climate, certainly, has a great
deal to do with it; ours is evidently more trying and more exhausting;
and because it is so, we should not pile upon its back errors of dress
and diet which are avoided by our neighbors. They keep their beauty,
because they keep their health. It has been as remarkable as any thing
to me, since I have been here, that I do not constantly, as at home,
hear one and another spoken of as in miserable health, as very
delicate, &c. Health seems to be the rule, and not the exception. For
my part, I must say, the most favorable omen that I know of for female
beauty in America is, the multiplication of water cure establishments,
where our ladies, if they get nothing else, do gain some ideas as to
the necessity of fresh air, regular exercise, simple diet, and the
laws of hygiene in general.

There is one thing more which goes a long way towards the continued
health of these English ladies, and therefore towards their beauty;
and that is, the quietude and perpetuity of their domestic
institutions. They do not, like us, fade their cheeks lying awake
nights ruminating the awful question who shall do the washing next
week, or who shall take the chambermaid's place, who is going to be
married, or that of the cook, who has signified her intention of
parting with the mistress. Their hospitality is never embarrassed by
the consideration that their whole kitchen cabinet may desert at the
moment that their guests arrive. They are not obliged to choose
between washing their own dishes, or having their cut glass, silver,
and china left to the mercy of a foreigner, who has never done any
thing but field work. And last, not least, they are not possessed with
that ambition to do the impossible in all branches, which, I believe,
is the death of a third of the women in America. What is there ever
read of in books, or described in foreign travel, as attained by
people in possession of every means and appliance, which our women
will not undertake, single-handed, in spite of every providential
indication to the contrary? Who is not cognizant of dinner parties
invited, in which the lady of the house has figured successively as
confectioner, cook, dining-room girl, and, lastly, rushed up stairs to
bathe her glowing cheeks, smooth her hair, draw on satin dress and kid
gloves, and appear in the drawing room as if nothing were the matter?
Certainly the undaunted bravery of our American females can never
enough be admired. Other women can play gracefully the head of the
establishment; but who, like them, could be head, hand, and foot, all
at once?

As I have spoken of stoves, I will here remark that I have not yet
seen one in England; neither, so far as I can remember, have I seen a
house warmed by a furnace. Bright coal fires, in grates of polished
steel, are as yet the lares and penates of old England. If I am
inclined to mourn over any defection in my own country, it is the
closing up of the cheerful open fire, with its bright lights and
dancing shadows, and the planting on our domestic hearth of that
sullen, stifling gnome, the air-tight. I agree with Hawthorne in
thinking the movement fatal to patriotism; for who would fight for an
airtight!

I have run on a good way beyond our evening company; so good by for
the present.




LETTER XXI

May 13. Dear father:--

To-day we are to go out to visit your Quaker friend, Mr. Alexander, at
Stoke Newington, where you passed so many pleasant hours during your
sojourn in England. At half past nine we went into the Congregational
Union, which is now in session. I had a seat upon the platform, where
I could command a view of the house. It was a most interesting
assemblage to me, recalling forcibly our New England associations, and
impressing more than ever on my mind how much of one blood the two
countries are. These earnest, thoughtful, intelligent-looking men
seemed to transport me back to my own country. They received us with
most gratifying cordiality and kindness. Most naturally
Congregationalism in England must turn with deep interest and sympathy
to Congregationalism in America. In several very cordial addresses
they testified their pleasure at seeing us among them, speaking most
affectionately of you and your labors, and your former visit to
England. The wives and daughters of many of them present expressed in
their countenances the deepest and most affectionate feeling. It is
cheering to feel that an ocean does not divide our hearts, and that
the Christians of America and England are one.

In the afternoon we drove out to Mr. Alexander's. His place is called
Paradise, and very justly, being one more of those home Edens in which
England abounds, where, without ostentation or display, every
appliance of rational enjoyment surrounds one.

We were ushered into a cheerful room, opening by one glass door upon a
brilliant conservatory of flowers, and by another upon a neatly-kept
garden. The air was fresh and sweet with the perfume of blossoming
trees, and every thing seemed doubly refreshing from the contrast with
the din and smoke of London. Our chamber looked out upon a beautiful
park, shaded with fine old trees. While contemplating the white
draperies of our windows, and the snowy robings of the bed, we could
not but call to mind the fact, of which we were before aware, that not
an article was the result of the unpaid oil of the slave; neither did
this restriction, voluntarily assumed, fetter at all the bountifulness
of the table, where free-grown sugar, coffee, rice, and spices seemed
to derive a double value to our friends from this consideration.

Some of the Quakers carry the principle so far as to refuse money in a
business transaction which they have reason to believe has been gained
by the unpaid toil of the slave. A Friend in Edinburgh told me of a
brother of his in the city of Carlisle, who kept a celebrated biscuit
bakery, who received an order from New Orleans for a thousand dollars
worth of biscuit. Before closing the bargain he took the buyer into
his counting room, and told him that he had conscientious objections
about receiving money from slaveholders, and that in case he were one
he should prefer not to trade with him. Fortunately, in this case,
consistency and interest were both on one side.

Things like these cannot but excite reflection in one's mind, and the
query must arise, if all who really believe slavery to be a wrong
should pursue this course, what would be the result? There are great
practical difficulties in the way of such a course, particularly in
America, where the subject has received comparatively little
attention. Yet since I have been in England, I am informed by the
Friends here, that there has been for many years an association of
Friends in Philadelphia, who have sent their agents through the entire
Southern States, entering by them into communication with quite a
considerable number scattered through the states, who, either from
poverty or principle, raise their cotton by free labor; that they have
established a depot in Philadelphia, and also a manufactory, where the
cotton thus received is made into various household articles; and
thus, by dint of some care and self-sacrifice, many of them are
enabled to abstain entirely from any participation with the results of
this crime.

As soon as I heard this fact, it flashed upon my mind immediately,
that the beautiful cotton lands of Texas are as yet unoccupied to a
great extent; that no law compels cotton to be raised there by slave
labor, and that it is beginning to be raised there to some extent by
the labor of free German emigrants. [Footnote: One small town in Texas
made eight hundred bales last year by free labor.] Will not something
eventually grow out of this? I trust so. Even the smallest chink of
light is welcome in a prison, if it speak of a possible door which
courage and zeal may open. I cannot as yet admit the justness of the
general proposition, that it is an actual sin to eat, drink, or wear
any thing which has been the result of slave labor, because it seems
to me to be based upon a principle altogether too wide in extent. To
be consistent in it, we must extend it to the results of all labor
which is not conducted on just and equitable principles; and in order
to do this consistently we must needs, as St. Paul says, go out of the
world. But if two systems, one founded on wrong and robbery, and the
other on right and justice, are competing with each other, should we
not patronize the right?

I am the more inclined to think that some course of this kind is
indicated to the Christian world, from the reproaches and taunts which
proslavery papers are casting upon us, for patronizing their cotton.
At all events, the Quakers escape the awkwardness of this dilemma.

In the evening quite a large circle of friends came to meet us. We
were particularly interested in the conversation of Mr. and Mrs.
Wesby, missionaries from Antigua. Antigua is the only one of the
islands in which emancipation was immediate, without any previous
apprenticeship system; and it is the one in which the results of
emancipation have been altogether the most happy. They gave us a very
interesting account of their schools, and showed us some beautiful
specimens of plain needlework, which had been wrought by young girls
in them. They confirmed all the accounts which I have heard from other
sources of the peaceableness, docility, and good character of the
negroes; of their kindly disposition and willingness to receive
instruction.

After tea Mr. S. and I walked out a little while, first to a large
cemetery, where repose the ashes of Dr. Watts. This burying ground
occupies the site of the dwelling and grounds formerly covered by the
residence of Sir T. Abney, with whom Dr. Watts spent many of the last
years of his life. It has always seemed to me that Dr. Watts's rank as
a poet has never been properly appreciated. If ever there was a poet
born, he was that man; he attained without study a smoothness of
versification, which, with Pope, was the result of the intensest
analysis and most artistic care. Nor do the most majestic and
resounding lines of Dryden equal some of his in majesty of volume. The
most harmonious lines of Dryden, that I know of, are these:--

  "When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
     His listening brethren stood around,
   And wondering, on their faces fell,
     To worship that celestial sound.
   Less than a God they thought there could not dwell
   Within the hollow of that shell,
   That spoke so sweetly and so well."

The first four lines of this always seem to me magnificently
harmonious. But almost any verse at random in Dr. Watts's paraphrase
of the one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm exceeds them, both in melody
and majesty. For instance, take these lines:--

  "Wide as his vast dominion lies,
     Let the Creator's name be known;
   Loud as his thunder shout his praise,
     And sound it lofty as his throne.

   Speak of the wonders of that love
     Which Gabriel plays on every chord:
   From all below and all above,
     Loud hallelujahs to the Lord."

Simply as a specimen of harmonious versification, I would place this
paraphrase by Dr. Watts above every thing in the English language, not
even excepting Pope's Messiah. But in hymns, where the ideas are
supplied by his own soul, we have examples in which fire, fervor,
imagery, roll from the soul of the poet in a stream of versification,
evidently spontaneous. Such are all those hymns in which he describes
the glories of the heavenly state, and the advent of the great events
foretold in prophecy; for instance, this verse from the opening of one
of his judgment hymns:--

  "Lo, I behold the scattered shades;
     The dawn of heaven appears;
   The sweet immortal morning sheds
     Its blushes round the spheres."

Dr. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, turns him off with small
praise, it is true, saying that his devotional poetry is like that of
others, unsatisfactory; graciously adding that it is sufficient for
him to have done better than others what no one has done well; and,
lastly, that he is one of those poets with whom youth and ignorance
may safely be pleased. But if Dr. Johnson thought Irene was poetry, it
is not singular that he should think the lyrics of Watts were not.

Stoke Newington is also celebrated as the residence of De foe. We
passed by, in our walk, the ancient mansion in which he lived. New
River, which passes through the grounds of our host, is an artificial
stream, which is said to have been first suggested by his endlessly
fertile and industrious mind, as productive in practical projects as
in books.

It always seemed to me that there are three writers which every one
who wants to know how to use the English language effectively should
study; and these are Shakspeare, Bunyan, and Defoe. One great secret
of their hold on the popular mind is their being so radically and
thoroughly English. They have the solid grain of the English oak, not
veneered by learning and the classics; not inlaid with arabesques from
other nations, but developing wholly out of the English nationality.

I have heard that Goethe said the reason for the great enthusiasm with
which his countrymen regarded him was, that he _did know how to
write German,_ and so also these men knew how to write English. I
think Defoe the most suggestive writer to an artist of fiction that
the English language affords. That power by which he wrought fiction
to produce the impression of reality, so that his Plague in London was
quoted by medical men as an authentic narrative, and his Life of a
Cavalier recommended by Lord Chatham as an historical authority, is
certainly worth an analysis. With him, undoubtedly, it was an
instinct.

One anecdote, related to us this evening by our friends, brought to
mind with new power the annoyances to which the Quakers have been
subjected in England, under the old system of church rates. It being
contrary to the conscientious principles of the Quakers to pay these
church rates voluntarily, they allowed the officers of the law to
enter their houses and take whatever article he pleased in
satisfaction of the claim. On one occasion, for the satisfaction of a
claim of a few pounds, they seized and sold a most rare and costly
mantel clock, which had a particular value as a choice specimen of
mechanical skill, and which was worth four or five times the sum owed.
A friend afterwards repurchased and presented it to the owner.

We were rejoiced to hear that these church rates are now virtually
abolished. The liberal policy pursued in England for the last
twenty-five years is doing more to make the church of England, and the
government generally, respectable and respected than the most
extortionate exactions of violence.

We parted from our kind friends in the morning; came back and I sat a
while to Mr. Burnard, the sculptor, who entertained me with various
anecdotes. He had taken the bust of the Prince of Wales; and I
gathered from his statements that young princes have very much the
same feelings and desires that other little boys have, and that he has
a very judicious mother.

In the afternoon, Mr. S., Mrs. B., and I had a pleasant drive in Hyde
Park, as I used to read of heroines of romance doing in the old
novels. It is delightful to get into this fairyland of parks, so green
and beautiful, which embellish the West End.

In the evening we had an engagement at two places--at a Highland
School dinner, and at Mr. Charles Dickens's. I felt myself too much
exhausted for both, and so it was concluded that I should go to
neither, but try a little quiet drive into the country, and an early
retirement, as the most prudent termination of the week. While Mr. S.
prepared to go to the meeting of the Highland School Society, Mr. and
Mrs. B. took me a little drive into the country. After a while they
alighted before a new Gothic Congregational college, in St. John's
Wood. I found that there had been a kind of tea-drinking there by the
Congregational ministers and their families, to celebrate the opening
of the college.

On returning, we called for Mr. S., at the dinner, and went for a few
moments into the gallery, the entertainment being now nearly over.
Here we heard some Scottish songs, very charmingly sung; and, what
amused me very much, a few Highland musicians, dressed in full
costume, occasionally marched through the hall, playing on their
bagpipes, as was customary in old Scottish entertainments. The
historian Sir Archibald Alison, sheriff of Lanarkshire, sat at the
head of the table--a tall, fine-looking man, of very commanding
presence.

About nine o'clock we retired.

May 15. Heard Mr. Binney preach this morning. He is one of the
strongest men among the Congregationalists, and a very popular
speaker. He is a tall, large man, with a finely-built head, high
forehead, piercing, dark eye, and a good deal of force and
determination in all his movements. His sermon was the first that I
had heard in England which seemed to recognize the existence of any
possible sceptical or rationalizing element in the minds of his
hearers. It was in this respect more like the preaching that I had
been in the habit of hearing at home. Instead of a calm statement of
certain admitted religious facts, or exhortations founded upon them,
his discourse seemed to be reasoning with individual cases, and
answering various forms of objections, such as might arise in
different minds. This mode of preaching, I think, cannot exist unless
a minister cultivates an individual knowledge of his people.

Mr. Binney's work, entitled How to make the best of both Worlds, I
have heard spoken of as having had the largest sale of any religious
writing of the present day.

May 16. This evening is the great antislavery meeting at Exeter Hall.
Lord Shaftesbury in the chair. Exeter Hall stands before the public as
the representation of the strong democratic, religious element of
England. In Exeter Hall are all the philanthropies, foreign and
domestic; and a crowded meeting there gives one perhaps a better idea
of the force of English democracy--of that kind of material which goes
to make up the mass of the nation--than any thing else.

When Macaulay expressed some sentiments which gave offence to this
portion of the community, he made a defence in which he alluded
sarcastically to the bray of Exeter Hall.

The expression seems to have been remembered, for I have often heard
it quoted; though I believe they have forgiven him for it, and
concluded to accept it as a joke.

The hall this night was densely crowded, and, as I felt very unwell, I
did not go in till after the services had commenced--a thing which I
greatly regretted afterwards, as by this means I lost a most able
speech by Lord Shaftesbury.

The Duchess of Sutherland entered soon after the commencement of the
exercises, and was most enthusiastically cheered. When we came in, a
seat had been reserved for us by her grace in the side gallery, and
the cheering was repeated. I thought I had heard something of the sort
in Scotland, but there was a vehemence about this that made me
tremble. There is always something awful to my mind about a dense
crowd in a state of high excitement, let the nature of that excitement
be what it will.

I do not believe that there is in all America more vehemence of
democracy, more volcanic force of power, than comes out in one of
these great gatherings in our old fatherland. I saw plainly enough
where Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill came from; and it seems to
me there is enough of this element of indignation at wrong, and
resistance to tyranny, to found half a dozen more republics as strong
as we are.

A little incident that occurred gave me an idea of what such a crowd
might become in a confused state of excitement. A woman fainted in a
distant part of the house, and a policeman attempted to force a way
through the densely-packed crowd. The services were interrupted for a
few moments, and there were hoarse surgings and swellings of the
mighty mass, who were so closely packed that they moved together like
waves. Some began to rise in their seats, and some cried "Order!
order!" And one could easily see, that were a sudden panic or
overwhelming excitement to break up the order of the meeting, what a
terrible scene might ensue.

"What is it?" said I to a friend who sat next to me.

"A pickpocket, perhaps," said she. "I am afraid we are going to have a
row. They are going to give you one of our genuine Exeter Hall
_'brays.'_"

I felt a good deal fluttered; but the Duchess of Sutherland, who knew
the British lion better than I did, seemed so perfectly collected that
I became reassured.

The character of the speeches at this meeting, with the exception of
Lord Shaftesbury's, was more denunciatory, and had more to pain the
national feelings of an American, than any I had ever attended. It was
the real old Saxon battle axe of Brother John, swung without fear or
favor. Such things do not hurt me individually, because I have such a
radical faith in my country, such a genuine belief that she will at
last right herself from every wrong, that I feel she can afford to
have these things said.

Mr. S. spoke on this point, that the cotton trade of Great Britain is
the principal support to slavery, and read extracts from Charleston
papers in which they boldly declare that they do not care for any
amount of moral indignation wasted upon them by nations who, after
all, must and will buy the cotton which they raise.

The meeting was a very long one, and I was much fatigued when we
returned.

To-morrow we are to make a little run out to Windsor.




LETTER XXII.

May 18.

Dear M.:--

I can compare the embarrassment of our London life, with its
multiplied solicitations and infinite stimulants to curiosity and
desire, only to that annual perplexity which used to beset us in our
childhood on thanksgiving day. Having been kept all the year within
the limits which prudence assigns to well-regulated children, came at
last the governor's proclamation, and a general saturnalia of dainties
for the little ones. For one day the gates of license were thrown
open, and we, plumped down into the midst of pie and pudding exceeding
all conception but that of a Yankee housekeeper, were left to struggle
our way out as best we might.

So here, beside all the living world of London, its scope and range of
persons and circles of thought, come its architecture, its arts, its
localities, historic, poetic, all that expresses its past, its
present, and its future. Every day and every hour brings its'
conflicting allurements, of persons to be seen, places to be visited,
things to be done, beyond all computation. Like Miss Edgeworth's
philosophic little Frank, we are obliged to make out our list of what
man _must_ want, and of what he _may_ want; and in our list
of the former we set down, in large and decisive characters, one quiet
day for the exploration and enjoyment of Windsor.

We were solicited, indeed, to go in another direction; a party was
formed to go down the Thames with the Right Hon. Sidney Herbert,
secretary at war, and visit an emigrant ship just starting for
Australia. I should say here, that since Mrs. Chisholm's labors have
awakened the attention of the English public to the wants and
condition of emigrants, the benevolent people of England take great
interest in the departing of emigrant ships. A society has been formed
called the Family Colonization Loan Society, and a fund raised by
which money can be loaned to those desiring to emigrate. This society
makes it an object to cultivate acquaintance and intimacy among those
about going out by uniting them into groups, and, as far as possible,
placing orphan children and single females under the protection of
families. Any one, by subscribing six guineas towards the loan, can
secure one passage. Each individual becomes responsible for refunding
his own fare, and, furthermore, to pay a certain assessment in case
any individual of the group fails to make up the passage money. The
sailing of emigrant ships, therefore, has become a scene of great
interest. Those departing do not leave their native shore without
substantial proofs of the interest and care of the land they are
leaving.

In the party who were going down to-day were Mr. and Mrs. Binney, Mr.
Sherman, and a number of distinguished names; among whom I recollect
to have heard the names of Lady Hatherton, and Lady Byron, widow of
the poet. This would have been an exceedingly interesting scene to us,
but being already worn with company and excitement, we preferred a
quiet day at Windsor.

For if we took Warwick as the representative feudal estate, we took
Windsor as the representative palace, that which imbodies the English
idea of royalty. Apart from this, Windsor has been immortalized by the
Merry Wives; it has still standing in its park the Herne oak, where
the mischievous fairies played their pranks upon old Falstaff.

And the castle still has about it the charm of the poet's
invocation:--

  "Search Windsor Castle, elves, within, without,
   Strew good luck, ouphes, on every sacred room,
   That it may stand till the perpetual doom
   In state as wholesome as in state 'tis fit,
   Worthy the owner, and the owner it.
   The several chairs of order, look you, scour
   With juice of balm and every precious flower,
   Each fair instalment, coat, and several crest,
   With loyal blazon evermore be blest.
   And nightly, meadow fairies, look you, sing
   Like to the garter's compass, in a ring.
   The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
   More fertile, fresh, than all the field to see,
   And Honi soit qui mal y pense, write
   In emerald tufts, flowers, purple, blue, and white,
   Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery,
   Fairies use flowers for their charactery."

As if for the loyal purpose of recommending old Windsor, the English
skies had cleared up into brightness. About nine o'clock we found
ourselves in the cars, riding through a perpetual garden of blooming
trees and blossoming hedges; birds in a perfect fury of delight. Our
spirits were all elated. Good, honest, cackling Mrs. Quickly herself
was not more disposed to make the best of every thing and every body
than were we. Mr. S., in particular, was so joyous that I was afraid
he would break out into song, after the fashion of Sir Hugh Evans,--

  "Melodious birds sung madrigals:
   Whenas I sat in Babylon," &c.

By the by, the fishing ground of Izaak Walton is one of the localities
connected with Windsor.

The ride was done all too soon. One should not whirl through such a
choice bit of England in the cars; one should rather wish to amble
over the way after a sleepy, contemplative old horse, as we used to
make rural excursions in New England ere yet railroads were. However,
all that's bright must fade, and this among the rest.

About eleven o'clock we found ourselves going up the old stone steps
to the castle. It was the last day of a fair which had been holden in
this part of the country, and crowds of the common people were
flocking to the castle, men, women, and children pattering up the
stairs before and after us.

We went first through the state apartments. The principal thing that
interested me was the ball room, which was a perfect gallery of
Vandyke's paintings. Here was certainly an opportunity to know what
Vandyke is. I should call him a true court painter--a master of
splendid conventionalities, whose portraits of kings are the most
powerful arguments for the divine right I know of. Nevertheless,
beyond conventionality and outward magnificence, his ideas have no
range. He suggests nothing to the moral and ideal part of us. Here
again was the picture of King Charles on horseback, which had
interested me at Warwick. It had, however, a peculiar and romantic
charm from its position at the end of that long, dim corridor,
vis-a-vis with the masque of Cromwell, which did not accompany it
here, where it was but one among a set of pictures.

There was another, presenting the front side and three quarters face
of the same sovereign, painted by Vandyke for Benini to make a bust
from. There were no less than five portraits of his wife, Henrietta
Maria, in different dresses and attitudes, and two pictures of their
children. No sovereign is so profusely and perseveringly represented.

The queen's audience chamber is hung with tapestry representing scenes
from the book of Esther. This tapestry made a very great impression
upon me. A knowledge of the difficulties to be overcome in the
material part of painting is undoubtedly an unsuspected element of
much of the pleasure we derive from it; and for this reason, probably,
this tapestry appeared to us better than paintings executed with equal
spirit in oils. We admired it exceedingly, entirely careless what
critics might think of us if they knew it.

Another room was hung with Gobelin tapestry representing the whole of
the tragedy of Medea. First you have Jason cutting down the golden
fleece, while the dragon lies slain, and Medea is looking on in
admiration. In another he pledges his love to Medea. In a third, the
men sprung from the dragon's teeth are seen contending with each
other. In another the unfaithful lover espouses Creusa. In the next
Creusa is seen burning in the poisoned shirt, given her by Medea. In
another Medea is seen in a car drawn by dragons, bearing her two
children by Jason, whom she has stabbed in revenge for his desertion.
Nothing can exceed the ghastly reality of death, as shown in the
stiffened limbs and sharpened features of those dead children. The
whole drawing and grouping is exceedingly spirited and lifelike, and
has great power of impression.

I was charmed also by nine landscapes of Zuccarelli, which adorn the
state drawing room. Zuccarelli was a follower of Claude, and these
pictures far exceed in effect any of Claude's I have yet seen. The
charm of them does not lie merely in the atmospheric tints and
effects, as those of Cuyp, but in the rich and fanciful combination of
objects. In this respect they perform in painting what the first part
of the Castle of Indolence, or Tennyson's Lotus Eaters, do in poetry--
evoke a fairyland. There was something peculiar about their charm for
me.

Who can decide how much in a picture belongs to the idiosyncrasies and
associations of the person who looks upon it. Artists undoubtedly
powerful and fine may have nothing in them which touches the nervous
sympathies and tastes of some persons: who, therefore, shall establish
any authoritative canon of taste? who shall say that Claude is finer
than Zuccarelli, or Zuccarelli than Claude? A man might as well say
that the woman who enchants him is the only true Venus for the world.

Then, again, how much in painting or in poetry depends upon the frame
of mind in which we see or hear! Whoever looks on these pictures, or
reads the Lotus Eaters or Castle of Indolence, at a time when soul and
body are weary, and longing for retirement and rest, will receive an
impression from them such as could never be made on the strong nerves
of our more healthful and hilarious seasons.

Certainly no emotions so rigidly reject critical restraints, and
disdain to be bound by rule, as those excited by the fine arts. A man
unimpressible and incapable of moods and tenses, is for that reason an
incompetent critic; and the sensitive, excitable man, how can he know
that he does not impose his peculiar mood as a general rule?

From the state rooms we were taken to the top of the Hound Tower,
where we gained a magnificent view of the Park of Windsor, with its
regal avenue, miles in length, of ancient oaks; its sweeps of
greensward; clumps of trees; its old Herne oak, of classic memory; in
short, all that constitutes the idea of a perfect English landscape.
The English tree is shorter and stouter than ours; its foliage dense
and deep, lying with a full, rounding outline against the sky. Every
thing here conveys the idea of concentrated vitality, but without that
rank luxuriance seen in our American growth. Having unfortunately
exhausted the English language on the subject of grass, I will not
repeat any ecstasies upon that topic.

After descending from the tower we filed off to the proper quarter, to
show our orders for the private rooms. The state apartments, which we
had been looking at, are open at all times, but the private apartments
can only be seen in the queen's absence, and by a special permission,
which had been procured for us on this occasion by the kindness of the
Duchess of Sutherland.

One of the first objects that attracted my attention when entering the
vestibule was a baby's wicker wagon, standing in one corner; it was
much such a carriage as all mothers are familiar with; such as figures
largely in the history of almost every family. It had neat curtains
and cushions of green merino, and was not royal, only maternal. I
mused over the little thing with a good deal of interest. It is to my
mind one of the providential signs of our times, that, at this stormy
and most critical period of the world's history, the sovereignty of
the most powerful nation on earth is represented by a woman and a
mother. How many humanizing, gentle, and pacific influences constantly
emanate from this centre!

One of the most interesting apartments was a long corridor, hung with
paintings and garnished along the sides with objects of art and _virtu_.
Here C. and I renewed a dispute which had for some time been pending,
in respect to Canaletto's paintings. This Canaletto was a Venetian
painter, who was born about 1697, and died in London in 1768, and was
greatly in vogue with the upper circles in those days. He delighted in
architectural paintings, which he represents with the accuracy of a
daguerreotype, and a management of perspective, chiaro oscuro, and all
the other mysteries of art, such as make his paintings amount to about
the same as the reality.

Well, here, in this corridor, we had him in full force. Here was
Venice served up to order--its streets, palaces, churches, bridges,
canals, and gondolas made as real to our eye as if we were looking at
them out of a window. I admired them very warmly, but I could not go
into the raptures that C. did, who kept calling me from every thing
else that I wanted to see to come and look at this Canaletto. "Well, I
see it," said I; "it is good--it is perfect--it cannot be bettered;
but what then? There is the same difference between these and a
landscape of Zuccarelli as there is between a neatly-arranged
statistical treatise and a poem. The latter suggests a thousand
images, the former gives you only information."

We were quite interested in a series of paintings which represented
the various events of the present queen's history. There was the
coronation in Westminster Abbey--that national romance which, for once
in our prosaic world, nearly turned the heads of all the sensible
people on earth. Think of vesting the sovereignty of so much of the
world in a fair young girl of seventeen! The picture is a very pretty
one, and is taken at the very moment she is kneeling at the feet of
the Archbishop of Canterbury to receive her crown. She is represented
as a fair-haired, interesting girl, the simplicity of her air
contrasting strangely with the pomp and gorgeous display around. The
painter has done justice to a train of charming young ladies who
surround her; among the faces I recognized the blue eyes and noble
forehead of the Duchess of Sutherland.

Then followed, in due order, the baptism of children, the reception of
poor old Louis Philippe in his exile, and various other matters of the
sort which go to make up royal pictures.

In the family breakfast room we saw some fine Gobelin tapestry,
representing the classical story of Meleager. In one of the rooms, on
a pedestal, stood a gigantic china vase, a present from the Emperor of
Russia, and in the state rooms before we had seen a large malachite
vase from the same donor. The toning of this room, with regard to
color, was like that of the room I described in Stafford House--the
carpet of green ground, with the same little leaf upon it, the walls,
chairs, and sofas covered with green damask. Around the walls of the
room, in some places, were arranged cases of books about three feet
high. I liked this arrangement particularly, because it gives you the
companionship of books in an apartment without occupying that space of
the wall which is advantageous for pictures. Moreover, books placed
high against the walls of a room give a gloomy appearance to the
apartment.

The whole air of these rooms was very charming, suggestive of refined
taste and domestic habits. The idea of home, which pervades every
thing in England, from the cottage to the palace, was as much
suggested here as in any apartments I have seen. The walls of the
different rooms were decorated with portraits of the members of the
royal family, and those of other European princes.

After this we went through the kitchen department--saw the silver and
gold plate of the table; among the latter were some designs which I
thought particularly graceful. To conclude all, we went through the
stables. The man who showed them told us that several of the queen's
favorite horses were taken to Osborne; but there were many beautiful
creatures left, which I regarded with great complacency. The stables
and stalls were perfectly clean, and neatly kept; and one, in short,
derives from the whole view of the economics of Windsor that
satisfaction which results from seeing a thing thoroughly done in the
best conceivable manner.

The management of the estate of Windsor is, I am told, a model for all
landholders in the kingdom. A society has been formed there, within a
few years, under the patronage of the queen, Prince Albert, and the
Duchess of Kent, in which the clergy and gentry of the principal
parishes in this vicinity are interested, for improving the condition
of the laboring classes in this region. The queen and Prince Albert
have taken much interest in the planning and arranging of model houses
for the laboring people, which combine cheapness, neatness,
ventilation, and all the facilities for the formation of good personal
habits. There is a school kept on the estate at Windsor, in which the
queen takes a very practical interest, regulating the books and
studies, and paying frequent visits to it during the time of her
sojourn here. The young girls are instructed in fine needlework; but
the queen discourages embroidery and ornamental work, meaning to make
practical, efficient wives for laboring men. These particulars, with
regard to this school, were related to me by a lady living in the
vicinity of Windsor.

We went into St. George's Chapel, and there we were all exceedingly
interested and enchained in view of the marble monument to the
Princess Charlotte. It consists of two groups, and is designed to
express, in one view, both the celestial and the terrestrial aspect of
death--the visible and the invisible part of dying. For the visible
part, you have the body of the princess in all the desolation and
abandonment of death. The attitude of the figure is as if she had
thrown herself over in a convulsion, and died. The body is lying
listless, simply covered with a sheet, through every fold of which you
can see the utter relaxation of that moment when vitality departs, but
the limbs have not yet stiffened. Her hand and a part of the arm are
hanging down, exposed to view beneath the sheet.

Four figures, with bowed heads, covered with drapery, are represented
as sitting around in mute despair. The idea meant to be conveyed by
the whole group is that of utter desolation and abandonment. All is
over; there is not even heart enough left in the mourners to
straighten the corpse for the burial. The mute marble says, as plainly
as marble can speak, "Let all go; 'tis no matter now; there is no more
use in living--nothing to be done, nothing to be hoped!"

Above this group rises the form of the princess, springing buoyant and
elastic, on angel wings, a smile of triumph and aspiration lighting up
her countenance. Her drapery floats behind her as she rises. Two
angels, one carrying her infant child and the other with clasped hands
of exultant joy, are rising with her, in serene and solemn triumph.

Now, I simply put it to you, or to any one who can judge of poetry, if
this is not a poetical conception. I ask any one who has a heart, if
there is not pathos in it. Is there not a high poetic merit in the
mere conception of these two scenes, thus presented? And had we seen
it rudely chipped and chiselled out by some artist of the middle ages,
whose hand had not yet been practised to do justice to his
conceptions, should we not have said this sculptor had a glorious
thought within him? But the chiselling of this piece is not unworthy
the conception. Nothing can be more exquisite than the turn of the
head, neck, and shoulders; nothing more finely wrought than the
triumphant smile of the angel princess; nothing could be more artistic
than the representation of death in all its hopelessness, in the lower
figure. The poor, dead hand, that shows itself beneath the sheet, has
an unutterable pathos and beauty in it. As to the working of the
drapery,--an inferior consideration, of course,--I see no reason why
it should not compare advantageously with any in the British Museum.

Well, you will ask, why are you going on in this argumentative style?
Who doubts you? Let me tell you, then, a little fragment of my
experience. We saw this group of statuary the last thing before
dinner, after a most fatiguing forenoon of sightseeing, when we were
both tired and hungry,--a most unpropitious time, certainly,--and yet
it enchanted our whole company; what is more, it made us all cry--a
fact of which I am not ashamed, yet. But, only the next day, when I
was expressing my admiration to an artist, who is one of the
authorities, and knows all that is proper to be admired, I was met
with,--

"O, you have seen that, have you? Shocking thing! Miserable
taste--miserable!"

"Dear me," said I, with apprehension, "what is the matter with it?"

"0," said he, "melodramatic, melodramatic--terribly so!"

I was so appalled by this word, of whose meaning I had not a very
clear idea, that I dropped the defence at once, and determined to
reconsider my tears. To have been actually made to cry by a thing that
was melodramatic, was a distressing consideration. Seriously, however,
on reconsidering the objection, I see no sense in it. A thing may be
melodramatic, or any other _atic_ that a man pleases; so that it
be strongly suggestive, poetic, pathetic, it has a right to its own
peculiar place in the world of art. If artists had had their way in
the creation of this world, there would have been only two or three
kinds of things in it; the first three or four things that God created
would have been enacted into fixed rules for making all the rest.

But they let the works of nature alone, because they know there is no
hope for them, and content themselves with enacting rules in
literature and art, which make all the perfection and grace of the
past so many impassable barriers to progress in future. Because the
ancients kept to unity of idea in their groups, and attained to most
beautiful results by doing so, shall no modern make an antithesis in
marble? And why has not a man a right to dramatize in marble as well
as on canvas, if he can produce a powerful and effective result by so
doing? And even if by being melodramatic, as the terrible word is, he
can shadow forth a grand and comforting religious idea--if he can
unveil to those who have seen only the desolation of death, its glory,
and its triumph--who shall say that he may not do so because he
violates the lines of some old Greek artist? Where would Shakspeare's
dramas have been, had he studied the old dramatic unities?

So, you see, like an obstinate republican, as I am, I defend my right
to have my own opinion about this monument, albeit the guide book,
with its usual diplomatic caution, says, "It is in very questionable
taste."

We went for our dinner to the White Hart, the very inn which
Shakspeare celebrates in his Merry Wives, and had a most overflowing,
merry time of it. The fact is, we had not seen each other for so long
that to be in each other's company for a whole day was quite a
stimulant.

After dinner we had a beautiful drive, passing the colleges at Eton,
and seeing the boys out playing cricket; had an excellent opportunity
to think how true Gray's poem on the Prospect of Eton is to boy-nature
then, now, and forever. We were bent upon looking up the church which
gave rise to his Elegy in a Country Churchyard, intending, when we got
there, to have a little scene over it; Mr. S., in all the conscious
importance of having been there before, assuring us that he knew
exactly where it was. So, after some difficulty with our coachman, and
being stopped at one church which would not answer our purpose in any
respect, we were at last set down by one which looked authentic;
embowered in mossy elms, with a most ancient and goblin yew tree, an
ivy-mantled tower, all perfect as could be.

There had been a sprinkle of rain,--an ornament which few English days
want,--and the westering beams of the sun twinkled through innumerable
drops. In fact, it was a pretty place; and I felt such "dispositions
to melancholies," as Sir Hugh Evans would have it, that I half
resented Mr. S.'s suggestion that the cars were waiting. However, as
he was engaged to speak at a peace meeting in London, it was agreed he
should leave us there to stroll, while he took the cars. So away he
went; and we, leaning on the old fence, repeated the Elegy, which
certainly applies here as beautifully as language could apply.

What a calm, shady, poetical nature is expressed in these lines! Gray
seems to have been sent into the world for nothing but to be a poem,
like some of those fabulous, shadowy beings which haunted the cool
grottoes on Grecian mountains; creatures that seem to have no
practical vitality--to be only a kind of voice, an echo, heard for a
little, and then lost in silence. He seemed to be in himself a kind of
elegy.

From thence we strolled along, enjoying the beautiful rural scenery.
Having had a kind invitation to visit Labouchère Park that day, which
we were obliged to decline for want of time, we were pleased to
discover that we had two more hours, in which we could easily
accomplish a stroll there. By a most singular infelicity, our party
became separated; and, misunderstanding each other, we remained
waiting for W. till it was too late for us to go, while he, on the
other hand, supposing us to have walked before him, was redoubling his
speed all the while, hoping to overtake us. In consequence of this, he
accomplished the walk to Labouchère Park, and we waited in the dismal
depot till it was too late to wait any longer, and finally went into
London without him.

After all, imagine our chagrin on being informed that we had not been
to the genuine churchyard. The gentleman who wept over the scenes of
his early days on the wrong doorstep was not more grievously
disappointed. However, he and we could both console ourselves with the
reflection that the emotion was admirable, and wanted only the right
place to make it the most appropriate in the world. The genuine
country churchyard, however, was that at Stoke Pogis, which we should
have seen had not the fates forbidden our going to Labouchère Park.




LETTER XXIII.

DEAR SISTER:--

The evening after our return from Windsor was spent with our kind
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Gurney. Mr. Gurney is rector of Mary-le-Bone
parish, one of the largest districts in London; and he is, I have been
told, one of the court chaplains; a man of the most cultivated and
agreeable manners, earnestly and devoutly engaged in the business of
his calling. As one of the working men of the church establishment, I
felt a strong interest in his views and opinions, and he seemed to
take no less interest in mine, as coming from a country where there is
and can be no church establishment. He asked many questions about
America; the general style of our preaching; the character of our
theology; our modes of religious action; our revivals of religion; our
theories of sudden and instantaneous conversion, as distinguished from
the gradual conversion of education; our temperance societies, and the
stand taken by our clergy in behalf of temperance.

He wished to know how the English style of preaching appeared to me in
comparison with that of America. I told him one principal difference
that struck me was, that the English preaching did not recognize the
existence of any element of inquiry or doubt in the popular mind; that
it treated certain truths as axioms, which only needed to be stated to
be believed; whereas in American sermons there is always more or less
time employed in explaining, proving, and answering objections to, the
truths enforced. I quoted Baptist Noel's sermon in illustration of
what I meant.

I asked him to what extent the element of scepticism, with regard to
religious truth, had pervaded the mind of England? adding that I had
inferred its existence there from such novels as those of Kingsley. He
thought that there was much of this element, particularly in the
working classes; that they were coming to regard the clergy with
suspicion, and to be less under their influence than in former times;
and said it was a matter of much solicitude to know how to reach them.

I told him that I had heard an American clergyman, who had travelled
in England, say, that dissenters were treated much as free negroes
were in America, and added that my experience must have been very
exceptional, or the remark much overstated, as I had met dissenting
clergymen in all circles of society. He admitted that there might be a
good deal of bigotry in this respect, but added that the infrequency
of association was more the result of those circumstances which would
naturally draw the two parties to themselves, than to superciliousness
on the side of the establishment, adding that where a court and
aristocracy were in the established church, there would necessarily be
a pressure of fashion in its favor, which might at times bring
uncomfortable results.

The children were sitting by studying their evening lessons, and I
begged Mrs. Gurney to allow me to look over their geographies and
atlases; and on her inquiring why, I told her that well-informed
people in England sometimes made such unaccountable mistakes about the
geography of our country as were quite surprising to me, and that I
did not understand how it was that our children should know so much
more about England than they about us. I found the children, however,
in possession of a very excellent and authentic map of our country. I
must say also that the most highly educated people I have met in
England have never betrayed any want of information on this subject.

The next morning we had at breakfast two clergymen, members of the
established church. They appeared to be most excellent, devout,
practical men, anxious to do good, and thoughtfully seeking for
suggestions from any quarter which might assist them in their labors.
They renewed many of the inquiries which Mr. Gurney had made the
evening before.

After breakfast I went with Mr. Gurney and Mr. S. to Richmond's studio
to sit for a likeness, which is to be presented to Mr. S. by several
friends. Richmond's name is one which in this London sphere has only
to be announced to explain itself; not to know him argues yourself
unknown. He is one of the most successful artists in a certain line of
portrait painting that the present day affords. He devotes himself
principally to crayon and water-color sketches. His crayon heads are
generally the size of life; his water-colors of a small size. He often
takes full-lengths in this way, which render not merely the features,
but the figure, air, manner, and what is characteristic about the
dress. These latter sketches are finished up very highly, with the
minuteness of a miniature. His forte consists in seizing and fixing
those fleeting traits of countenance, air, and movement, which go so
far towards making up our idea of a person's appearance. Many of the
engravings of distinguished persons, with which we are familiar, have
come from his designs, such as Wilberforce, Sir Powell Buxton,
Elizabeth Fry, and others. I found his studio quite a gallery of
notabilities, almost all the _distingués_ of the day having sat
to him; so I certainly had the satisfaction of feeling myself in good
company. Mr. Richmond looks quite youthful, (but I never can judge of
any one's age here,) is most agreeable in conversation, full of
anecdote in regard to all the moving life of London. I presume his
power of entertaining conversation is one secret of his successful
likenesses. Some portrait painters keep calling on you for expression
all the while, and say nothing in the world to awaken it.

From Richmond's, Mr. S., C., and I drove out to call upon Kossuth. We
found him in an obscure lodging on the outskirts of London. I would
that some of the editors in America, who have thrown out insinuations
about his living in luxury, could have seen the utter bareness and
plainness of the reception room, which had nothing in it beyond the
simplest necessaries. Here dwells the man whose greatest fault is an
undying love of his country. We all know that if Kossuth would have
taken wealth and a secure retreat, with a life of ease for himself,
America would gladly have laid all these at his feet. But because he
could not acquiesce in the unmerited dishonor of his country, he lives
a life of obscurity, poverty, and labor. All this was written in his
pale, worn face, and sad, thoughtful blue eye. But to me the unselfish
patriot is more venerable for his poverty and his misfortunes.

Have we, among the thousands who speak loud of patriotism in America,
many men, who, were she enfeebled, despised, and trampled, would
forego self, and suffer as long, as patiently for her? It is even
easier to die for a good cause, in some hour of high enthusiasm, when
all that is noblest in us can be roused to one great venture, than to
live for it amid wearing years of discouragement and hope delayed.

There are those even here in England who delight to get up slanders
against Kossuth, and not long ago some most unfounded charges were
thrown out against him in some public prints. By way of counterpoise
an enthusiastic public meeting was held, in which he was presented
with a splendid set of Shakspeare.

He entered into conversation with us with cheerfulness, speaking
English well, though with the idioms of foreign languages. He seemed
quite amused at the sensation which had been excited by Mr. S.'s
cotton speech in Exeter Hall. C. asked him if he had still hopes for
his cause. He answered, "I hope still, because I work still; my hope
is in God and in man."

I inquired for Madame Kossuth, and he answered, "I have not yet seen
her to-day," adding, "she has her family affairs, you know, madam; we
are poor exiles here;" and, fearing to cause embarrassment, I did not
press an interview.

When we parted he took my hand kindly, and said, "God bless you, my
child."

I would not lose my faith in such men for any thing the world could
give me. There are some people who involve in themselves so many of
the elements which go to make up our confidence in human nature
generally, that to lose confidence in them seems to undermine our
faith in human virtue. As Shakspeare says, their defection would be
like "another fall of man."

We went back to Mr. Gurney's to lunch, and then, as the afternoon was
fine, Mr. and Mrs. Gurney drove with us in their carriage to Pembroke
Lodge, the country seat of Lord John Russell. It was an uncommonly
beautiful afternoon, and the view from Richmond Hill was as perfect a
specimen of an English landscape, seen under the most benignant
auspices, as we could hope to enjoy. Orchards, gardens, villas,
charming meadows enamelled with flowers, the silver windings of the
Thames, the luxuriant outlines of the foliage, varied here and there
by the graceful perpendicular of the poplars, all formed one of the
richest of landscapes. The brow of the hill is beautifully laid out
with tufts of trees, winding paths, diversified here and there with
arbors and rustic seats.

Richmond Park is adorned with clumps of ancient trees, among which
troops of deer were strolling. Pembroke Lodge is a plain,
unostentatious building, rising in the midst of charming grounds. We
were received in the drawing room by the young ladies, and were sorry
to learn that Lady Russell was so unwell as to be unable to give us
her company at dinner. Two charming little boys came in, and a few
moments after, their father, Lord John. I had been much pleased with
finding on the centre table a beautiful edition of that revered friend
of my childhood, Dr. Watts's Divine Songs, finely illustrated. I
remarked to Lord John that it was the face of an old friend. He said
it was presented to his little boys by their godfather, Sir George
Grey; and when, taking one of the little boys on his knee, he asked
him if he could repeat me one of his hymns, the whole thing seemed so
New England-like that I began to feel myself quite at home. I hope I
shall some day see in America an edition of Dr. Watts, in which the
illustrations do as much justice to the author's sentiments as in
this, for in all our modern religious works for children there is
nothing that excels these divine songs.

There were only a few guests; among them Sir George Grey and lady; he
is nephew to Earl Grey, of reform memory, and she is the eldest
daughter of the pious and learned Bishop Ryder, of Lichfield. Sir
George is a man of great piety and worth, a liberal, and much
interested in all benevolent movements. There was also the Earl of
Albemarle, who is a colonel in the army, and has served many years
under Wellington, a particularly cheerful, entertaining, conversable
man, full of anecdote. He told several very characteristic and comical
stories about the Duke of Wellington.

At dinner, among other things, the conversation turned upon hunting.
It always seemed to me a curious thing, that in the height of English
civilization this vestige of the savage state should still remain. I
told Lord Albemarle that I thought the idea of a whole concourse of
strong men turning out to hunt a poor fox or hare, creatures so feeble
and insignificant, and who can do nothing to defend themselves, was
hardly consistent with manliness; that if they had some of our
American buffaloes, or a Bengal tiger, the affair would be something
more dignified and generous. Thereupon they only laughed, and told
stories about fox hunters. It seems that killing a fox, except in the
way of hunting, is deemed among hunters an unpardonable offence, and a
man who has the misfortune to do it would be almost as unwilling to
let it be known as if he had killed a man.

They also told about deer stalking in the highlands, in which exercise
I inferred Lord John had been a proficient. The conversation reminded
me of the hunting stories I had heard in the log cabins in Indiana,
and I amused myself with thinking how some of the narrators would
appear among my high-bred friends. There is such a quaint vivacity and
droll-cry about that half-savage western life, as always gives it a
charm in my recollection. I thought of the jolly old hunter who always
concluded the operations of the day by discharging his rifle at his
candle after he had snugly ensconced himself in bed; and of the
celebrated scene in which Henry Clay won an old hunter's vote in an
election, by his aptness in turning into a political simile some
points in the management of a rifle.

Now there is, to my mind, something infinitely more sublime about
hunting in real earnest amid the solemn shadows of our interminable
forests, than in making believe hunt in parks.

It is undoubtedly the fact, that these out-of-door sports of England
have a great deal to do with the firm health which men here enjoy.
Speaking of this subject, I could not help expressing my surprise to
Lord John at the apparently perfect health enjoyed by members of
Parliament, notwithstanding their protracted night labors. He thinks
that the session of Parliament this year will extend nearly to August.
Speaking of breakfasts, he said they often had delightful breakfasts
about three o'clock in the day; this is a total reverse of all our
ideas in regard to time.

After dinner Lord and Lady Ribblesdale came in, connections of Lord
John by a former marriage. I sat by Lord John on the sofa, and
listened with great interest to a conversation between him and Lady
Grey, on the working of the educational system in England; a subject
which has particularly engaged the attention of the English government
since the reign of the present queen. I found a difficulty in
understanding many of the terms they used, though I learned much that
interested me.

After a while I went to Lady Russell's apartment, and had an hour of
very pleasant conversation with her. It greatly enlarges our
confidence in human nature to find such identity of feeling and
opinion among the really good of different countries, and of all
different circles in those countries. I have never been more impressed
with this idea than during my sojourn here in England. Different as
the institutions of England and America are, they do not prevent the
formation of a very general basis of agreement in so far as radical
ideas of practical morality and religion are concerned; and I am
increasingly certain that there is a foundation for a lasting unity
between the two countries which shall increase constantly, as the
increasing facilities of communication lessen the distance between us.

Lady Russell inquired with a good deal of interest after Prescott, our
historian, and expressed the pleasure which she and Lord John had
derived from his writings.

We left early, after a most agreeable evening. The next day at eleven
o'clock we went to an engagement at Lambeth Palace, where we had been
invited by a kind note from its venerable master, the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Lambeth is a stately pile of quaint, antique buildings,
rising most magnificently on the banks of the Thames. It is surrounded
by beautiful grounds, laid out with choice gardening. Through an
ancient hall, lighted by stained-glass windows, we were ushered into
the drawing room, where the guests were assembling. There was quite a
number of people there, among others the lady and eldest son of the
Bishop of London, the Earl and Countess Waldegrave, and the family
friends of the archbishop.

The good archbishop was kind and benign, as usual, and gave me his arm
while we explored the curiosities of the palace. Now, my dear, if you
will please to recollect that the guide book says, "this palace
contains all the gradations of architecture from early English to late
perpendicular," you will certainly not expect me to describe it in one
letter. It has been the residence of the archbishops of Canterbury
from time immemorial, both in the days before the reformation and
since.

The chapel was built between the years 1200 and 1300, and there used
to be painted windows in it, as Archbishop Laud says, which contained
the whole history of the world, from the creation to the day of
judgment. Unfortunately these comprehensive windows were destroyed in
the civil wars.

The part called the Lollards' Tower is celebrated as having been the
reputed prison of the Lollards. These Lollards, perhaps you will
remember, were the followers of John Wickliffe, called Lollards as
Christ was called a "Nazarene," simply because the word was a term of
reproach. Wickliffe himself was summoned here to Lambeth to give an
account of his teachings, and in 1382, William Courtnay, Archbishop of
Canterbury, called a council, which condemned his doctrines. The
tradition is, that at various times these Lollards were imprisoned
here.

In order to get to the tower we had to go through a great many
apartments, passages, and corridors, and terminate all by climbing a
winding staircase, steeper and narrower than was at all desirable for
any but wicked heretics, who ought to be made as uncomfortable as
possible. However, by reasonable perseverance, the archbishop, the
bishop's lady, and all the noble company present found themselves
safely at the top. Our host remarked, I think, that it was the second
time he had ever been there.

The room is thirteen feet by twelve, and about eight feet high,
wainscotted with oak, which is scrawled over with names and
inscriptions. There are eight large iron rings in the wall, to which
the prisoners were chained; for aught we know, Wickliffe himself may
have been one. As our kind host moved about among us with his placid
face, we could not but think that times had altered since the days
when archbishops used to imprison heretics, and preside over grim,
inquisitorial tribunals. We all agreed, however, that, considering the
very beautiful prospect this tower commands up and down the Thames,
the poor Lollards in some respects might have been worse lodged.

We passed through the guard room, library, and along a corridor where
hung a row of pictures of all the archbishops from the very earliest
times; and then the archbishop took me into his study, which is a most
charming room, containing his own private library: after that we all
sat down to lunch in a large dining hall. I was seated between the
archbishop and a venerable admiral in the navy. Among other things,
the latter asked me if there were not many railroad and steamboat
accidents in America. O my countrymen, what trouble do you make us in
foreign lands by your terrible carelessness! I was obliged, in candor,
to say that I thought there was a shocking number of accidents of that
sort, and suggested the best excuse I could think of--our youth and
inexperience; but I certainly thought my venerable friend had touched
a very indefensible point.

Among other topics discussed in the drawing room, I heard some more
_on dits_ respecting spiritual rappings. Every body seems to be
wondering what they are, and what they are going to amount to.

We took leave of our kind host and his family, gratefully impressed
with the simplicity and sincere cordiality of our reception. There are
many different names for goodness in this world; but, after all, true
brotherly kindness and charity is much the same thing, whether it show
itself by a Quaker's fireside or in an archbishop's palace.

Leaving the archbishop's I went to Richmond's again, where I was most
agreeably entertained for an hour or two. We have an engagement for
Playford Hall to-morrow, and we breakfast with Joseph Sturge: it being
now the time of the yearly meeting of the Friends, he and his family
are in town.




LETTER XXIV.

MY DEAR S.:--

The next morning C. and I took the cars to go into the country, to
Playford Hall. "And what's Playford Hall?" you say. "And why did you
go to see it?" As to what it is, here is a reasonably good picture
before you. As to why, it was for many years the residence of Thomas
Clarkson, and is now the residence of his venerable widow and her
family.

Playford Hall is considered, I think, the oldest of the fortified
houses in England, and is, I am told, the only one that has water in
the moat. The water which is seen girdling the wall, in the picture,
is the moat: it surrounds the place entirely, leaving no access except
across the bridge, which is here represented.

After crossing this bridge, you come into a green court yard filled
with choice plants and flowering shrubs, and carpeted with that thick,
soft, velvet-like grass which is to be found nowhere else in so
perfect a state as in England.

The water is fed by a perpetual spring, whose current is so sluggish
as scarcely to be perceptible, but which yet has the vitality of a
running stream.

It has a dark and glassy stillness of surface, only broken by the
forms of the water plants, whose leaves float thickly over it.

The walls of the moat are green with ancient moss, and from the
crevices springs an abundant flowering vine, whose delicate leaves and
bright yellow flowers in some places entirely mantle the stones with
their graceful drapery.

[Illustration: _of Playford Hall._]

The picture I have given you represents only one side of the moat. The
other side is grown up with dark and thick shrubbery and ancient
trees, rising and embowering the entire place, adding to the retired
and singular effect of the whole. The place is a specimen of a sort of
thing which does not exist in America. It is one of those significant
landmarks which unite the present with the past, for which we must
return to the country of our origin.

Playford Hall is peculiarly English, and Thomas Clarkson, for whose
sake I visited it, was as peculiarly an Englishman--a specimen of the
very best kind of English mind and character, as this is of
characteristic English architecture.

We Anglo-Saxons have won a hard name in the world. There are
undoubtedly bad things which are true about us.

Taking our developments as a race, both in England and America, we may
be justly called the Romans of the nineteenth century. We have been
the race which has conquered, subdued, and broken in pieces other
weaker races, with little regard either to justice or mercy. With
regard to benefits by us imparted to conquered nations, I think a
better story, on the whole, can be made out for the Romans than for
us. Witness the treatment of the Chinese, of the tribes of India, and
of our own American Indians.

But still there is in Anglo-Saxon blood, a vigorous sense of justice,
as appears in our habeas corpus, our jury trials, and other features
of state organization; and, when this is tempered, in individuals,
with the elements of gentleness and compassion, and enforced by that
energy and indomitable perseverance which are characteristic of the
Anglo-Saxon mind, they form a style of philanthropy peculiarly
efficient. In short, the Anglo-Saxon is efficient, in whatever he sets
himself about, whether in crushing the weak or lifting them up.

Thomas Clarkson was born in a day when good, pious people imported
cargoes of slaves from Africa, as one of the regular Christianized
modes of gaining a subsistence and providing for themselves and their
households. It was a thing that every body was doing, and every body
thought they had a right to do. It was supposed that all the sugar,
molasses, and rum in the world were dependent on stealing men, women,
and children, and could be got in no other way; and as to consume
sugar, molasses, and rum, were evidently the chief ends of human
existence, it followed that men, women, and children must be stolen to
the end of time.

Some good people, when they now and then heard an appalling story of
the cruelties practised in the slave ship, declared that it was really
too bad, sympathetically remarked, "What a sorrowful world we live
in!" stirred their sugar into their tea, and went on as before,
because, what was there to do?--"Hadn't every body always done it? and
if they didn't do it, wouldn't somebody else?"

It is true that for many years individuals at different times had
remonstrated, written treatises, poems, stories, and movements had
been made by some religious bodies, particularly the Quakers, but the
opposition had amounted to nothing practically efficient.

The attention of Clarkson was first turned to the subject by having it
given out as the theme for a prize composition in his college class,
he being at that time a sprightly young man, about twenty-four years
of age. He entered into the investigation with no other purpose than
to see what he could make of it as a college theme.

He says of himself, "I had expected pleasure from the invention of
arguments, from the arrangement of them, from the putting of them
together, and from the thought, in the interim, that I was engaged in
an innocent contest for literary honor; but all my pleasures were
damped by the facts which were now continually before me."

"It was but one gloomy subject from morning till night; in the daytime
I was uneasy, in the night I had little rest; I sometimes never closed
my eyelids for grief."

It became not now so much a trial for academical reputation as to
write a work which should be useful to Africa. It is not surprising
that a work written under the force of such feelings should have
gained the prize, as it did. Clarkson was summoned from London to
Cambridge, to deliver his prize essay publicly. He says of himself, on
returning to London, "The subject of it almost wholly engrossed my
thoughts. I became at times very seriously affected while on the road.
I stopped my horse occasionally, dismounted, and walked."

"I frequently tried to persuade myself that the contents of my essay
could not be true; but the more I reflected on the authorities on
which they were founded, the more I gave them credit. Coming in sight
of Wade's Mill, in Hertfordshire, I sat down disconsolate on the turf
by the roadside, and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind,
that if the contents of the essay were true, it was time that somebody
should see these calamities to an end."

These reflections, as it appears, were put off for a while, but
returned again.

This young and noble heart was of a kind that could not comfort itself
so easily for a brother's sorrow as many do.

He says of himself, "In the course of the autumn of the same year, I
walked frequently into the woods, that I might think of the subject in
solitude, and find relief to my mind there; but there the question
still recurred, 'Are these things true?' Still, the answer followed as
instantaneously, 'They are;' still the result accompanied it--surely
some person should interfere. I began to envy those who had seats in
Parliament, riches, and widely-extended connections, which would
enable them to take up this cause.

"Finding scarcely any one, at the time, who thought of it, I was
turned frequently to myself; but here many difficulties arose. It
struck me, among others, that a young man only twenty-four years of
age could not have that solid judgment, or that knowledge of men,
manners, and things, which were requisite to qualify him to undertake
a task of such magnitude and importance; and with whom was I to unite?
I believed, also, that it looked so much like one of the feigned
labors of Hercules, that my understanding would be suspected if I
proposed it."

He, however, resolved to do something for the cause by translating his
essay from Latin into English, enlarging and presenting it to the
public. Immediately on the publication of this essay he discovered, to
his astonishment and delight, that he was not the only one who had
been interested in this subject.

Being invited to the house of William Dillwyn, one of these friends to
the cause, he says, "How surprised was I to learn, in the course of
our conversation, of the labors of Granville Sharp, of the writings of
Ramsey, and of the controversy in which the latter was engaged! of all
which I had hitherto known nothing. How surprised was I to learn that
William Dillwyn had, two years before, associated himself with five
others for the purpose of enlightening the public mind on this great
subject!

"How astonished was I to find that a society had been formed in
America for the same object! These thoughts almost overpowered me. My
mind was overwhelmed by the thought that I had been providentially
directed to this house; the finger of Providence was beginning to be
discernible, and that the daystar of African liberty was rising."

After this he associated with many friends of the cause, and at last
it became evident that, in order to effect any thing, he must
sacrifice all other prospects in life, and devote himself exclusively
to this work.

He says, after mentioning reasons which prevented all his associates
from doing this, "I could look, therefore, to no person but myself;
and the question was, whether I was prepared to make the sacrifice. In
favor of the undertaking, I urged to myself that never was any cause,
which had been taken up by man, in any country or in any age, so great
and important; that never was there one in which so much misery was
heard to cry for redress; that never was there one in which so much
good could be done; never one in which the duty of Christian charity
could be so extensively exercised; never one more worthy of the
devotion of a whole life towards it; and that, if a man thought
properly, he ought to rejoice to have been called into existence, if
he were only permitted to become an instrument in forwarding it in any
part of its progress.

"Against these sentiments, on the other hand, I had to urge that I had
been designed for the church; that I had already advanced as far as
deacon's orders in it; that my prospects there on account of my
connections were then brilliant; that, by appearing to desert my
profession, my family would be dissatisfied, if not unhappy. These
thoughts pressed upon me, and rendered the conflict difficult.

"But the sacrifice of my prospects staggered me, I own, the most. When
the other objections which I have related occurred to me, my
enthusiasm instantly, like a flash of lightning, consumed them; but
this stuck to me, and troubled me. I had ambition. I had a thirst
after worldly interest and honors, and I could not extinguish it at
once. I was more than two hours in solitude under this painful
conflict. At length I yielded, not because I saw any reasonable
prospect of success in my new undertaking,--for all cool-headed and
cool-hearted men would have pronounced against it,--but in obedience,
I believe, to a higher Power. And I can say, that both on the moment
of this resolution and for some time afterwards, I had more sublime
and happy feelings than at any former period of my life."

In order to show how this enterprise was looked upon and talked of
very commonly by the majority of men in those times, we will extract
the following passage from Boswell's Life of Johnson, in which Bozzy
thus enters his solemn protest: "The wild and dangerous attempt, which
has for some time been persisted in, to obtain an act of our
legislature to abolish so very important and necessary a branch of
commercial interest, must have been crushed at once, had not the
insignificance of the zealots, who vainly took the lead in it, made
the vast body of planters, merchants, and others, whose immense
properties are involved in that trade, reasonably enough suppose that
there could be no danger. The encouragement which the attempt has
received excites my wonder and indignation; and though some men of
superior abilities have supported it, whether from a love of temporary
popularity when prosperous, or a love of general mischief when
desperate, my opinion is unshaken.

"To abolish a _status_ which in all ages God has sanctioned, and
man has continued, would not only be robbery to an innumerable class
of our fellow-subjects, but it would be extreme cruelty to the African
savages, a portion of whom it saves from massacre or intolerable
bondage in their own country, and introduces into a much happier state
of life; especially now, when their passage to the West Indies, and
their treatment there, is humanely regulated. To abolish this trade
would be to '--shut the gates of mercy on mankind.'"

One of the first steps of Clarkson and his associates was the
formation of a committee of twelve persons, for the collection and
dissemination of information on the subject.

The contest now began in earnest, a contest as sublime as any the
world ever saw.

The abolition controversy more fully aroused the virtue, the talent,
and the religion of the great English nation, than any other event or
crisis which ever occurred.

Wilberforce was the leader of the question in Parliament. The other
members of the antislavery committee performed those labors which were
necessary out of it.

This labor consisted principally in the collection of evidence with
regard to the traffic, and the presentation of it before the public
mind. In this labor Clarkson was particularly engaged. The subject was
hemmed in with the same difficulties that now beset the antislavery
cause in America. Those who knew most about it were precisely those
whose interest it was to prevent inquiry. An immense moneyed interest
was arrayed against investigation, and was determined to suppress the
agitation of the subject. Owing to this powerful pressure, many, who
were in possession of facts which would bear upon this subject,
refused to communicate them; and often, after a long and wearisome
journey in search of an individual who could throw light upon the
subject, Clarkson had the mortification to find his lips sealed by
interest or timidity. As usual, the cause of oppression was defended
by the most impudent lying; the slave trade was asserted to be the
latest revised edition of philanthropy. It was said that the poor
African, the slave of miserable oppression in his own country, was
wafted by it to an asylum in a Christian land; that the middle passage
was to the poor negro a perfect Elysium, infinitely happier than any
thing he had ever known in his own country. All this was said while
manacles, and handcuffs, and thumbscrews, and instruments to force
open the mouth, were a regular part of the stock for a slave ship, and
were hanging in the shop windows of Liverpool for sale.

For Clarkson's attention was first called to these things by observing
them in the shop window, and on inquiring the use of one of them, the
man informed him that many times negroes were sulky, and tried to
starve themselves to death, and this instrument was used to force open
their jaws.

Of Clarkson's labor in this investigation some idea may be gathered
from his own words, when, stating that for a season he was compelled
to retire from the cause, he thus speaks:--

"As far as I myself was concerned, all exertion was then over. The
nervous system was almost shattered to pieces. Both my memory and my
hearing failed me. Sudden dizzinesses seized my head. A confused
singing in the ear followed me wherever I went. On going to bed the
very stairs seemed to dance up and down under me, so that, misplacing
my foot, I sometimes fell. Talking, too, if it continued but half an
hour, exhausted me so that profuse perspiration followed, and the same
effect was produced even by an active exertion of the mind for the
like time.

"These disorders had been brought on by degrees, in consequence of the
severe labors necessarily attached to the promotion of the cause. For
seven years I had a correspondence to maintain with four hundred
persons, with my own hand; I had some book or other annually to write
in behalf of the cause. In this time I had travelled more than thirty-five
thousand miles in search of evidence, and a great part of these journeys
in the night. All this time my mind had been on the stretch. It had been
bent, too, to this one subject, for I had not even leisure to attend to my
own concerns. The various instances of barbarity which had come
successively to my knowledge, within this period, had vexed, harassed,
and afflicted it. The wound which these had produced was rendered still
deeper by those cruel disappointments before related, which arose from
the reiterated refusals of persons to give their testimony, after I had
travelled hundreds of miles in quest of them. But the severest stroke was
that inflicted by the persecution, begun and pursued by persons interested
in the continuance of the trade, of such witnesses as had been examined
against them, and whom, on account of their dependent situation in life,
it was most easy to oppress. As I had been the means of bringing these
forward on these occasions, they naturally came to me, when thus
persecuted, as the author of their miseries and their ruin. From their
supplications and wants it would have been ungenerous and ungrateful
to have fled. These different circumstances, by acting together, had at
length brought me into the situation just mentioned; and I was, therefore,
obliged, though very reluctantly, to be borne out of the field where I had
placed the great honor and glory of my life."

I may as well add here that a Mr. Whitbread, to whom Clarkson
mentioned this latter cause of distress, generously offered to repair
the pecuniary losses of all who had suffered in this cause. One
anecdote will be a specimen of the energy with which Clarkson pursued
evidence. It had been very strenuously asserted and maintained that
the subjects of the slave trade were only such unfortunates as had
become prisoners of war, and who, if not carried out of the country in
this manner, would be exposed to death or some more dreadful doom in
their own country. This was one of those stories which nobody
believed, and yet was particularly useful in the hands of the
opposition, because it was difficult legally to disprove it. It was
perfectly well known that in very many cases slave traders made direct
incursions into the country, kidnapped and carried off the inhabitants
of whole villages; but the question was, how to establish it. A
gentleman whom Clarkson accidentally met on one of his journeys
informed him that he had been in company, about a year before, with a
sailor, a very respectable-looking young man, who had actually been
engaged in one of these expeditions; he had spent half an hour with
him at an inn; he described his person, but knew nothing of his name
or the place of his abode; all he knew was, that he belonged to a ship
of war in ordinary, but knew nothing of the port. Clarkson determined
that this man should be produced as a witness, and knew no better way
than to go personally to all the ships in ordinary, until the
individual was found. He actually visited every seaport town, and
boarded every ship, till in the very _last_ port, and on the very
_last_ ship, which remained, the individual was found, and found
to be possessed of just the facts and information which were
necessary. By the labors of Clarkson and his contemporaries an
incredible excitement was produced throughout all England. The
pictures and models of slave ships, accounts of the cruelties
practised in the trade, were circulated with an industry which left
not a man, woman, or child in England uninstructed. In disseminating
information, and in awakening feeling and conscience, the women of
England were particularly earnest, and labored with that whole-hearted
devotion which characterizes the sex.

It seems that after the committee had published the facts, and sent
them to every town in England, Clarkson followed them up by journeying
to all the places, to see that they were read and attended to. Of the
state of feeling at this time Clarkson gives the following account:--

"And first I may observe, that there was no town through which I
passed in which there was not some one individual who had left off the
use of sugar. In the smaller towns there were from ten to fifty, by
estimation, and in the larger from two to five hundred, who made this
sacrifice to virtue. These were of all ranks and parties. Hich and
poor, churchmen and dissenters, had adopted the measure. Even grocers
had left off trading in the article in some places. In gentlemen's
families, where the master had set the example, the servants had often
voluntarily followed it; and even children, who were capable of
understanding the history of the sufferings of the Africans, excluded,
with the most virtuous resolution, the sweets, to which they had been
accustomed, from their lips. By the best computation I was able to
make, from notes taken down in my journey, no fewer than three hundred
thousand persons had abandoned the use of sugar." It was the reality,
depth, and earnestness of the public feeling, thus aroused, which
pressed with resistless force upon the government; for the government
of England yields to popular demands quite as readily as that of
America.

After years of protracted struggle, the victory was at last won. The
slave trade was finally abolished through all the British empire; and
not only so, but the English nation committed, with the whole force of
its national influence, to seek the abolition of the slave trade in
all the nations of the earth. But the wave of feeling did not rest
there; the investigations had brought before the English conscience
the horrors and abominations of slavery itself, and the agitation
never ceased till slavery was finally abolished through all the
British provinces. At this time the religious mind and conscience of
England gained, through this very struggle, a power which it never has
lost. The principle adopted by them was the same so sublimely adopted
by the church in America in reference to the foreign missionary cause:
"The field is the world." They saw and felt that, as the example and
practice of England had been powerful in giving sanction to this evil,
and particularly in introducing it into America, there was the
greatest reason why she should never intermit her efforts till the
wrong was righted throughout the earth.

Clarkson, to his last day, never ceased to be interested in the
subject, and took the warmest interest in all movements for the
abolition of slavery in America.

At the Ipswich depot we were met by a venerable lady, the daughter of
Clarkson's associate, William Dillwyn. She seemed overjoyed to meet
us, and took us at once into her carriage, and entertained us all our
way to the hall by anecdotes and incidents of Clarkson and his times.
She read me a manuscript letter from him, written at a very advanced
age, in which he speaks with the utmost ardor and enthusiasm of the
first antislavery movements of Cassius M. Clay in Kentucky. She
described him to me as a cheerful, companionable being, frank and
simple-hearted, and with a good deal of quiet humor.

It is remarkable of him that, with such intense feeling for human
suffering as he had, and worn down and exhausted as he was by the
dreadful miseries and sorrows with which he was constantly obliged to
be familiar, he never yielded to a spirit of bitterness or
denunciation.

The narrative which he gives is as calm and unimpassioned, and as free
from any trait of this kind, as the narratives of the evangelists.
Thus riding and talking, we at last arrived at the hall.

The old stone house, the moat, the draw bridge, all spoke of days of
violence long gone by, when no man was safe except within fortified
walls, and every man's house literally had to be his castle.

To me it was interesting as the dwelling of a conqueror, as one who
had not wrestled with flesh and blood merely, but with principalities
and powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world, and who had
overcome, as his great Master did before him, by faith, and prayer,
and labor.

We were received with much cordiality by the widow of Clarkson, now in
her eighty-fourth year. She has been a woman of great energy and
vigor, and an efficient co-laborer in his plans of benevolence.

She is now quite feeble. I was placed under the care of a respectable
female servant, who forthwith installed me in a large chamber
overlooking the court yard, which had been Clarkson's own room; the
room where, for years, many of his most important labors had been
conducted, and from whence his soul had ascended to the reward of the
just.

The servant who attended me seemed to be quite a superior woman, like
many of the servants in respectable English families. She had grown up
in the family, and was identified with it; its ruling aims and
purposes had become hers. She had been the personal attendant of
Clarkson, and his nurse during his last sickness; she had evidently
understood, and been interested in his plans; and the veneration with
which she therefore spoke of him had the sanction of intelligent
appreciation.

A daughter of Clarkson, who was married to a neighboring clergyman,
with her husband, was also present on this day.

After dinner we rode out to see the old church, in whose enclosure the
remains of Clarkson repose. It was just such a still, quiet, mossy old
church as you have read of in story books, with the graveyard spread
all around it, like a thoughtful mother, who watches the resting of
her children.

The grass in the yard was long and green, and the daisy, which, in
other places, lies like a little button on the ground, here had a
richer fringe of crimson, and a stalk about six inches high. It is, I
well know, the vital influence from the slumbering dust beneath which
gives the richness to this grass and these flowers; but let not that
be a painful thought; let it rather cheer us, that beauty should
spring from ashes, and life smile brighter from the near presence of
death. The grave of Clarkson is near the church, enclosed by a
railing, and marked by a simple white marble slab; it is carefully
tended, and planted with flowers. In the church was an old book of
records, and among other curious inscriptions was one recording how a
pious committee of old Noll's army had been there, knocking off
saints' noses, and otherwise purging the church from the relics of
idolatry.

Near by the church was the parsonage, the home of my friends, a neat,
pleasant, sequestered dwelling, of about the style of a New England
country parsonage.

The effect of the whole together was inexpressibly beautiful to me.
For a wonder, it was a pleasant day, and this is a thing always to be
thankfully acknowledged in England. The calm stillness of the
afternoon, the seclusion of the whole place, the silence only broken
by the cawing of the rooks, the ancient church, the mossy graves with
their flowers and green grass, the sunshine and the tree shadows, all
seemed to mingle together in a kind of hazy dream of peacefulness and
rest. How natural it is to say of some place sheltered, simple, cool,
and retired, here one might find peace, as if peace came from without,
and not from within. In the shadiest and stillest places may be the
most turbulent hearts; and there are hearts which, through the busiest
scenes, carry with them unchanging peace. As we were walking back, we
passed many cottages of the poor.

I noticed, with particular pleasure, the invariable flower garden
attached to each. Some pansies in one of them attracted my attention
by their peculiar beauty, so very large and richly colored. On being
introduced to the owner of them, she, with cheerful alacrity, offered
me some of the finest. I do not doubt of there being suffering and
misery in the agricultural population of England, but still there are
multitudes of cottages which are really very pleasant objects, as were
all these. The cottagers had that bright, rosy look of health which we
seldom see in America, and appeared to be both polite and
self-respecting.

In the evening we had quite a gathering of friends from the
neighborhood--intelligent, sensible, earnest people, who had grown up
in the love of the antislavery cause as into religion. The subject of
conversation was, "The duty of English people to free themselves from
any participation in American slavery, by taking means to encourage
the production of free cotton in the British provinces."

It is no more impossible or improbable that something effective may be
done in this way than that the slave trade should have been abolished.
Every great movement seems an impossibility at first. There is no end
to the number of things declared and proved impossible which have been
done already, so that this may become something yet.

Mrs. Clarkson had retired from the room early; after a while she sent
for me to her sitting room. The faithful attendant of whom I spoke was
with her. She wished to show me some relics of her husband, his watch
and seals, some of his papers and manuscripts; among these was the
identical prize essay with which he began his career, and a commentary
on the Gospels, which he had written with great care, for the use of
his grandson. His seal attracted my attention--it was that kneeling
figure of the negro, with clasped hands, which was at first adopted as
the badge of the cause, when every means was being made use of to
arouse the public mind and keep the subject before the public. Mr.
Wedgwood, the celebrated porcelain manufacturer, designed a cameo,
with this representation, which was much worn as an ornament by
ladies. It was engraved on the seal of the Antislavery Society, and
was used by its members in sealing all their letters. This of
Clarkson's was handsomely engraved on a large, old-fashioned
carnelian; and surely, if we look with emotion on the sword of a
departed hero,--which, at best, we can consider only as a necessary
evil,--we may look with unmingled pleasure on this memorial of a
bloodless victory.

When I retired to my room for the night I could not but feel that the
place was hallowed: unceasing prayer had there been offered for the
enslaved and wronged race of Africa by that noble and brotherly heart.
I could not but feel that those prayers had had a wider reach than the
mere extinction of slavery in one land or country, and that their
benign influence would not cease while a slave was left upon the face
of the earth.




LETTER XXV.

DEAR C.:--

We returned to London, and found Mr. S. and Joseph Sturge waiting for
us at the depot. We dined with Mr. Sturge. It seems that Mr. S.'s
speech upon the subject of cotton has created some considerable
disturbance, different papers declaring themselves for or against it
with a good deal of vivacity.

After dinner Mr. Sturge desired me very much to go into the meeting of
the women; for it seems that, at the time of the yearly meeting among
the Friends, the men and women both have their separate meetings for
attending to business. The aspect of the meeting was very
interesting--so many placid, amiable faces, shaded by plain Quaker
bonnets; so many neat white handkerchiefs, folded across peaceful
bosoms. Either a large number of very pretty women wear the Quaker
dress, or it is quite becoming in its effect.

There are some things in the mode of speaking among the Friends,
particularly in their public meetings, which do not strike me
agreeably, and to which I think it would take me some time to become
accustomed; such as a kind of intoning somewhat similar to the manner
in which the church service is performed in cathedrals. It is a
curious fact that religious exercises, in all ages and countries, have
inclined to this form of expression. It appears in the cantilation of
the synagogue, the service of the cathedral, the prayers of the
Covenanter and the Puritan.

There were a table and writing materials in this meeting, and a circle
of from fifty to a hundred ladies. One of those upon the platform
requested me to express to them my opinion on free labor. In a few
words I told them I considered myself upon that subject more a learner
than a teacher, but that I was deeply interested in what I had learned
upon this subject since my travelling in England, and particularly
interested in the consistency and self-denial practised by their sect.

I have been quite amused with something which has happened lately. It
always has seemed to me that distinguished people here in England live
a remarkably out-door sort of life; and newspapers tell a vast deal
about people's concerns which it is not our custom to put into print
in America. Such, for instance, as where the Hon. Mr. A. is staying
now, and where he expects to go next; what her grace wore at the last
ball, and when the royal children rode out, and what they had on; and
whom Lord Such-a-one had to dinner; besides a large number of
particulars which probably never happen.

Could I have expected dear old England to make me so much one of the
family as to treat my humble fortunes in this same public manner? But
it is even so. This week the Times has informed the United Kingdom
that Mrs. Stowe is getting a new dress made!--the charming old
aristocratic Times, which every body declares is such a wicked paper,
and yet which they can no more do without than they can their
breakfast! What am I, and what is my father's house, that such
distinction should come upon me? I assure you, my dear, I feel myself
altogether too much flattered. There, side by side with speculations
on the eastern question, and conjectures with regard to the secret and
revealed will of the Emperor of Russia, news from her majesty's most
sacred retreat at Osborne, and the last debates in Parliament, comes
my brown silk dress! The Times has omitted the color; I had a great
mind to send him word about that. But you may tell the girls--for
probably the news will spread through the American papers--that it is
the brown Chinese silk which they put into my trunk, unmade, when I
was too ill to sit up and be fitted.

Mr. Times wants to know if Mrs. Stowe is aware what sort of a place
her dress is being made in, and there is a letter from a dressmaker's
apprentice stating that it is being made up piecemeal, in the most
shockingly distressed dens of London, by poor, miserable white slaves,
worse treated than the plantation slaves of America.

Now, Mrs. Stowe did not know any thing of this, but simply gave the
silk into the hands of a friend, and was in due time waited on in her
own apartment by a very respectable woman, who offered to make the
dress; and lo, this is the result! Since the publication of this
piece, I have received earnest missives, from various parts of the
country, begging me to interfere, hoping that I was not going to
patronize the white slavery of England, and that I would employ my
talents equally against oppression under every form. The person who
had been so unfortunate as to receive the weight of my public
patronage was in a very tragical state; protested her innocence of any
connection with dens, of any overworking of hands, &c., with as much
fervor as if I had been appointed on a committee of parliamentary
inquiry. Let my case be a warning to all philanthropists who may
happen to want clothes while they are in London. Some of my
correspondents seemed to think that I ought to publish a manifesto for
the benefit of distressed Great Britain, stating how I came to do it,
and all the circumstances, since they are quite sure I must have meant
well, and containing gentle cautions as to the disposal of my future
patronage in the dressmaking line.

Could these people only know in what sacred simplicity I had been
living in the State of Maine, where the only dressmaker of our circle
was an intelligent, refined, well-educated woman, who was considered
as the equal of us all, and whose spring and fall ministrations to our
wardrobe were regarded a double pleasure,--a friendly visit as well as
a domestic assistance,--I say, could they know all this, they would
see how guiltless I was in the matter. I verily never thought but that
the nice, pleasant person, who came to measure me for my silk, was
going to take it home and make it herself; it never occurred to me
that she was the head of an establishment.

And now, what am I to do? The Times seems to think that, in order to
be consistent, I ought to take up the conflict immediately; but, for
my part, I think otherwise. What an unreasonable creature! Does he
suppose me so lost to all due sense of humility as to take out of his
hands a cause which he is pleading so well? If the plantation slaves
had such a good friend as the Times, and if every over-worked female
cotton picker could write as clever letters as this dressmaker's
apprentice, and get them published in as influential papers, and
excite as general a sensation by them as this seems to have done, I
think I should feel that there was no need of my interfering in a work
so much better done. Unfortunately, our female cotton pickers do not
know how to read and write, and it is against the law to teach them;
and this instance shows that the law is a sagacious one, since,
doubtless, if they could read and write, most embarrassing
communications might be made.

Nothing shows more plainly, to my mind, than this letter, the
difference between the working class of England and the slave. The
free workman or workwoman of England or America, however poor, is
self-respecting; is, to some extent, clever and intelligent; is
determined to resist wrong, and, as this incident shows, has abundant
means for doing so.

When we shall see the columns of the Charleston Courier adorned with
communications from cotton pickers and slave seamstresses, we shall
then think the comparison a fair one. In fact, apart from the
whimsicality of the affair, and the little annoyance which one feels
at notoriety to which one is not accustomed, I consider the incident
as in some aspects a gratifying one, as showing how awake and active
are the sympathies of the British public with that much-oppressed
class of needlewomen.

Horace Greeley would be delighted could his labors in this line excite
a similar commotion in New York.

We dined to-day at the Duke of Argyle's. At dinner there were the
members of the family, the Duchess of Sutherland, Lord Carlisle, Lord
and Lady Blantyre, &c. The conversation flowed along in a very
agreeable channel. I told them the more I contemplated life in Great
Britain, the more I was struck with the contrast between the
comparative smallness of the territory and the vast power, physical,
moral, and intellectual, which it exerted in the world.

The Duchess of Sutherland added, that it was beautiful to observe how
gradually the idea of freedom had developed itself in the history of
the English nation, growing clearer and more distinct in every
successive century.

I might have added that the history of our own American republic is
but a continuation of the history of this development. The resistance
to the stamp act was of the same kind as the resistance to the ship
money; and in our revolutionary war there were as eloquent defences of
our principles and course heard in the British Parliament as echoed in
Faneuil Hall.

I conversed some with Lady Caroline Campbell, the duke's sister, with
regard to Scottish preaching and theology. She is a member of the Free
church, and attends, in London, Dr. Cumming's congregation. I derived
the impression from her remarks, that the style of preaching in
Scotland is more discriminating and doctrinal than in England. One who
studies the pictures given in Scott's novels must often have been
struck with the apparent similarity in the theologic training and
tastes of the laboring classes in New England and Scotland. The
hard-featured man, whom he describes in Rob Roy as following the
preacher so earnestly, keeping count of the doctrinal points on his
successive fingers, is one which can still be seen in the retired,
rural districts of New England; and I believe that this severe
intellectual discipline of the pulpit has been one of the greatest
means in forming that strong, self-sustaining character peculiar to
both countries.

The Duke of Argyle said that Chevalier Bunsen had been speaking to him
in relation to a college for colored people at Antigua, and inquired
my views respecting the emigration of colored people from America to
the West India islands. I told him my impression was, that Canada
would be a much better place to develop the energies of the race.
First, on account of its cold and bracing climate; second, because,
having never been a slave state, the white population there are more
thrifty and industrious, and of course the influence of such a
community was better adapted to form thrift arid industry in the
negro.

In the evening, some of the ladies alluded to the dressmaker's letter
in the Times. I inquired if there was nothing done for them as a class
in London, and some of them said,--

"O, Lord Shaftesbury can tell you all about it; he is president of the
society for their protection."

So I said to Lord Shaftesbury, playfully, "I thought, my lord, you had
reformed every thing here in London."

"Ah, indeed," he replied, "but this was not in one of my houses. I
preside over the West End."

He talked on the subject for some time with considerable energy; said
it was one of the most difficult he had ever attempted to regulate,
and promised to send me a few documents, which would show the measures
he had pursued. He said, however, that there was progress making; and
spoke of one establishment in particular, which had recently been
erected in London, and was admirably arranged with regard to
ventilation, being conducted in the most perfect manner.

Quite a number of distinguished persons were present this evening;
among others, Sir David Brewster, famed in the scientific world. He is
a fine-looking old gentleman, with silver-white hair, who seemed to be
on terms of great familiarity with the duke. He bears the character of
a decidedly religious man, and is an elder in the Free church.

Lord Mahon, the celebrated historian, was there, with his lady. He is
a young-looking man, of agreeable manners, and fluent in conversation.
This I gather from Mr. S., with whom he conversed very freely on our
historians, Prescott, Bancroft, and especially Dr. Sparks, his sharp
controversy with whom he seems to bear with great equanimity.

Lady Mahon is a handsome, interesting woman, with very pleasing
manners.

Mr. Gladstone was there also, one of the ablest and best men in the
kingdom. It is a commentary on his character that, although one of the
highest of the High church, we have never heard him spoken of, even
among dissenters, otherwise than as an excellent and highly
conscientious man. For a gentleman who has attained to such celebrity,
both in theology and politics, he looks remarkably young. He is tall,
with dark hair and eyes, a thoughtful, serious cast of countenance,
and is easy and agreeable in conversation.

On the whole, this was a very delightful evening.




LETTER XXVI.

DEAR C.:--

I will add to this a little sketch, derived from the documents sent me
by Lord Shaftesbury, of the movements in behalf of the milliners and
dressmakers in London for seven years past.

About thirteen years ago, in the year 1841, Lord Shaftesbury obtained
a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the employment of children
and young persons in various trades and manufactures. This commission,
among other things, was directed toward the millinery and dressmaking
trade. These commissioners elicited the following facts: that there
were fifteen hundred employers in this trade in London, and fifteen
thousand young people employed, besides a great number of journeywomen
who took the work home to their own houses. They discovered, also,
that during the London season, which occupied about four months of the
year, the regular hours of work were fifteen, but in many
establishments they were entirely unlimited,--the young women never
getting more than six hours for sleep, and often only two or three;
that frequently they worked all night and part of Sunday. They
discovered, also, that the rooms in which they worked and slept were
overcrowded, and deficient in ventilation; and that, in consequence of
all these causes, blindness, consumption, and multitudes of other
diseases carried thousands of them yearly to the grave.

These facts being made public to the English nation, a society was
formed in London in 1843, called the Association for The Aid of
Milliners and Dressmakers. The president of this society is the Earl
of Shaftesbury; the vice presidents are twenty gentlemen of the most
influential position. Besides this there is a committee of ladies, and
a committee of gentlemen. At the head of the committee of ladies
stands the name of the Duchess of Sutherland, with seventeen others,
among whom we notice the Countess of Shaftesbury, Countess of
Ellesmere, Lady Robert Grosvenor, and others of the upper London
sphere. The subscription list of donations to the society is headed by
the queen and royal family.

The features of the plan which the society undertook to carry out were
briefly these:--

First, they opened a registration office, where all young persons
desiring employment in the dressmaking trade might enroll their names
free of expense, and thus come in a manner under the care of the
association. From the young people thus enrolled, they engaged to
supply to the principals of dressmaking establishments extra
assistants in periods of uncommon pressure, so that they should not be
under the necessity of overtaxing their workwomen. This assistance is
extended only to those houses which will observe the moderate hours
recommended by the association.

In the second place, an arrangement is made by which the young persons
thus registered are entitled to the best of medical advice at any
time, for the sum of five shillings per year. Three physicians and two
consulting surgeons are connected with the association.

In the third place, models of simple and cheap modes of ventilation
are kept at all times at the office of the society, and all the
influence of the association is used to induce employers to place them
in the work and sleeping rooms.

Fourth, a kind of savings bank has been instituted, in which the
workwomen are encouraged to deposit small earnings on good interest.

This is the plan of the society, and as to its results I have at hand
the report for 1851, from which you can gather some particulars of its
practical workings. They say, "Eight years have elapsed since this
association was established, during which a most gratifying change has
been wrought in respect to the mode of conducting the dressmaking and
millinery business.

"Without overstepping the strict limits of truth, it may be affirmed
that the larger part of the good thus achieved is attributable to the
influence and unceasing efforts of this society. The general result,
so far as the metropolis is concerned, may be thus stated: First, the
hours of work, speaking generally, now rarely exceed twelve, whereas
formerly sixteen, seventeen, and even eighteen hours were not unusual.

"Second, the young persons are rarely kept up all night, which was
formerly not an unusual occurrence.

"Third, labor on the Lord's day, it is confidently believed, has been
entirely abrogated.

"Under the old system the health and constitution of many of the young
people were irretrievably destroyed. At present permanent loss of
health is rarely entailed, and even when sickness does from any cause
arise, skilful and prompt advice and medicine are provided at a
moderate charge by the association.

"In addition to these and similar ameliorations, other and more
important changes have been effected. Among the heads of
establishments, as the committee are happy to know and most willing to
record, more elevated views of the duties and responsibilities,
inseparable from employers, have secured to the association the
zealous cooperation of numerous and influential principals, without
whose aid the efforts of the last few years would have been often
impeded, or even in many instances defeated. Nor have the young
persons engaged in the dressmaking and millinery business remained
uninfluenced amidst the general improvement. Finding that a strenuous
effort was in progress to promote their physical and moral welfare,
and that increased industry on their part would be rewarded by
diminished hours of work, the assistants have become more attentive,
the workrooms are better managed, and both parties, relieved from a
system which was oppressive to all and really beneficial to none, have
recognized the fundamental truth, that in no industrial pursuit is
there any real incompatibility between the interests, rightfully
interpreted, of the employer and the employed. Although not generally
known, evils scarcely less serious than those formerly prevalent in
the metropolis were not uncommon in the manufacturing towns and
fashionable watering-places. It is obviously impracticable to
ascertain to what extent the efforts of the association have been
attended with success in the provinces; but a rule has been
established that in no instance shall the cooperation of the office,
in providing assistants, be extended to any establishment in which the
hours of work are known to exceed those laid down by the association.
On these conditions the principals of many country establishments have
for several years been supplied; latterly, indeed, owing to the great
efficiency of the manager, Miss Newton, and to the general
satisfaction thus created, these applications have so much increased
as to constitute a principal part of the business of the office; and
with the increase the influence of the association has been
proportionally extended."

This, as you perceive, was the report for 1851. Lord Shaftesbury has
kindly handed me the first proof of the report for 1853, from which I
will send you a few extracts.

After the publication of the letter from the ladies of England to the
ladies of America, much was said in the Times and other newspapers
with regard to the condition of the dressmakers. These things are what
are alluded to in the commencement of the report. They say,--

"In presenting their annual report, the committees would in the first
place refer to the public notice that has lately been directed to the
mode in which the dressmaking and millinery business is conducted:
this they feel to be due both to the association and to those
employers who have cooperated in the good work of improvement. It has
been stated in former reports, that since the first establishment of
this society, in the year 1843, and essentially through its influence,
great ameliorations have been secured; that the inordinate hours of
work formerly prevalent had, speaking generally, been greatly reduced;
that Sunday labor had been abolished; that the young people were
rarely kept up all night; and that, as a consequence of these
improvements, there had been a marked decrease of serious sickness.

"At the present moment, in consequence of the statements that have
appeared in the public journals, and in order to guard against
misconceptions, the committees are anxious to announce that they
perceive no reason for withdrawing any of their preceding statements--
the latest, equally with former investigations, indicating the great
improvement effected in recent years. The manager at the office has
been instructed to make express inquiries of the young dressmakers
themselves; and the result distinctly proves that, on the whole, there
has been a marked diminution in the hours of work.

"The report of Mr. Trouncer, the medical officer who has attended the
larger number of the young persons for whom advice has been provided
by the association, is equally satisfactory. This gentleman, after
alluding to the great evils in regard to health inflicted in former
years, remarks that these have, through the instrumentality of the
association, been greatly ameliorated; that as regards consumption,--
although the nature of the employment itself, however modified by
kindness, has a tendency to develop the disease where the
predisposition exists,--he is happy to state that the average number
of cases, even in the incipient stage, has not been so great as might,
from the circumstances, have been anticipated; that during the last
two years, out of about two hundred and fifty cases of sickness, no
death has occurred; and that but in a few instances only has it been
necessary to advise a total cessation of business. Mr. Trouncer adds
--and this is a statement which the committees have much pleasure in
announcing--that, in the majority of the West End houses, the
principals have, in cases of sickness, acted the part of parents,
evincing, in some instances, even more care than the young persons
themselves.

"In addition to these satisfactory and reliable statements, it is a
matter of simple justice to state that many houses of business have
cooperated with the association in reducing the hours of work, in
improving the workrooms and sleeping apartments, and generally in
promoting the comfort of those in their employ. Some employers have
also very creditably, and at considerable expense, exerted themselves
to secure a good system of ventilation--a subject to which the
committees attach great importance, both as regards the health and
comfort of those employed.

"It is not, by these statements, intended to be said that all
requiring amendment has been corrected. In their last report the
committees remarked that some few houses of business systematically
persisted in exacting excessive labor from their assistants; and they
regret to state that this observation is still applicable. The
important subject of ventilation is still much neglected, and there is
reason to apprehend that the sleeping apartments are often much
overcrowded. Another and a more prevailing evil relates to the time
allowed for meals: this is often altogether insufficient, and strongly
contrasted with the custom in other industrial pursuits, in which one
hour for dinner, and half an hour for breakfast or tea, as the case
may be, is the usual allowance. In an occupation so sedentary as
dressmaking, and especially in the case of young females, hurried
meals are most injurious, and are a frequent cause of deranged health.
It is also the painful duty of the committees to state that in some
establishments, according to the medical report, the principals, in
cases of sickness, will neither allow the young people an opportunity
of calling on the medical officer for his advice, nor permit that
gentleman to visit them at the place of business. The evils resulting
from this absence of all proper feeling are so obvious that it is
hoped this public rebuke will in future obviate the necessity of
recurring to so painful a topic."

The committee after this proceed to publish the following declaration,
signed by fifty-three of the West End dressmakers:--

"'We, the undersigned principals of millinery and dress-making
establishments at the West End of London, having observed in the
newspapers statements of excessive labor in our business, feel called
upon, in self-defence, to make the following public statement,
especially as we have reason to believe that some of the assertions
contained in the letters published in the newspapers are not wholly
groundless:--

"'1. During the greater portion of the year we do not require the
young people in our establishments to work more than twelve hours,
inclusive of one hour and a half for meals: from March to July we
require them to work thirteen hours and a half, allowing during that
time one hour's rest for dinner, and half an hour's rest for tea.

"'2. It has been our object to provide suitable sleeping
accommodations, and to avoid overcrowding.

"'3. In no case do we require work on Sundays, or all night.

"'4. The food we supply is of the best quality, and unlimited in
quantity.'"

Five of these dressmakers, whose names are designated by stars, signed
with the understanding that on rare occasions the hours might possibly
be exceeded.

The remarks which the committee make, considering that it has upon its
list the most influential and distinguished ladies of the London
world, are, I think, worth attention, as showing the strong moral
influence which must thus be brought to bear, both on the trade and on
fashionable society, by this association. They first remark, with
regard to those employers who signed with the reservation alluded to,
that they have every reason to believe that the feeling which prompted
this qualification is to be respected, as it originated in a
determination not to undertake more than they honestly intended to
perform.

They say of the document, on the whole, that, though not realizing all
the views of the association, it must be regarded as creditable to
those who have signed it, since it indicates the most important
advance yet made towards the improvement of the dressmaking and
millinery business. The committees then go on to express a most
decided opinion, first, that the hours of work in the dressmaking
trade ought not to exceed ten per diem; second, that during the
fashionable season ladies should employ sufficient time for the
execution of their orders.

The influence of this association, as will be seen, has extended all
over England. In Manchester a paper, signed by three thousand ladies,
was presented to the principals of the establishments, desiring them
to adopt the rules of the London association.

I mentioned, in a former letter, that the lady mayoress of London, and
the ladies of the city, held a meeting on the subject only a short
time since, with a view of carrying the same improvement through all
the establishments of that part of London. The lady mayoress and five
others of this meeting consented to add their names to the committee,
so that it now represents the whole of London. The Bishop of London
and several of the clergy extend their patronage to the association.




LETTER XXVII.

DEAR S.:--

The next day we went to hear a sermon in behalf of the ragged schools,
by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The children who attended the ragged
schools of that particular district were seated in the gallery, each
side of the organ. As this was the Sunday appropriated to the
exercise, all three of the creeds were read--the Apostles',
Athanasian, and Nicene; all which the little things repeated after the
archbishop, with great decorum, and probably with the same amount of
understanding that we, when children, had of the Assembly's Catechism.

The venerable archbishop was ushered into the pulpit by beadles, with
gold lace cocked hats, striking the ground majestically with their
long staves of office. His sermon, however, was as simple, clear, and
beautiful an exposition of the duty of practical Christianity towards
the outcast and erring as I ever heard. He said that, should we find a
young child wandering away from its home and friends, we should
instinctively feel it our duty to restore the little wanderer; and
such, he said, is the duty we owe to all these young outcasts, who had
strayed from the home of their heavenly Father.

After the sermon they took up a collection; and when we went into the
vestry to speak to the archbishop, we saw him surrounded by the church
wardens, counting over the money.

I noticed in the back part of the church a number of children in
tattered garments, with rather a forlorn and wild appearance, and was
told that these were those who had just been introduced into the
school, and had not been there long enough to come under its modifying
influences. We were told that they were always thus torn and forlorn
in their appearance at first, but that they gradually took pains to
make themselves respectable. The archbishop said, pleasantly, "When
they return to their right mind they appear _clothed_, also, and
sitting at the feet of Jesus."

The archbishop sent me afterwards a beautiful edition of his sermons
on Christian charity, embracing a series of discourses on various
topics of practical benevolence, relating to the elevation and
christianization of the masses. They are written with the same purity
of style, and show the same devout and benevolent spirit with his
other writings.

My thoughts were much saddened to-day by the news, which I received
this week, of the death of Mary Edmonson. It is not for her that I
could weep; for she died as calmly and serenely as she lived,
resigning her soul into the hands of her Savior. What I do weep for
is, that under the flag of my country--and that country a Christian
one--such a life as Mary's could have been lived, and so little said
or done about it.

In the afternoon I went to the deanery of St. Paul's--a retired
building in a deep court opposite the cathedral. After a brief
conversation with Mr. and Mrs. Milman, we went to the cathedral. I had
never seen it before, and was much impressed with the majesty and
grace of the interior. Nevertheless, the Italian style of
architecture, with all its elegance, fails to affect me equally with
the Gothic. The very rudeness of the latter, a something inchoate and
unfinished, is significant of matter struggling with religious ideas
too vast to be fully expressed. Even as in the ancient Scriptures
there are ideas which seem to overtask the powers of human language. I
sat down with Mrs. M. in one of the little compartments, or
_stalls,_ as they are called, into which the galleries are
divided, and which are richly carved in black oak. The whole service
was chanted by a choir expressly trained for the purpose. Some of the
performers are boys of about thirteen years, and of beautiful
countenances. There is a peculiar manner of reading the service
practised in the cathedrals, which is called "intoning." It is a
plaintive, rhythmical chant, with as strong an unction of the nasal as
ever prevailed in a Quaker or Methodist meeting. I cannot exactly
understand why Episcopacy threw out the slur of "nasal twang" as one
of the peculiarities of the conventicle, when it is in full force in
the most approved seats of church orthodoxy. I listened to all in as
uncritical and sympathetic a spirit as possible, giving myself up to
be lifted by the music as high as it could waft me. To one thus
listening, it is impossible to criticize with severity; for, unless
positively offensive, any music becomes beautiful by the power of
sympathy and association. After service we listened to a short sermon
from the Rev. Mr. Villiers, fervent, affectionate, and evangelical in
spirit, and much in the general style of sermonizing which I have
already described.

Monday morning, May 23. We went to breakfast at Mr. Cobden's. Mr. C.
is a man of slender frame, rather under than over the middle size,
with great ease of manner, and flexibility of movement, and the most
frank, fascinating smile. His appearance is a sufficient account of
his popularity, for he seems to be one of those men who carry about
them an atmosphere of vivacity and social exhilaration. We had a very
pleasant and social time, discussing and comparing things in England
and America. Mr. Cobden assured us that he had had curious calls from
Americans, sometimes. Once an editor of a small village paper called,
who had been making a tour through the rural districts of England. He
said that he had asked some mowers how they were prospering. They
answered, "We ain't prosperin'; we're hayin'." Said Cobden,

"I told the man, 'Now don't you go home and publish that in your
paper;' but he did, nevertheless, and sent me over the paper with the
story in it." I might have comforted him with many a similar anecdote
of Americans, as for example, the man who was dead set against a
tariff, "'cause he knew if they once got it, they'd run the old thing
right through his farm;" or those immortal Pennsylvania Dutchmen, who,
to this day, it is said, give in all their votes under the solemn
conviction that they are upholding General Jackson's administration.

The conversation turned on the question of the cultivation of cotton
by free labor. The importance of this great measure was fully
appreciated by Mr. Cobden, as it must be by all. The difficulties to
be overcome in establishing the movement were no less clearly seen,
and ably pointed out. On the whole, the comparison of views was not
only interesting in a high degree, but to us, at least, eminently
profitable. We ventured to augur favorably to the cause from the
indications of that interview.

From this breakfast we returned to dine at Surrey parsonage; and,
after dinner, attended Miss Greenfield's concert at Stafford House.
Mr. S. could not attend on account of so soon leaving town.

The concert room was the brilliant and picturesque hall I have before
described to you. It looked more picture-like and dreamy than ever.
The piano was on the flat stairway just below the broad central
landing. It was a grand piano, standing end outward, and perfectly
_banked up_ among hothouse flowers, so that only its gilded top
was visible. Sir George Smart presided. The choicest of the
_élite_ were there. Ladies in demi-toilet and bonneted. Miss
Greenfield stood among the singers on the staircase, and excited a
sympathetic murmur among the audience. She is not handsome, but looked
very well. She has a pleasing dark face, wore a black velvet headdress
and white carnelian earrings, a black mohr antique silk, made high in
the neck, with white lace falling sleeves and white gloves. A certain
gentleness of manner and self-possession, the result of the universal
kindness shown her, sat well upon her. Chevalier Bunsen, the Prussian
ambassador, sat by me. He looked at her with much interest. "Are the
race often as good looking?" he said. I said, "She is not handsome,
compared with many, though I confess she looks uncommonly well
to-day."

Among the company present I noticed the beautiful Marchioness of
Stafford. I have spoken of her once before; but it is difficult to
describe her, there is something so perfectly simple, yet elegant, in
her appearance; but it has cut itself like a cameo in my memory--a
figure under the middle size, perfectly moulded, dressed simply in
black, a beautiful head, hair _à la Madonna_, ornamented by a
band of gold coins on black velvet: a band of the same kind encircling
her throat is the only relief to the severe simplicity of her dress.

The singing was beautiful. Six of the most cultivated glee singers of
London sang, among other things, "Spring's delights are now
returning," and "Where the bee sucks there lurk I." The duchess said,"
These glees are peculiarly English." It was indeed delightful to hear
Shakspeare's aerial words made vocal within the walls of this fairy
palace. The duchess has a strong nationality; and nationality, always
interesting, never appears in so captivating a form as when it
expresses itself through a beautiful and cultivated woman. One likes
to see a person identifying one's self with a country, and she
embraces England, with its history, its strength, its splendor, its
moral power, with an evident pride and affection which I love to see.

Miss Greenfield's turn for singing now came, and there was profound
attention. Her voice, with its keen, searching fire, its penetrating
vibrant quality, its _"timbre"_ as the French have it, cut its
way like a Damascus blade to the heart. It was the more touching from
occasional rusticities and artistic defects, which showed that she had
received no culture from art.

She sang the ballad, "Old folks at home," giving one verse in the
soprano, and another in the tenor voice.

As she stood partially concealed by the piano Chevalier Bunsen thought
that the tenor part was performed by one of the gentlemen. He was
perfectly astonished when he discovered that it was by her. This was
rapturously encored. Between the parts Sir George took her to the
piano, and tried her voice by skips, striking notes here and there at
random, without connection, from D in alt to A first space in bass
clef: she followed with unerring precision, striking the sound nearly
at the same instant his finger touched the key. This brought out a
burst of applause.

After the concert we walked through the rooms. The effect of the
groups of people sauntering through the hall or looking down from the
galleries was picture-like. Two of the duke's Highland pipers, in full
costume, playing their bagpipes, now made their appearance, and began
to promenade the halls, playing. Their dress reminds me, in its
effect, of that of our American Indians, and their playing is wild and
barbaric. It had a striking effect among these wide halls and
corridors. There is nothing poetic connected with the history and
position of the family of which the fair owner of the halls does not
feel the power, and which she cannot use with artistic skill in
heightening the enchantments of an entertainment.

Rev. S. R. Ward attracted attention in the company, as a full-blooded
African--tall enough for a palm tree. I observed him in conversation
with lords, dukes, and ambassadors, sustaining himself modestly, but
with self-possession. All who converse with him are satisfied that
there is no native difference between the African and other men.

The duchess took me to look at a model of Dunrobin--their castle on
the Sutherland estate. It is in the old French chateau style in
general architecture, something like the print of Glamis. It is
curious that the French architecture has obtained in Scotland. Her
grace kindly invited me to visit Dunrobin on my return to Scotland in
the autumn, taking it after Inverary. This will be delightful. That
Scottish coast I love almost like my own country.

Lord Shaftesbury was there. He came and spoke to us after the concert.
Speaking of Miss Greenfield, he said, "I consider the use of these
halls for the encouragement of an outcast race, a _consecration_.
This is the true use of wealth and splendor when it is employed to
raise up and encourage the despised and forgotten."

In the evening, though very weary, C. persuaded me to accept an
invitation to hear the Creation, at Exeter Hall, performed by the
London Sacred Harmonic Society. They had kindly reserved a gallery for
us, and when we went in Mr. Surman, the founder and for twenty years
conductor of the society, presented me with a beautifully bound copy
of the Creation.

Having never heard it before, I could not compare the performance with
others. I heard it as I should hear a poem read, simply thinking of
the author's ideas, and not of the style of reading. Haydn I was
thinking of,--the bright, brilliant, cheerful Haydn,--who, when
complained of for making church music into dancing tunes, replied,
"When I think of God my soul is always so full of joy that I want to
dance!" This Creation is a descriptive poem--the garden parts unite
Thomson and Milton's style--the whole effect pastoral, yet brilliant.
I was never more animated. I had had a new experience; it is worth
while to know nothing to have such a fresh sensation.

The next day, Tuesday, May 24, we went to lunch with Miss R., at
Oxford Terrace. Among a number of distinguished guests was Lady Byron,
with whom I had a few moments of deeply interesting conversation. No
engravings that ever have been circulated of her in America do any
justice to her appearance. She is of a slight figure, formed with
exceeding delicacy, and her whole form, face, dress, and air unite to
make an impression of a character singularly dignified, gentle, pure,
and yet strong. No words addressed to me in any conversation hitherto
have made their way to my inner soul with such force as a few remarks
dropped by her on the present religious aspect of England--remarks of
such a quality as one seldom hears.

Lady Byron's whole course, I have learned, has been one made venerable
by consistent, active benevolence. I was happy to find in her the
patroness of our American outcasts, William and Ellen Crafts. She had
received them into the schools of her daughter, Lady Lovelace, at
Occum, and now spoke in the highest terms of their character and
proficiency in study. The story of their misfortunes, united with
their reputation for worth, had produced such an impression on the
simple country people, that they always respectfully touch their hats
when meeting them. Ellen, she says, has become mother of a most
beautiful child, and their friends are now making an effort to put
them into some little business by which they may obtain a support.

I could not but observe with regret the evident fragility of Lady
Byron's health; yet why should I regret it? Why wish to detain here
those whose home is evidently from hence, and who will only then fully
live when the shadow we call life is passed away?

Here, also, I was personally introduced to a lady with whom I had
passed many a dreamy hour of spiritual communion--Mrs. Jameson, whose
works on arts and artists were for years almost my only food for a
certain class of longings.

Mrs. Jameson is the most charming of critics, with the gift, often too
little prized, of discovering and pointing out beauties rather than
defects; beauties which we may often have passed unnoticed, but which,
when so pointed out, never again conceal themselves. This shows itself
particularly in her Characteristics of Shakspeare's Women, a critique
which only a true woman could have written.

She seemed rather surprised to find me inquiring about art and
artists. I asked her where one might go to study that subject most
profitably, and her answer was, in Munich.

By her side was Mrs. Chisholm, the author of those benevolent
movements for the emigrants, which I have mentioned to you. She is a
stout, practical looking woman, who impresses you with the idea of
perfect health, exuberant life, and an iron constitution. Her face
expresses decision, energy, and good sense. She is a woman of few
words, every moment of whose time seems precious.

One of her remarks struck me, from the quaint force with which it was
uttered. "I found," said she, "if we want any thing done, we must go
to work and _do_; it is of no use to talk, none whatever." It is
the secret of her life's success. Mrs. Chisholm first began by
_doing_ on a small scale what she wanted done, and people seeing
the result fell in with and helped her, but to have convinced them of
the feasibility of her plans by _talking_, without this practical
demonstration, would have been impossible.

At this _réunion_, also, was Mr. George Thompson, whom I had
never seen before, and many of the warmest friends of the slave.
During this visit I was taken ill, and obliged to return to Mr.
Gurney's, where I was indisposed during the remainder of the day, and
late in the evening drove home to Surrey parsonage.

The next evening, Wednesday, May 29, we attended an antislavery
_soirée_, at Willis's rooms, formerly known as Almack's; so at
least I was told. A number of large rooms were thrown open,
brilliantly lighted and adorned, and filled with throngs of people. In
the course of the evening we went upon the platform in the large hall,
where an address was presented by S. Bowley, Esq., of Gloucester. It
was one of the most beautiful, sensible, judicious, and Christian
addresses that could have been made, and I listened to it with
unmingled pleasure. In reply, Mr. S. took occasion still further to
explain his views with respect to the free-grown cotton movement in
England, and its bearings on the future progress of the cause of
freedom. [Footnote: We are happy to say that a large body of religious
persons in Great Britain have become favorable to these views. A
vigorous society has been established, combining India reform and free
cotton with the antislavery cause. The Earl of Albemarle made, while
we were in London, a vigorous India reform speech in the House of
Lords, and Messrs. Bright and Cobden are fully in for the same object
in the Commons. There is much hope in the movement.]

After the addresses we dispersed to different rooms, where refreshment
tables were bountifully laid out and adorned. By my side, at one end
of them, was a young female of pleasing exterior, with fine eyes,
delicate person, neatly dressed in white. She was introduced to me as
Ellen Crafts--a name memorable in Boston annals. Her husband, a
pleasant, intelligent young man, with handsome manners, was there
also. Had it not been for my introduction I could never have fancied
Ellen to have been any other than some English girl with rather a
paler cheek than common. She has very sweet manners, and uses
uncommonly correct and beautiful language. Let it not be supposed
that, with such witnesses as these among them, our English brethren
have derived their first practical knowledge of slavery from Uncle
Tom's Cabin. The mere knowledge that two such persons as William and
Ellen Crafts have been rated as merchantable commodities, in any
country but ours would be a sufficient comment on the system.

We retired early after a very agreeable evening.




LETTER XXVIII.

May 28.

MY DEAR COUSIN:--

This morning Lord Shaftesbury came according to appointment, to take
me to see the Model Lodging Houses. He remarked that it would be
impossible to give me the full effect of seeing them, unless I could
first visit the dens of filth, disease, and degradation, in which the
poor of London formerly were lodged. With a good deal of satisfaction
he told me that the American minister, Mr. Ingersoll, previous to
leaving London, had requested the police to take him over the dirtiest
and most unwholesome parts of it, that he might see the lowest as well
as the highest sphere of London life. After this, however, the
policeman took him through the baths, wash houses, and model lodging
houses, which we were going to visit, and he expressed himself both
surprised and delighted with the improvement that had been made.

[Illustration: _of the facade of "The Model Lodging House."_]

We first visited the lodging house for single men in Charles Street,
Drury Lane. This was one of the first experiments made in this line,
and to effect the thing in the most economical manner possible, three
old houses were bought and thrown into one, and fitted up for the
purpose. On the ground floor we saw the superintendent's apartment,
and a large, long sitting room, furnished with benches and clean,
scoured tables, where the inmates were, some of them, reading books or
papers: the day being wet, perhaps, kept them from their work. In the
kitchen were ample cooking accommodations, and each inmate, as I
understand, cooks for himself. Lord Shaftesbury said, that--something
like a common table had been tried, but that it was found altogether
easier or more satisfactory for each one to suit himself. On this
floor, also, was a bathing room, and a well-selected library of useful
reading books, history, travels, &c. On the next floor were the
dormitories--a great hall divided by board partitions into little
sleeping cells about eight feet square, each containing a neat bed,
chair, and stand. The partition does not extend quite up to the wall,
and by this means while each inmate enjoys the privacy of a small
room, he has all the comfort of breathing the air of the whole hall.

A working man returning from his daily toil to this place, can first
enjoy the comfort of a bath; then, going into the kitchen, make his
cup of tea or coffee, and sitting down at one of the clean, scoured
tables in the sitting room, sip his tea, and look over a book. Or a
friendly company may prepare their supper and sit down to tea
together. Lord Shaftesbury said that the effect produced on the men by
such an arrangement was wonderful. They became decent, decorous, and
self-respecting. They passed rules of order for their community. They
subscribed for their library from their own earnings, and the books
are mostly of their own selection. "It is remarkable," said his
lordship, "that of their own accord they decided to reject every
profane, indecent, or immoral work. It showed," he said, "how strong
are the influences of the surroundings in reforming or ruining the
character." It should be remarked that all these advantages are
enjoyed for the same price charged by the most crowded and filthy of
lodging houses, namely, fourpence per night, or two shillings per
week. The building will accommodate eighty-two. The operation supports
itself handsomely.

I should remark, by the by, that in order to test more fully the
practicability of the thing, this was accomplished in one of the worst
neighborhoods in London.

From these we proceeded to view a more perfect specimen of the same
sort in the Model Lodging House of George Street, Bloomsbury Square, a
house which was built _de novo_, for the purpose of perfectly
illustrating the principle. This house accommodates one hundred and
four working men, and combines every thing essential or valuable in
such an establishment--complete ventilation and drainage; the use of a
distinct living room; a kitchen and a wash house, a bath, and an ample
supply of water, and all the conveniences which, while promoting the
physical comfort of the inmates, tend to increase their self-respect,
and elevate them in the scale of moral and intellectual beings. The
arrangement of the principal apartments are such as to insure economy
as well as domestic comfort, the kitchen and wash house being
furnished with every requisite convenience, including a bath supplied
with hot and cold water; also a separate and well-ventilated safe for
the food of each inmate. Under the care of the superintendent is a
small, but well-selected library.

The common room, thirty-three feet long, twenty-three feet wide, and
ten feet nine inches high, is paved with white tiles, laid on brick
arches, and on each side are two rows of tables with seats; at the
fireplace is a constant supply of hot water, and above it are the
rules of the establishment. The staircase, which occupies the centre
of the building, is of stone. The dormitories, eight in number, ten
feet high, are subdivided with movable wood partitions six feet nine
inches high; each compartment, enclosed by its own door, is fitted up
with a bed, chair, and clothes box. A shaft is carried up at the end
of every room, the ventilation through it being assisted by the
introduction of gas, which lights the apartment. A similar shaft is
carried up the staircase, supplying fresh air to the dormitories, with
a provision for warming it, if necessary. The washing closets on each
floor are fitted up with slate, having japanned iron basins, and water
laid on.

During the fearful ravages of the cholera in this immediate
neighborhood, not one case occurred in this house among its one
hundred and four inmates.

From this place we proceeded to one, if any thing, more interesting to
me. This was upon the same principle appropriated to the lodgment of
single women. When one considers the defenceless condition of single
women, who labor for their own subsistence in a large city, how easily
they are imposed upon and oppressed, and how quickly a constitution
may be destroyed for want of pure air, fresh water, and other common
necessaries of life, one fully appreciates the worth of a large and
beautiful building, which provides for this oppressed, fragile class.

The Thanksgiving Model Buildings at Port Pool Lane, Gray's Inn, are so
called because they were built with a thank-offering collected in the
various religious societies of London, as an appropriate expression of
their gratitude to God for the removal of the cholera. This block of
buildings has in it accommodations for twenty families, and one
hundred and twenty-eight single women; together with a public wash
house, and a large cellar, in which are stored away the goods of those
women who live by the huckster's trade.

The hundred and twenty-eight single women, of whom the majority are
supposed to be poor needlewomen, occupy sixty-four rooms in a building
of four stories, divided by a central staircase; a corridor on either
side forms a lobby to eight rooms, each twelve feet six inches long,
by nine feet six inches wide, sufficiently large for two persons. They
are fitted up with two bedsteads, a table, chairs, and a washing
stand. The charge is one shilling per week for each person, or two
shillings per room.

Lord Shaftesbury took me into one of the rooms, where was an aged
female partially bedridden, who maintained herself by sewing, The room
was the picture of neatness and comfort; a good supply of hot and cold
water was furnished in it. Her work was spread out by her upon the
bed, together with her Bible and hymn book; she looked cheerful and
comfortable. She seemed pleased to see Lord Shaftesbury, whom she had
evidently seen many times before, as his is a familiar countenance in
all these places. She expressed the most fervent thankfulness for the
quiet, order, and comfort of her pleasant lodgings, comparing them
very feelingly with what used to be her condition before any such
place had been provided.

[Illustration: _of a four story rectangular brick/masonry structure._]

From this place we drove to the Streatham Street Lodging House for
families, of which the following is an outside view. This building is,
in the first place, fire proof; in the second, the separation in the
parts belonging to different families is rendered complete and perfect
by the use of hollow brick for the partitions, which entirely
prevents, as I am told, the transmission of sound.

The accompanying print shows the plan of one tenement.

[Illustration: _of an apartment's plan (no scale)_:


..::::........................::::.........................::::..

                 Open gallery, five feet wide

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   ::            A                 ::          B            ::
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A Living room
B Bed room                         ASCII Key:
C Bed room
D Lobby                              ::   Wall
E Scullery                         ::XX:: Wall intersection
F Water closet                     ::--:: Window
G Bed closet                       ::..:: Balcony
H Sink                             +----+ Fixture edge
I Meat safe
L Dust flue (*_not identified on original plan--location estimated
from author's description_)]

[Illustration: _of the multi-story brick/masonry structure with covered
galleries._]

By means of the sleeping closet adjoining the living room, each
dwelling affords three good sleeping apartments. The meat safe
preserves provisions. The dust flue is so arranged that all the
sweepings of the house, and all the refuse of the cookery, have only
to be thrown down to disappear forever; while the sink is supplied to
an unlimited extent with hot and cold water. These galleries, into
which every tenement opens, run round the inside of the hollow court
which the building encloses, and afford an admirable play-place for
the little children, out of the dangers and temptations of the street,
and in view of their respective mothers. The foregoing print,
representing the inner half of the quadrangle, shows the arrangement
of the galleries.

"Now," said Lord Shaftesbury, as he was showing me through these
tenements, which were models of neatness and good keeping, "you must
bear in mind that these are tenanted by the very people who once were
living in the dirtiest and filthiest lodging houses; people whom the
world said, it did no good to try to help; that they liked to be dirty
better than clean, and would be dirty under any circumstances."

He added the following anecdote to show the effect of poor lodgings in
degrading the character. A fine young man, of some considerable taste
and talent, obtained his living by designing patterns for wall paper.
A long and expensive illness so reduced his circumstances, that he was
obliged to remove to one of these low, filthy lodging houses already
alluded to. From that time he became an altered man; his wife said
that he lost all energy, all taste in designing, love of reading, and
fondness for his family; began to frequent drinking shops, and was
visibly on the road to ruin. Hearing of these lodging houses, he
succeeded in renting a tenement in one of them, for the same sum which
he had paid for the miserable dwelling. Under the influence of a neat,
airy, pleasant, domestic home, the man's better nature again awoke,
his health improved, he ceased to crave ardent spirits, and his former
ingenuity in his profession returned.

"Now, this shows," said Lord Shaftesbury, "that hundreds may have been
ruined simply by living in miserable dwellings." I looked into this
young man's tenement; it was not only neat, but ornamented with a
great variety of engravings tastefully disposed upon the wall. On my
expressing my pleasure in this circumstance, he added, "It is one of
the pleasantest features of the case, to notice how soon they began to
ornament their little dwellings; some have cages with singing birds,
and some pots of flowering plants; some, pictures and engravings."

"And are these buildings successful in a pecuniary point of view?" I
said. "Do they pay their own way?"

"Yes," he replied, "they do. I consider that these buildings, if they
have done nothing more, have established two points: first, that the
poor do not prefer dirt and disorder, where it is possible for them to
secure neatness and order; and second, that buildings with every
proper accommodation can be afforded at a price which will support an
establishment."

Said I, "Are people imitating these lodging houses very rapidly?"

"To a great extent they are," he replied, "but not so much as I
desire. Buildings on these principles have been erected in the
principal towns of England and Scotland. The state of the miserable
dwellings, courts, alleys, &c., is the consequence of the neglect of
former days, when speculators and builders were allowed to do as they
liked, and run up hovels, where the working man, whose house must be
regulated, not by his choice, but by his work, was compelled then, as
he is now, to live, however narrow, unhealthy, or repulsive the place
might be. This was called 'the liberty of the subject.'" It has been
one of Lord Shaftesbury's most arduous parliamentary labors to bring
the lodging houses under governmental regulation. He told me that he
introduced a bill to this effect in the House of Commons, while a
member, as Lord Ashley, and that just as it had passed through the
House of Commons, he entered the House of Lords, as Lord Shaftesbury,
and so had the satisfaction of carrying the bill to its completion in
that house, where it passed in the year 1851. The provisions of this
bill require every keeper of a lodging house to register his name at
the Metropolitan Police Office, under a penalty of a fine of five
pounds for every lodger received before this is done. After having
given notice to the police, they are not allowed to receive lodgers
until the officers have inspected the house, to see whether it accords
with the required conditions. These conditions are, that the walls and
ceilings be whitewashed; that the floors, stairs, beds, and bed
clothes are clean; that there be some mode of ventilating every room;
that each house be provided with every accommodation for promoting
decency and neatness; that the drains and cesspools are perfect; the
yards properly paved, so as to run dry; and that each house has a
supply of water, with conveniences for cooking and washing; and
finally, that no person with an infectious disease is inhabiting the
house. It is enacted, moreover, that only so many shall be placed in a
room as shall be permitted by the commissioners of the police; and it
is made an indispensable condition to the fitness of a house, that the
proprietor should hang up in every room a card, properly signed by the
police inspector, stating the precise number who are allowed to be
lodged there. The law also strictly forbids persons of different sexes
occupying the same room, except in case of married people with
children under ten years of age: more than one married couple may not
inhabit the same apartment, without the provision of a screen to
secure privacy. It is also forbidden to use the kitchens, sculleries,
or cellars for sleeping rooms, unless specially permitted by the
police. The keeper of the house is required thoroughly to whitewash
the walls and ceilings twice a year, and to cleanse the drains and
cesspools whenever required by the police. In case of sickness, notice
must be immediately given to the police, and such measures pursued,
for preventing infection, as may be deemed judicious by the inspector.

The commissioner of police reports to the secretary of state
systematically as to the results of this system.

After looking at these things, we proceeded to view one of the model
washing houses, which had been erected for the convenience of poor
women. We entered a large hall, which was divided by low wood
partitions into small apartments, in each of which a woman was
washing. The whole process of washing clothes in two or three waters,
and boiling them, can be effected without moving from the spot, or
changing the tub. Each successive water is let out at the bottom,
while fresh is let on from the top. When the clothes are ready to be
boiled, a wooden cover is placed over them, and a stream of scalding
steam is directed into the tub, by turning a stop cock; this boils the
water in a few moments, effectually cleansing the clothes; they are
then whirled in a hollow cylinder till nearly dry, after which they
are drawn through two rollers covered with flannel, which presses
every remaining particle of water out of them. The clothes are then
hung upon frames, which shut into large closets, and are dried by
steam in a very short space of time.

Lord Shaftesbury, pointing out the partitions, said, "This is an
arrangement of delicacy to save their feelings: their clothes are
sometimes so old and shabby they do not want to show them, poor
things." I thought this feature worthy of special notice.

In addition to all these improvements for the laboring classes, very
large bathing establishments have been set up expressly for the use of
the working classes. To show the popularity and effectiveness of this
movement, five hundred and fifty thousand baths were given in three
houses during the year 1850. These bathing establishments for the
working classes are rapidly increasing in every part of the kingdom.

When we returned to our carriage after this survey, I remarked to Lord
Shaftesbury that the combined influence of these causes must have
wrought a considerable change in the city. He answered, with energy,
"You can have no idea. Whole streets and districts have been
revolutionized by it. The people who were formerly savage and
ferocious, because they supposed themselves despised and abandoned,
are now perfectly quiet and docile. I can assure you that Lady
Shaftesbury has walked alone, with no attendant but a little child,
through streets in London where, years ago, a well-dressed man could
not have passed safely without an escort of the police."

I said to him that I saw nothing now, with all the impr

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