VIGNETTES OF TRAVEL. SOME COMPARATIVE SKETCHES IN ENGLAND AND ITALY. BY W. W. NEVIN. NEW YORK : WM. L. ALLISON COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. 719 N5"- Copyright, 1880, by W. W, TSTimn. HENRY MORSE STEPHEN* INTRODUCTORY. THESE papers are in part a recast of some letters contrib- uted to the public press of the United States during a visit to Europe in 1879 and 1880, and in part fresh matter from original notes then taken. The wide republication here and abroad of many of the newspaper letters suggested the prep- aration of this volume. Tie several sketches are mainly in the direction of com- parative studies of social and political life in other countries. The volume is, however, less symmetrical in this respect than I could have wished now, for the reason that this line of treatment was not an original plan the work only drifting that way in the gradual course of travel and writing. Comparative study has been the rule of advancement in all knowledge this century, and advance in the sciences of politics and society will best be made by the same means. We cannot compare our own institutions and form of government with those of other nations until we understand them, and we can never thoroughly understand them until we see them brought out in relief against the bark-round of other countries. In other countries and in former times responsibility tor the social and political progress of any nation has been confined to a small and highly- favored class. With us it rests upon the whole people. The education of foreign travel once the privilege and pleasure of a few has, therefore, become the duty of every American citizen. The citizen is the statesman now. If this is not the Providential intent of the flood of European travel which annually leaves our shores, it is cer- tainly its fortunate opportunity. Any contribution, however imperfect, to this comparative study of ourselves ought to be of some use to some portions of our people. In Chapter XVII. of this work I have at- tempted to show that aid in this work is the most useful function now left to our diplomatic service and the best reason for its present existence. Along the pathway of travel and study I have endeavored 3 5J 1080 4 INTRODUCTORY. to give, wherever possible, some of that more intimate and personal information which every educated traveller so often feels the want of, and which for some reason will not get into the guide-books the special uses of special places, the best economies of time and route and intellectual energies, the tried and tested equipment of books, that kind of information gotten only by experience, always costly, and which to one en route for the first or only time generally conies too late for use. And in this matter of information, a closing word of coun- sel. Much of the higher value of travel is often lost for want of some reasonable provision beforehand for taking all of the advantage of foreign life. Old lands, with their endless asso- ciations, have such charms for the New- World citizen that he is apt to think of nothing but the pleasure of wandering at will among their ruins, their grandeur, their unaccustomed and suggestive sights and sounds. The highest expression of any living land, however, is its society, which is the fruit of all its years or centuries of struggle and longing. He only sees a land who knows its people. England, for instance, which, by reason of language and race is the most profitable ground for American travel, one can only begin to appreciate by meeting personally some members of some of its distinctive and defined classes, and seeing them in the setting of their own homes. A single day spent in a cathedral close ; in an old castle, with an his- toric family, still its living soul, yet in it ; in an English gentleman's country-house, that charming flower of a well- perfected order of life ; in the college-cloisters of one of the ancient universities ; in a substantial farm-house ; or, if one cannot do any better, in a humble, out-of-the-way inn, will give more insight into the social structure and historical civilization of England than a whole cycle of existence in hotels or helpless rambling with red books among show ruins and over beaten highways. These are the pictures which are the real histori- cal paintings of the country. To get a stereoscopic view of England one should enter all these doors and many others. That good fortune, of course, can only come to very few, but all may enjoy some one " interior," and from it, like a skilled anatomist, construct to his own conception the whole fabric of the body politic and social. PHILADELPHIA, November 15, 1880. CONTENTS. ENGLISH TOWNS. "01 I. CHESTER 9 II. YORK 19 III. SHOTTERT 25 IV. READING IN BERKSHIRE 30 V. LANCASTER 36 VI. UNIVERSITY TOWNS: OXFORD .... 44 VII. UNIVERSITY TOWNS: CAMBRIDGE ... 61 ENGLISH POLITICS. VIII. ENGLISH POLITICAL LIFE 79 IX. GLADSTONE 84 X. AN ENGLISH ELECTION 92 XI. THE INTERROGATION POINT IN POLITICS. . 99 XII. COMPARATIVE COST OF GOVERNMENT . . 103 XIII. PARLIAMENT, THE HOUSE OF COMMONS . 109 XIV. PARLIAMENT, THE HOUSE OF COMMONS . 118 XV. PARLIAMENT, THE HOUSE OF COMMONS . 126 XVI. PARLIAMENT, THE HOUSE OF LORDS . .142 XVII. FOREIGN SERVICE 146 XVIII. COMPARATIVE POLITICS 161 LONDON. XIX. WESTMINSTER ABBEY 165 XX. THE LONDON PULPIT 175 XXL THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE . . . .189 XXII. THE LONDON TIMES 196 XXIIL HISTORIC TAVERNS 207 1* 6 6 CONTENTS. SCOTLAND. OHAPTEB PAOB XXIV. ENTERING SCOTLAND 223 XXV. SCOTTISH NOTES 230 XXVI. TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES . . . .238 XXVII. IONA 247 NORTHERN ITALY. XXVIII. VENICE . . . . ' . . . .265 XXIX. GENOA 276 XXX. PISA 286 XXXI. SIENA 293 XXXII. ORVIETO 305 XXXIII. PISTOJA 314 XXXIV. RAVENNA .322 ROME. XXXV. ROME THE CENTRE 331 XXXVI. ST. PETER'S, AND ITALIAN PREACHING . 336 XXXVII. THE PANTHEON 346 XXXVIII. PRISON OF ST. PAUL AND ST. PETER. . 353 XXXIX. THE PALACE OF THE INQUISITION . . 362 XL. CONSTANTINE'S BATTLE-FIELD . . . 367 XLI. OSTIA THE POMPEII OF ROMAN CIVILI- ZATION 374 MODERN ITALY. XLII. NEW ROME 385 XLIIL UNITED ITALY ,393 XLIV. GARIBALDI 402 XLV. MODERN ITALY 409 XLVL THE ITALIAN LIPS . . . . .122 APPENDIX. HINTS OF TRAVEL , 435 ENGLISH TOWNS. CHAPTER 1. CHESTER. THE ENTRANCE-PORCH TO ENGLAND AN INITIAL WALK THE OLD HOME VITIATION OF THE LANGUAGE THE SOLDI KR AND THE BKGGAR COMING DIFFERENTIATION OF THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LANGUAGE THE VIGNETTE CATHEDRAL SCENE OF ENGLAND. CHESTER is the vignette scene of England, and a very charming one. Within fifteen miles of Liver- pool, and trains running out almost hourly, the expe- rienced traveller can, and the judicious one will, avoid that monotonous town consecrated to trade and lucre, and spend his first night in England in a little country village representative and typical of the most English of English scenery. Indeed, if circumstances permit, I would advise that the visitor walk from Liverpool to Chester. It is a short distance, over excellent roads, and the walk will give one at once an idea of English landscape which it would take weeks of railway travel to acquire. The walk will be made along green lanes and by hedges and under avenues of great trees which form a picture not to be forgotten, and answering completely to what is, perhaps, the conventional conception of any well-read person of rural England. To an educated American, indeed, all England is so familiar by pic- tures, literature, and legend that, entering it for the first time, he feels as if he were coming home again instead of visiting a strange land, as if he had beer- there before in a half-remembered childhood or in a dream, and were part of it. This indefinable sense of a previous knowledge is not, I think, a me.'e intellec- 9 12 ENGLISH TOWNS. which marked the fall of thrones and turned the course of history. Inside the walls, in the "old city," every building and street is quaint and picturesque, and the narrow ways are fairly crowded with houses that are historic and pregnant with suggestion. There is the summer residence of King Henry VIII., a low, mud-walled building, not twelve feet high, but which so short a time ago was a fit dwelling for a monarch. It sounds rather comical now, but there is in Chester a charitable foundation of this rnany-wived King Henry for the perpetual support of " six widows." The widows are to-day enjoying this benefit. Through a brick alley-passage not five feet wide you come on the ancient palace of the great Earl of Derby, a soldier and statesman, who in old times headed armies, levied war against his king, and for that act parted with his head on the scaffold. This place is a rackety structure of two low stories, hardly high enough to stand up in, and is now occupied by a family of the poorest sort in a city where poverty is squalid and wretched to an extent that we happily know nothing of. A dirty, red-haired girl with torn petticoats and a hungry-looking face received us on the threshold and offered the modern hospitalities of the palace. Another building strikingly quaint and suggestive of ancient manners is a long, low structure, gabled and antique, which, some six or seven hundred years ago, was the residence of a great bishop who ruled in Chester. It is more spacious and imposing than either of the others just mentioned. Along the entire front, of some eighty feet, runs a gallery something like the inclosed porch of a Lancaster County hotel. The whole front of this house, from the roof to the ground, is covered with carved and graven images in wood of curious and often grotesque design. Two entirely nude figures, man and woman, are shown you by the guide, and one CHESTER. 13 fa9ade has been cancelled and shaven plain, the imagery being too gross for modern eyes. These odd old buildings, their whole fronts covered with curious wooden carvings, and many of them de- voted now to the commonest and humblest uses, give a general effect to Chester which is stronger and more im- pressive than any of the detached " shows" which here, as in any locality, are always forced on the stranger. This fantastic tracery of steep gables and overhanging eaves and brown skeleton rafters, the lean ribs of cen- turies, and quaint relievos, half-religious, half-pagan, this and the beautiful view stretching out over peaceful water and meadow to the delicate filmy contour of the Welsh mountains are the pictures of the place. The great sight of Chester, of course, is her cathedral, the central point which gathers up her history from the time of King Alfred. It is not large compared with others in the island, but, half in ruins, is beautiful and picturesque beyond description. This cathedral, like all the great churches of England, is a pantheon. In St. Paul's and Westminster lie the dead of the nation. In Chester and other country churches or cathedrals sleep the local great. These grand graves, where those men who have deserved well of their country and their fellows are gathered in noble companionship and hon- ored for ages, are a powerful stimulus to .great thought and heroic action, and must tend strongly to elevate those who live near them and worship in them, drawing them daily away from the ignoble struggle for mere gain of money, and lifting them up to better things. For in all this country, for which wealth has done so much, I have not found one name enshrined there in honor merely for its riches, and any man or boy may be buried in the greatest church of his county or the kingdom if he does some service to his fellows worthy of recognition and remembrance. In this beautiful cathedral of Chester, consecrated by art, legend, and re- ligion, among the bishops and statesmen and generals 14 ENGLISH TOWNS. of centuries, I have found the names of young soldiers, without rank, fortune, or family, who died only a few years ago in the Crimea. In St. Paul's grand pile, where lie Wellington, and Nelson, and Sir John Moore, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, and John Howard, and Bishop Heber, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, there are inscribed, with equal honor, the names of some poor unknown ship-boys who in a great naval action went down nobly, standing to their duty as grandly and as faithfully as admiral or general. As I looked at this tablet some young sergeants, proud of their early chevrons, and of a regiment on its way to the African war, were poring earnestly over the names, and I knew that the real service of this cathe- dral would be offered some day in silence on the battle- fields of Zululand. It is impossible, of course, to describe in words such a cathedral as this, a building which is the result of the consecrated labor, art, and devotion of centuries. And it is but one of many. They must be seen to be conceived, and when seen can only be known through the eye of culture and history. Chester cathedral is not by any means the one to select as the prelude to a course of systematic study, but it does well enough to break in with. One must do his aesthetic teething somewhere, and Chester answers very well for that purpose. Right here at Chester, on the threshold of England^ one strikes an English habit which is offensive to Amer- ican taste, and which will jar on the ear during one's entire stay in the country, viz., the corruption, by illiter- ate contraction, of the language. This process of de- terioration is going steadily on in all classes. Cheshire, the county name, is slovenly and ignorant English for Chestershire, but it has been adopted by all England, although its origin must have been from the thick-lipped hinds. Cheshire is clownish, and means nothing; Ches- CHESTER. 15 tershire is sonorous, stately, and records two volumes of English national history, the Latin rule of the camp and the Saxon rule of the shire. The lower-class Englishman is thoroughly illiterate, and often succeeds in stamping his illiteracy on the na- tion. There cannot be a neglected class in any com- munity without the whole community suffering for it. Just as the Southern people in our country acquired a negro twang and dialect, the black nurses teaching it to the white children, so to-day the English language in England suffers at the hands of its large uneducated and neglected class, and it has come to pass that Eng- lish gentlemen cannot keep even their aristocratic names intact, but accept them back from their servants amtilated and vulgarized in sound. Thus Beaiichamp has deteriorated to Beaeham, Beauvoir to Beaver, Stan- hope to Stannup, Cholmondeley to Chumly, St. John to Sinjin, Marjoribanks to Marsh banks, Worcester to Wooster, Leicester to Lester, Greenwich to Greenitch, Chaworth to Chorth, Woolwich to Woolich, Ha worth to Horth, Hawarden to Harden, Warwick to Warick, Taliaferro to Toliver, St. Botolph's-town to Boston, Sandys to Sands, Wemyss to Weems, Dillwyn to Dil- lan, Strachan to Strawn, Mainwearing to Mannering, and so on from one end of the island to the other. This vulgar and servile pronunciation, especially of the lordly old Norman names, is very marked and very unpleasant to a stranger. But it is retribution. Eng- land has not been true to her trust in the matter of common education. With universities and schools far beyond anything we can pretend to, with a clergy educated greatly beyond our grade and enjoying in the days of priories and abbeys the monopoly of educa- tion, she has kept her talent of learning selfishly folded in a napkin for the exclusive uses of one class. Now the wronged classes avenge themselves. Indeed, the wrong against the noble language of Mil- ton and Shakespeare is very prevalent throughout all 16 ENGLISH TOWNS. England, high and low. If the lower-class Englishman drops his "h's," the upper-class Englishman drops his " w ; s ;" and I do not know that the offence is in any way mitigated because fashion approves the one elision and disapproves the other. "Extraordinary" is a good shibboleth with which to test the Englishman. Very rarely does he successfully master the " d." It sometimes seems as if the special function of the United States with regard to our common English lan- guage were to be its preservation by the general educa- tion of the whole people. England has shown that no special centres of education, however excellent, respected, or sacred, will protect the purity of the tongue against masses of ignorance and servility. This lazy vitiation of the English by the dropping of letters, and sometimes of whole syllables, is in con- stant progress in England on a grand scale, enervating the language in form and sound, and were there no communication between the two countries would soon, with other influences, result in two tongues related to each other like French and Spanish or Spanish and Italian. As it is, the process of differentiation has al- ready set in, but it is hourly counteracted by the inces- sant intercommunication of the two peoples. As this different use of words will confront the stranger all the time in England, I give here some illustrations to show on how large a scale ihe variation has already begun : English. American. Shop. Store. Shopkeeper. Storekeeper, merchant. Shares, shareholder. Stock, stockholder. Chairman (of a company). President. Eailway. Kailroad. High level (railway). Elevated. Station. Depot. Shunt. Switch. Stoker. Fireman. Guard. Conductor. Driver. Engineer. CHESTER. 17 English. Booking-t ffice. Goods. Carriage. " The cars." Line. Chemist. Lift. Tram, tramways. Outing. Post. To book. To post (a letter). To book (a seat). To " take in" (a newspaper) Quito, in the sense of Public-house. Spirits. Meat-shop. Tub. Cab, cabman. Ian. Luggage, luggage-van. '\\> register (luggage). Stick. The hustings. The Ministry. Member. " Contesting a seat" for Parlia- ment. American. Ticket-office. Freight. Car. "The train." Track. Druggist. Elevator. Street-cars. Excursion. Mail. To charge. To mail. To buy a ticket. To subscribe for. Entirely. Tavern. Liquor. Butcher-shop. Bath. Hack, hack-driver. Hotel. Haggage, baggage-wagon, -car. To "check (baggage). Cane. The stump. The Cabinet. Representative. " "Running" for Congress. Who can translate into exact American "young son" as uttered by a British dame? How shall one ex- press, under our different social conditions, the contempt and disgust of " cad" ? What equivalent have we on this side of the Atlantic for those great structural ver- tebra? of an Englishman's speech, "really," "ah," " haw," " now" ? Were it not for the large and continuous intercom- munication of books and magazines and newspapers, of letters and telegrams and travel, the languages would even now be standing widely apart. The "Rows," the guide-book feature of Chester, were a disappointment. They are a curiosity, of course, but b 2* 18 ENGLISH TOWNS. greatly overrated. The best description, perhaps, is in one of Dickens's later novels, but the great novelist wrote of them like a reporter paid by the column, and from his trained imagination built up a curiously in- volved and very interesting structure on a rather com- monplace foundation of fact. The Rows run only for a few short blocks, and are simply a deep porch set far in each house and open from house to house. One can walk continuously for the distance of a block along the porches just as on the street below. At the end of each block, however, he must descend to the street, ascending again at the next block. In time, small shops have been opened in the second story, and you have thus a double shopping-front for a small distance. It is only this, and nothing more. Chester's greatness and interest lie in her historic riches, her wealth of culture, legend, religious tradi- tion, and power, and it seems a pity that she should be labelled and ear-marked for travellers by what is at best but a curiosity and but an item in her vast repertoire of things curious and quaint. Entering this pleasing vestibule of England, you meet at once two figures unpleasant to the American eye, the soldier and the beggar. Here they are in these quiet sylvan shades and echoless cloisters, and they never leave you wherever you go in Europe. The poverty and beggary of Chester are very repulsive to one unacquainted with the squalor and wretchedness of this continent, and it is something very sad to see them in a village town whose chief monument and distinction is a venerable cathedral, and which itself is almost a cathedral close. The British scarlet and gold, too, flashes along these leafy streets and under ruined walls and still moss-grown arches, wherever, in fact, a Brit- ish nursemaid strays. The English drum-beat echoes every day around the entire globe, which is grand, but it is also heard every night in every peaceful county of England, which is not so grand. YORK. 19 CHAPTER II. YORK. AN OLD CATHEDRAL CITY THE GATEWAY TO HISTORIC ENG- LAND A TRAVELLER'S PLIGHT THE ENGLISH CATHEDRALS STORY OF THEIR BUILDING AND WHAT THEY COST THE NEW USES OF THE OLD TEMPLES STRIPPED OF THEIR PlC- TURES AND IDOLS AN ENGLISH K.EST. YORK is the historic gateway by which to enter Eng- land. The stress of modern travel carries one to Liverpool, and, while its suburban confine of Chester is a very picturesque and pleasing vignette portal, it has no historical significance. The traveller who comes to study England will do well to leave there after a day and strike directly for York. This is in conflict with all the modern routes of travel but, as these routes have been determined for the use and advantage of railway companies rather than the pleasure or profit of travellers, they arc no guide to an intelligent seeing of the country, and are often a harm. York was a stronghold of our ancient Briton fathers and a capital seat of rude power away back in the mists before the time of Christ. It was the capital of the Roman empire in Britain, and the old Roman military walls around the city are still standing in a wonderful state of preservation. You could fight a battle from them to-day did the conditions of modern warfare allow it. In the streets and buildings and remains you see the record successively of the Roman period of English history, the Saxon, the Norman, and modern England from the Plantagenets through the Commonwealth down to Victoria. In the walls and arches of the great minster you read the whole history of English archi- 20 ENGLISH TOWNS. tecture, Saxon, Norman, Late Norman, Early English, Decorated, Early Perpendicular, Perpendicular, Late Perpendicular. York is a kindergarten of English history for grown folks. In its name York is another illustration of the in- herited and hopeless tendency of the Englishman to a corruption, by contraction, of the language. " York" is the stately and civilized " Eboracum" of the Latins as it has come down to us through the thick-lipped Saxons and half-articulating Britons, only the rude guttural remains of a once polished word. Coming to York on the last day of a racing week, I had an experience very odd to an American. This town, with a modern population of fifty thousand and some twenty centuries of dignity, has hardly the hotel accommodation of one of our Western towns of ten thousand people. Every inn was full, and the land- lords did not seem to feel under the least obligation to provide for any one. When all their rooms were full they seemed to think their duty ended, although this thing must occur again and again. In nearly all the old towns of England the hotel provision is simply ridiculous, judged by our necessities. After driving to the half-dozen or so modest-sized inns of the place without getting a lodgment, I was about taking the train again to find a roof for the night, when some citizen who had watched the quest directed me to a private house where lodging, he thought, might be had. I found there very good apartments and fair service and meals, but at a cost greater than the Windsor in New York or the St. George in Philadelphia. Much of the interest of the town attaches to its Norman period, as you read it in castle and bar and ruined abbey, although in this epoch of its splendor and power York was but a town of ten thousand in- habitants. The Normans, however, cared very little for monotonous figures. Although great sailors, they had only moderate capacity as traders ; but as soldiers, YORK. 21 priests, artists, poets and builders, the force of their time, they left their stamp indelibly. They made his- tory rather than textile fabrics or patent machinery. The glory of York, however, as it is one of the glories of England, is its great cathedral or minster; and it is the object chiefest worthy of study in the place. It is indeed a very good specimen with which to begin the study of the English cathedrals. These noble cathedrals of England, spread over all the land, are one of the first and strongest impressions of the king- dom on the stranger. They are so grand, so beautiful, so living, like breathing hearts of stone, that seeing them one feels at once as if he had never seen a church before. They seem not of this world, but of some other world ; higher and better houses not made with hands, but born of an art and a conception beyond our modern powers. But when one reflects what they are and what they mean, they start a singularly involved social problem, and the cold judgment inclines against them. They are the product and represent that dreary and profitless stretch of English history from the Norman conquest to the Reformation, five wretched centuries of want and ignorance and human suffering and stagnation. They are the outcome, and with a few castles and splendid abbeys the whole outcome, of the five hundred years in which England was a province of the modern Roman empire, the people and the kings of England ruled over by cardinal-princes, the ecclesiastical pro- consuls of Rome. During this period all the other countries of Europe were similar provinces, and these wonderful cathedrals went up in them all. You recog- nize at once the essential idea of them, the grand con- ception, the spirit of the work, as you meet them again in France and Germany and North Italy. The ca- thedral stands out everywhere as the dominant idea of that period and the symbol of its power. This idea in the different development of our day is lost, and you 22 ENGLISH TOWNS. cannot reproduce these old cathedrals now. It hab been tried, but with inevitable failure. No study or imitation of the old proportions will fashion a building like unto those which yet speak for their dead age. You may get something which is like the form, but it is not the living form ; it is a corpse. The soul has forever fled. Now, what is painful to think of in relation to these lovely cathedrals is this : These magnificent buildings, that seem almost to glow with faith and beauty, drank the life-blood of England. During the period of their building England was almost stationary. There was no social advance and no social hope. There were no homes in England as we know them now. There was no freedom as we know it now, little of comfort, and nothing of progress. From A.D. 1100 to A.D. 1400 the population of England advanced but ten per cent, a century, less than one-tenth of one per cent, a year. For the people there was no wealth, no education, no trade or commerce. There was deficient food, shelter, and clothing, and, in consequence, continuous disease and epidemic. There was chronic war. It was a time of plague, pestilence, and famine, of battle and murder, and of sudden death. There was no science, there was no art save in the direction of ecclesiastical architecture and is furnished with very heavy and soft linen, woven in the family, and hemmed with wonderful elaboration. This, too, an heirloom from more prosperous times. In this bedroom is a spinning-wheel seat, alleged to huvc been immortalized by Shakespeare, but the good dumc would not give the passage by which his kindly re- membrance had carried the homely object into literature. This room, the old state bedroom of the family, like its adjoining mate, the present sleeping-apartment of the house, is so low that you touch the ceiling every- where except in the centre, and the joists and rafters are joined together not by nails but by wooden pegs. The Hatheways of Shakespeare's time were " yeo- men," a class of British society that has pretty much disappeared. The people who live in their cottage to- day are farm-laborers, a class so poor and ignorant and hopeless of any future that we happily have no equiv- alent to it in the United States. This fact accounts for much of the contrast between the substance and com- fort indicated by these relics and traditions of the past and the meagreness and poverty of the family to-day. It makes this humble cottage, also, an instructive illus- tration of a very unsatisfactory change that has been going on in the lower order of English society. 28 ENGLISH TOWNS. Visitors, the Hatheway dowager informed me, came often, but not so many in these hard times as in years before. The Americans, she said, were " the best;" and to my inquiry as to what was best, she said they took most interest and seemed most pleased. I was pretty sure my hostess took me for an American prince, and so, noblesse oblige, gave her a shilling, where I think a sixpence was the usual gratuity. This modest British coin brought me a shower of blessings and kind wishes, and, what was more practical, some, snowdrops and " rosemary for remembrance" from the garden. Indeed, the real gratitude which a shilling given to a decent man or woman in this land always evokes is sad evi- dence of the narrow margin of existence here. Life is a struggle, and the poor go into it burdened and handi- capped almost beyond hope. In the modest garden of the cottage, planted with box, lavender, marigold, rosemary, pansy, thyme, and other familiar English flowers and shrubs, stands the well of pure cold water, in the same place and serving the same homely uses as of old. It is doubtful, however, if Shakespeare ever drank of it. The Englishman of the sixteenth century, like the Englishman of the nine- teenth, I suppose, confined himself to ale. In my walk across-fields from Stratford-on-Avon to Shottery, the footpath of course often diverged, and I was forced to inquire of those I met the way. I was much struck with the familiar knowledge of all with the story of Shakespeare's love, and their simple pride in it. In other localities where there were famous churches, in which good knights and old earls famous in history lay buried, I have often inquired of respectable- looking people and found them ignorant of or only half acquainted with the great historic features of these places. In Warwick, for instance, I found several worthy people who seemed to know nothing of the great Earl of Leicester, and not to care much whether his body was in their church or not. All around Shot SHOTTERY. 29 tery, however, the name of Anne Hatheway was a household word and the humble thatched cottage a shrine. Some rude farm-laborers, who spoke so thickly I could hardly understand them, and used language so provincial as not to seem English to American ears, and some bright little boys hardly twelve years old, alike gave intelligent answers, showed a friendly sym- pathy in my quest, and seemed to think my pilgrimage the right and proper and natural thing to do. This is " Shakespeare land." The town lives and moves and has its being in his memory and tradition. His body lies buried here in a beautiful and stately edifice, a noble shrine to which the culture and genius of the world come to worship; the house in which he was horn has been carefully and faithfully restored, and is held in honorable trust for the use and devotion of posterity; the dwelling in which he died is set apart from common uses, and is to be the site of a grand memorial monument ; but the hearts of this people go out in simple love and affection to the little cottage where he loved, even though historic gossip suggests and calm reflection convinces one that the passionate fascination of a boy of eighteen for an innocent crea- ture of twenty-six was not a purely idyllic romance. I am staying here at the Red Horse Inn, a house which has the enviable distinction of having its adver- tisement drawn by Washington Irving. He introduced it into American literature in his first letters from Eng- land, and it has ever since enjoyed a rich castom of American travel, and is worthy of it. Irving, long years ago, wrote with grateful feeling of its good cheer, its solid comforts, its homelike domesticity, its honest wines, and its pretty waiting-maids, and the house keeps up well its reputation in all these essential points. Of the inns of England suffice it to say that, while some- what expensive as compared with our hotels, they are a delightful experience in life which I fear we shall 3* 30 ENGLISH TOWNS. never have in our country. Neither our landlords are solid and unassuming enough to give them nor our people sensible enough to demand and have them. I have tried three now, the Craven Arms, at Coventry, 'the Warwick Arms, at Warwick, and the classic Red Horse here, and understand the reason of their affec- tionate remembrance in English literature. STRATFORD-ON-AVON. CHAPTER IV. READING IN BERKSHIRE. HEADING OF ENGLAND AND READING OF PENNSYLVANIA COMPARATIVE PICTURE OF Two COUNTY TOWNS BLOOD is STRONGER THAN WATER. READING of England, like the familiar Reading of our Pennsylvania, is the capital town of the county of Berks, here often called Berkshire, the shire or shriev- alty of Berks. The two towns are almost about the same size, 42,000 to 45,000 inhabitants. Reading of England figures in the directories at 27,000, but the town of Early, which is built into it so that the stranger cannot tell in which municipal corporation he may be, is substantially and popularly a part of Reading, and brings its population up to the figures of its New-World namesake. England's Berks County has a population of 196,475, and an acreage of 450,132 acres. The Pennsylvania Berks has a population of something over 100,000, and an acreage something over 600,000 acres. They are near enough to make a parallel have some interest. Politically, all comparison ceases. Berks of Penn- sylvania, with its Reading in it, sends one member to the House of Representatives of the United States, and READING IN BERKSHIRE. 31 sends him by male or manhood suffrage, every male citizen of age and not convicted of an infamous offence having an equal voice in the selection of the repre- sentative. The Berkshire of England, with only 7741 legal votes, sends to the House of the Commons of the United Kingdom three members, two of whom are Conservatives and one Liberal ; while Readingtown in its own right, on a registry of 4721 votes, sends two more members, both of whom are in this Parliament Liberals. Then Abingdon, with 890 votes, Walling- ford, with 1204 votes, and Windsor, with 2054 votes, all boroughs in the same county, send one member each, two of whom are Conservatives and one Liberal. Eight members, therefore, are sent from the county of Berks, and, as it may often happen under the peculiar British system of voting and representation, they are exactly divided as to party. Berks County, therefore, pairs itself in the House of Commons. I write of the House which expired in 1880. The county is represented in the upper house by all /ts peers, be they one or twenty. It is to be said, how- ever, for the honor of the peers, that its members when sitting as legislators rise above sectional or local feelings and sit for the whole country, i.e., when that does not conflict with their sitting for their own class. I am [rlad of the opportunity to make this political contrast, for it is only by such pictures that one can set forth the wide differences of detail in the practical politics of the two countries. The Reading I write from is a very ancient site. It emerges in a shadowy way out of the night of history, and first appears in recorded tradition as Redinges, which has very naturally softened into Reading. The Danes and Saxons fought around here one thousand years ago. King Alfred the Great once or more visited the spot. Parliaments of England sat here when the Parliament was a peripatetic and experimental institu- tion, wandering around as our own Continental Congress 32 ENGLISH TOWNS. once did through York and Lancaster and Philadelphia, Archbishop Laud and John Bunyan were familiar with its streets. An old King Henry, about 1100, founded for it a magnificent abbey to house and accommodate two hundred Benedictine monks, the same fortunate fellows who once enjoyed the historic cloisters of West- minster Abbey and were a great order in England. The stately ruins of this grand old abbey, artistically clad in fresh and neatly-kept ivy, jealously guarded from decay on the one hand or too perfect restoration on the other, are now the pride and glory of the Reading of to-day. It is, in truth, a very striking and vener- able pile. The great old walls, with gates and arch- ways and massive works still standing in the rough outline of hall and chapel and cloister, are quite re- markable in their composition, the masonry resembling that natural conglomerate formation of rock popularly known as pudding-stone. The huge walls in front have been built entirely of pebbles or bowlders of a hard, smoky crystal or quartz, imbedded in some kind of mortar, which formed the whole into one solid mass. These are the things which uld Reading has in advan- tage over our new Reading. And these legacies of the past are not only a wealth of tradition and legend and inspiring associations, but a substantial material bequest of brick and mortar. Her churches, her public build- ings, her roads, in part at least, come down to her as the gift of previous generations. This is the advantage which every English town has over us, and it is a great one. These things apart, there is a strong similarity be- tween the two towns, the Readings of England and Pennsylvania. In both the houses are solid, comfort- able, respectable, the dwellings of a substantial mid- dle class of people. In both the streets are spacious and fairly well kept. In both brick is the predomi- nating material of structure, and in both there is a dis- tinctly visible new and old order of building. The READING IN BERKSHIRE. 33 pavements of the Pennsylvania Reading are roomier than those here, and the accommodations for travellers on a larger scale. Although three railways run into or through the place, there does not seem to be much travel, and consequently little provision for it. The business of Reading is largely as a distributing centre for Berks County, which comes in and goes out the same day, while the nobility and upper classes rarely have occasion to use a country hotel, visiting at one an- other's houses. These facts, of course, limit the neces- sity of providing for travel. I am staying at the tradi- tional county-house, a good old English inn, which, although comfortable and excellent in its way, is quite primitive and thoroughly provincial. Our Reading is quite " smarter." It is to be said further for this Reading that its best does not show on the outside. The nobility and landed gentry, of course, eschew a town and spend their large means in building country establishments, which, being seated in the heart of vast estates, are out of sight even from the high-roads. The presence of this class in the town is seen only in an occasional drag on the streets, or the " boxes" and ponies and coroneted equipages and heavily-built hunters which indicate the neigh- borhood of gentlemen's stables. Were all the houses of the wealthier people of our Reading to be with- drawn from its town limits, it would lower the level of the appearance of the place very greatly. The environs of the town here are for this season very beautiful and attractive. As you pass along the road you catch continuous glimpses of homes of ease and elegance and refinement hidden in tlfe trees or nestling quietly and warmly in the midst of broad and abounding acres, golden now with wheat, and bordered by thorn-hedges red and fragrant with roses. This Reading of England, like ours, is also some- what famous for its breweries, its fountains of beer. It has, too, noted iron-works, a fairly gigantic biscuit- 34 ENGLISH TOWNS. factory known all over the kingdom, and other manu- factories, and has become quite a centre of the seed trade in England. In fact, this trade is the most conspic- uous in this place, the seed depdt of the main house in the business being an enormous aifair entirely dispro- portionate in size to anything else in the town. Being on the junction of the Thames with another small stream, this Reading has also some shipping and fishing interests, which our town has not, and the Oxford stu- dents come down to it often in racing- and boating-par- ties. The boating is, indeed, quite a feature of the place, giving a distinct local color to the town. Anglican Reading, finally, has a park with which, I suppose, our younger town cannot compete. It is not large, but speaks well for the cultivation and aesthetic advancement of the people. Its laying out evinces a thorough acquaintance with the best principles of land- scape-gardening, and fully doubles its apparent size and all its uses. Its treasures of ornament are quite effective, wonderful old trees always the centres of little systems of walks, a grim, black cannon, " cap- tured at Sevastapol," fountains and basin grass-plots relieved with rare flowers and exotic foliage, and, last and best, the crowning feature to which all avenues finally lead you, that stately old abbey, with its royal ivy and arched vistas, and scattered fragments and capitals, and the stone sarcophagus, and all the " prop- erties," in fine, which any well-regulated, picturesque old English abbey should have. Like our own Reading, this one, too, rests in a mag- nificent background of generous farms and agricultural wealth. The good cheer of the country is everywhere visible, in the fruiting-fields, in the warm, rubicund faces of the burghers, in the heavy, well-fed horses, and in the general well-to-do and contented look of everything and everybody. The farms of Berkshire are reputed through England, and the famous Berk- shire pigs are known to breeders the world over. In READING IN BERKSHIRE. 35 the old country, as in the new, the county of Berks is the solid foundation of Reading city. This Reading has just three weekly newspapers and none daily. Compare this with the vigor and energy and journalistic excellence of the large press of Amer- ican Reading, daily, weekly, and monthly, and you know which country you are in. To trace this parallel between these two towns of our two countries, although starting in the accidental point of similarity of name, has been very interesting to me, and I trust will be equally so to some of my readers. The two people are very much alike; their dwellings are similar; their ways and habits. of living about the same, even, notwithstanding the strong in- fusion of Germanic blood into the human stream of our Reading. But what is that again but the repeti- tion in modern times, and on a small scale, of the an- cient race history of England ? The two towns repre- sent also the substantial middle-class population of both counties, and it is interesting and instructive to observe that like conditions of life, or nearly like, pro- duce on both sides of the wator about the same results, notwithstanding the great differences of politics, gov- ernment, and social structure which exist between us. It is evidence of our common blood and race, a blood that goes back of modern history and takes in German as well as English stock. READING, ENGLAND. 36 ENGLISH TOWNS. CHAPTER V. LANCASTEK. Two TOWNS IN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW TRACING THE LINEAMENTS OF THE PENNSYLVANIA TOWN IN THE BLOOD AND SOIL OF ENGLAND ENGLISH ELECTORAL SYSTEM VOTERS WITH THREE OR MORE VOTES THE CELTIC TINGE A MISSING LINK THE OLD TIME COLONIAL LANCAS- TER OF PENNSYLVANIA FRESH IN ENGLAND YET. PENNSYLVANIA, in her State nomenclature, bears perpetual testimony to the affectionate remembrance in which the early English settlers ever held their old country, keeping green in the names of the new land the memory of the old homes they should see no more in this world. The extent and detail in which this has been done is quite remarkable, although it often escapes notice until it is forced on one's attention by finding in a strange land place after place with the old familiar names. This systematic reproduction sometimes almost makes the new land seem like a shadow of the old. There are here a Carlisle town, " on which the sun shines fair," which is the county-seat of Cumberland ; a Reading, the county-seat of Berkshire; a Lancaster, the county-town of Lancashire ; a York, the county- town of Yorkshire ; a Chester, the cathedral city of Cheshire ; a Huntingdon, in Huntingdon County ; and a Bedford, in Bedford County. There are a Bucks County, a Montgomery County, a Westmoreland County, a Northampton County, a Somerset County, a North- umberland County; and in detached towns and villages, streams, townships, and so on, one might run the list out indefinitely. In this Lancaster from which I write one can trace the family relationship even to minuter detail. LANCASTER. 37 There are here from old a King Street and a Queen Street and a Little Duke Street, and St. Mary's, James', High, Market, Water, Ann, Church, and Middle Streets. Our Prince Street is here Prince Regent Street. There are a St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church and a Phoenix Foundry, which may, for aught I know, be the parent of our Phcenixville Iron-Works. England's Lancaster, like Pennsylvania's, is a town of something over twenty thousand people and the centre of a Lancaster County, but between the two counties there is no parallel. England's Lancashire has nearly three millions of population. It is relatively one of the largest counties of England, having an acre- age of one million two hundred and eight thousand acres. During this century it has become the centre of the cotton trade, and cities like Manchester and Liverpool, with their hundreds of thousands of inhab- itants, have sprung up within its borders, but little Lancaster town, with its old church and castle and the prestige of its Roman camp, is still the historic county- town, the seat of its dignV-,' and honor. England rather looks down on new-n "le wealth unconsecrated by religion, learning, blood, or traditions of arms. Although a place of perhaps several thousand inhab- itants less than our Pennsylvania town, this Lancaster presents a much more imposing appearance. It is built entirely of stone, giving it a very solid and substantial air, while the tints of the stone, grays of every hue, produce a much handsomer effect than anything that could be gotten from bricks. The central view from the old Main Street, looking up the rising slope of the hill, covered with quaint gables and buttressed walls, and finally culminating in the castellated masses of John of Gaunt's great tower, is one of the finer pic- tures of interior England, and architecturally quite striking. It is an irregular town of narrow streets, rambling up and down hills of even steeper grade than those of our own Lancaster, and plunging every now 4 '-,' I.,- :- I.:- 41 five three of Oar roang lamjftur of the will tahcraet fi*n it all the ptagncc a !f!M3>i -> Of thi That m the oalr.aHMddifar.ee. Yo do c m grateful German word here, or see the tar* of 40 ENGLISH TOWNS. tive, two of whom are in the Cabinet. Preston sends two Conservatives, Liverpool two Conservatives aijd one Liberal, and Manchester two Liberals and one Con- servative, these latter two great towns just pairing off each other's influence. The voting list of Lancashire, when all the districts are footed up, seems pretty high, but it must be remembered that under the English sys- tem one man may easily cast three votes, or even more. For instance, in Lancashire, a man living in Preston or Liverpool might easily have three votes, thus : 1. If in his town he is a registered property-owner or rent-payer, he has a vote there. This is the first, and, according to English feeling, the lower grade of franchise. The man votes as one average, industrious, respectable subject of the kingdom. 2. If this same man is of a county family, owning estates in the county, he may also vote on the county list. Here he votes his family birth and historic con- nection with the kingdom. 3. If this same voter, who has already cast two legitimate votes, is an educated man, he may vote again on the registry list of his university, which sends its members to Parliament. Here he votes his education. Lastly, as far as he may be able to influence or assist in the appointment of a bishop, he also votes again, the bishops being lords, who sit in the upper House. It is this delicately-adopted system of the representa- tion of interests, of birth, of education, of religion, of classes, of labor, of money, etc., which makes all mere figures so deceptive and illusory in treating of English politics. The English statesman resents the mathe- matical basis of representation as being merely an averaging and levelling process. English Lancaster has just three weekly newspapers. Here, as in the case of Reading, our Pennsylvania towns so far outstrip their old-country parents that any comparison is out of the question. It is the same way in old Carlisle, which, with a population of thirty- LANCASTER. 41 five thousand, publishes only weekly journals, and but three of them. Our young Lancaster of the New World if you will subtract fi\m\ it all the presence and influence of the great German blood, which it could so ill do with- out is a pretty fair reproduction of this old town. That is the only marked difference. You do not hear a grateful German word here, or see the trace of a single Germanic custom, usage, or tradition. There are no great barns here ; no red-faced farmer boys with their shining buggies and well-fed horses in the streets; no staid and decorous Mennonite elders with solid and prosperous air; no German books or papers or almanacs in the shop-windows ; none and nothing of that honest, strong, and historic race which has contributed so much to the wealth and glory of out Lancaster County, and which is now perhaps its bettei half, only their English cousins of like manner and degree. You find here fresh and in clear outline the Lancaster of our young past ; the Lancaster that clus- tered around the old-fashioned court-house ; the Lan- caster of old King and Queen and Duke Streets; the Lancaster of the Old Bar and of the country " manors" of gone times ; the Lancaster that used to come in from Carnarvon and Coleraiue and Little Britain and the " lower end ;" the Lancaster of the Yates and Cun- ninghams and Lardners and Montgomerys and Frank- lyns and Jenkins and Bartons laid away in their family graves forever. Here it is, drinking pert and sitting in stately old Windsor chairs and burning wax tapers and swearing at dignified butlers and powdered foot- men yet. In their respective relation to the adjacent country there is a strong resemblance between the two Lancas- ters. Lancaster of England is situated on the pleasing river Lune, which, when the tide is out, is nearly as respectable a stream as our Conestoga Creek ; when the tide is in it is something larger. While the county of 4* 42 ENGLISH TOWNS. Lancashire is distinctively kwown as a cotton-spinning district, that portion of it which lies immediately around Lancaster town and forms its beautiful setting is a fine, rich agricultural sweep of land rolling pretty much as do the farm-fields from Lancaster to Millers- ville, in Pennsylvania. It looks rather richer and more bountiful than our land, because the generous green of the meadows and fields is not broken by the arid lines of dusty roads and dry fences. The sweep around this Lancaster is one broad field of living green, the various divisions of property marked only by the darker olive shades of the hedges. The roads are nar- row and deep, and so hedged by hawthorns and box and bushes as to be hardly seen, and not at all to break the picture of the landscape. Altogether, there is quite a family resemblance be- tween the two towns, their people and life. There is the same size, the same equable comfort and rest and substance, the golden mean of blessing. The general features of every-day life on the outside and out of doors at least are much the same. There is a reason- able distribution of wealth among the people of both towns, and a comparative freedom from want, Lancaster of England with its solid structures of stone ; its fine gray tints unbroken by the glare of red brick or white paint ; its old-fashioned domestic houses, with quaint armorial bearings or scriptural legends carved above the doorways; with its venerable walls and gateways clad with ivy and lichens; with its famous round castle, which has " Oft rolled back the tide of war," and from whose parapets surly cannon are even now trained on the peaceful fields; with its mediaeval legacies of dungeon and keep ; with its authentic traditions of Roman empire ; with its towers and turrets and spires of modern time and use ; with the British soldiery of LANCASTER. 43 to-day, brilliant in scarlet and gold, filing through its streets to the calls of drum and bugle ; with its local peasant dialect, unintelligible to American ears, and the clang of the weoden shoe is by far the more pictu- resque and impressive of the two places. Lancaster of Pennsylvania, however, has solid ad- vantages over the older city. She has already public buildings far beyond those of this town at the same age. Give the Lancaster of the New World one thousand years more and I doubt not she will be a greater city than even this one, and in tradition, already in her in- fancy, has she not the names of Muhlenbergand Mifflin and Fulton and Buchanan and Thaddous Stevens, men as great and historical as any of the heroes of the Wars of the Roses? She was for a brief space, in times of turmoil, also the capital of the nation, a seat of govern- ment just as respectable as the court of Henry IV., which for a short time was held here. And to-day, in many of those things which mark the strength of this century, in newspapers, in schools, in broad streets, in commodious pavements, in spacious hotels, in fine stores and the goods in them, our Penn- sylvania town is far ahead of its respectable old English parent. The glory of this Lancaster lies in its past : ours is yet to come. There is one fact forces itself on one in drawing this parallel between the two towns from the old home site which is rather strange and somewhat sad. The name of our new Lancaster, the establishing it as the seat of d con n tv of Lancaster, the naming of the streets after the old ones even to the detail of rank, King and Queen and Prince being the great streets here and the others mentioned minor ones, all force the conclusion that our American Lancaster was laid out by English- men of Lancashire, who lovingly traced in the soil of the New World the very lines and features of their old home. Yet in the county paper of to-day, on the signs of the shops in the streets, on the mouldering and 44 ENGLISH TOWNS. sunken tombs and gravestones in the old churchyards, I have not found a single one of the old colonial family names of the Lancaster of Penn. Literally, " the places that once knew them know them no more." LANCASTER, ENGLAND. CHAPTER VI. OXFORD. AN IDYLLIC SEAT OF LEARNING AND CONSERVATISM CURI- OUS SUPERSTITIOUS SURVIVALS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN COLLEGE THE AMERICAN AND THE ENG- LISH COLLEGE ECCLESIASTICAL OXFORD THE MARTYRS AN OLD-FASHIONED ENGLISH COUNTRY INN AND FOUR-IN- HAND TRAVEL GENTLEMAN-COACHING IN ENGLAND A COUNTY INSTITUTION. " A citie seated riche in everye thinge, Girt with woode and water." OXFORD the ford where, in old Saxon times, the oxen crossed the river, and now the ford where, for five hundred years, England's youth have crossed a greater stream is a charming picture of rest and sylvan beauty, an academic idyl. It is a picturesque old place of that medisevo-ecclesiastical architecture, half religious, half military, which tells so impressively the story of its day ; a town of towers and turrets and spires ; of ancient walls and buttresses and quaint gargoyles ; of glorious stained-glass windows, oriel and rose and arched and Catharine; of lovely academic garden- parks; of quadrangles and chapels and cloisters for the monks of letters; of forgotten bastions and re- doubts, and long, stern walls with battlemented walks, now peacefully crumbling under ivy and roses; of stately oaks and beeches, and grand old trees venerable with moss and lichen and tenderly watched and cared OXFORD. 45 for in their green old age ; of Gothic arches and gate- ways and falling ruins ; of wooded walks and gentle waters ; of smooth, soft meadows, all shaven and shorn, " and fields of living green ;" of noble bits of forest, carefully tended and stocked with antlered tenants ; of prisons of the martyrs and precious altars where, in flame and fire, they won their crowns ; of crosses and statues of great men and good women and strange beasts, grotesque symbolic images in stone ; of quiet churchyards and chiming bells and peaceful graves; of gray stone and clinging green and ancient gables ; of scented gardens filled with old-fashioned English flowers with homely Saxon names ; of rustic inns ; of classic streams and time-stained halls consecrated by the traditions of faith and learning, and hallowed with the names and memories of the great and good of England, " Were ever river-banks so fair, Gardens so fit for nightingales, as these? Was ever town so rich in court and tower?" When the American college graduate sees all this wealth of culture and of the tradition and legend of learning which is lavished so generously on the founda- tions of scholarship here, he feels sharply the bareness and poverty of the surroundings of our best academic life. The English student, even if he never studies much, may get unconsciously, almost by absorption, a generous education. His training, apart from the tuition of the schools, is liberalizing and humane, for he enters at once in his daily life and being into the fellowship of cen- turies of learning and intellectual dower. It is his in- heritance. I think no American alumnus will ever visit an English university without a feeling of poignant regret for the opportunities which have not been his and a vain instinctive wish that he might be born again. But it is not fair to compare our young American col- leges with the English school, the heir of all the 46 ENGLISH TOWNS. of Anglo-Saxon culture, piety, and intellectual growth. Not only are they separated by centuries of care and sacrifice and endowment, but to-day they represent different conditions of society, and different stages in the development of history and education. Nor would it be wise for an American student to take his full academic course in an English university, however superior the advantage and pleasure as far as scholarship and cultivation are concerned. The friend- ships one makes at college will largely influence and control his future life, and for Americans this associa- tion should be American. An American boy who studies at a foreign school simply expatriates himself for life. He comes home a stranger in his own land. I would, however, strongly advise every college- bred man of our country who is yet within, say, five or six years of his graduation to complete .and finish his course by a year at Cambridge or Oxford. Such one year of post-graduate study will sum up and round off all that has gone before, and in the way of broad- ening thought and widening the range of his intellec- tual activities double the value of all the years of his American cursus. Even one day in Oxford or Cam- bridge will yield a rich return to a trained mind from our schools. The acquaintance made, too, of English and continental young men men who will rise to power and influence in foreign nations will always extend one's power and influence at home if he can make them available from a wide basis of home acquaint- ance. If, however, one must be restricted to a single course of a few brief years, for an American the American college, with all its barrenness, its lack of refinement, its poverty of intellectual wealth, is the proper place. The two schools represent different stages of society, and the progress of learning and the education of the American college will, on the whole, best answer the present demands of American life, social and political. OXFORD. 47 Education, in our Anglo-Saxon times, has so far de- veloped three grand stages or epochs: I. The monk and the convent represent the first stage of learning in our modern civilization, or renewal of lost civilizations. During this period education was a mo- nopoly, held strictly and exclusively within the control of the Church. This was the mediaeval period. Edu cation was shut up in the cloister. The very word claustrum describes it. II. Next comes the fellow and the college. The modern college, with its foundation, its endowed and permanent masterships and fellowships, all the fortu- nate holders of these franchises housed and living to- gether with their precious stores of tradition, association, honors, books, manuscripts, and appliances of learning, is the legitimate child of the convent, and has been often actually and literally its heir. Here, too, educa- tion was at first held to the Church, but within recent centuries it has been emancipated to the learned profes- sions, comparatively limited bounds. Knowledge, however, was still in collegia, and not free. This is the period of modern Europe and the second stage. III. Third comes a stage which has not yet taken definite shape or outline, the stage to which we are tending, and for which the American college in its present condition is the preparation and vestibule. The work of this stage I take to be the emancipation of learning and education from any class bounds, and its free distribution among all the people, perhaps even at their homes, the fixed centre being a limitation and a thing of the past. The system of university examina- tions which now covers all England like a network, and which Harvard has introduced in the United States, is a pronounced movement in this direction. This is the period of the near-impending future. We are now in transition from the second to the third stage, and must endure all the unpleasant features of transitional existence. 48 ENGLISH TOWNS. But while we may not reproduce the English college on our soil, we cannot, therefore, affect to ignore or despise it. We are its heir, entitled to all its wealth of life, just as the college inherited the treasure and his- toric existence of the convent. And it should be our study to get this in all its fulness, and as soon as pos- sible. There are many features of English university life which might at once be advantageously adopted or adapted here, and I think a most useful training for an American college president or professor would be a personal study of English university life, its organi- zation, academic discipline, relations to society, and daily school and individual life. There could be no better qualification for an academic leader. Oxford, as a village, is a far lovelier and more pic- turesque place than Cambridge. Indeed, as a picture to a stranger it is one of the loveliest spots in all England, and I much wonder that it is not more of a place of summer resort for travellers, especially as dur- ing the long vacation chambers are to be had cheap. Living, indeed, is always cheap as compared with the cost of our life. I noticed in Oxford a placard offering fourteen small houses for rent at a gross rental of one hun- dred and fourteen pounds. They were houses for work- ing-people, four rooms and back-closet and shed, built of solid stone, well finished, in a healthful and clean lo- cality. This is about forty dollars a year of our money Apart from its academic life and glory, Oxford pre- sents many features of attraction to the visitor. Its authentic record dates from A.D. 900, and one reads the history of England down from that time in its ven- erable walls and crumbling ruins. It has religious associations and memories of surpass- ing interest to Protestant faith. In its streets once flamed the most famous fires of martyrdom in Eng- land ; m its halls and chambers preached, in its towers OXFORD. 49 were imprisoned, and from them led to death, the death- less martyrs. An imposing memorial cross, after the general fashion of the handsome Queen Eleanor design, erected in the middle of a handsome street, marks the neighborhood of the spot where Archbishop Cranmer and Bishops Ridley and Latimer were burned to death.* ' " Then God was with them, and the glare Of their death-fires still lights the land to truth." This splendid monument was erected in 1841, and I take it was intended as a mute and imperishable memo- rial against the Tractarian movement, then in alarming progress. From a stern and gray church-tower still stand- ing near this spot you see the window from which that ex- cellent authority, Burnet, says Cranmer in prison looked out and saw his comrades, Kidley and Latimer, burned at the stake. He was near enough to see their faces. There are several of these martyrs' towers in Oxford in which distinguished scholars and prelates and states- men were confined for conscience' sake, and it is depress- ing to think that most of them were church -towers, parts of houses dedicated to worship and to the preach- ing of a gospel of love, and that men did and could worship in them at the very time they were desecrated to such unholy and unchristian uses. In those dark days of Oxford church towers seem to. have been built with perhaps an ulterior u eye to the glory of God," but practically and immediately for the purpose of con- fining in them such persons as differed in views and opinions from the builders or custodians. Among the records of Oxford are two sickening bills of the executioner in these martyrdoms, charging by items for the services of his assistants and for materials, fagots, etc., significant now as monuments of the con- * The original picture, by the way, of the " Burning of Kidley and Latimer at Oxford," by Sir George Haytes, left England some time ago for Philadelphia, having been purchased by Mr. Latimer, a direct descendant, c d 5 50 ENGLISH TOWNS. dition of civilization and religion in the sixteenth cen- tury. The entire cost of the burning of the two bishops was 1 5s. 2d. of Cranmer, 12s. Oxford has always been noted as against Cambridge for its religious activity and coloring of thought. It has been in all its history the home of polemics and controversy and doctrine. From the pulpit and the stake, and in later and more gentle years the "com- mons room" of its precincts, nearly all the great re- ligious movements of modern English times have taken their start. To-day I believe it furnishes a much larger proportion of its graduates to the orders of the Church than does its sister Cambridge. In the list of its graduates you can almost read the religious and ecclesiastical history of England. Among them are John Wiclif the Reformer, Tyndal, (translator of the Bible and martyr), Archbishop Laud, John Foxe ("Book of Martyrs"), Cardinal Pole and Cardinal Wolsey, Archdeacon Philpot, martyr, Bishop Hooper, martyr, Cardinal Moreton, Bishop Jewell, Bishop Bonner, " the bloody," Sir Matthew Hale, Cam- pian, the noted Jesuit, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Cecil, Bishop Heber, Dean Mil man, both the Wesleys, John and Charles, Hooker, the writer, Bishop Butler ("Anal- ogy"), Sir Thomas More and Sir Thomas Browne (" Religio Medici"), Bishop Lowth, Dr. South, John Keble, Rev. F. W. Robertson, Dr. Edward Young, Archbishop Whately, Cardinals Manning and John Henry Newman, and Dr. Pusey. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer were Cambridge men, but they were all burnt here. I might lengthen out this list almost indefinitely by going into the names of distinguished living clergy and dignitaries in the English Church, would it not seem invidious to make selection. I have mentioned none of the men now alive save only the two able princes of the Roman empire who claim to rule in England. But a glance at this list shows that the great Methodist and OXFORD. 51 Tractarian movements, so unlike in character and tend- ency, wore cradled here ; that the rehabilitation of the Roman Church on English soil in the nineteenth cen- tury found its leaders here ; that many of the minor currents of modern theological and religious thought started here; and that here surged in merciless force the fluctuating waves of the English Reformation, out of whose conflict, through fire and sword, arose the present Churches of England. Sydney Smith and Dean Swift, who illustrate how oddly the English semi-social, semi-political system of filling pulpits sometimes works, were also Oxford men. Oxford has been in all its history distinctively the Church school, and to-day stands nearer the cloister than Cambridge) which, in many features, is tentatively stretching forward to the new era. Oxford, like Cambridge, has a university press, known the world over for the finish and scholarly thoroughness of its work. The distinctive feature of the Oxford press has come to be the printing of the English Bible. Here you get the authorized King James version in absolute purity of text, every letter and point established with critical accuracy and judg- ment, and the whole book produced in the highest finish of paper, composition, press-work, and binding. It is the best memento to bring home from Oxford, and you can get it in editions of every kind and style and price. It claims to be the best-printed Bible in the world, and, I suppose, is, and certainly it is invested \\ith more interesting traditions and associations than any edition that issues from any other press, for it comes from the school-house of Wiclif and Tyndal, and the martyr-fires of Cranmer and Ridley in Oxford's streets made the circulation of our English version possible. It is a curious fact that the traces of an extinct re- 52 ENGLISH TOWNS. ligion survive longest in the forms of the new /eligion which takes the place of the dead one. Long after the life of the old faith has fled it still is preserved in the ceremonies of the new. In Italy to-day nearly every striking fte and feature of the Roman Catholic Church is traceable to customs and rites of the old classic faiths which held sway there before the Christian era. So in Oxford, a historic religious centre of Eng- land, and, as the centres of learning always are, a most conservative spot, the vestiges of the forgotten beliefs and usages of early paganism in Britain are clearly visible in a number of traditional ceremonies which have been handed down from the centuries, and whose observance is yet jealously maintained, although their meaning and original life are long lost. The beautiful Magdalen Tower is the pride of Ox- ford, and well it may be, for in grace and symmetry of architectural design, and the lovely picture of culti- vated glebe and wood and water which surrounds it, it is one of the finest sights of England. On the castellated summit of this tower, every first day of May, " at five o'clock in the morning," the choir of St. Mary Magdalen College, in vestments, assemble and chant a Latin anthem, and in reverential orison hail the rising of the sun. Hundreds of people gather on the streets and in the parks at the foot of the tower to witness this ceremony. This matin rite means noth- ing any more now, but is admitted to be the survival of some pagan solemnity, as most May-day customs are, probably of sun worship. In Queen's College, to this hour, the "ryghte merrie jouste of ye boare's heade" is yet observed with cere- monial state on every Christmas day. At dinner in the great arched college hall on that day a fine old boar's head, bedecked with bays, is solemnly borne around the oaken floor, while the college chant the sonorous old carol whose words and music are so familiar to academic memory : OXFORD. 53 )ri differo Keddens laudes Domino. The boar's head in hand bring I, With garlands gay and rosemary ; I pray you all sing merrily : Qui estis in convivio." This observance is most probably a transmitted vestige of the Feast of Freyr, the Scandinavian god of peace and plenty, held at Yule-tide, when a boar was always sacrificed in his honor and as an offering of thanks and gratitude. The words of this semi-pagan canticle date from the sixteenth century, and, although the whole thing is a Norse relic, it was certainly a more Christian diversion than burning bishops. Non-academic Oxford is a typical English village of the prettiest kind, a village of green hedges framing picturesque bits of wood and valley and charming homes; of slumbering churchyards toned with gray tombstones and dark yews ; of quaint gablas and ram- bling streets stocked with old-fashioned country inns, each one the fitting background of an ever-changing picture of rural sights. All the traditional inn names of England seem to be gathered here, and they make one of the features of the town. There are the King's Head, and the Red Lion, and the Saracen, the Three Jolly Farmers and the Three Cups, the Maiden- head, and the Crown, and the Roebuck, and others I cannot recall. I put up at the Mitre, the traditional old county and university inn, an interesting historical picture in itself of past social life and customs in England. The Mitre is to-day but a survival of a past generation, of a glory of Oxford that is gone; but it is still an instructive and pleasing remain to an American stranger. It is an old-fashioned county inn of the once aristocratic kind, of a High-Church and horse- racing flavor, redolent of old port and strong red ale, patronized by young country squires, who lunch on cold 5* 54 ENGLISH TOWNS. ham and champagne, and by broad-shou. dered, florid- faced, cheery Englishmen born of the soil, and "who they themselves have said it." Its very name is a de- fiant shout for prelacy and Establishment, an echo of a war-cry which carries you back to the old days of trouble and party-passion, the days of Church and Crown. You enter through an unpretending wooden door, heavily barred and crossfastened, into a low broad hall, and the first sight which greets your eyes are stout rounds of beef and generous flitches of bacon and game of various kinds hung by hooks to the unplaned rafters overhead ; you step hastily from under to avoid the drops of fat which threaten the unwary lounger (the experienced habitues, I soon found out, knew just where to stand), and in doing so confront the useful young woman who answers as bar-maid, room-clerk, and cashier in a British inn, who welcomes you personally and pleasantly to the house. Some four-in-hand coach- ing-whips of approved pattern and trial ornament the hall-way, professionally and gracefully coiled on the walls. The guards' loud livery hangs on the pegs with some gentlemen's overcoats. Several handsome and affectionate hounds mingle intelligently with the other functionaries, guests, and dignitaries, and you know you are at a respectable centre of coaching, hunting, racing, and English country sports generally. But the bishop's mitre is the trade-mark of the house and the historic crest of the place. This prelatical symbol confronts you everywhere and all the time. It is panelled in the halls, painted on the walls, carved on the doors, burnt in the china, engraved on the glass, the silver, and the pewter, and woven in the linen. It blushes through your wine, lies placidly under the water in your wash-basin, consecrates the stables and dog-ken- nels, and seems to rest in contented benediction on your ale-tankard. Even the napkins are loyally folded ID this respectable episcopal device. OXFORD. 55 But it is the benediction of the past which cornea down on the American traveller when he enters these old-fashioned doors. The Mitre claims to have stood here from A.D. 1400, dispensing food and shelter for man and beast. Fifteen generations of fathers and sons have purchased its hospitalities. In its low-ceilinged coffee- rooms men sat, near five hundred years ago, much as we sit now, and when they talked politics or told the news they spoke of Aginoourt and glorious King Harry, of the execution for treason of the Lollards, of John Huss burnt, of the strange maid Joan, the sorceress of Arc, luring English soldiers to defeat and shameful death on the fields of France, or of how the rude but resolute Parliaments of England were wrestling with the crafty and learned legates of the pope. This is the Mitre tavern which the American crosses the seas to see, and which, I think, his English cousin on the spot never sees. The Mitre tavern of Oxford, however, as it exists in the flesh to-day, is a thing of the past, and I cannot conscientiously recommend it to the modern traveller. The times have changed and it has not changed with them, except, perhaps, to keep abreast with the modern extravagant prices. Flavor and picturesque traditions are very good in their way, but they will neither feed, lodge, nor care for one's comfort and cleanliness. There are other and better hostelries now in Oxford, those of our own century. The link which connects the Mitre with the present time, and drags it, half-alive, into this nineteenth cen- tury, is stage-coaching. I entered Oxford on the top of a stage-coach and left it in the same glory, and warmly advise every traveller for pleasure or study to do the same. One sees the country, the estates, and the common people for miles as he can by no other way, and, by a half-mental, half-physical process, arrives at the consciousness of the Englishman's conception 56 ENGLISH TOWNS. of the height of human happiness. The Mitre, by virtue of its lineage and traditions, is the hostel where " the coach" puts up, and hence its raison d'etre and existence now. Four-in-hand stage-coaching in England is something more than a rich man's amusement. It is an institution. It is the assertion of a national and class tradition, and when an English gentleman assumes charge for a sea- son of a coach line it is looked on as a patriotic act, and the man himself in doing so is deemed to have de- served well of his country. The stage line from Oxford via London to Cambridge is owned and driven by a gentleman of the county, Captain B., his commission in the local militia, I be- lieve, who pleasantly gave the full details of his work as we drove along. His line of road is one hundred and twenty miles, and his coach stable is stocked with just one hundred and twenty horses, a horse to the mile. He drives this entire route in one day, return- ing the next, and resting only on Sunday. The schedule time either way is twelve hours, starting from the Mitre, Oxford, on Monday at nine o'clock A.M., and pulling up at The Bull, Cambridge, at nine o'clock P.M., reversing the trip on Tuesday, and so on through the week. This schedule allows thirty minutes in London for luncheon. Captain B., a gentleman of about thirty -six, of wealth and position, does this work regularly every day for a season of some five months each year. I spent a week at Oxford, and also at Cambridge, and was person^ ally witness to the unfailing punctuality of departure and arrival at both places. There is no railway in our country or in England which does better, perhaps none which does so well. He and his coach were immensely popular all along the line. The little villages were always in a tumult as we rolled through them. All day every wagon or carriage of high or low degree drew off and gave the road to " the coach ;" the ladies were gathered at many OXFORD. 57 a tempting- looking hall or park gate to see the spirited horses, well in hand, dash by foaming and glossy. The landed gentry of the neighborhood frequently timed their walks so as to come in with us at the changing-places and exchange a word of greeting or welcome. Every one, high and low, gentle and simple, the entire route through, knew all the teams and their respective merits, and every inn and station was full of tales and legends of them and their driver. From one end of the drive to the other the coach was a county institution and the captain was a county hero, and to understand the meaning of this you must remember that " the county" is the corner-stone and foundation of English life. " Captain B. had perfected with a master-hand every arrangement of detail in his enterprise, and both the safety and pleasure of the passengers were looked after with scrupulous regard. He carried with him three servants, a guard, a vaiet, and a relay driver in case of emergency. While everything was thus provided to support and sustain him and keep him in good condi- tion, he personally did the work of driving, and it was one whose magnitude and steadiness would, I think, appal most American gentlemen. It was not a party or an excursion, recollect, or a spurt, but regular daily work, in wet weather or fine, this year nearly every day wet, and carried on often without even the relief of a congenial companion. At the end of the season, the captain told me, he sells all his horses by auction at Tattersall's, and sometimes makes on them. Having been driven for a season in the coach is a good character for a horse and commends him in the market. It is a guarantee of careful and experienced training. Part of the work and pleasure of coaching during the season is the breaking in of the new horses. There is no one day of English travel which is better worth taking than this enjoyable four-in-hand drive 58 ENGLISH TOWNS. from Oxford to Cambridge, or vice versd if you are at Cambridge first. You see five counties of England, much of its best farm land and southern scenery. Yon enter London and leave it on a seat from which you have a view such as you can get in no other mode of conveyance. You see the city shading into the country for miles and miles on either side, and gain an idea of its vast size and of the dense population of rural Eng- land such as no reading, statistics, or thinking will give you. In London you rest half an hour and lunch at the White Horse Cellar, just as English gentry were supposed to have clone a hundred years ago. It is a veritable cellar, down steps, and with a humble and unmarked front, but right in the centre of fashionable Piccadilly, and preserved in all its original features with pious care. And best of all you see the English stage-coach in its glory, the struggling survival of the eighteenth cen- tury. This is a historic study, and alone is a picture worth coming to England for. It is a sight to see the coach roll off: it is a greater sight to see it come in at the end of the day amid the popular acclaim and en- thusiasm that might attend a victorious general return- ing from conquest and battles. Fully an hour before the time of starting the boys and idle men of the town begin to gather around the main court-yard and gaze in silent and satisfied contem- plation on the great lumbering red-and-yellow vehicle which stands empty and unhorsed before the door. Then, in due time, the stately guard makes his appear- ance with a burden of responsibility upon his serious features. One or more young porters attend his decorous footsteps. A hush falls upon the vulgar crowd, and then, in measured and authoritative tone, begins the issuance of official orders. Ah ! it is a sight to see the grandeur of this functionary, conscious that the eyes of all the couniy are upon him, in gorgeous livery and high beaver hut and huge bouquet in button-hole, OXFORD. 59 pinned there by the buxom barmaid ; the ministerial air with which he determines the proper location of the luggage ; the judicial gravity with which he decrees for or against a trunk; the grave halt over the proper strapping of a box ; the utter repression of any levity on the part of his youthful subordinates; the more than Olympian front with which he accepts the grateful in- cense of the common herd ; and the swelling sense of im- portance of every favored servant who is intrusted with a duty about the wheeled throne, their official communica- tions with each other; the distended dignity of every groom and footman ; the nervous, expectant look of some town youth halfway up in society, who lingers by the team and boldly essays to stroke the near wheeler, anx- ious to receive a nod, perhaps, happy moment ! a con- descending word of recognition, to be seen talking with the swell demigod of a driver when he in due time appears. Punctually at 8.59 the lord of the coach, with his buttonhole flower, too, and irreproachably dressed, walks out of the open door through an aisle of living flesh, which opens deferentially before him, ascends the box, accepts the reins, and sits for a moment like a statue. The guard and the proprietary driver compare gold watches, an awful instant of suspense, a last moment of rapid comprehensive inspection ; the guard reports all ready, the horn rings out, and the state carriage of. the county rolls off as smoothly and noise- lessly as a perfect locomotive, in the hands of a perfect engineer, draws its train out of a well-appointed depot. As a matter of pride and point of finished etiquette, the guard, who has been clambering all over the stage, on and off a dozen times, makes his final report from the ground, and then leaps lightly on the wagon after the wheels are in motion. His easy professional ascent of the coach diagonally is the last touch to the picture. The arrival of the coach is a still more inspiriting scene. In an English village all work has stopped at four o'clock in the afternoon, perhaps three, and by gO ENGLISH TOWNS. nine P.M. the whole town, men, women, and children, are thrown painfully on their own resources for amuse- ment or occupation. They are, therefore, more than ready for the discharge of any public duty. I have repeatedly seen the streets, both at Oxford and Cam- bridge, densely packed for squares awaiting the coming of the coach, whose horn was to be heard out of the darkness at 8.57, growing clearer and livelier as it grew nearer. And this not on any extraordinary occa- sions, not to meet any prominent guest, but only to welcome " the stage-coach." We simply cannot under- stand the feeling with which the Briton clings to an old institution, and honors and worships the man who sus- tains and asserts it. A shout goes up as the heads of the impatient leaders, who snuff excitement in the air, touch the crowd. The human walls form themselves again, the coach rolls into the stand, and, with the solemn air of a great duty done, the driver drops the reins into the hands of the local f^ooms, who contest for the honor of receiving them, hen the cheery welcomes, the questions as to the events of the past two days in which the worlds of the village and of the coach have been sunuered, the orders for dinner, and the form and ceremony of the landing. The formal service of the morning is all repeated in inverse order, and, last of all, the tired and triumphant horses disappear into the night, led away like heroes, amid thronging masses of attendant Britons. I have seen a cabal of veteran politicians decide on the policy of a momentous national campaign. I have seen battles forced in a flash, and anxious generals strike out a plan of action in the saddle and almost in the moment of execution. I have seen^i council of officers, with defeat around them and their dead among them, answer with solemn defiance a summons to sur- render. I have seen half a dozen army corps deploy their massed battalions in silence on to afield of history and death, but I have never seen anything half so CAMBRIDGE. impressive, so utterly and overwhelmingly imposing, as the arrival or departure of a swell English coach- and-four in front of an old-fashioned English country inn. OXFORD, ENGLAND. CHAPTER VII. CAMBRIDGE. IN COLLEGE CHAMBERS IN THE UNIVERSITY THE PURITAN COLLEGE THAT GAVE BIRTH TO HARVARD THE COLLEGE- DAY AT CAMBRIDGE THE SUPPRESSED UNDERGRADUATE. DINNER IN THE COLLEGE HALL A SURVIVAL OF BARONIAL TIMES ENGLISH COLLEGE EXPENSES A COMMONWEALTH or LETTERS. SOME months since, in Rome, I spent an afternoon in the convent grounds of San Gregoriano, from whose pleasant shades St. Augustine carried, hundreds of years ago, the seeds of learning and Christianity to savage England, leaving the refinement, the culture, the religious fellowship of civilization to bear the faith to our rude Saxon forefathers. To-day I write from the Puritan cloisters of Em- manuel College, Cambridge, the historic walls from whence the germs of civil freedom, and that education which alone can protect and perpetuate it, were borne to our New England. It was from this Emmanuel College that Puritan foundation established in faith away back in the stormy days of the Commonwealth that went forth the early divines and educated laymen who, in our colonial times, laid the firm foundations of the civil and religious liberty we enjoy in this land, in this generation. And to-day it is grateful and 62 ENGLISH TOWNS. pleasing to know that, foremost among the traditions of Emmanuel, and cherished among her wealth of pious, civic, and scholarly associations, are the memories of these graduates, the Harvards and Hookers and Wards and Bradshaws of 1600-1650, and the great work they did, in which the mother-college claims her deserved share. " Among those chiefest worthy of honor," says Bacon, " are the founders of states ;" and Emmanuel hopes to have securely founded in the New World the Commonwealth which went to pieces so disastrously in the Old. It is her crown. That staunch and learned old Puritan statesman, Sir Walter Mild- may, whose liberality and faith laid the foundations of Emmanuel in the darkness of uncertainty and political trouble, builded better than he knew. The language of the charter or deed of foundation of the college given by this scholar, soldier, and states- man, which I regret I have not at hand to quote at this moment of writing, is often touching, and read now, in the light of history, is in places dramatically prophetic. He held high office under the government of Queen Elizabeth, and the fact of his freedom to found, in express words, an establishment for the teaching and culture of Puritan principles is strong evidence of the civil liberties of England in that brilliant epoch of her history, and of the intellectual breadth and liberality of her political leaders. As the direct ancestor of Har- vard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Emmanuel College has always had a special interest and attraction for the American scholar, and some of our best New England and New York families have sent their sons to it for their collegiate education. From Cambridge of England, however, the interest of Emmanuel College takes a wider sweep and range. As the academic fountain of Puritanism she looks on our whole land, people, and history in one sense, the religious and political development of Puritanism is her child and descendant. CAMBRIDGE. 63 A good friend in London, who recognized the Puri- tan in me, and who was himself a fellow of Emmanuel in residence, was kind enough to invite me to spend a week in Cambridge in college quarters, placing at my disposal a suite of undergraduate chambers then vacant, it being the long vacation. The college life of Oxford and Cambridge, the mu- nificent development of ages of faith and learning, is something so infinitely deeper, broader, richer, and better than anything we have in our land, and withal so different, that it is difficult to know how to describe it or where to begin the attempt. I do not know, how- ever, that I can commence in any better way than by attempting a picture of my quarters and working out from thence. Cambridge University, as I suppose every one knows, is a collection of independent colleges, each with its own separate govern ment, buildings, grounds, history, and associations. These colleges to-day are seventeen in number, and they make up both the university and the town. If you will take seventeen silver dollars and half-dollars, and throw them down on a piece of white paper irregularly but rather close together, draw circles with a pencil around each of the coins, and then connect these circular inclosures by convenient lines indicating streets and walks, you will have a pretty good idea of the plan of Cambridge town. It is simply a village which has grown up and around the grounds or what, in Pennsylvania, is called the "campus" of the several colleges. What first strikes an American stranger with some .surprise is the comparatively limited extent of these grounds, the territorial plant of the college. In our imaginations these colleges venerable in age and tra- dition, and dowered with the associations of centuries rise in magnificent proportions, and seem to stand in princely domains in glebe and forest. As a matter of fact, the average college at Cambridge or Oxford has (54 ENGLISH TOWNS. not a greater acreage in its grounds .than the average American college ; in fact, has not so great. Harvard, I am sure, has larger grounds than most of the English colleges. So have Princeton and Union, and, I believe, Yale. Pennsylvania is already very generously en- dowed in this respect. Few of the English colleges have grounds equal in extent or in artistic possibilities to those of Jefferson and Washington at Canonsburg, or Franklin and Marshall at Lancaster, or the Lehigh at Bethlehem, or Dickinson at Carlisle, or Lafayette at Easton, or the institution at Mercersburg, or even of our University of Pennsylvania, planted on costly acres in the built-up streets of a great city. All these have greater advantages in the way of scenery and room and possible embellishment and artistic enrichment of their grounds than the average English college of the two great universities. Some of the college-buildings here consist of but a single structure, with such grounds only as are inclosed in the interior court. On these limited academic fields, however, the con- secrated wealth of long centuries has been lavished, under the guidance and direction of the highest art and cultivation of the time. The grounds of some of the larger colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are often laid out with park and landscape effects such as have hardly been reached anywhere in our country. Even the smaller ones are carefully dressed and worked, so that an acre or two will often set forth a wonderful study of foliage or hue. And all are crowded with grand old tombs, mouldy, half-decipherable legends, armorial bearings, monuments of history, the graves of martyrs, statues, arches, solemn ruins, memorial gateways, monumental crosses, picturesque cloisters, and a thou- sand works of art and ennobling associations. In the successive architecture of many of these noble edifices and in the chain of names and graves and monuments you can read the history of England from the twelfth century down. CAMBRIDGE. 65 It is this splendid endowment of tradition, this con- tinuous legended memorial of the scholarship and piety of ages, which is the wealth of the English college. It is the contrast with this which makes our own college life, so far, seem so poor and thin and meagre. Another disillusion is the fact that the number of undergraduates in these English colleges does not differ materially from the number in ours. This runs from sixty or seventy up through the hundreds, in some one or two cases touching a thousand, just as in our de- tached American col logos. It is the massing of these English colleges in one column and bringing them all under the influences of one another which gives them their intellectual force in the world of thought. The seventeen colleges of Cambridge are not educating any more young men than seventeen isolated American colleges, but they are as an organized regular army is to a body of loose militia regiments. Emmanuel College holds about a medium rank as to the extent and decoration of its grounds. The extensive front of the great college-building is Greek, with some adaptation of English style, this in the way of protest against the ecclesiastical architecture of most of the other colleges. The central feature of the main edifice to an American eye is the high quadrangle or interior court, faced on two sides with arcades, and bright with its shaven lawn of grass ever green and smooth and fresh. The entrances to the chambers of the fellows and undergraduates open on to this court, always known over Cambridge in college vernacular as the " quad." Although this residence portion of the college is but one building, it is divided into sections or grand compartments, very much like the separate houses of a city row, having no communication with one another, and each section entered only from its own front door. These sections, or houses, consist of about six or eight sets of chambers, two or three of which are * 8* 66 ENGLISH TOWNS. occupied by fellows, the remainder by undergraduates. In older times this was the family, the fellows being charged with some care of the students. This is not the case now, although the fellows always take a kindly interest in their undergraduate neighbors, feel, perhaps, some little historic responsibility, invite the boys, at all events once or twice, to breakfast with them, and if there is any community of tastes or feelings it results in a valuable association and acquaintance for the undergraduate. He is in the care of an older man, who feels for him as a brother. Now for the life of the undergraduate, the only col- lege-life known in our country. My quarters, as I have said, were the ordinary suite of chambers of an undergraduate student, absent at the time, and their description will appear rather sumptuous to the Ameri- can graduate who recalls the two-in-a-small-room ac- commodation of many a good Pennsylvania college. This suite consisted of three good-sized chambers, with a small pantry or closet-room. The main chamber, by which you enter your suite, is a fine large room about twenty feet square, looking out with three windows on the quadrangle. In this sitting- and reception-room are served your breakfast and luncheon by your own servant, and at- tached to it is the pantry, a capacious closet for the storage of your table-linen and service, and large enough for your attendant to make a little coffee or tea, wash the dishes, or cook a slight breakfast. Out of this large room open two smaller one*, ten by fourteen feet, a bed-chamber, and a study or private retiring- room. Each section, or house of six or eight suites, has its own separate servants, with their own quarters, to whose services each fellow or student has equal rights. This staff consists generally of a man and wife or small family, who can, between them, readily cook the break- t'asts, prepare the morning baths, brush the clothes, CAMBRIDGE. 67 black boots, and run the errands of the six or eight single gentlemen who form the family. Some of these servants, as is always the case around a college, become quite scholastic in appearance and demeanor. In Cam- bridge this male attendant is known as the " gyp ;" in Oxford as the " scout/' The development of the undergraduates' quarters to the present generous provision illustrates somewhat the progress of social life and habits during the past century or two, and affords evidence of some curious changes. In early times undoubtedly two or more students were quartered together. " Chum" is a con- traction of chambermen. It is likely, in remote times, that six students occupied a common sleeping-room with three or more beds in it ; but even then each one of them, as the ancient buildings show, had his sepa- rate little cell, generally opening out of the common bed-chamber, to which he retired to read, study, or " muse." From this habit this little cell became known as the student's " museum." Here we have the history of another word now diverted to quite a different special use. The change in personal habit and feeling made by a few hundred years is quite curious. The student of Cambridge to-day would willingly read, write, or study in a common chamber with another man, but he would, under no circumstances, share his bed-room with him. My rooms look out on either side on prosp M cls pleasing to the eye, cultivating to the taste, and ele- vating in association and suggestion. On one side they command the classic green quadrangle, all shaven and shorn, with its cloistered arcades, venerable gray tombs, monumental legends, and the admonitory walls and columns of gone ages. On the other side the study and bed chamber sweep a small stretch of college park, looking out on gardens with ivy and roses, and a clear little stream in which, from your windows, you can see the fishes swimming under the crystal waters, and on 63 ENGLISH TOWNS. whose quiet bosom placid ducks and philosophic swans live in amity with their finny friends. Wide, roomy seats are built into these windows, in the pleasant old English fashion, and very delightful and restful they are when you look out from them on noble trees, charming gardens, and vistas of leafy boughs and lake and meadow. Compare this with the red brick walls and the bare wastes of clay, and, perhaps, the barren, neglected campus, which form the entourage of a new American school and leave their painful photo- graph forever on the minds of its children. On the walls of these rooms hang some good en- gravings and a small painting, a mounted fox head and brush, a worn horseshoe, probably from the heels of some triumphant racer, whips, spurs, crossed oars, some hunting pictures. It is proper to add that there are also some books. The suites of the fellows are gene- rally somewhat superior in accommodation to those of the undergraduates. Life in one of the colleges of an English university is something very different from that of an American college. Intellectually it is something far higher and stronger. The undergraduate is not the central feature, as with us, but only an incident. The living college is the master and the fellows. The undergraduates are but the younger members of the academic family and on the threshold of the house, the little children who are seen and not heard. Again, not the least part of the liberal endowment of an English college is the tradition of social usage and habit which it carries down, by foroe of which any student coming to live within its walls and sharing its life receives the training of a gentleman, acquiring the personal habits and manners which fit him for associa- tion with the better classes of society. In the average American college the student leaves either a boor or a gentleman, just as he entered. In the English college, however, the home for hundreds of years of the sons CAMBRIDGE. 69 of gentlemen, the habit of life has become fixed and traditional, and any boy going through it comes out with that as a part of his education. The daily life of the English college-resident is simple, and differs from ours distinctively in the care with which it is arranged to distribute the time for work and exercise or rest, and the ease with which it consequently bears on the individual. The English student attains a far higher grade of scholarship than ours, but we never hear of his breaking down, of shat- tered nerves and prostrated brain. He takes more time, it is true, but saves his body and his head. The order of the college day is roughly this: Bathe in your room at six or seven o'clock ; breakfast served in your front chamber at seven or eight o'clock ; read- ing until one o'clock P.M., when there comes a light lunch in your room, generally only bread and cheese and strong college ale. Lunch-hour ends absolutely the day of study or work. At this point the whole college master, fel- lows, and students betakes itself to the open air, and spends the whole afternoon, iritil six or seven o'clock, out of doors, walking, riding, boating, fishing, or at ath- letic games. It is here the college boy builds himself up for life. At seven o'clock dinner, and from dinner to bedtime rest. This is the common schedule of an or- dinary university day. I have heard that there are " reading men" who burn the midnight oil far into the night, but I write only of what I have seen. The college dinner is an imposing and perhaps the central feature of the daily life of the university. Here, in the great hall, the whole college meets together in pleasant union, and it is, I believe, now the only general meeting of the day, compulsory prayers being abolished except on extraordinary occasions. The hall itself a survival of the old baronial times of the days of the " boar's head and rosemary" is always one of the most striking an hitectural features of the college 70 ENGLISH TOWNS. building. It is a fine and lofty room, with arched or fretted or handsomely-designed roof, the walls adorned with rich panelling and carvings, statues, heraldic de- vices, armorial shields, and old inscriptions, and hung with the portraits of founders and benefactors, kings, queens, statesmen, and soldiers. It is generally oaken, with stone or wooden floors. At one end of the great hall, the farthest from the entrance, on a raised surface, is placed the table of the master and fellows, extending across the room ; on the lower level of the floor are tables for the undergrad- uates, running the length of the room, and placed at right angles with the master's table. All are served at the same time and alike. When the hour for dinner comes, the master and fellows, with their guests if there are any, assemble in the combination-room, another fine chamber, of which anon, and move from there into the dining-room, the master leading. The same order of procession and seating of guests holds as at any gen- tleman's table. As the procession from the combina- tion room enters the main hall, the undergraduates, who are already seated, rise from their benches and stand as the college passes. When the procession reaches the head of the table, one of the students reads or intones a brief Latin prayer, and all seat them- selves. At the close of the meal the same ceremony is repeated, the undergraduates rising and standing at attention as the master and fellows pass out. In Queen's College, Oxford, I believe the summons to dinner is yet blown from a trumpet by a tabarder, but this is exceptional. This college dinner, taken thus every day in the academic ancestral hall, in the presence of the effigies of great men and good women, the founders and an- cestors of the house, in the midst of historic associations and venerable traditions, is the dress-parade of univer- sity life. The dinner, I should have said before, is the ordinary CAMBRIDGE. 71 solid English evening meal of four or five courses, a soup, a fish, roast meat and vegetables, a salad and dessert. Ale is served the undergraduates on allowance, I believe. On the master's tables there are generally wines, in some colleges on allowance, at others ordered at cost prices. The Englishman, however, generally always drinks a huge flagon or tankard of ale with his wines, sometimes before and sometimes after. It seems always to be in place to the British stomach. The col- lege cellars, I need hardly add, are most excellent: tra- dition does its work kindly and gently even here, and one generation takes care of the next. Dinner over, the undergraduates are dismissed to their roonn, while the master and fellows retire to "the com- bination-room," where over their coffee and after-dinner wines the evening is spent in conversation and discourse. The combination-room is a spacious chamber, large enough usually to accommodate forty to sixty men, in solid old-fashioned arm-chairs, with tables, rests, screens, and stools. It is also hung with memorial paintings of benefactors, masters, distinguished "fellows" who have passed out into the world and become statesmen, cardinals, generals, writers, martyrs, or won fame in any wav. Every old college has its gallery of these its honored children, and they are among its chiefest treas- ures. The room itself quickly becomes a centre of in- teresting association and academic tradition. In our combination-room at Emmanuel, for instance, more than one hundred years ago, Dr. Samuel Johnson was a fre- quent visitor, and the spot where he always sat, just to the left of the warm chimney-place as you face it, is pointed out as a tradition to-day, and the broad chairs we sat in this year were the same used then. It was in the combination-room of Oriel College, when Keble, and Whateley, and Newman, and Arnold, and Pusey were follows, that the celebrated " Tractarian" move- ment took its start. The fellows of a college in residence at times may be 72 ENGLISH TOWNS. only eight or ten, when, of course, this room is too large, but the little groups gather in the gloaming of the fireplace, and the effect of the shadows around them advancing or retreating into the dark recesses of the spacious walls is very picturesque. Wax candles, I may say here, with their antique religious light, are en rtyle in a well-regulated old combination-room, gas being too modern and shoddy. A solemnly stately but- ler, with white hair and portly, judicial air, is also an indispensable property. Smoking, I believe, is not customary in the combina- tion-room, the fellows, who retire at their convenience during the evening, going to their own chambers singly or in squads for a pipe or cigar. At eleven or twelve the English university man brews a pot of hot tea, drinks it, and on this extraordinary sleeping-potion goes to bed. Here ends the college day. Emmanuel College was founded to nourish and as- sert the Puritan principles inside the Church of Eng- land, and for a long time it distinctively represented the Puritan idea in English thought and history. Its very name was a battle-cry. Emmanuel " God with us" was the watchword and popular device of the early Puritans. They wrote it at the head of their letters, used it as a common form of salutation in their homes and on the streets, and later on under Cromwell shouted it at the head of regiments in the crucial hour of battle. The chapel of this Puritan college, as a protest against ec- clesiastical tendencies and superstitious usages, was built plain as a Methodist meeting-house, pointed north and south instead of east and west, and was never consecrated. Those stirring old times are gone, and nothing is left of them at Cambridge, not even the cold ashes of the dead controversies. The ancient theological camp is now the pleasant home of humaner letters and a pas- sionless science which studies their remains as it would the nerves of a frog or the traces of a prehistoric hah- CAMBRIDGE. 73 itation of the globe. Toleration, a spirit of judicial study, is the claim and intellectual boast of the Cam- bridge of to-day. It is its pride now that it never burnt a bishop on either side when the fires of hate and narrowness were flaming over all England. Speaking one evening at King's College table of Whistler, " It may be heresy here," I said, " to admit to an enjoyment of his paintings." "There are no heresies in Cambridge," promptly spoke up the senior fellow at the table. In looking over the worn and somewhat defective records of the early years of Emmanuel College one sees very clearly the direct stream of its influence on the thought and history of our land. From its walls came Thomas Hooker, John Cotton, Nathaniel Ward, John Ward, and many of the lesser divines of colo- nial New England, John Bradshaw, president of the court which tried Charles I., and others of the famous regicides, some of whom sleep to-day on our shores, and also a large number of the historic " Assembly of Divines," who, in the palmy Parliamentary days of Puritanism, drafted the " Shorter Catechism*' in West- minster Abbey. After much search we found, on the original rolls, the date of the taking of his degree of M.A. by John Harvard, the early scholar who has given his name to the new Cambridge University of our country. It was in 1628. This date, I think, has never before been published, not being found in the large two-volumed history of Harvard. The record of graduation seems to have been lost, but the degree is taken in course. Among the incidental library treasures of Emmanuel shown me was an autograph letter from Edward Everett, who visited the college some thirty years ago, examined with interest its records, and on returning home sent it some volumes of New England academic history. It seemed at times rather odd to me to recall the D 7 74 ENGLISH TOWNS. memories of the rigid old Puritanism of self-sacrifice ;uid severe manners and personal austerity the cid Puritanism we know so well in our land here in its modern home. The old Greek walls, with their once hard Protestant lines, are toned and softened and mellowed by time. The rigid distinctive intellectual principles of ancient struggles are lost in the broader culture and wider range of modern thought. The Puritan college of Cambridge to-day does not differ materially from the High Church college or the Broad Church college of the same university. The old names are there held in affectionate memory, like family portraits, but that is all. I hardly think the gaunt old Puritan of the seventeenth century would recognize his Emmanuel boy at Cambridge to-day. I much fear the undergraduate has a carnal knowledge of playing cards and running horses and boat-racing and strange wines and ungodly games, and I do not think the corporate fellows would object to having their college and now-consecrated chapel all covered over with Madonnas and saints and crucifixes, if only it were done in good taste and in the highest glory of mar- ble and stained glass, and mosaic and oaken carving. But these Puritan descendants have not forgotten their fathers. They may not lead their austere lives to-day any more than they should wear their quaint clothes, nor would it do any more good. But they give to all the freedom for which the Puritan fought, and thus afford the sweetest incense to his memory, and in the daily college life keep green the names of the founders and leaders. They venerate the ancestral manes ; they honor their parents in the goodly land which the Lord has given them ; and every evening the gathering in the combination-room is a reverent func- tion in piam memoriam. The libation is generally claret, sometimes port. I was interested in finding how moderate are the CAMBRIDGE. 75 expenses of the undergraduates at Cambridge in com- parison with the generous provision for his living and tuition. An allowance of seven hundred and fifty to one thousand dollars a year will sustain a boy creditably. This sum will not only cover necessary expenditures, but enable him to bear his fair share in the college amusements, boating, cricket, etc., and mix on equal terms with his associates. My friends thought one thousand dollars a rather generous estimate, which should also cover the travelling expenses of the year to and from Cambridge from a home in England. For this sum the student not only gets the thorough train- ing of a strong college, but lives in the strengthening atmosphere of seventeen colleges, with all their splendid inheritance of centuries of tradition and association. In outward organization the university is a union of independent colleges forming a literary commonwealth. These colleges hold to the central government much the relation of our States to the national government at Washington. Indeed, following out the line of this comparison, the university might aptly be called the United Colleges of Cambridge. This phrase will, perhaps, best convey to the American mind the outline of its constitution. Each college manages its own in- tornal affairs, regulates its own admissions, establishes its own cursuSj governs its own students, administers its own endowment, and elects its own master. The university organization masses the forces of the whole of them as against the outside world. It confers de- grees, elects members to Parliament, and generally deals with the outward or " foreign affairs" of the academic commonwealth. Under recent acts of Parliament very considerable changes are being made in the constitution of the uni- versities and the administration of the colleges, but they are too wide and complex to take up in the limits of this paper. The general movement I may say 76 ENGLISH TOWNS. however, is towards centralization, the strengthening the University at the expense of the several individual colleges. In fact, I must stop here, noting only in closing one mediaeval touch of local color. Every night here, pre- cisely at nine o'clock, the curfew-bell sounds. It tolls just the same strokes as in the troubled times of the Norman conquest, carrying us back hundreds of years, but it cannot carry us off to bed any more. CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND. ENGLISH POLITICS. 77 CHAPTER VIII. ENGLISH POLITICAL LIFE. A TRANSITION or SOVEREIGN POWER IN PROGRESS THE ENG- LISHMAN'S DEVELOPMENT FROM THE "SUBJECT" INTO THE " CITIZEN" GOVERNMENT OK THE GREAT FAMILIES THE ARISTOCRATIC ORDER LAND ITS BASIS THE BLOW TO ENGLISH SOCIETY THAT COMES FROM OUR PRAIRIES THE ENGLISH CASTLE AND THE KANSAS WHEAT-FIELD A BLOODLESS AND SILENT REVOLUTION THE RUNNYMEDE OF 1880. ENGLISH politics are an extremely interesting study at this moment, because they are in a transition state, and the old forces and the new define themselves more clearly than when the country is in repose and standing still. The government is passing from the hands of an aristocracy into the hands of the people, and this by reason of a change in the social structure of Eng- land itself. The old England whose corner-stone is class and privilege is dissolving in the new political acids of the nineteenth century. The stratification of society many classes and orders of the people, and these classes resting one upon another is giving way to a new order of things, where, as nearly as possible, society becomes homogeneous, rank is done away with, and all classes are fused into one mass. For many centuries England has been governed by its great families. The castle was the germ of political power, as the township is with us. The people were not sharers in the management of the nation, but "subjects," nominally of the crown, really of that order or, in American parlance, "ring" of great families who made and unmade kings and queens. i y 80 ENGLISH POLITICS. Now the Englishman is developing from the " sub- ject" into the " citizen." This is the silent revolution, social and political, which is in progress to-day in Eng- land. It is noiseless, bloodless, after the fortunate fashion of the land, and moves ever without violence, but it is none the less radical and thorough. No one can look on the landed aristocracy of Great Britain without a sense of profound admiration for the power and self-control which have constructed and sustained the order. For many centuries it has governed England absolutely, controlling to its own use and behoof the power of the crown, the Church, the army, the schools, and subordinating to itself and its own uses trade and commerce and wealth. There has been a breadth and intelligence and self-restraint necessary to achieve and keep all this which challenges respect and admiration. These great families acquired and held all the land of the country, and so held a nation as tenants. When votes became the coin of government, they kept all the votes to themselves. Withal there was a certain conscientiousness in all this princely plunder. They did not defend it as a lordly robbery. They wished to show a better title than the sword for this high estate, and so they held it all in trust for the nation. The ballot was a trust in the hands of the few to be exercised for the benefit and good of the many. This was Burke's famous theory, brilliantly elaborated in his brilliant style, and doubt- less he believed it. And if you ask an English lord of to-day, he will tell you that he holds his magnificent estates, hundreds of broad farms, villages, towns, counties, not as a selfish personal possession, but in trust for all the people. Nevertheless, in both of these instances it is clearly a case where the trusteeship is more desirable than the usufruct. The people have gotten the votes to themselves, and now they are getting the land. This is the revolution. Without question, the large English holder by descent ENGLISH POLITICAL LIFE. gj does feel a responsibility over, which the American landowner by purchase never experiences. His fathers did acquire their land as a trust, to defend the kingdom. The trust has passed now into a different shape, and those who are conscientious recognize it. The defect of the theory is that those who are not conscientious or intel- ligent do not recognize it, and there is no way of making them. The suffering usufructuaries have no remedy. The submergence of the English aristocracy -in the waves of the people is a sight which even the American re- publican views not without a certain sadness. The ultimate gain to the whole people is large. The immediate loss .to the world is definite and sharp. As a class the aristocracy of England is probably the best and highest that has ever been. It has IK-CD more con- scientious, more dignified, of a higher nmral and in- tellectual grade, than the nobility of any other country. To its blood and birth it has added education and wealth, consecrating them to its high social and politi- cal uses. Thus it has become educated without pedan- try, and wealthy without vulgarity. It is this trinity of hereditary power and education and wealth which has made it strong and permanent. As a consequence of all this it has evolved a very high type of man and woman, a flower for the enjoy- ment of all the world. In physical health, in personal cultivation, in gentle manners, in a delicate sense of honor, in the perfection of his mode and order of life at home, the English gentleman of our day stands without a rival. Other classes of other countries may approach or equal him in some one of these points, but in the com- bination of them all there is none that comes near him. Now, the lower-class Englishman, in whom, by the force of numbers, he will be lost, is not a pleasing or desirable order of man. When the English aristoc- racy goes down it is not merely the dissolving of a venerable historical picture, like a ruined abbey or a fallen castle. It is a positive loss. Thoughtful Eng- 82 ENGLISH POLITICS. lishmen to-day will tell you that the imminent clanger to English society is the coming up of large masses of uneducated wealth, which, presumptuous and vulgar just in proportion to its ignorance, deteriorates and lowers the tone of opinion and thus degenerates the fibre of the whole social structure. This is so in every country, but is especially so in England, for the lower-class English- man is a peculiarly ungracious and disagreeable kind of being. The safety of England and the hope of good for all her classes lie in the fact that this change has been going on very slowly. Just at present, however, there are many indications that a crisis is threatening that may hasten the course of English history beyond its average slow movement, Curiously enough, the impulse comes directly from our side of the ocean. Land is the basis of the English aristocracy. Its rentals have been their revenue, and all of it, for a peer could not go into trade. The rental of land depends ultimately on its bread-yielding power, the value of the wheat it will raise. But land, having become the corner-stone of social position and power of all kinds, has come to have a fictitious value in England far be- yond its wheat-raising value. The new-made millionaire in England is nothing until he owns a large country estate. This, and this alone, will give him any position in the county and open, grudgingly and sparingly enough it is true, the doors of society. Consequently, the new manufacturer and tradesman buy it at any price. Thus it has come to pass that in recent years, while the rents or income of land have been coming down, the price of land has been going up. The new men want it without reference to its legitimate value. With the rise of commercial fortunes values have been going up all over England, as over the world. It costs more to live, and the landed classes, even if getting the rents of a hundred years ago, are relatively poorer. But ENGLISH POLITICAL LIFE. g^ they do not get the old rents, for the value of wheat is going down all the time; and the value of wheat is the measure of the rent which the tenant-farmer can pay. It is the farmer whose profits support the landed aristoc- racy. The castle rests on the farm. Now, it is the tre- mendous importation, at ever cheaper rates, of our American wheat into England which is steadily lower- ing the market price of English wheat and the rental of English farms. Thus comes a dramatic situation. The Kansas fanner, the men of Minnesota, Nebraska and Dakota, all-innocent of their work, are sapping away the foundations of the aristocracy of England. Every swath in a Western wheat-field topples a stone from an English castle. The social and political fate of the strongest and ablest aristocracy of Europe is being worked out to-day on a foreign continent and by emigrants from Europe, the stones which the builders rejected there. It is Nemesis. This is the situation, and every year it is getting worse and worse, for every year the price of land will represent less and less its bread-yielding power and more and more its social power, and with the perfection of transportation and the opening of wider areas to cul- tivation American wheat will be laid cheaper and cheaper at English doors. Then, again, another pres- sure hastens the crash. Growing slowly poorer, the landed nobility have been for a generation or two doing what most other people do in like situation, borrowing and mortgaging their land. To-day the landed estates of England, as a whole, are heavily encumbered, many of them up to their full value. As the power to pay off debt is steadily decreasing, this effort for relief only speeds the final disaster. One of the imminent questions which confronts most gravely the new Parliament is some plan for the relief by law of the landed estates of Great Britain burdened by the debts and charges of generations. 84 ENGLISH POLITICS. However radical the social and political changes in progress in England, there will not likely be any change in the form of government in onr time : Eng- land loves a form too well. The great families admin- istered their aristocratic government under the form of a monarchy. The people likely will administer a re- publican government under the same monarchical form. England to-day is as republican as we are in many things, but the old forms remain unchanged, venerable and picturesque, but lifeless. This is the revolution which is going on to-day in the England of our sight, and it is as great and impor- tant as any in her history, as sharp in its lines, as far- reaching in its consequences. Conventional travellers seek out the plains of Runnymede to sentimentalize or indulge in patriotic platitudes, but there is a current flowing through Westminster to-day, and at every election-poll in England, with a stream clearer and swifter and more fateful than ever ran the historic water-brooks of Surrey. CHAPTER IX. GLADSTONE. THE ENGLISH STATESMAN IN HIS LONDON HOME A PEN- PORTRAIT OF THE MAN THE SCHOLAR IN EUROPEAN POLI- TICS MR. GLADSTONE ON AMERICAN GOVERNMENT ADMIN- ISTRATION THE PAYMENT OF OUR NATIONAL DEBT His FUNDAMENTAL REPUBLICANISM FREE TRADE. I FOUND Mr. Gladstone, the scholar-statesman of England, among books, letters and MSS., and volumes laid in successive strata on his table. The last number of the Nineteenth Century served as a paper-weight, holding down a mass of official parchments. A file GLADSTONE. 85 of Greek newspapers peeped out from the covert of a pigeon-hole, Cyprus was then the b&e noir of English polities, looking like erudite mummies among the strapped and indorsed bundles of parliamentary briefs and " orders for the day." The " Homeric studies" of the Oxford "double-first" scholar were coming into the most practical kind of play as a political force. Dis- raeli himself could not have asked a more dramatic situation. Mr. Gladstone's London dwelling is a plain, spacious house, one of a substantial "row," with the ordinary architectureless front of a close-built city street. It stands on Harley Street, in one of the most solid and respectable quarters of London. Inside there is only the usual provision of the average well-off citizen, a great deal of comfort, but no display. He avoids the palace-atmosphere in his own home, just as he eschews the glamour of imperial ideas in politics. Simplicity is, indeed, one of Mr. Gladstone's ruling characteristics. The visiting-card of the ex-premier of England reads simply "Mr. W. E. Gladstone." This is, indeed, all the rank he is entitled to under the social laws of England, which are held more binding 1 and sacred throughout the land than the acts of Par- liament. It is one of the triumphs of the English social organization, which it has taken centuries to perfect, that at a London dinner-party Mr. Gladstone (out of office) would have to yield precedence to any hobbledehoy of a school -boy whose father chanced to be an earl. In this modest house the work-room of the veteran statesman is a moderate-sized chamber on the second story, lined with books and very solidly furnished with heavy table, large, comfortable leathern chairs, and a few fine engravings, some of political, some of art interest, the day's papers on the floor. A vase of fresh flowers, full of color and bloom, smiled through the sombre smoke and muddy fog of London. 8 86 ENGLISH POLITICS. In personal appearance Mr. Gladstone is an active, lithe, muscular man, rather tall, and of well-propor- tioned frame. His face and figure have that clear-cut contour which generally indicates several generations of intellectual activity and personal leadership. Mr. Gladstone is the descendant of a long line of Scottish lairdmen of small wealth and limited possessions, but accustomed to stand first in their community, to think, and to lead. The face is scholarly, cultivated, its out- lines boldly defined by that meagreness of muscle which distinguishes the intellectual athlete. There is not an ounce of superfluous flesh on it. The thin lips and well- cut mouth and chin betoken firmness, determination, and endurance. Seventy summers have sat lightly on Mr. Gladstone, but the years have brought their bless- ing of rest, and his face in general wears the repose of strength and experience, strongly lined with the record of struggle and thought. A new fact, however, or an aggressive opinion wakes the whole man with the fire of youth, and the eye flashes with eager light, and the body bends quickly forward, as if to grasp a fresh ac- quisition. Like all strong Englishmen, Mr. Gladstone is a man of large physical power and endurance, fond of out- door air and work, and the ring of his axe at Hawar- den, so familiar to England, has echoed even across the Atlantic. An Eton boy and a Christ Church graduate, I found at Oxford that the great university had already in living memory enrolled Mr. Gladstone among her jewels of state, with Wolsey and Pole and Laud and Hampden and Vane and Clarendon and Sir Thomas More and Marlborough and Pitt, and the long list of her sons who have led in field and council, consecrating their trained powers to the service of their country. If Mr. Gladstone owes' to his university the intellectual training and discipline which have enabled him to stand foremost am^ng the political leaders of his time, he has GLADSTONE. 87 amply repaid the debt in the conscientious devotion with which he has served at the altars of learning dur- ing a busy and eventful life, and a long one, for the premier's political career began within one year from his college graduation, when he was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative. Within two years from that time he was in the ministry as an under-secretary. Notwithstanding the strain of a continuous political career in a country whose political service is, perhaps, the most exacting in the world at this time, its interests encircling the globe, Mr. Gladstone has been a most prolific writer, his range of study and discussion run- ning pretty much over all the fields of modern thought. His greater works, " Homer and the Homeric Age," "Juventus Mundi," "Ecce Homo," "Vatican De- crees," are, perhaps, as well known to the educated classes of our own country as to those of England. They do not begin, however, to represent the immense bulk and varied range of Mr. Gladstone's literary labors. These are best seen in the wonderful wealth of his magazine articles, which have flowed in a steady stream for a generation now through the periodical press of England. An edited collection just made by one of the London publishers forms quite a respectable library in itself. In fact, Mr. Gladstone's contributions to the magazine literature of the day have been more voluminous than those of many a professional writer. In outlining Mr. Gladstone's literary rank and work one cannot help noting the absence of any high schol- arship in American politics as contrasted with its marked presence in European statesmanship. Edu- cation, of course, is a prerequisite for the European politician, but, further, a respectable degree of scholar- ship may even be said to be demanded. Personal cul- tivation, I may add, is a further incidental qualification growing out of the social structure of the Old World. A glance at the English political leaders of the day shows how thoroughly scholarship has entered into 88 ENGLISH POLITICS. their lives. Disraeli, ex-premier, is a distinguished novelist. Of Gladstone, premier of to-day, author, essayist, magazinist, I have just spoken, and I might have noted his breathing Latin renderings of standard hymns which have gone into classic literature. The late Earl of Derby, another premier, is known the learned world over f % or his translation of the Iliad. Lord Brougham was almost the first scholar of his day. The Earl of Caernarvon, a distinguished reviewer, has just published a translation of the Agamemnon of JEschylus. The Duke of Argyll has published elabo- rate works on politico-theological themes. Coming down a little farther, Lord Hough ton finds leisure from his duties in the House of Peers to con- tribute a volume of poems, while such active political workers as Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. Edward Jenkins, Sir George Campbell, Henry Vivian, M.P., Lord Lytton, Sir Bartle Frere, Lord Dufferin, Sir Henry Rawlinson, and others, have all published popular books of more or less literary ability. Sir Garnet Wolseley is an accomplished military writer, author of an admirable "Soldiers' and Officers' Hand-Book." Henry Fawcett, M.P., is professor of political economy at Cambridge as well as a distinguished writer. Coming to France, it is no less striking. Thiers has given to the world a piZce de resistance in twenty vol- umes. Victor Hugo, Girardin, Lamartine, Laboulaye, Montalembert, Jules Simon, Guizot, are names familiar and distinguished equally in politics and in literature. The Comte de Paris has produced the most elaborate and the best history of our civil war yet written, and perhaps the best of all the books called out by our great struggle. Olivier has a new work just announced, and Jules Favre one just out. Even Louis Napoleon felt it desirable to assume a virtue if he had it not, and issued an imperial "Life of Caesar." - In Italy, Menghetti, prime minister of the outgoing Cabinet, is known for his large work on " Church and GLADSTONE. 89 State/' and Pantaleone, senator and soldier, lias brought out an elaborate volume "Against Infallibility." In Germany the greatest national force of the day every Cabinet has some of its chairs filled by doctors of philosophy, and even the generals are trained schol- ars. In fact, in this country, where the entire mass of the nation has almost a finished education, the political leaders must be men of trained intellectual power. Compare all this with our own poverty. General John A. Dix won some possibly permanent literary distinction by a scholarly translation of the "Dies Ira3." Charles Sumner was a vigorous and polished writer. The present Secretary of the Navy has entered the field of polemics. There are some New England names in politics entitled to be mentioned respectfully in the world of letters ; but how brief the list, and how meagre for the whole country ! The American legislator's education is pretty much confined to votes and voting, just that particular field of knowledge which English public opinion prohibits its legislator from entering, forcing him to relegate all this kind of work to " the agent," a special political institution over here, as incompatible with the standing and character of a law- giver. Like the "w"hip," the "agent" is a distinctive feature in English practical politics to which we have no direct equivalent. I shall describe them both farther on. In the course of conversation Mr. Gladstone grew quite eloquent in praise of the work of the successive administrations of our government since the war, warm- ing almost into enthusiasm as he recounted their achieve- ments in reducing the public debt, and asking practical questions as to the internal direction of this uniform policy through so many administrations, and as to its popular political effects on the country at large. The well-considered, almost scientific character of these in- quiries showed how thoroughly Mr. Gladstone has studied and how closely he has followed our course in this matter. Indeed, he has made great practical 8* 90 ENGLISH POLITICS. political use of it, from session to session, for some years, in fighting the Conservative party. It was the ambition of Mr. Gladstone as leader of the Ministry of 1868-74 to follow in a modest way our lead in this direction, and he did grapple directly with the national debt of England, monster as it is, and initiated a very promising movement towards its dimi- nution. Since his outgoing the movement has not been carried on, but I have no doubt the attempt will be re- newed under his present administration. In truth, in a general way Mr. Gladstone is rather extravagantly laudatory of our country, standing up stoutly to all the assertions in his recent famous " Next of Kin" article, so complacently received on our side of the water, so severely criticised on this. I told him frankly I thought he had done us some substantial harm by this brilliant paper, as our national sense of self- sufficiency is not, as a rule, in need of stimulant, but he avers that we were entitled to all he said. Mr. Gladstone has unquestionably made a close study of our public men and measures of late years, and takes heart for England from our achievements, believing that the two great popular governments of the English- speaking peoples of the world must move in the same direction, and that what one can achieve the other can do. He has a familiar knowledge of the interior work- ing of our political system, and of the work and char- acter of our really prominent men, the men whose speeches have shown thought enough to catch the ear of foreign statesmen. Mr. Gladstone avers that our national integrity in the payment of our public debt the efforts both of the people and of administrations made to this end is something unprecedented in political history. To this point he returned again and again with unflagging in- terest, inquiring whether the nation never grew restive under the continued pressure of taxation, whether it was made a leading issue in the campaign before the GLADSTONE. 91 people, and expressing his renewed admiration for the courage and integrity of the leaders who carried it through, and of the people who are capable of such things. Mr. Gladstone, whom I met in the fall of 1879, when he was out of office, was kind enough to go at some length into the party situation of the hour, re- vealing his mental and political cast in this unstudied conversation, following its own drift, far better than in an elaborate speech or article. He has all the essential fibre of republicanism. He has that faith in the people which it is so hard to find in a country where society rests on a foundation of sharply-distinct and separated classes. He is, as a consequence, the instinc- tive enemy of imperialism and all it tends to and longs for, hating its dreams and ventures with a hearty hatred. He believes thoroughly in movement forward, which, for an old man in an old country, is a sign of a very young heart. The very atmosphere of Europe is depressing and calculated to make one lose faith in human progress. Indeed, I have noticed that even the American domiciled long in the Old World loses insen- sibly that sense of the recognition of a common man- hood in all men which is a part of our inheritance. Mr. Gladstone out of office was as much a power as in. The Marquis of Hartington was the technical leader of the Opposition, and did really " drive the politi- cal machine" on the floor of the House of Commons, but Mr. Gladstone was the heart of the party, the power around which the intelligence and personal confidence of liberal England gathered, as the parliamentary cam- paign of 1880 abundantly demonstrated. To-day he is again at the head of the England that is making history. "Free trade" is a popular political enthusiasm or sentiment with the Englishman, something like the instinctive assertion of the Monroe doctrine with us, and in this matter Mr. Gladstone is the prophet of his 92 ENGLISH POLITICS. people. For it he has labored all his life, and has a word, in season or out, to be cast on good soil or barren. During this visit the subject had not come up, but at the door of the room, after having shaken hands, it seemed to strike Mr. Gladstone suddenly, and, coming out into the hall, he resumed conversation earnestly on this new tack, firing out some facts and arguments from a thoroughly unstudied and unconventional position over the banisters. " Oh ! I want to say a word, frankly and heartily, as we English always do : Why do you persist in your illogical policy of protection ?" ete., etc. " You Ameri- cans are having everything your own way ; you are competing against us all the time in manufactures; you will beat us finally in the long run. Why will you retard your own progress ?" " Well, Mr. Gladstone, I come from a city of manu- facturers, and we are perfectly satisfied with our rate of progress ; in fact, our great national danger is always of going ahead too fast, and the very best policy for us is one that does retard us a little." And the momentary colloquy closed as discussions on this subject always do. LONDON. CHAPTER X. AN ENGLISH ELECTION. FIXING THE TIME OF BATTLE THE BRIEF CAMPAIGN KE- TURNING A MEMBER MEETING OF THE ELECTORS CON- TESTING A SEAT NATURE AND COST OF THE EXPENSES OF AN ENGLISH PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION THE ENGLISH- WOMAN AT THE POLLS WOMAN AND SOCIETY IN POLITICS. AN English parliamentary election is so different from ours, and the differences show so sharply some AN ENGLISH ELECTION. 93 of the divergences in practice of our twc political systems, which are so similar on paper, so dissimilar in fact, that they can best be developed and contrasted in describing the practical process of returning a member. In the first place, the time of holding elections is not fixed by law, but depends on the will of either one or the other party, an immense tactical advantage for whichever party is able to secure it. When Parlia- ment dissolves, an immediate election is held for the next one. The party in power can dissolve whenever they wish, if there is any reason so to do. Disraeli was watching, for instance, the whole of the year 1879 for a desirable opportunity to dissolve the Parliament whose limitation of seven years was expiring, ready to do so at whatever moment he deemed the public mind was in a favorable condition to return a Conservative majority in the next. But while the party in power have the first shot for this great chance of fixing the time of battle, the Opposition, if it should find itself strong enough to defeat the Ministry, can bide its time for that, and force a dissolution, and the consequent elec- tion of a new Parliament at the moment of its choice. In either case the election takes place at the will of the management of either one or the other party, and is not at stated periods fixed beforehand by law. In the second place, when an election comes the struggle is immediate, short, and sharp. Ten to twenty days is full time for a national political campaign in England. In that brief time all the work is done, and the struggle is over, this, too, in a country where the public pulse does not beat nearly so fast as with us, and where ideas travel very slowly. From London to Edinburgh is in railway time about the distance from New York to Pittsburgh, but an idea will travel from Maine to California ten times faster than from Surrey to Scotland. Nevertheless, the Englishman puts through his political campaigns ten times more rapidly than, we do. 94 ENGLISH POLITICS. The process of an election, or as they call it here " returning a member," is in this wise: When the time comes, either by a general dissolution or by cause of a special vacancy, a writ goes out from Westminster to each constituency (American, election district) to send forthwith, or within a certain brief time mentioned, the member or members which constitute its representation* as fixed by law. This election district is not as with us a given number of population temporarily defined for that purpose. It is a borough, a county, a city, a university that has at one time or another acquired the right to a certain representation. This writ goes out to the returning officer, who is generally the head of the election district whatever it be, the mayor of a city, the high sheriff of a county. This returning officer immediately calls a public meeting of the legal electors to send a member. This meeting takes place, I believe, generally about two days after the reception of the writ. The returning officer who called it presides. Any elector may there nominate a member. The nomination is generally made by the most prominent and influential gentleman in the county or borough. If it is seconded by four other gentlemen, so that five electors join in proposing, the nomination is duly and fully made. The presiding officer waits a due interval to hear if any other nomi- nations are proposed, and, if none are, he then and there declares that the nominee proposed is duly returned, and issues to him at once his certificate, and the whole thing is over. Should there, however, be any other candidates, their friends immediately put them in nomination, the names of five electors in each case being needed to bring a name before the meeting. W T hen two or more have been so nominated the presiding officer announces that the electors have failed to make any return and that their choice must be decided by a ballot, and he fixes a day for taking this ballot, generally from two to ten AN ENGLISH ELECTION. 95 days from the meeting. The ballot is therefore only a contingency in an English election, and not the sonl of it, as with us. In ancient times it hardly came into play at all, and even in the general election of 1880 very many members were returned without its use. This appeal to the ballot is what in England is called contesting a county or borough. "A contest" in Eng- land is not a scrutiny of the vote as with us, but exactly what we call "running" for afiy office. Before any candidate, however, is declared duly in nomination, he must, if there is this contest, give bond to the returning officer, with two good securities, for his share of the costs of the election. The terms and amount of this bond are in the judgment of the return- ing officer. If the candidate cannot give it, his nomina- tion drops. Up to this time the proceedings have cost nothing. If there has been no contest, the gentleman nominated has a seat in Parliament without the expendi- ture of a cent. With the "contest" or running, however, the work gets serious. This bond is the check-rein to individual political ambition in England. A member of Par- liament receives no salary ; the costs of obtaining a scat by an election average at the least five thousand dollars; should Parliament dissolve in thirty days after it convenes, as is perfectly possible, the seat is gone and all is lost. It is always a mystery to an American politician why the expenses of an English election are so heavy, and what they can be. I think the general belief among us is that this five thousand dollars and it sometimes goes up to twenty-five thousand dollars or over is simply a bribery and corruption fund, but it is not so necessarily, and hardly ever directly. In England an election is an affair of the candidates entirely, and not of the people, as with us. They hold it and conduct it, and not the state. Out of their own pockets, therefore, they must provide for all the expenses. They pay for 96 ENGLISH POLITICS. the printing of the tickets and all blanks and forms, for the hiring of watchers, inspectors, and clerks, and for the rent of all the polling-places, which in a large district, as in some parts of London, may be enormous. These expenses they share among themselves, and it is to mutually secure these that the bond is given. There are also other individual expenses which are legitimate, and which are special to England. The lower-class Englishman has not that taste for politics which is inbred with us, and great exertion is needed to "get out the vote," which is always light contrasted with our polling. Now, the most delicate attention you can pay the English voter is to haul him to the polls in an open two-horse barouche. The lower-grade vote generally insists on this, and as a consequence the outlay for carriages is always a tremendous item in a candidate's bill. A carriage for an election day also is apt to cost more than for any other day in the year. Again, the canvass in England is conducted through " agents," whose functions will be explained farther on. These agents are generally local attorneys. As many are used as may be needed, and gradually the custom is spreading of having more and more, until now I am assured that in a rural election the entire local bar is often divided between the opposing candidates. These at- torneys' fees, too, are sometimes regulated on the same principle as are the bills of the livery-stable keepers. There is no trouble at all spending the five thousand dollars when one understands the customs of the country. Finally, the count of the vote is made by the candi- dates themselves, and not by the state. On their mutual report of the result the returning officer makes out his certificate. The most novel feature, however, by all odds, of an English election to American eyes is the presence of women in it ; and the active part they take in the can- AN ENGLISH ELECTION. 97 vass. There is no Duchess of Devonshire to kiss the butchers nowadays, but the ladies of England freely lend their charms to the adornment of the hustings all the kingdom over, and take a personal share and intel- ligent sympathy in the work. The wife, mother, and sisters of the candidate, and sometimes his cousins and his aunts and his friends, appear on the platform with him, or ride in open carriages with him and his party from point to point during the canvass of a city, or on the critical day of the polling, and their names, movements, and appearance are duly chronicled in the daily prints. Gladstone's wife and daughters it will be remembered were with him through all his wonderful invasion of Scotland, and they also "assisted" his son in his contest for an English seat. A youthful Lord Ramsey ran on the Liberal ticket for Liverpool during my stay in the country. His young wife accompanied him everywhere, and her presence really seemed to be popularly his strong point. The Liberal papers referred editorially again and again to " this interesting couple," and kept the picture steadily before the people. It evidently was a political force. The canvass of a county whose political control is in the hands of a great family, may be almost a kind of picnic. The candidate drives out every day from the ca-t!c with a brilliant party of lords and ladies, and if he is fortunate speaks on the platform from the centre of a bouquet of countesses and Honorable Marys, a lovely kind of election committee forever out of the reach of an Ameri- can politician. On occasions the candidate and his friends who speak with him appear in evening dress and with bouquets at the button-holes, a proceeding that would be rather desperate here. In England society is a power in politics; here it is something which the average voter resents. The women of course enter into politics with that charming disregard for principles and regard for men which is so pleasing a characteristic of the sex e* r ery- B 9 98 ENGLISH POLITICS. where, and their participation lends a piquant flavor to a political campaign entirely lost to us. The politics, like the Church, of an old family, however, is generally a matter of descent. It is not likely that this phase of political life will ever obtain here. In England politics enters into the very fibre of society, and is part of the social structure. The family is the unit of society there, and not the individual, as with us. The government of the king- dom up to this time has been entirely a matter of certain great families, part of their property and occupation, and naturally all the family take an in- terest in it. Gentlemen the young sons of peers or influential county families as little able to do any political work as school-girls themselves, also often go around with the party, lending the influence of the family and name by their presence. It is something like sending the empty family-carriage to a funeral, but it does the work with the English voter. Englishwomen, it should be added, by the force of this kind of education learn, after a fashion, a good deal of politics, and have a knowledge of public affairs and take an interest in their country which the American woman does not. When a girl can help her lover into Parliament, which, in England, means something much more than going to Congress here, or a married woman can distribute secretaryships or curacies for social vas- salage faithfully performed, politics becomes fully as interesting as dancing or millinery. LONDON. THE INTERROGATION POINT IN POLITICS. 9 1 i 1 Door. LOWER END. 10* 114 ENGLISH POLITICS. are not conspicuous, and the right at least of this table is occupied by the ministry, with their secretaries and papers, this section of the floor is popularly spoken of as the treasury bench, although that designation in strictness belongs only to the short front bench where sit officially the leaders of the Right. The space on the floor between the two tiers of right and left benches is perhaps fifteen to twenty feet, and stretches the entire length of the room. Its uppermost boundary is " the treasury bench," its lowermost limit " the bar." This is the arena, or clear floor, into which our members are so fond of getting when they want to make a speech and give the nation a full view of them- selves. No member of the English Parliament, how- ever, dare speak from this space, which is always kept clear. It is an established rule of the House, come down from the centuries now, and a usage stronger than any written regulation, that no member shall address the House save from some spot where, if he sat down, he would sit down on something. So every member must stand to his bench, and most unsatisfactory, awk- ward, and uncomfortable places are they to speak from. This is undoubtedly a " survival," as is everything you meet here. I furnish a rough draft or diagram which gives at a glance a bird's-eye view of the political topography of the House of Commons. The knowledge of this, al- though apparently an incidental and ancillary matter, is very important for a familiar understanding of Eng- lish politics, as the ordinary political phraseology is ba^ed on it, and in speeches and newspaper articles the bulk of references to parties, sections, or members is made to them not by name, but to the location where they sit. Sitting on long benches, or pews, with no conveni- ences of table or desk, the members, when in the chamber, must attend to public business. They cannot write private letters or do their committee work during PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. H5 the session, as at Washington. Nor can they adorn the furniture of the House with their feet. They can, however, when bored, read newspapers and sleep, although the position for sleeping is not a happy one, and gives the sleeper rather a drunken and disjointed air. The members sit with their hats on, another his- toric survival. This usage comes down as an assertion of the dignity and sovereignty of the House that it did not have to uncover before any one. As a matter of fact, now only about one-half of the House wear hats at one time, a member relieving himself appa- rently by sometimes wearing and sometimes removing his hat. This custom in this century results in any- thing but an effect of dignity, particularly when the Hou.se is half-asleep. In fact, it often gives a rowdy, bar-room appearance or tone to the whole room. It has, perhaps, one advantage. When a noble lord is undergoing a severe attack from the champion of the other side, he simply thrusts both hands away down into his trousers-pockets, jams his broad-rimmed silk hat far down over his eyes, projects his motionless crossed legs stiffly forward, and in this statesmanlike iotrenchment no movement or play of his features can betray him. In front of the Speaker's table, on a lower desk (not in the diagram), used by the clerks, lies a huge golden club. It is the mace, a substantive historic survival, and the outward and visible symbol of the power of the House. When the House goes out of session and sits in committee of the whole the mace is removed and slung on rests under the table. Whenever a division is taken in the House of Com- mons the members are all told off bodily by a most clumsy proceeding, a custom which evidently comes down from a very ancient and primitive time. All the members get up and leave the floor, deserting the cham- ENGLISH POLITICS. her absolutely. They are literally poured out into a hall, where they separate themselves into two lobbies, the " ayes" going into one lobby and the "noes 7 ' into another. From these lobbies they file out, each lobby pouring out its contents through its own door between a pair of tellers. The vote is thus counted, and there is no other way of taking it if the yeas and nays are called for. Calling for a division, therefore, is a very serious matter in the way of delay. Half a dozen counts may consume a whole afternoon or evening session, especially if any of the members choose to loiter in the hall or lobby. By another curious formality, whenever a division was called we " visitors of the House" were removed from our private dock to an outer chamber, and when the ceremony was over brought back again. The reason gravely given for this usage is " lest any stranger might get mixed with the members and counted/' During one night I went out thus three times to avoid the danger of being pressed in as a British legislator. The description of these arrangements the ma- chinery of the House of Commons has consumed so much space, that I postpone to another letter some de- scription of the appearance of the House itself and of its ways and modes of doing business as compared with ours. I conclude with some explanation of a human instru- ment of machine politics which we do not have on our side of the water, in just the same shape, at least, the " whip." It is the duty of the " whip" to see that the neces- sary party " vote" is always on hand in case it should be needed either to carry a measure or to prevent an ad- journment. An adjournment can always be had here if there are less than forty members in their seats and any one chooses to call for a count. Jn this land, where parliamentary attendance is so PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. H7 very negligent, the duty of the " whip" is no light one, and requires a large amount of tact, knowledge of so- ciety and the different social relations of the members, prudence, judgment, and sagacity. He must not be nervous and detail the members for duty when they are not needed. He must not be reckless or over-confident or let himself be misled or deceived ou the other hand, and be found without any forces when the vote is called. Everything over here if once tried and accepted works itself very quickly into shape and becomes an institution. The " whip" is now a recognized and well-established cog-wheel in British machine politics. He is always one of the under-secretaries of the treasury, I think, the second under-secretary. His real work is not the treasury business, of course, but the party manage- ment and engineering. He has a special office-room in the Parliament building, one of the treasury-rooms, fitted up for his particular uses and work, with tele- graph, messengers, clerks, etc. By courtesy the whip of the Opposition has also a room allowed him in the building, similarly fitted up, to do his party work in, which, to say the least, is very generous of the party in power. However, the taxes of the people pay for both the rooms. When the Opposition come into power their whip is, by now-established usage, entitled to the post in the new Ministry of second under-secretary of the treasury, and thus the machine works smoothly on. LONDON. 138 ENGLISH POLITIC CHAPTER XIV. PARLIAMENT (CONTINUED). HOUSE OF COMMONS THE WRITTEN CONSTITUTION AND THE UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION Two SYSTEMS OF REPRESENTA- TION THE REPRESENTATION OF NUMBERS AND THE REP- RESENTATION OF INTEREST NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION AND NATIONAL GROWTH SOCIETY IN PARLIAMENT. WHILE the English Parliament and the Congress of the United States are fashioned after the same general shape, the former serving, in fact, as the model of the latter, there are essential and fundamental differences between them that make all hasty comparisons mislead- ing and render the study and practice of English politics something very different from that of American politics. Both bodies are divided into two Houses, an upper and a lower; both bodies are elective (in the English Parliament the seats of the English peers are heredi- tary, but the Scotch and Irish peers are elective) ; both bodies divide the work in much the same way between the two Houses, the lower House controlling the supplies. All these general features of resemblance, however, only serve to hide the radical differences and mislead the superficial observer. I shall endeavor briefly, in a running parallel, and in the simplest language possible, to point out the funda- mental and radical divergencies which exist between the Governments of our two great English-speaking countries, as administered by their national legislatures, and to show in passing how these differences illustrate themselves on the floors of Parliament and Congress in diverse customs, habits, and modes of procedure. To begin with, the controlling organic difference be- PARLIAMENT- THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. H9 tween the two nations is the difference between a growth and a construction. This difference underlies everything, government, politics, law, social structure, and e very-day habit and usage. England is a growth, we are a structure. You see this in everything you look at or consider here, every day and every hour. And wherever there is a difference in the habits, man- ners, or customs of the two people you can nearly always trace it back to this source and determine it by this as a rule. First, of course, this comes out in the constitutions, the bottom and foundation law of both countries. We all know that ours is a pure construction, a plan traced carefully on paper by political draughtsmen for the use of political architects. We know that every word has been carefully studied and every clause and sentence thoughtfully adjusted, or tried to be adjusted. Every word is plainly written, so that every citizen may know it. Many of them have been made the subject of legal interpretation, -even the punctuation lias been so considered. Our Constitution in this feature of ab- solute and entire construction does not differ from a written contract, an insurance prospectus, or a railway company's charter. Our own Constitution being thus rigidly framed and fixed on paper, we unconsciously assume that all others are also. We hear of the " unwritten Constitution" of England and assent to it, but I presume the average American, nine times out of ten, thinks of this phrase loosely as a figure of speech, meaning something, he does not exactly know what. As a matter of literal fact, the Constitution of Eng- land the fundamental and greatest and determining law of the whole country is absolutely unwritten. Nor is it anywhere or in any way divided into chapters and sections and division of topics, as ours. Nor is it, of course, indexed. It is a vast body of customs and usages, most of which are rights which have grown up, 120 ENGLISH POLITICS. rights of the crown ; rights of the Chinch and of special Churches; rights of classes; rights of Parlia- ment and of each House ; rights x>f persons ; rights of colleges, village vestries, abbeys, counties, etc., etc., etc. In the chapter of this volume on Westminster Abbey there is noted a striking illustration of one of these early personal usages grown into a right of national proportions. The whole body of these rights and usages which have grown up from year to year, and from century to century, and which are growing yet, is the English Con- stitution. They have never been gathered together, they have never been recorded ; some of them have perhaps never been definitely reduced to rigid words. No one in England would do all this for them if he could, and no one could, for these rights and usages are living things, changing and growing every day, just as our own bodies grow by constant hourly change. One can think out for himself how this needs affect the daily life and work of the courts and of the legisla- tures, and of the politicians and the statesmen, and how it must make their work diverge from ours. While the English House of Commons and our House of Representatives are both elected by the people, they are elected in an entirely different way, and so as to represent in an entirely different way the body and in- terests of the nation. Here, again, it is growth and construction. We choose our representatives to represent purely the principle of numbers or population, if that is a political principle at all, each male over twenty-one years of age, and not convicted of infamous crime, be he good or bad, educated or uneducated, cultivated or vulgar, with property or without property, a valuable citizen or a worthless citizen, counting one, and being equally represented in an infinitesimal fraction of the member he sends to Congress. We represent only the individual, PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 121 not what he is or may have been. We elect our repre- sentatives, too, by a very simple and easy method, and in mathematical proportion to the numbers of the pop- ulation, everything accurately "constructed," like loga- rithms or the tables of a life-insurance company. The English system of representation, on the other hand, is very complex and very involved, like the un- folding leaves of bud and flower and tree. It is a growth, various interests and classes having achieved represen- tation from time to time as they have forced themselves forward into notice and power. It is also changing every few years, growing. It could not begin to be described in detail within the limits of a letter, being elaborate, complicated, and not in any way reduced to a simple rule, as ours. There are features in it which seem to us to work great inequalities, at least if we take our principle of numbers to be the true one. The great difference between the two systems, how- ever, may be stated thus : That while we represent di- rectly only the individual, the English system undertakes to represent directly a large number of the higher in- terests of the country. The voter does not vote merely as an individual, but for what he is worth to the com- munity as nearly as that can be ascertained. For instance, education is represented when the uni- versities send members to Parliament ; the Church is represented when the bishops sit in the House of Peers ; classes are represented in the same way ; counties are represented when they send members as counties ; boroughs are represented when they send members as boroughs ; and, finally, property is represented in the property qualification, nearly always attached, of the voter. As a matter of fact, too, the army and the navy, great and important institutions and interests in this country, are always well represented on the floor of the House, this by the personal choice of the voters, how- ever, and not by any direct provision. Labor is rep- resented also in the towns which it has built up, j 11 122 ENGLISH POLITICS. Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and which send members as towns and not by reason of population. It will be seen that the members of Congress and the members of Parliament go to Washington and West- minster in a very different way and represent very different things. The duties and labors of the English Parliament are very vast and onerous as compared with those of the Congress at Washington. Our legislative functions have been distributed by construction to the State gov- ernments and other bodies, while in the gradual growth of centuries all the burdens of the whole nation, and latterly of an empire, have been piled up on Parlia- ment. Our simple distribution of legislative functions is familiar to every one at home. Parliament does, or undertakes to do, everything. It debates on the con- struction of a bridge across the little Thames one day, and the reconstruction of the Indian empire or the con- duct of a foreign war or the peace of Europe the next. In this respect the machine seems to have broken down at present. Everybody, Conservative leader as well as Liberal, admits that the business of the House of Com- mons is at this moment hopelessly in arrears. It is in the condition of a court with an overburdened docket, back, not for terms, but, as is variously estimated, from ten to fifty years. All these great differences of organic law, of struc- ture, of functions show themselves clearly, work themselves down in the appearance, in the manners and usages, and in the mode of proceeding of the two great Houses. When you first look over the House of Commons and contrast it with our House of Representatives, two things strike you at once. You see, first, that the average of years of the representative is higher than with us ; and, second, you find a larger proportion to PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 123 the membership of distinguished men than with us, men of known ability as soldiers, statesmen, thinkers, scholars. The first fact is simply the general tendency and result of a more highly organized and mature com- munity. We send older men from Philadelphia and Boston than from the Kickapoo and Oshkosh and such-like districts. The second fact the larger presence of strong men is directly traceable to the English system of repre- sentation and one of its usages. In the first place, the average grade of the voter in England is higher than with us, which, of course, raises the grade of the rep- resentative. Under the system prevailing now, the very ignorant man or the man without any property interest in his country at all (unless he have a high educational qualification, as on the university lists) is pretty surely excluded from the ballot-box. No Tam- many legions can be marshalled and marched to the polls here; and that is the reason, perhaps, why t hex- march in New York rather than in London or Dublin. Then it is the happy usage of an English constitu- ency to select for their representative the ablest and most distinguished man they can get in their kingdom, whether he is born inside the parish linos of the district or out of them. They want to be represented, not to satisfy the claims of Little Peddlington or this or that cross-roads section. For instance, in 1865, Mr. Glad- stone was returned from South Lancashire, and while serving for that district became the leader of the Liberal party, succeeding Palmerston. In 1868, South Lancashire failed to re-elect him. He was not lost, hoxv- ever, either to England or to the party. Greenwich immediately asked the honor of his candidacy, returned him, and in December, 1868, he was prime minister of England. In our country the xvhole nation xx r ould have suffered for the ignorance of South Lancashire. Again, the Marquis of Harrington, the new leader of 124 ENGLISH POLITICS. the Liberals, at the recent election, stood in a different borough from that which sent him to the previous Par- liament. This judicious "selection of the fittest" can be made in Pennsylvania under our laws, but it is not the cus- tom, and the petty feeling of local prejudice is against ft. The wildest and most barren and meagrely edu- cated district in our mountains can send the most dis- tinguished lawyer or scholar of Philadelphia to repre- sent them in Congress if they want. Had Thaddeus Stevens been rejected by Lancaster, the Chester or the Bradford or any other strong Republican district could have sent him if they had wanted to; but I suppose they would rather have left the House of Representa- tives in the crisis of war without its great leader than to have done so. Another incidental feature of the House which immediately strikes an American is the number of dress-suits scattered over the room, the men who have been to dinner or are going; for "society" here is always distinctly represented in Parliament. I sup- pose we might say that in our country it is not only not represented in Congress, but positively excluded and disfranchised. Here, however, politics is really fashionable. The differences of home structure explain this diver- gency again. There is a great deal of loose talk about the duty of American gentlemen going into politics, and the example of English gentlemen devoting their lives and energies to political work is held up as a conclusive argument. Of course, they should, as a duty, but there is no incentive outside of that. There is no analogy at all between the two cases. The English gen- tleman goes into politics because he has his class inter- ests at stake and must defend them. His lands depend on the stability of the present laws, and he must sup- port them. He is " holding the fort" of his position. Moreover, he has a distinct representation in Parlia- PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 125 ment, his position, his class, his education, his prop- erty, while with us nothing is represented but the individual, his existence as a unit of population. Under the English system not only has "the indi- vidual" a certain representation, but also all that he has been able to add to himself of moral or intellectual worth, or even material wealth. The American gen- tleman in politics, on the contrary, has only the same quality and force as the American blackguard, one vote. The American scholar in politics has only the same quality and force as the American hoodlum one vote. The American millionaire in politics has only the same quality and force as the American communist one vote. The bottom reason why the American gentleman, the American scholar, the American property-holder, do not go into politics, and are so infrequently seen in Washington, is because education, cultivation, and prop- erty as such are not represented in our suffrage system, and there is no constituency, therefore, to send these men. We represent only the " individual," and, con- sequently, as a rule, " individuals" go into politics, and "individuals" are sent to Washington. The dress-coats, I may mention in concluding, are this year mainly on the Government side, although the Marquis of Hartington, the leader of the Opposition, frequently addresses the House in full dinner-costume. Still, Liberalism in some way seems to tend strongly to sack-coats and felt hats and ready-made clothing. LONDON. 11* 126 ENGLISH POLITICS. CHAPTER XV. PARLIAMENT (CONTINUED). HOUSE OF COMMONS THE CRIES OF PARLIAMENT THE SCHOOL- BOY IN PARLIAMENT FAIR PLAY INDIVIDUAL INDEPEND- ENCE ETIQUETTE OF THE FLOOR THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE " POLITICIAN" OR " STATESMAN" DIGNITY OF THE HOUSE DECLINE OF ORATORY SPEAKING IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS CICERO ON THE TREASURY BENCH THE AGENT. I HAVE mentioned the school-boy atmosphere which often marks the House of Commons. English life, or at least the life of the upper, and so far controlling, classes, begins at the public schools of which Eton and Rugby are examples familiar to us and receives there an impress which never leaves it. Looking over the floor of either House of Parliament, you can see there the Eton boy and the university man all the time. They are the foundation of English pub- lic life, not merely intellectual, but moral. There is no more forcible illustration of the surviving force of this boy-education than the cries of Parliament, which sound so strangely to a foreigner, but which he soon sees are a real part of the process of legislation, just as regular and just as effective as the speech- making. Sometimes I thought them more so. These cries, so unusual to our ears, are a kind of low inter- mittent chorus with which the house at 'times accompa- nies the speaker, each political section, " right" and " left," " right above the gangway," " left above the gangway," etc., bearing its part. Unlike the Greek chorus, this accompaniment is not used to explain the plot of the speaker, but it does serve admirably to ex- plain the effect of the speech on the audience and on PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 127 each part of it. Usually, of course, these cries are confined to staccato explosions of dissent or approba- tion at the ends of sentences or at the point of some startling facts or figures. Sometimes, however, a speaker is accompanied from beginning to end with a kind of monotonous chant, rising, swelling, or sinking from time to time and sung in two or more parts. Mr. Edward Jenkins, who is especially distasteful to the Conservatives, generally speaks to music of this kind. These cries are exactly such as might be heard from a school-room of boys anxious to put down a speaker, who by a natural reaction is supported in his turn by his friends, who come up to his aid with an opposing volume of sounds. Singularly enough, these sounds are often generally, I think given more or less fur- tively. You see before you a body of dignified, rather elderly gentlemen ; you know them to be perhaps the strongest legislative body in the world ; you see among them some of the greatest thinkers, writers, and states- men of the time; you recognize some of England's no- blemen of high rank ; some gallant oi fleers of her annv, perhaps an admiral, too, or distinguished author; sud- denly you hear a low, rising swell of sound that carries you back to your callow days of spelling-books and pop- corn and mint-stick candy, O-o-o-o-o-h ; Ou-oo-oo-oo ; Ah-a-a-a; Whoo- \vhoo-\vh ; Eeh-eeh-eeh-eh ; Boo- oo-oo; Err-r-r-r; Oh-ah-ooh-bah ; Urnm-m-m-m-m; Ay-ay-ay, all the vowel-sounds of the alphabet with every conceivable intonation and form of expression. It is these old gentlemen assisting in the making of a law of England. Watching closer, you will see, perhaps, a nervous sexagenarian member sitting squarely up in his seat and looking straight into the eyes of the speaker with a severely-dissenting frown. His stern, grave features never move, but from his open mouth your ears detect a steadily-flowing stream of guttural bass. Another one intones openly his chant of derision or dissent. 128 ENGLISH POLITICS. You see hats go up before mouths, heads turned away, a legislator or two suspiciously close behind a column, and other venerable but franker old gentlemen in boy- ish abandon giving way openly to the jollities of the hour. Then up from the other side comes a counter- wave, bearing on its swell the sense of injury and a protest, indignation and the determination to stand by its spokesman ; and so this battle, which is not on " the order of the day," and which is not recorded in the next morning's papers, wages from night to night. Some members, by practice and experience, perhaps by constitutional adaptation or perhaps from having worked hard at school, attain great proficiency and ability in this mode of parliamentary tactics. One evening two portly old legislators with broad, cheery faces, white whiskers, and generally a fine, responsible, conservative air, who sat for the moment on the bench just in front of mine, opened fire at the same time, evidently by preconcert. Not a feature moved ; their lips were just apart and apparently in rest; the bland, kindly expression of countenance never changed, but from these stout, smooth-shaven throats a strong volume of derisive sound flowed steadily and in smooth cur- rent, without a waver or break, for at least some min- utes, a chorus sufficient to disconcert a pretty self-reliant speaker, the more so from its being so well masked and conveying a mysterious opposition. The custom has some practical uses. Although the sounds are mostly simple vowel-notes, you soon learn to understand their meaning, and are able to mark the immediate effect of a speech in all parts of the house. It is, in fact, an almost instantaneous and continuous vote, enabling the speaker and his friends or foes to follow the effect of his argument from moment to mo- ment. Where there is a political topography of the floor, and the House sits in party platoons, as it does here, the feeling and condition of the body at any given moment are very clearly traceable in this way. PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 129 While these school-room cries are rather a boyish kind of warfare, they are generally used with a boy's sense of candor, fair dealing, and fair play. They seem to be largely the spontaneous utterance of individual opinion, and not a mere partisan game, directed and organized. The cry "Oh!" is the general note used to express derision, disapprobation, and opposition; " Hear !" to express support, sympathy, or to call es- pecial attention to any fact or opinion. " Hear !" might be called a kind of emphasis underlining contributed by the audience. It is also used ironically at times. The several cries frequently greeted a speaker from all sections of the house at one time, showing that they were individual and not mere responses. I have more than once seen a member while speaking applauded from the opposite side of the house, and I have also seen derisive cries on either side silenced by counter cries from the same side. This sense of fairness on the floor of Parliament, and aversion to partisan tactics, is a marked feature. The individual legislator has full freedom, and he is often allowed even to abuse it rather than that the right of free speech should suffer in his person. There is no " previous question" in the House in the sense of our rule, and I have heard members talk platitudes far into the morning and repeat each other wearily without re- buke or remonstrance, although the floor must have had its patience well worn out. Certainly the foreign visit- ors had. The chairman, too, allows the widest latitude in speaking to the question. This generous worship of fair play will be recognized as a well-known British school-boy trait. I never saw it violated in the House save on an oc- casion when Mr. Edward Jenkins arose to speak on the " flogging-in-the-army" debate. Then the entire Con- servative side gray whiskers, bald-heads, dress-suits, army and navy officers, lords, statesmen, white hairs and all set up a concerted symphony of disturbance 130 ENGLISH POLITICS. entirely drowning his voice. Mr. Jenkins faced the in- decorous storm with great composure, speaking for four or five minutes, the usual length of the speeches then being made, although he was entirely unheard from beginning to end, an occasional detached word, sentences apart, being the only sound intelligible. His compo- sure, as I afterwards learned, was perhaps like that of the eels which got used to be skinned, as he for some time past has always spoken under such circumstances. This gentleman, better known in the United States as " Ginx's Baby," has made himself especially obnoxious to the Conservatives, who allege that his assaults on the Government and its officials have been ungentlemanly and offensive, and placed him outside of the pale of gen- tlemen. Mr. Jenkins's friends, on the other hand, claim that all his movements have been legitimate and neces- sary ; that some of the abuses of English administra- tion are so involved with vested interests and hereditary claims that it is impossible to attack them without seem- ing to become personal. The question is therefore a debatable one inside of the House, and this treatment of Mr. Jenkins to an American view appears indefensible and hardly worthy of a great party. It is, in a sense, however, a strong tribute to Mr. Jenkins's power, as it proves that he has struck a blow or blows somewhere where they have hurt. The sibilant " hiss" of popular assemblies is, I be- lieve, used very little or not at all in Parliament. I do not recall hearing it. In addition to this admonitory refrain of dissent or assent, members are constantly subjected to another species of boyish training by " calls." Does a speaker indulge in some loose assertion, some wild generalization or inexact statement of fact, he is immediately reined up with sharp calls of "Date?" "Date?" "Name?" " Name ?" " When ?" " Where ?" " Time ?" " Place ?" Year ?" " Day ?" or positive cries of " No !" " No !" PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 131 if any one wishes to personally traverse his allegations. The educational influence of this usage is very great and very valuable. Careless declamation, vague rhet- oric, cowardly innuendo, rapidly shrink under this treat- ment. There is little speaking for effect in the House of Commons : a man must speak to the facts. There is no chance, either, under this rule of indulging in the unmanly habit of making loose and sweeping charges in the expectation that they will go to the country un- answered and do their work before an answer can come. Nor is it possible, under this regimen, to make foolish .speeches and vainglorious threats to be read at home by your constituency, safe in the sure knowledge that none of your fellow-members will be silly enough to notice them. In short, in these respects the floor of the House of Commons is very much like a ring in a boys' school- ground. Any boy may fight in it, but he must strike fair. It need hardly be added that these habits conduce tc the habitual display of great personal independence on the part of the members. The personal independence of the English politician, his ready assertion of his in- dividuality, is a marked fact which soon strikes the political observer from America accustomed to the ready subserviency and machine drill of our own men of this class. The English political leader starts, as a rule, with social position, education, and an inherited in- come. He is not dependent on his political exertions, therefore, either for his standing in his community or for his means of livelihood, and has, besides, social and intellectual resources within himself which preclude the need of his seeking occupation or mental activity in politics. Fortunate thus in his triple armor, he need never sacrifice his individual opinions or his self-respect under the coercion of circumstances. So far, happily for England, the professional politician the man who makes his living by politics has not appeared, but I fear, with the social transition in progress, he is com ing. 132 ENGLISH POLITICS. There are, of course, men who will cringe and crawl under any circumstances, and England has her share of them, but as a class her public men are inde- pendent and courageous in the expression of individual opinion to an extent which contrasts most happily with the sad reverse in our own country. They are so by reason of their education and assured social position. I heard the Marquis of Hartington, the Liberal leader, one night in the House, and from the leaders' bench, make a speech disclaiming and rebuking the action of a section of his party which I feel sure no leader in our House would dare to make. And it created no especial surprise or commotion here. It seemed to be expected that Lord Hartington would do it, that he owed it to himself. He owed it as a leader. With us, unfortu- nately, the leadership of a party too often consists in the collective sense of the average and commonplace ma- jority of its membership. There is much about the landed system of Great Britain the " great-families" system, based on primo- geniture and entail which a republican cannot but consider bad for the state and for the human indi- vidual, but this great tribute must be paid to it, that it does secure independent and educated politicians for the administration of the affairs of state. The syco- phancy of England so far is social rather than political, and as such comparatively harmless to the state. In fact, the very use of words shows the difference in the moral grade of the two countries on this point. " Politician," a depreciated word with us, is here an honorable one. It means here about what "statesman" means with us in the popular acceptation and use, i.e., one who administers public affairs as a trust. Uncon- sciously, with us politician has come to mean one who is working for his own personal ends, and we seek in the word statesman to express some higher conception. People may not consciously acknowledge this, but I believe any fair man will admit that when it is ordi- PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 133 narily said of any one in our land, " X is going into politics," it means that "X" is beginning to look for personal political employment. Politics means work- ing for office. Statesmanship means government or the administration of the public interests. Now, the English popular mind does not so degrade its political men as yet. Politics means, in popular acceptation, the administration of the affairs of state, and politicians the men who administer them. In fact, the popular sense of propriety does not admit that a politician a member of the House, for instance should busy himself about his election. The machinery of election, the science of elections, are something below the legislator, and which he must not touch. I do not mean to say that many members of Parliament do not busy themselves most earnestly about their elections and watch with most efficient care 1 the whole process, but they must do it within-doors, with carefully-concealed hand, and not ostentatiously and so as to offend the conventional and traditional feeling of their constituency in this matter. Votes, voting, and the active direction of the canvass must be left to " the agent." While the beggarly seating of the House of Com- mons, its boyish cries, and the wearing of hats by the members give an undignified and almost indecorous air to its exterior, it is at bottom a most dignified and substantial body. The sense of the House of its own dignity is something far surpassing anything of the kind known in our Congress. It is an historic evolu- tion. The House of Commons represents, and means, and is, " the people of England." It never forgets that. Every privilege it has has been wrested from reluctant power. They have come at long intervals, generations apart. Many of them have been paid for with blood, offered on the scaffold and shed in battle. Many of them have cost life and property, long years of merci- 12 134 ENGLISH POLITICS. less imprisonment, and cruel confiscation. No wonder that this treasure, this trust for the nation, is so sacredly and jealously guarded. Every offence against the dignity of the House from without or within is an assault on the liberties of England. Hence the ex- treme sensitiveness of the Englishman to the rights of the House, and the honest feeling that an attempt to coerce or bribe a member is the highest kind of treason to the people. For instance, this month a citizen, a lawyer-lobbyist, was committed to the tower of West- minster by Parliament for merely saying that he could influence a parliamentary committee. It was generally admitted that he did not believe that he could do so, and that he lied to his client when he said so, but Par- liament considered its honor involved by such a state- ment even from a comparatively irresponsible man, and he went to prison by a unanimous vote of the House, the leaders of both parties vying with one another to punish the impertinent falsehood. I was present when the motion for commitment was made. The facts having been established by a report of a select committee, there was no debate at all, the House seeming to disdain to soil its hands with such a discussion, and the whole affair was a matter of only a few moments. In previous letters I noted several traditional usages and observances which illustrate how zealously, even in petty things, the House guards its dignity and privileges. There are also some habits and traditional formulae of speech which, although seemingly of small moment in themselves, act as efficient mechanical aids in pre- serving the dignity of official or political intercourse. Names are never used. One member always speaks of another as "the honorable gentleman and member from ." This is inexorable, and is only the first step. All members are " honorable gentlemen," and must be addressed as such. If they are or have been PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 135 in the Ministry, they must be addressed as "the right honorable gentlemen." If a member is also a lawyer, he must be addressed as " the honorable and learned gentleman." If he has served in the army or navy, he is addressed as "the honorable and gallant gentleman." If he is, further, a peer, he is to be addressed as "the honorable gentleman" or " right honorable gentleman juul noble lord," or " most noble lord" if his rank is high enough. A member may readily be a "right honorable and gallant gentleman and noble lord," and, if he is, must be so addressed every time he is spoken to or of on the floor. This ii.snge, although a mechanical form, acts as an effectual barrier to indecorous or impertinent familiarity or to bad man tiers, which may be unintentional, the unfortunate heritage of early vulgarity. It would be impossible, for instance, under this rule for one states- man to speak of another as Johnny Sherman, or Andy Johnson, or Abe Lincoln, or Tom Corwin, or Zich Chandler. The habits of good society thus acquired in the House, if not attained before, are carried on to the stump, or hustings, as they say here, where the language of the speakers is, with rare exceptions, that of gentlemen. Every idea in England must have .a personal em- bodiment or conception. She is much nearer the "idol" stage of thought than we. She believes in a personal sovereign as necessary to localize and animate the na- tional sense of loyalty. This sovereign, too, must have a golden crown and a sceptre like any monarch in Afghanistan or Persia or Zu Inland or the fifth cen- tury. She believes that her judges need robes and wigs to express the majesty of the law, invisible here, but which is so clearly visible in the pine-table court- rooms of the backwoods of Pennsylvania and Minnesota. So the power and dignity and authority of the H< use of Commons centre in the person of the Speaker. He 136 ENGLISH POLITICS, sums up in his official presence centuries of history. And in this case there is a dramatic and historical pro- priety in the political nimbus which encircles his figure 1 . He it was that for hundreds of years was first arrested when the crown moved against the people of England. He it was who rotted in the dungeon and died on the scaffold. And he represents to-day a popular strength and is looked up to with a respect and kind of loyalty which in no way attaches to the office in our country. His authority inside the House is correspondingly respected. His slightest movement seemed to command attention and respect. The rude accessory of the ham- mer is entirely unneeded. I listened to one debate which Englishmen of long parliamentary experience seemed to think almost unprecedented in its heat and disorder, and one distinguished member frankly ex- pressed his mortification that I should witness the same and carry it away as an impression of the British Parliament. Feeling certainly ran high, although the language was always guarded and, compared with our legislative emeutes, moderate. The Irish members, however, were openly engaged in the work of " ob- struction," and, with their English friends ai'ding and abetting, the night was far spent, and the situation was unquestionably trying. The speaking was brief, but quick and spirited, and the floor always contested, half a dozen or more members often striving for it at once. In all this evening the Speaker's decisions which were manifestly impartial and honest were never contested, and when a surge of feeling or cries seemed about to overwhelm the room and sweep away everything, a simple wave of his hand without moving from his seat instantly calmed the rising storm and restored tran- quillity and order. The noisy pounding of a hammer or the frantic ringing of a bell, as in Italy or France, would be resented in Westminster. The Speaker, Mr. Brand, it is fair to say, is, however, an exceptionably able man. He is a Liberal, and his PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 137 discharge of his office under the former administration was so acceptable and satisfactory that he was re-elected to his position by the new Conservative House, by a unanimous vote, in fact, I think. This evidences a very marked contrast between politics in England and America. The salary of the Speaker of the House is 5000, about $25,000. The members receive no salary for their services, or compensation of any kind in money. There is no system of standing 'committees in the House, as with us, nor is there any call of the previous question, in the sense of our use of it. The most marked difference, however, by all odds between the legislatures of the two countries is in the style of speaking and general conduct of business, the demonstrative "oration" on our side and the quiet, business-like statement of a few sentences here. It is commonly known, I suppose, that there is no such thing as " oratory" in Parliament, in either House. No member ever "makes a speech" in the conventional sense of that phrase, as known with us. Some of the usages I have described are clearly incompatible with the traditional custom of forensic declamation or pomp- ous and pretentious argument, and are sufficient to ac- count for its absence. Many writers ascribe the death of oratory in the House to the uncomfortable benches and limited accommodations, a clearly superficial and thoughtless view, as in the palmy oratorical days of Pitt and Burke the accommodations were no better, and most likely worse, especially in the auxiliary point of retiring-rooms, wash-rooms, closets, etc. The cause of the decline of forensic declamation is deeper and historical. The days of the Pitts and of Fox and of Burke are gone forever in England, be- cause she is too far advanced in thought and education, Impassioned oratory, I take it, is an ingredient of im- mature civilization and dies before a higher condition 12* 138 ENGLISH POLITICS. of general education. Demosthenes was possible only under the crude and simple conditions of Greek society. Cicero and the brilliant school of contemporary orators were the product of a slavocratic republic, where the mass of the people were unlearned and untaught. Chrysostom spoke to congregations of Christian con- verts densely ignorant and rude in their manners, as his own reproofs of them show. When Bossuet and Bourdeloue swayed all France with emotion and pas- sion, common France was in a state of mental and re- ligious tutelage. England, when she was proud of Pitt and Fox and Burke, had a class of country gen- tlemen she will never be proud of as men of intelli- gence and intellectual calibre, whatever else may have been their merits. Even Clay and Webster represent a very crude and provisional stage of civilization in our own country, while Patrick Henry and the Revolution- ary orators were the outcome of our cradle-hours. The rule holds good in the United States even at this mo- ment. Wherever civilization is highest and scholarship compact and influential, there the pyrotechnic " orator" flickers out. The " mountain eagles" of our Alle- ghenies and Cordilleras, the " silver-tongued clarions" who thrill courts and stump and legislatures on the prairies or in the Mississippi bottom, cut a sorry figure if ever they get before the Supreme Court of the United States or of any Eastern State. Oratory is, in fact, only a means of impressing simple or half-educated people which fails when the people get beyond that way of receiving impressions. The civilized world of to-day has pronounced against it. Bismarck declares parliamentary oratory to be " a mischief." England suppressed it a generation ago, and we are going in the same direction. The speaking in the House of Commons to-day is extremely severe and simple. Members usually speak only from three to five minutes even on the most im- portant subjects, and their language is studied in its PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 139 simplicity and avoidance of rhetoric. Of course there are times when both the occasion and the matter de- mand elaborate and more lengthy treatment and a minister or member may speak for an hour or hours, hut this is very rare. The habitual mode is for mem- bers to rise only for a few moments, delivering them- selves straight to the point in a rather conversational style, but every word weighed, guarded, and carefully chosen, very much as an experienced merchant might speak in making a contract. The British legislator has a sense of person nl responsibility for every word uttered on the floor which does not exist in our legislative bodies at all. In fact, the conduct of business in Par- liament resembles rather the consultation of responsible merchants in a counting-room or the meeting of a small board of railway directors than anything like our pop- ular conception of a legislative discussion. The usage of "interrogating the Ministry" also leads directly both to brevity, a conversational style, and caution and preci- sion in the selection of words. The substance of parliamentary speech is generally substantial and good, and the scene would be impressive and dignified were not the whole eifect marred by a hesi- tation and labored awkwardness in speaking which, if it is not affectation, has all the appearance of it. But whether an affectation or an infirmity, it is a serious blemish. There is observable throughout all the Eng- lish higher classes a cultivated diffidence and tendency to self-depreciation, which is perhaps in the start a recoil from the self-assertion and pretension of the vulgar and new-made classes. It has been carried, however, to an extreme which verges on effeminacy, if it is not that already. This mannerism of halting and hawing is its development on the rostrum, and it effectually disposes of all forensic grace and a good deal of forensic effi- ciency. The far remove of the British Parliament from all the traditions of the forum is best illustrated by reporting one of Cicero's speeches as it would be 140 ENGLISH POLITICS. delivered from the treasury bench to-day : Quousque ah tandem ah-a-abutere, Catilina hem-m-m patientia, n-nostraf Quamdiu nos etiam haw-aw furor hem haw ah-h-h. Yet this is the exact way in which a British legislator grapples with a question of state, and to get the force of what he is saying you have to disabuse your mind absolutely of the vice and un- gracefulness of its delivery. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the general impres- sion made by the House of Commons when compared with the leading legislative bodies of the. world is good. Its dignity is well sustained, and there is a thorough and conscious power in the membership which inspires con- fidence. There is no attempt at producing effects or making a personal display, and the body keeps pretty steadily to the work in hand, although, for reasons already mentioned, it is not either skilful or successful in producing results. The work of legislation is fear- fully behind, by common admission. It is to the high credit of the membership, however, to be able to say when you look over the floor and listen to it you feel a sense of its integrity. You believe that the bulk of the body is honestly at work trying to make laws, not talking to the distant county of Buncombe or manu- facturing issues and records for the next campaign. In fact, legislation the administration of public affairs here is one thing, the function of a gentleman, and getting elected is another thing, and public opinion so far jealously enforces their division. That is at least the traditional feeling, which as yet the politician dare not offend. He must not conduct his campaign per- sonally, but through an agent. Hence has arisen in English political life " the agent," a distinctive cog-wheel in the political machine to which we have no direct equivalent. The agent is a kind of political attorney who has made votes and the science of voting a study. He has the records of many PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 141 elections for many years. All elections here are very local, in boroughs, counties, universities, or some re- stricted limits. The agent knows the past history of all these votes and the characteristics of the sections. He can calculate political " probabilities" and give estimates, and, having this fund of special knowledge and this special bent of mind, he is regularly employed by the candidates to control their campaign and is paid in money for this service. The nominee is presumed at least to be above this kind of work. Thus votes and voting are one thing here, and politics i.e., statesman- ship is another, and the man of votes cannot presume to be the politician. This distinction is severely maintained clear down to comparatively minute details. For instance, paid canvassers, clerks, managers, or watchers, under an act of 1867, are not allowed to be polled, and lose their votes by reason of the nature of their occupation. It is needed to be said, greatly to their credit, that the English laws in their provisions for guarding the integrity of the polls are very strict. Gratuitous re- freshments in all forms have long been forbidden. Charities distributed in a borough by a man who after- wards contested it have been held to be corruption. This rule, although its intent is honorable, might at times work great hardships both to the poor and to liberal gentlemen. Looking over the House of Commons, even a stranger can see clear evidence of great changes at work, for under the healthy law of the British Constitution the House must change with the changing social structure of the kingdom. And these changes follow our lead. LONDON. 142 ENGLISH POLITICS. CHAPTER XVI. PARLIAMENT (CONTINUED). THE HOUSE OF LORDS A HISTORIC SURVIVAL THE THRONH OF ENGLAND SAILING OF THE " MAYFLOWER." THE House of Lords has less interest for an Ameri- can than the Commons, for it is a lost form in the ma- chinery of government. Like our electoral colleges, the life has gone out of it, and only the shell remains; but it is a very handsome shell. The hall itself is a gorgeous flood of gold and color flushed with soft light and walled in with Gothic oak and stained-glass win- dows. Around the wall in solemn niches stand the statues of the bold barons of Runnymede. -The stal- wart barons of England, however, have long since abandoned this floor. There is no special difficulty in seeing a session of the House of Lords, as the order of any peer will admit one, and not merely to a caged gallery, but to very good seats just in the rear of the floor and on a level with it. From here one can see all that is to be seen, which, in the way of parliamentary procedure, is not much, and what there is of it is dull and spiritless. As the American visitor walks through the peers' corridor on his way to that portion of Westminster Hall which contains the chamber of the House of Lords, he experiences for a moment the slight shock of a complimentary sensation in seeing as one of the eight great frescos of the walls "The Sailing of the Mayflower," a companion-piece to the interminable " Landing of the Pilgrims," which forever stares one in the face from bank-notes and legislative halls throughout all the confines of the United States. But PARLIAMENT: THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 143 it certainly makes one feel suddenly at home, and with even a pride of kinship in the place, to find the English end of the story told with such honor, and almost at the footsteps of the throne. An odd sight which strikes one passing through the lobby or vestibule to the floor, quite a small and cramped chamber, is a number of rows of common pegs, such as might be in the closet of a boys 7 school-room, but over each peg the name of a peer of England, all the dukes and earls and barons. These pegs are crowded close together, and are for the hats and coats of the members, a peg to a peer. The provision is not a whit better than that of many a com- mon school-house in our land to which barefoot boys come with ragged felts and perhaps no coat at all, but it is all there is for these lords, who drive up to the door with a brace of footmen, perhaps, and from a palace. The custom, however, has some historic sanc- tion, and they stick to it. It will probably last as long as the House of Lords. Inside of the main hall the seating and general ap- pearance of the interior are about the same as those of the House of Commons. At the head of the room, however, where the Speaker's desk would be in our Senate chamber, you see " the throne of England." You feel an absurd sense of suffering a disillusion when you see only a chair,^-a very profound achievement of upholstery, no doubt, but still a chair. The Ameri- can republican knows in his heart that a throne must be a chair; still, as it is associated in his mind with fairy tales and myths and all the wonders of childhood, it has grown into something grand and stately and im- pressive, and he suffers a pang to find it only a piece of furniture replaceable from any cabinet-shop. The throne is one of those things which, on the whole, it is best not to see. When it is resolved into a common- place chair there is a shattering of faith as sad as when the beanpole of Jack the Giant-Killer vanishes into the thin cold air of experience and science. In front of 144 ENGLISH POLITICS. the throne some little distance, and at its foot, is the cele- brated "woolsack." It is a capacious, heavily-cushioned footstool. On this sits the Lord Chancellor of England, who presides over the sessions of the House of Lords. By the law and theory of the English government, the House of Lords is something more than a co-ordi- nate body of the national legislature, like our Senate. It has an absolute veto on all legislation by the House of Commons. Not only is this power utterly unused, but it has ceased even to deter. It will never be claimed. Politically, the House of Lords has ceased to exist, its functions in the government having passed to the Cabinet, or Ministry, which is practically the Upper House. Even the family influence of the peers, to yield political results in this day, must be wielded through the House of Commons. As a historical picture, however, the House of Lords still survives in good condition. A nominal number of peers attend its daily sessions during Parliament season, and mechanically pass all the bills and go through all the forms of legislation. On state occa- sions this venerable relic solemnly " summons" the lower House into its presence, and the House comes. The crimsoned hall, too, serves as a splendid stage, where the queen occasionally gives a grand spectacular political tableau something like one of the gorgeous religious func- tions yon see at intervals in the great churches of Rome. It is worth while dropping in on the House of Lords as often as possible just to study the personnel of the body, and see that type of man which a privileged class, carefully tended for centuries, and draining the blood and soil of the land, its education and culture and power and wealth, evolves. That is about all, although it is a good deal. You will see nothing of debate or action in it, learn nothing of politics. The House of Lords in our day is an interesting social study, but it has ceased to be a political one, save as an antique or remain. FOREIGN SERVICE. 145 CHAPTER XVII. FOREIGN SERVICE. THE OLD AMBASSADOR AND THE NEW A NEWSPAPER PLENI- POTENTIARY THE OLD-WORLD AMBASSADOR WITHOUT USES IN THE POLITICAL MACHINERY OF THE NEW EDUCATIONAL FUNCTIONS OF THE SERVICE How BEST TO CONSERVE IT KOTATION ON THE DIPLOMATIC LlST TENDENCY OF THE EU- ROPEAN LIFE TO DE-AMERICANIZE THE KEPUBLICAN CITI- ZEN. IT is one of the anomalies of the present transition state of society from old ideas and usages to newer ones that, while our government sends fifteen ministers to Europe at salaries of from ,$7500 to 17,500, to repre- sent us and speak for us, the incessant, effective repre- sentation is done by a modest journalist in Philadelphia, Mr. Joel Cook, the American correspondent of the Lon- don Times, whose voice is heard every day, not only in one but in all the courts of Europe, and not only by the official governments, but by the people. He is by far the most omnipresent and influential envoy extraor- dinary that has ever gone from this country. While the London Times has not the circulation of many of the papers of Europe, it has a weight and in- fluence which none of them have. It is taken by every foreign minister of all countries, and in all countries its dispatches are accredited as authority. They arc quoted in Parliament and at the dinner-tables and official desks of ambassadors. What Europe at this time from day to day thinks of America awl the American people is decided, not by the communications of our diplomatic force, but by what says the London Times. There is a grave and growing doubt in the public mind whether our foreign or diplomatic service is worth its cost to the republic since the introduction of ocean o k 13 146 ENGLISH POLITICS. cables 'and newspaper correspondence and the absolute adoption of the Monroe doctrine as an article of popular political faith. A look over the ground I think justi- fies the conclusion that it has little meaning at all for us any more in the old sense, but that possibly it can still be put to better and higher uses than it has ever served, and that without change of form. It is better perhaps for the present to let the shell of the old insti- tution remain, but to gradually give to the service itself a new character and function. "The ambassador" is the survival of a European condition of society which never was transferred here. His functions belong to a machinery of government which never was put in motion on this continent. His work, in the natural revolution of our new social growth, lias been taken up and is discharged on a larger scale by a new personage, the special correspondent. Prince Metternich, in his gossippy memories of Old- World and old-fashioned diplomacy, just given to print by his son, relates that he once asked a brother ambas- sador " how he contrived to have a letter to send to London every post day." There were two a week. "You will see no difficulty in it when I tell you my secret. If anything comes to my knowledge that may interest rny government, I tell it; if not, I invent my news, and contradict it by the next courier." Now, that is exactly the trick of the lazy or unrelia- ble newspaper correspondent of our time ; but it illus- trates forcibly how exactly one of the functions of the old ambassador has devolved upon the new international envoy. The ambassador reported to his government all that he could of the social and political movements in foreign countries; the correspondent reports exactly the same, only a thousand times more fully, to the people, which is our government. The Old-World ambassador had three grand functions which were the meaning of his office and the reason of his being : FOREIGN SERVICE. 147 I. To represent in his person the relations, whatever they were, which existed between his own Government and the Government to which he was sent. II. At times to act for his Government on his own responsibility according to his best judgment. III. To keep his Government constantly advised of all the news. For the American situation the Monroe doctrine has done away with the first of these functions, the tele- graph with the second, and the newspaper with the third. We have no foreign relations in the sense of Euro- pean diplomacy with any power in Europe. When it is necessary for a minister to act now, he receives spe- cific instructions by telegraph. He can even cable a conversation. The diplomatic reports are always far behind the public information of wire and type. As a matter of fact, our entire diplomatic list could be swept away with entire safety. Our only real rela- tions with foreign countries arc commercial ones, and these are handled by the consular department. As far as my judgment goes, however, I would not advise its abolition, but strongly urge its retention for the present on broader grounds of national utility. There is no more broadening education than the comparative study of foreign nations, their governments, social structure, and systems of thought and religion, and there is no education more needful at present to our own national wants. The diplomatic service affords an admirable school for this. It may be made, in fact, a national free college for this kind of education, and its uses in this way are twofold. It serves to educate personally the men whom we specially select for this elevated tuition, and, if their selection is judicious, they in turn become teachers of the whole people. A James Russell Lowell in Eng- land, a Motley or Bancroft or Bayard Taylor or an 148 ENGLISH POLITICS. Andrew White at Berlin, a George P. Marsh at Rome, do something more than answer all our meagre official uses, or than even to train and strengthen themselves. They serve to translate and send over something of England and Germany and all Europe to us, and Bret Harte and Eugene Schuyler, at their consular desks, are worth a good deal more to the American people and literature than all their possible service as registrars of shipping entries. Nathaniel Hawthorne, consul to Liv- erpool, is doing good service to the whole nation yet, although the Government and the men that sent him are long ago gone with him into the grave. It is by the adoption of this principle of appointment the se- lection for diplomatic posts of men of high character and of scholarly rather than of an average politician's abilities that we can best conserve our diplomatic de- partment under an altering condition of things, and obtain its fullest and highest uses for the whole nation. At all events, as it stands at present, our diplomatic service is thoroughly illogical and unsatisfactory, and no change or experiment even could much impair its illusory efficiency. The salaries of the several embassies are extremely inadequate to do what they are supposed to do, and it is impossible for the ministers living on them to repre- sent our country as other countries are represented. If it is the idea of the government to perpetuate the old-fashioned system of diplomatic representation and communication, then funds should be supplied our rep- resentatives to act their part decently, according to the requirements of the old-fashioned code. Again, according to the established law of diplo- matic usage and etiquette settled long before we came on the stage, an ambassador is one who represents the person of a sovereign ruler and always outranks a minister plenipotentiary, who only represents the gov- ernment of a country. Now, we know nothing at all of the doctrine of the sanctity or superiority of the FOREIGN SERVICE. 149 person of a sovereign, and, when it is explained to us, look on it only as either political heresy or silliness ; but we are forced all the time to impliedly admit it in our diplomatic relations. At any court of Europe in any question of rank or precedence, any ambassador repre- senting a toy king (of Greece, for instance) or a bur- lesque emperor (of Hayti, for instance) will always take the lead of the republican representative of fifty mil- lions of American citizens. No American minister, no matter what his years or influence or seniority of service, can ever be the dean of the diplomatic college at any capital where there is an ambassador present. This is the very case now at one of the prominent courts of Europe. But there is another and more serious consequence resulting from this fundamental diplomatic law. An ambassador as representing the person of his soven -i^n may always demand and have a personal interview with the sovereign of the country to which he is accredited. A minister plenipotentiary may deal only through the ministry. In a crisis the foreign sovereign of his own pleasure may grant him an interview, but the minister cannot dcMiiand it as a right. We are therefore in this false position, that should our relations with any Eu- ropean court at any time become critical, our minister at that very court would not have equal facilities for action with the ambassadors of other powers. For instance, the empire of Russia is an autocratic govern- ment. The pleasure of the Emperor is supreme, and his word is law. Should this imperial person meditate a huge war involving the interests of every first-rate power on the earth, the ambassadors from England and Germany could see him and talk with him at their will ; but the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at St. Petersburg could not, not even if the threatened war was with ourselves. Could any position be more false than this, and what is the propriety of recognizing a system which forces us to accept it? 13* 150 ENGLISH POLITICS. Lastly, the men whom we do send on this important service, which may be made more important every year, should be real Americans, fresh from the soil, and not those who have lived long enough abroad to have de-Americanized themselves. The European life in- evitably tends to lessen one's respect for the human person and to weaken one's trust and hope in the people. This moral change is sure to come, and it comes so slowly and insensibly that the victims are not aware of their own transmutation. It must needs be when the vast mass of the people are looked down upon, are classified to the bottom, are used, when perhaps they have lost respect for themselves, that one comes to feel unconsciously contempt for them, and that manhood fails to command the respect which is given to class and privilege. Yet an instinctive reverence for humanity, no matter what its mask, and faith in the people are two of the foundation-pillars of the republic, and he who has lost them does not any more represent the American people. There is a sound, healthy democratic principle at bottom in the usage of rotation in office on foreign ser- vice. Jefferson held, I think, that no man could rep- resent us abroad with usefulness longer than eight years, and he was about right, although no fixed term can be intelligently laid down, for men are not alike. Some men travel in Europe only during a long residence of years. Others begin to live there from the moment of their landing on its shores. COMPARATIVE POLITICS. CHAPTER XVIII. COMPARATIVE POLITICS. CONTRAST BETWEEN THE POLITICS OF ENGLAND AND OF THE UNITED STATES THK COMPARATIVE MAGNITUDE AND RE- SPONSIBILITIES OF ADMINISTRATION EVOLUTION OF THE EUROPEAN STATESMAN THE EDUCATED FORCES OF EURO- PKAN POLITICS THE INTELLECTUAL REQUIREMENTS OF GOV- ERNMENT ABROAD THE ENGLISH STATESMEN. THERE is nothing in all Europe that challenges one's profounder respect than the strength of her statesmen, and nothing that is more of a revelation to a New-World stranger than the gravity and intellectual range of her politics. Government abroad is a science, here it "runs itself ; v and there could be nothing better calcu- lated to repress the "spread eagle" of the average! citizen than an honest attempt to master the political system of one of these " effete monarchies," and to gain some definite conception of its practical workings. The problem of government in Europe is so vexed, the dangers so imminent, so fixed and hereditary, the rela- tions with all neighboring powers so involved and en- tangling, the internal interests so conflicting, the people so poor and discontented and burdened, that our. own troubles and questions of state seem poor and childish in comparison. Studying the range and demands of European states- manship, one sees readily how it has produced the edu- cated statesman, so unfamiliar to us, and why the con- duct of government abroad calls for a breadth of scholarship and a trained intellectual force that have not yet been a necessity in the United States. The " log cabin" and " mill-boy" and " horny-handed" statesmen 152 ENGLISH POLITICS. of our prairie reputation would wreck any European ship of state irretrievably in three months, perhaps in twenty-four hours. In viewing the field of foreign governments one sees a new wisdom and safety in the Monroe doctrine. Perhaps its framers foresaw even in their early hour that our crude political leaders would never be able to meet in equal combat the intellectual giants of the Old World. To illustrate more clearly the disparity between the magnitude of the burden of European government and the simplicity of ours, I propose to etch a running par- allel between the political systems of Great Britain and of our country, in the briefest outline, of course ; but it will serve to suggest the wide difference between the requirements of statesmanship in the two nations. I select England because the similarity of her institutions admits best of direct comparison, but nearly every Euro- pean government faces all the troubles and dangers and responsibilities of England ; some have them intensi- fied ; and some have special problems of their own. I. Perhaps the initial and commonest form of national self-glorification with us is the boast of our space of ter- ritory, the eagle that rests on Rocky Mountain cordil- leras and laves his wings in the Atlantic and Pa- cific. Now, extent of territory is in itself not necessarily either a danger or a source of power, although it may be both. Judea and Greece have been the mightiest forces of known civilization, and the Roman empire managed to govern the whole world without steamships, railways, or telegraphs. But, as far as magnitude of dominion tests statesmanship or is evidence of national power, we with one segment of a continent do not begin to approach Great Britain. The British rule to-day extends over one-third of the surface of the globe, and over one-fourth of its population. We are but a modest principality in comparison. Again, the territory of the British empire is not COMPARATIVE POLITICS 153 compact and contiguous as is ours (with the inconsid- erable exception of Alaska), but lies in every quarter of the globe, separated by seas and continents, and on it dwell people of every race and of nearly every lan- guage, speaking in different tongues, thinking by dif- ferent modes, inheriting diverse systems of thought and religion and political tradition. We are one people. II. In England the structure of society is a rigid stratification of classes ; in the United States there is but one homogeneous class. The people of our country are one mass of molecular atoms, each atom politically alike. The English legislator legislates for many classes, each with defined limits and vested rights fixed by law and sanctified by inheritance. These rights and the interests of the several classes from time to time jar and clash. He must legislate for many kingdoms in one. The American legislator, on the other hand, simply passes one law for all, because all are equal before the law and in the eye of the law. By virtue also of this homogeneousness of the people, political ideas travel rapidly and equally, permeating a common mass. In England they cannot, by reason of the sectional and class barriers. A given view of politics or of some special question of policy may be accepted and adopted by some one class long before it reaches another, or it may linger long in some certain locality for historical reasons. The Scotchman and the Welshman and the Irishman do not fuse mentally with the Englishman, do not think according to the same modes of thought. Even the Yorkshire man and Lancashire man stand apart, and the man of Surrey or Devon from him of Northumberland. Nor, for that matter, do the farmers with the gentry, or the clergy with the laborer, or the professional man with the peerage, or any of these classes with the others. The body politic has neither the constant internal circulation nor the uniform molec- ular composition of ours. Everything in England is fixed to the soil in small local centres by fastenings 154 ENGLISH POLITICS. of society and of blood, and there is not that mobility in the community at large by virtue of which, with us, a national idea travels rapidly and uniformly over the whole nation. Each county has different customs, usages, and habits of thought which differentiate it from the rest of the nation as a whole and in all its social strata. The great family estates, covering compact territories, transmit family peculiarities of living, of thinking, even of farming and working, and operate as a barrier to national impulses of thought. In our country a wave of thought moves rapidly and evenly over all the land and through all the people. The whole country feels it at once. Witness not only the passage of political emotions over the national mind, the rapid transit of a new party issue, or of the thoughts of a great speech, but of social or mental sensation, as in the sweep of the praying-band or spelling-bee excite- ment from one ocean to the other. In England it is not so. Men do not travel, ideas do not travel. It is but thirteen hours from London to Edinburgh, but it takes more than thirteen years for a political idea to traverse the route. III. Our government is a simple republic, a federa- tion of a body of equal and co-ordinate States, each State peopled by a population of the same race, the same language, the same history. All the States have the same rights, powers, and obligations, and all these are defined. The administration of the government, even, is by a written chart. Everything is laid down on paper. Compare with this simplicity the tremendous impe- rial system of Great Britain, a system that has an illustration only in Rome under the Caesars. A little class of great families dominate, first, their own order and through it England, and, controlling social Eng- land, elect their own Parliament. Through this Parlia- ment they govern allied kingdoms and an empire stretching through Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, COMPARATIVE POLITICS. 155 Australasia, and the islands of the sea. The imperial standard of this great dominion floats over colonial na- tions of all races, spanning even the great gulf between the Aryan and Semitic bloods ; over people of every re- ligion and creed, the regnant faith of Christianity being in the minority ; over all latitudes, all colors, all lan- guages, all traditions, all forms of government. The British empire of to-day, morally and physically, is grander than ever were those of Greece or Rome, and its rule is far more conscientious and beneficent. And these principalities and powers and provinces and dis- tant kingdoms of the seas the imperial Parliament governs, not on one simple and uniform plan, but by ever diverse and varying machineries, by legislatures, by armies, by imperial decrees, by proconsuls, by mili- tary governors, by civil governors, by unpretentious u political agents," or by regal viceroys. The name is nothing, the power is always there. The heart of this marvellous body politic throbs at Westminster, whence its currents of blood are impelled to the uttermost ends of the earth. The brain is the premier of England. Contrast this with our ready-made work at Washington. IV. Our provincial statesmen groan under what they call the burden of national patronage. When they affect liberal political culture, they te!l us that the un- paralleled magnitude of this patronage is a grave danger to the republic. When they simply claim to be strong politicians, " leaders," they struggle and wrestle and raise mighty tempests about the distribution of a few petty clerkships and evanescent post-offices. The whole government patronage of the United States is but as a flea-bite to that of England. Whatever we have Eng- land has on a grander scale. What are our petty post- offices, with New York at $8000 salary and Philadelphia at $4000 heading the list, to the limitless range of public offices necessary to administer the vast and imposing imperial machine? Consider the endless civil-service list; the post-offices; the telegraph-service, which, in 156 ENGLISH POLITICS. Great Britain, is governmental ; the army and commissions for colossal hosts and fleets ; the swollen pension-lists, not only military, but civil, literary, and political ; the Church preferment ; the court patronage to tradesmen ; the immense foreign service; and, finally, the dazzling rewards of titles, orders, and peerages. Consider alone the patronage of India, with its state railways and public works, an army of four hundred thousand men, and a parental government over a popu- lation of more than two hundred millions of souls. On this question of patronage I will instance just one item to illustrate what its splendors and magnitude and tempting prizes are under the English government. It is an item to which we have no equivalent at all, like the titles and orders and peerages and telegraph- and railway-service and foreign civil list, and other depart- ments. The bishoprics of the Church of England are in the gift of the government. There are twenty-eight of them and two archbishoprics. The Archbishop of Canterbury receives $75,000 a year and two official palaces for a residence, and holds office for life. The Archbishop of York gets $50,000 a year, and a palace and his office for life. Either of these positions, in the way of worldly emolument, is better than the Presi- dency of the United States. The twenty -eight bishops receive salaries ranging from $20,000 to $50,000 a year (they average over $25,000 a year), a residence, a seat in the House of Lords, and they have all this for life. The whole higher-class patronage in the gift of the United States, the Supreme bench, the Cabinet, the Vice-presidency, and our entire European diplomatic list, does not begin to approach in splendor or dignity or money value to this one item. The whole body of these great offices of our state are less in number than these bishoprics ; their salaries range but from $7500 to $17,500; there are no official residences attached, and they are not held for life. V. This ecclesiastical item of patronage suggests one COMPARATIVE POLITICS. 157 of the ugliest of all the problems of European politics, one which is a danger and burden to every European Government to-day, but from which our country hap- pily is and always has been entirely free, the vexed question of Church and State. The Established Church of England, a Church embracing a minority only of the people, is a part of the Government of England. The head of the Church is the head of the State; its bishops, by virtue of their mitres, sit in Parliament; its clergy are necessarily a kind of national police. The Church is in the very Constitution. Its interests enter sharply into every party platform and struggle. They fought over the Irish-Church disestablishment a few years ago, they are going to fight soon over English disestablishment. As a consequence, the clerical inter- est goes actively into the political campaigns in a way that rather shocks our American sense of propriety. The clergy assist at the nominations, and the Church vote at the polls is cast on as purely selfish and grace- less principles as would be the Irish or negro ballot in our cities. The alliance of the Church and liquor in- terests " beer and Bibles" is one of the open scandals of the recent elections. Further, this marriage of Church and State makes an appeal to religious hatreds and fanaticism, the most dangerous and wicked of all passions, an effective political weapon always on hand and useful. A vulgar anti- popery speech that, in the United States, would hardly be tolerated, is acceptable and effective on most English hustings. Thus it conies that premiers and cardinal-princes are writing hotly on questions which we have removed entirely from the field of popular passion. While the situation of Church and State in England is indecorous and embarrassing to Transatlantic view, it is only that, and not a danger, as it is to most of the other European nations. In Italy the Church is a vast octopus, with its dank, flaccid arras sucking at every pore of the State. The fight of Germany with Rome 158 ENGLISH POLITICS. is historic and inherited. At this very hour the inflam- mable question of French politics is the expulsion of the Jesuits. Even Japan has just got through a gi- gantic civil war to decide this very question, the su- premacy of Tycoon or Mikado. We alone of all nations have not inherited in our politics this brand of discord, which has been the occasion of more wars in Christendom than any one other cause, perhaps of more than all others combined. VI. We have no foreign relations, no entangling al- liances, no responsibilities or obligations outside of our- selves. With every European people this is the main field of politics. The nation itself is but the starting- point of government. The real work is ramified and spread all over the continent, perhaps all over the world. Not a step can be taken without consulting other nations and understanding their interests. Europe is as we would be were all the States of our Union independent, antago- nistic, and with inherited animosities of blood, race, and faith, with Diverse languages, modes of thought, and political traditions, and with the quarrels and revenges of a thousand years to settle. It is this that makes the minister of state so important a personage in European government and so often its head. Following traditional forms, we have made our Secretary of State the head of our Cabinet, but it is only a survival. He is but a shadow, for happily we have no foreign affairs. It is this also which produces the broad scholarship and in- tellectual supremacy of the European statesman, and drives the demagogue and the half -educated out of the field of politics. Our Monroe doctrine is a political blessing, but it necessarily limits the range and powers of our public men, because it limits the demands and the strain on them. It deprives them of the compara- tive study of politics and history, which European poli- tics, on the other hand, enforce and necessitate. And comparative study has been the law of all advancement in thought and science in this century. COMPARATIVE POLITICS. 159 The general elections of 1880 in England were fought on issues almost entirely outside of England, and they involved an intelligent knowledge not only of modern continental politics and history, but of the Greek, Ot- toman, and Asiatic civilizations. Just imagine the statesman of Kentucky or Nebraska being called on for this kind of work ! Or how many members are there in any State delegation in Congress whom we could trust to vote for us on such questions when the consequence of an ignorant or reckless vote might be war ? VII. Finally, the critical responsibilities of govern- ment in our country are a mere nothing compared with those which immediately and forever confront the Eu- ropean statesman. We never feel them ; they are never brought home either to the people or to the legislator. The European statesman legislates with a sword sus- pended over his head. He deals with armed nations ready to strike. Vast camps of populations surround his own, in fatal readiness to move at a .signal. A false vote, and before it was circulated through the kingdom hostile bayonets would be swarming across the frontier, and hostile artillery thundering over the land. Within twenty-four hours after a declaration of war by Germany or France or Italy or Russia, the cav- alry would be over the border. A legislative debate in Europe may be like brandishing a torch in a powder- magazine. The European statesman, further, has absolutely no margin on which to make mistakes in home affairs, either. He deals with a discontented people, a bur- dened people, a suffering people. With the utmost wisdom and prudence, the average lot of the people will not be a pleasant one. Imprudent or ignorant legislation will bring suffering to many and sure death to some. How different the situation from ours where the land, from one end to the other, is one happy field, with a whole nation garnering smiling harvests, or at 160 ENGLISH POLITICS. cheerful and contented work in its shops and factories ! We have an illimitable margin for legislative mistake. No blunder costs us either blood or money that we feel. We are living like spendthrifts on accumulated capital. This country would have been wrecked a dozen times within living memory by its ignorant leadership had we had the same narrow margin to go on for errors as have the European nations. When that time comes in which a foolish word may precipitate a war, an indis- creet tax raise a riot, or a blunder of political economy result in national convulsion, then we will begin to appreciate the value of education in government, and of the scholar in politics. Let me recapitulate briefly, in such form that the eye may take it in at a glance, some of the main points of this imperfect contrast between the involved politics of the Old World and the simple field of the New. So shall we better see the different manner of public men that the two fields call for : England. One-third of the globe and one-fourth of its population. The empire scattered over all the continents. A social structure of many classes, with unlike interests and vested rights. An imperial government, ad- One simple form of govern- ministered through the Parlia- ment, with uniform machinerv ment, of one kingdom, and using all known kinds of po- litical machinery. The United States. A moderate and contiguous territory. One homogeneous people. Distribution and control of enormous government patron- age. Civil service, immense foreign service, military, naval, Church, titles, orders, peerage, public works, railways, tele- graph, etc. Moderate government pa- tronage. COMPARATIVE POLITICS. 161 England. Church and State, infinite political and religious compli- cations. Established and involved for- eign relations. Responsibilities in common. The nation only a component part of the conti- nent. No margin for political or legislative mistakes. In the midst of armed powers with colossal armies. Huge standing armies. An increasing national debt. A discontented people. Emi- gration. A people taxed to their ut- most capacity. Ignorant lower classes. The United Stctes. None. None. Monroe doctrine. Wide margin. No armies without or within. A decreasing national debt. A contented people. Immi- gration. A generous margin for tax- ation. A general common educa- tion. Is it any wonder that European politics evolve a stronger order of men than do ours? When you meet or hear or read the English statesman, you feel the immediate contrast, and a little study of the country shows how different are all the conditions of his life and work. The English statesman must be an educated man, for he deals with educated forces and with history. He generally springs from the upper classes, and has that knowledge of society which comes from looking from the top down, and not from the bottom up. So far and it strikes the American with a strong impres- sion the higher culture of Great Britain governs it, although it has little in common with the mental or religious life of the body of the people, and no syra- 162 ENGLISH POLITICS. pathy at all with their social life. But this is changing : the governing power is passing every year farther down the social scale. The English statesman, finally, is mostly a man of means. He has leisure to study for his work, and independence to do as he thinks best. Politics is not with him a means of making a livelihood. LONDON. LONDON. 168 CHAPTER XIX. WESTMINSTER ABBEY. A SERMON IN STONE THE PEACE OF THE GRAVE How A GRAVE IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY COMES A MONUMENTAL EPITOME OF ENGLISH HISTORY ENGLAND'S WORSHIP OF COURAGE OUR COUNTRY IN THE ABBEY THE BIRTH-SPOT OF THE "SHORTER CATECHISM" "THE ELECT OF ENG- LAND'S DEAD." IT was my good fortune to be shown the treasures and beauties of Westminster Abbey by its scholarly and accomplished dean, whose reputation and fame are as broad in all our land and in all the learned world as his own broad sympathies and the generous, gospel he preaches so boldly in the first of English churches. I shall not attempt a picture of this historic fane, which rises so stately here, and which stands perhaps in still statelier and more unattainable proportions in the imagi- nation of all read and cultured Americans. I will not even speak here of the sermons I heard of two of its greatest preachers, Dean Stanley himself and Canon Farrar, reserving the opportunity to touch on them in a later letter on the London pulpit, when a larger com- parative hearing of its eminent men shall have qualified me to write of it with more information and judgment. I would not write with the rapid pen and flow of newspaper work of Westminster Abbey, which centres and sums up in itself all of English history, and which, year by year, gathers to its bosom the best and greatest of England's men. Its picturing or treatment demands long and special study, and any other treatment is an injustice alike to the spot and to the reader. I sup- pose, indeed, that many of my countrymen to whom 166 166 LONDON. the venerable pile is familiar by painting ana engrav- ing and the allusions of literature may feel somewhat disappointed at the mention of its name without an effort at its description. There are those, however, whose lives have been a labor of love in its service, and who have written fully, authoritatively, and responsibly. To their works I refer all across the water who would see or know the best that pen and pencil can do for the abbey. Or, better yet, come and see it. "They sleep with their fathers" It was a noble in- stinct, worthy of illustrating its age, whatever that age was, which first conceived the idea of making the churches of England the tombs of its great dead, and Westminster Abbey has been highly favored of history and of England in becoming the shrine of the nation. " Let us here praise famous men and our fathers that begat us/' It is the one thing which I most envy of Europe, this wealth of its great men and the noble and beautiful use which it may make and does make of their graves, by which it carries down through the centuries what is best of them, keeping their memory green and imperishable, but, more than that, trans- fusing, as it were, their virtues into the daily life and generation of the hour. Here they lie in stately tombs all over England, the men who have deserved well of their country, who have served their fellow-men, who have honored their race, the soldiers, the philanthro- pists, the teachers, a lesson, a stimulus, an inspiration, to all that come after them. And it is alike to the honor of England, and convincing evidence of her moral vigor and integrity and of long national life yet to come, that this recognition, these great honors, are open to aU. Riches will not buy a tomb in West- minster Abbey, nor a life of ostentation and luxury and display ; but its walls are free to the young lieu- tenant, the young clergyman, the sailor or private soldier or drummer or cabin-boy, who does his duty and dies in doing it. WESTMINSTER AEBLY. 167 Perhaps the distinctive feature of Westminster Abbey to a thoughtful stranger is the wonderful catholicity of its tombs. We unconsciously think of it as an aris- tocratic burial-place of the Established Church of Eng- land, words of limitation. We find its consecrated crypts open to humanity, literally, to all the world. It has been eloquently called the a temple of silence and conciliation/' and this language is the literal truth. Variances of faiths, harsh judgments on personal lives, the Msperities of politics, the rancorous struggles of ambition, the bitterness of 'parties, all are forgotten in its still and passionless chapels where side by side sleep friend and foe. The clangor of arms and the damna- tory Clauses of old creeds are hushed in its hallowed and silent aisles. Here, walking among its graves, eloquent in their mute and voiceless expression, one comes again and again on tombs or monuments of men almost startling you by their associations or the dra- matic contrast of their lives with their last resting- place. You find in a place of honor " John and Charles Wesley," their tablet legended "My parish is the world," the founders of Methodism in the pantheon of the Anglican Church. You pause in- voluntarily at the name of John Bradshaw, the regi- cide judge, and president of the fatal court. Cromwell and the two Charleses and General Monk sleep near together. An English mob, in unhappier times, once rifled the tomb of the Puritan statesman and soldier and scattered his dust and bones, but the empty grave and its inscribed slab are still there in memory and honor of the man. John Dryden, the Roman Catho- lic; Isaac Watts, the nonconformist; Mrs. Siddons, the actress; Kemble, the actor; Congreve, the play- writer of broad freedom, to speak gently near his ashes; Casaubon, the Frenchman; Spanheim, the Swiss; Theodoras Paleologus, the Greek ; some of the family of Louis Philippe, all lie peacefully in the resting ranks of the noble army of its dead. It might be easy 168 LONDON. enough to lay most of these men here now in our better and gentler times, but think of the bitter pas- sions of older days when statesmen paid with their heads for political mistakes, think of the merciless and ignorant hatred which so short a time ago passed for religion and faith, and you can begin to gauge the strength of mind and moral courage and nobility ahead of their generation of the men who dug some of these graves, and who recognized in advance of their time the peace of the grave. Honor to whom honor is due. The honor for this great service to humanity is due of recent history ulti- mately to the dean of Westminster (and in earlier cen- turies, I suppose, to the abbot), who is finally responsible for every tomb, monument, or inscription in the church, and whose veto can exclude anybody, living or dead, and any tablet. Let me explain a moment how a grave in Westminster comes, how the greatest honor England can bestow is given. It is so thoroughly illustrative of the interior of English life, of a power of tradition and usage of which we know absolutely nothing, and which we can hardly understand or comprehend at all, that time is not lost in learning it. This great honor, for which kings hope and prelates strive and soldiers die, rests in law to-day, entirely and absolutely, in the hands of one man, the dean of the Abbey. He can bury any one in the Abbey he pleases and he can close its doors against any one he pleases, and there is no power in the land that can force or control his judgment or discretion in the matter, save, of course, the special action, in a special case, of Parliament, which, unlike our Congress, limited in its power and field of action, is " supreme, irresistible, and uncontrollable" in all things and over all men in England. It is one of those instances con- tinually arising out of the fortuitous historical develop- ment of England in which enormous powers or public trusts or franchises have come into the hands of some WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 169 one man or class, who are responsible for their use only to their own honor and conscience and the general sense of a whole people, which generally insome way enforces its own will. And a vast body of such usages, powers, vested rights, and franchises, ecclesiastical and civil and poli- tical, which no one has ever attempted to enumerate or define, and which no one here would define if he could, and of which there is nowhere any written or authori- tative record, is the Constitution of England. Compare this condition of things with the carefully-written paper which is our Constitution, and you have some idea of the organic differences of the two Governments, the one a growth, the other as yet a pure construction. This fact is the great and foundation difference between English and American politics, and the reason why the acts of one are often no precedent for the other. As a matter of fact, Dean Stanley, as any strong man would in a similar position, feels bound to act as the prophet and interpreter of the English people in the discharge of this unique and singularly high trust, and does, as have the deans of Westminster before him. While the exercise of such sole and irresponsible power looks dangerous to the American mind, accustomed to the careful distribution of responsibilities and the deli- cate balance of powers, it has many advantages apparent he popul will, but it is regulated, restrained perhaps for a time, at a glance. The popular feeling generally obtains its by the sounder and truer judgment of an educated and cultivated man, who can also by his power of veto not only prevent indecorous burials, which might be forced under temporary impulse or immature sentiment, but save the building from the profanation of crude inscrip- tions, born of ignorance, passion, or bad taste. Indeed, the present dean has done an acknowledged service, not only to England, but to the English language, in the regulation of the mural legends and inscriptions which have been placed in the Abbey during his long incumbency. As a whole work they show a marked H 15 170 LLJDON. force, elegance, and good taste that in future times will be noted and remembered to the credit of our century. A stroll through the aisles and cloisters of this great church awakens the echoes of history and starts associa- tions almost at every step which lead one to the outer confines of our knowledge political, religious, and social of ourselves. Here, in the ancient Chapter-House, a perfectly cir- cular room, on rude stone benches continuous around the wall in three tiers, without arms or railing or rest of any kind, for three hundred years sat the Parliaments of England. Here, in the Jerusalem Chamber, a modest kind of vestry room, storied in legend as the death-scene of Henry IV., juggled by a prophecy, was framed and published " The Shorter Catechism," that famous com- pendium of Presbyterian belief. How many of our American Presbyterians ever think of the " Assembly of Westminster Divines" as assembled and working at this historic Anglican centre ? ' In this same room sat and worked the men who pro- duced the revision of the Book of Common Prayer in the form in which it is now used in England. And, to keep up the chain of historical tradition in this line, the modern " Committee for the Revision of the Bible" is to-day sitting in this chamber invested with such dis- tinguished ecclesiastical associations. Here once was the " treasury of the kings of Eng- land," and here now all the official gold and silver standards of the coin of the realm are under royal lock and key. Here, too, opening out of the dean's private study, is the simple closet, now disused, but which once served for the keeping of the crown jewels and regalia, of which the dean and chapter are still the legal and con- structive keepers, and which, on the eve of the corona- WESTMINSTER ABBEY. tion-day of every monarch, are yet brought to the Abbey and kept there over-night, that they may be ready fof the ceremony of the morning ; for the coronation of every king or queen of England takes place in this church in front of the Chapel of Henry VII. These jewels are the gorgeous collection of crowns and coronets and .sceptres and royal swords and gold and silver and diamonds familiar to all who have visited the Tower of London. Although in the constructive keeping of the Abbey, these regal valuables are by statute in the actual charge as deposits of the constable of the Tower, who is supposed to have the safest place in the kingdom either for state prisoners or state property. Here, in silent admonitory state, among the dusty tombs of the sovereigns who have sat in it, stands the coronation chair. Under its seat, and part of it now, is the famous " Stone of Scone," the rude throne of the old Scottish chiefs, and which Scottish tradition and relic-worship assert to be the very stone on which the patriarch Jacob rested his head for a pillow when he slept and saw his glorious vision of power and long life and God's protection, " the Shepherd and the Stone of Israel." Here, by a dark and narrow stairway, you ascend to the small, rude, touching Chapel of Henry V., swung in the air, the solid stone steps worn almost into cups by the feet of devoted worshippers, who for centuries have climbed its hard, bare way to hear mass and pray by the body of their dead, loved king, the saddle and the helmet of Agincourt keeping solemn guard over the warrior at rest forever. On the Continent I saw many impressive altars in crypts and corners and dramatic situations, but I remember none in the unique position of this one, raised high into the air, on a level above the main altar of the church, and looking down on all around it. But why lengthen out detached pictures where every foot is illustrative, where every stone is eloquent, where 172 LONDON. every aisle and corridor and archway is tremulous with the memories of centuries ? Westminster Abbey, with its picturesque Old English architecture, so thoroughly ecclesiastical, so rich, so ele- gant ; with its cloisters and venerable aisles, shadowy with the associations of legend, history, and tradition ; with its stately tombs, the grand records of England's glories, learning, and faith ; with its historic chapels and crumbling stones and time-stained walls hung with dropping banners or crowded with suggestive inscrip- tions, is one of those places which, like Niagara, cannot disappoint. One need not fear to see it lest the sight should dissolve cherished dreams or beautiful images. No matter what one's range of reading, no matter what one's fund of learning, no matter what one's sweep and realm of imagination, the fair fabric of fact stands for- ever, grander than dream or fancy, a living sermon in stone. I could not help thinking, whenever I passed this historic spot, of the riches with which England is dowered in this single church, and my mind reverts to the reflection again and again as I think how long, long, long it must be before we can be equally favored. It is a foundation with which no college can ever be endowed, a perpetual lesson and education. " Re- member the days of old ; consider the years of many generations." Wandering through Westminster Abbey, as in all the churches of England, there is forced on one a sense of the great honors which England pays to her soldiers. I think that in the cathedrals and churches of the kingdom a larger proportion of soldiers lie buried in state, or have their names recorded in memorial legend if they have died on foreign fields, than any one other class, not even excepting the clergy, whose homes have been these buildings, and who themselves in former times have played so great a part in history. At every step their stately tombs or eloquent tablets arrest you ; WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 173 their still stone effigies rest under the gathering duste of every century ; " their good swords rust" on every wall : " their souls are with the Lord, we trust." It is this cultus of courage and force which has made England, and it is these honors which make her men soldiers. While there is something in her present mil- itary organization and structure which seems to produce deficient generalship, or prevent the development and coming forward of the real military genius which is surely in her armies, the soldierly qualities of the body of her officers are something wonderful and worthy of the highest admiration, their fidelity, their personal chivalry in moments of danger, their perfect willing- ness and readiness to die. Her gentlemen leave homes of loveliness and cultivation and refinement unequalled on the face of the globe, and die every year, every day, almost, old and young, on the plains of Asia, in the forests of Africa, in fever-swamp and desert-sands, cheerfully and uncomplainingly. Hardly a country home in England but has its soldier's grave somewhere in the uttermost parts of the earth where England is pushing her imperial arms. And that all this sacrifice is made in the face of a general sense of uneasiness and want of confidence in the ability of the directing power makes it all the more wonderful. "Somebody blun- dered" at Balaklava, just as they did at Braddock's Field and Bunker's Hill, and before the cotton-bales of New Orleans in 1812, and among the kraals of Zu- luland, and in the cations of Afghanistan this fatal year ; but still the British soldier, gentleman and yeo- man, is ever ready, with his life in his hand, to go for- ward. It is these tombs in the old cathedrals. Passing from the ancient abbots' palace, now the dwelling of the dean, by private entrance to the church, just before we entered the transept of the main build- ing Dean Stanley, to whom my presence started recol- lections of Philadelphia, said, " Stop a moment ; I want 16* 174 LONDON. to show you something that will remind you of home," and ascending by a side entry three narrow steps, into a little chapel shut off by an open railing from public entrance, we stood suddenly before the handsome me- morial window of Mr. Chi Ids to the two English poets, a grand blaze of illumination, covering almost an entire wall of the chapel. It is a beautiful and costly work of art, in the conventional ecclesiastical style of glass-painting, rich and impressive. It is the usage in the Abbey to inscribe on all monu- ments the incident of their erection, and the story of this one is very simply and frankly told in a single line: " D. D.* Oeorgius Gulielmua Childs. Cims Americanus." This is the first appearance of our country in the his- toric Abbey. There are a few other American names, some loyal refugees in the war of 1776-83, some colo- nial worthies, some British soldiers killed in the Revo- lution and French wars, but this is the only inscription which distinctly places the new nation of " the United States of America" in the monumental archives of Westminster. LONDON. * Donum dedit. THE LONDON PULPIT. CHAPTER XX. THE LONDON PULPIT. DEAN STANLEY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY CANON FARRAR Al ST. MARGARET'S ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL CARDINAL MANNING IN THE PRO-CATHEDRAL AT KENSINGTON REV. MR. HAWEIS AT MARYLEBONE THE ENGLISH CLERGY AS PUBLIC MEN. To an American imagination there is no preacher in all the world who has a grander pulpit than he who speaks in Westminster Abbey. It is an inspiration to stand there. The scene of an ordinary afternoon ser- vice is itself a dramatic one. From the little pulpit at the corner of the transept the preacher sees a living sea of heads stretching out every broad aisle as far as the voice will reach. The wave of his audience overflows even the generous provision of the seats and surges up and over the tombs of the historic dead. On the con- fines of the seated congregation throng dark clouds of standing listeners, moving restlessly for some coign of vantage, pressing forward anxiously and expectant as when some great speech is to be delivered in a Parlia- ment. This, at least, is the scene which every Sunday greets the eye of Dean Stanley, who is one of the most popular preachers in London. This popularity comes solely, too, from the spirit and tone of his sermons, for their delivery breaks their effect rather than adds to it. The dean reads his sermons, which is the murder of ora- tory, and few voices if any can reach the outer edges of the vast audience which gathers in the spacious gray- stone halls of the nave and transept. It is the ex- quisite English of these sermons and their gentle cath- olic spirit which draws all London and all the world of travel to hear them. Dean Stanley's spare form 176 LONDON. kindly features are so well known now in our country that the American traveller does not feel as a stranger when on entering the church he sees the familiar face in the reading-desk or pulpit. London is the vortex of the world, Westminster ia the heart of London, and its preacher is so thoroughly in all the currents of modern life that one loses in every sermon of Dean Stanley's the more delicate touches, the keener allusions, the more eifective because so deftly veiled, if he is not thoroughly familiar with all the higher movements of the hour. Here in a very striking sense "the parish is the world," and Dean Stanley has all the tact of a born journalist in harness- ing the events of each day to the chariot of his work. When I first heard him the text was a clause of Scrip- ture, "the service of the sanctuary." The theme, how- ever, was strictly " the Book of Common Prayer," its historic associations and growth, its spirit, and mainly and practically the question of the expediency or pro- priety of its emendation now. However scholarly or critical the treatment of this subject, and this sermon was both, the theme, in such a temple and before a Church-of-England audience, must of necessity involve panegyric, and that it might not lead to narrowing opinion or the nurture of prejudice the preacher with fine tact prefaced his discourse by recalling as appro- priate to the subject and the day that this very Sunday was the anniversary of that historic occasion when the service of the Established Church of England was read for the first time and the last time in the national Church of Scotland. Then, in perfectly impartial and dispassionate words and in a tone and voice colorless of the slightest trace of feeling or judgment, he related the story of that famous scene in Edinboro' when Janet Geddes threw the footstool at the dean of Edinboro's head just as he began to read the collect for the day, the same collect in which we- had all joined that very hour, the uproar and confusion, the broken and ended THE LONDON PULPIT. 177 service, and the historical consequences of the event. That picture, drawn so calmly, all the passions of the time faded out with the years, as lifeless and departed as if veritably entombed with the dead of centuries that lay all around us, made its own argument. The audience stood at once on the catholic plane of the preacher. On the question of amendment now the practical body of the discourse the dean was direct and ex- plicit. Noble as was the book, grand as were its asso- ciations, it was a living growth and must change. It had defects, the legacies of times not so fortunate or blessed with light as ours, and they should be amended; the sooner the better. The specific changes suggested and pointed out as desirable were one and all in th" line of broadening the Church and opening wide its doors, wide and loving as the arms of its Founder. Among those instanced were the expurgation of the sweeping damnatory clauses of the Athnnasian Creod ; also the abolition of that rubric which forbids the burial prayers of t\\e Church to be read over the body "of a man of the purest and most blameless life if he be- longed, say, to that most excellent and pious people, the Friends, instead of the Established Church," or "even over the most innocent of little children, those little children of whom Christ Himself said, 'Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Another change urged was the wording of those special prayers for rain which seem to assume that the favors of nature are sent upon the just and its disfavors upon the unjust, contrary to the now clearly acknowledged teachings of the New Testament. In Westminster Abbey the service is rather a medium between the High Church intoning of England and the severely plain enunciation demanded with us. When it was over and the sermon finished the congregation slowly dispersed, not with a rush to the streets, but lingering kindly and lovingly in the cool gray shades 78 LONDON. of the tombs and arched aisles, and there were no im- patient vergers or janitors hanging around to hustle out the last lingerers and close inhospitable doors. In the yard of Westminster Abbey, a solid pavement of flat tombs, stands the parish church of St. Margaret. St. Margaret's Parisli is the first parish in the kingdom, for in its bounds rise both Houses of Parliament, and, I think, the official residences of all the government. The Speaker of the House of Commons, the Speaker of the House of Lords, and -most of the great officials of state are always members of this parish. Until within a very few years the House of Commons was accus- tomed to attend this church in state, as provided in the Prayer-book. Westminster Abbey, although it fills so large a space in London in American imagination, has no territorial jurisdiction. An abbey is something to which we have no equivalent iii Protestant America. It is a college of priests, a point or foundation purely for worship of God, unclogged by any congregational cares or limita- tions. It has no congregation in our sense. There is regular service and it is -free to all, but it goes on whether any persons from outside come or not. Dr. F. W. Farrar, whose name as a popular author is so familiar on both sides of the sea, is the rector or pastor of St. Margaret's, and he is so by virtue of holding a canonry in Westminster Abbey. St. Margaret's, too, is a stimulating house in which to preach. It is part of the fabric of the English Constitution; the strongest legislation in the world throbs at its very side, and the congregation must always hold some of the ablest and most influential men living. Add to this that there is not a Sunday but when, in addition to the permanent congregation, there are to be found among the hearers distinguished men of all peoples, statesmen, thinkers, writers, soldiers, who come as strangers and travellers, unknown and unseen, but none the less critical and ob- THE LONDON PULPIT. 179 serving. In fact, they are making up the verdict of the world. The interior of St. Margaret's is very plain. It was the ordinary rectangular American church or meeting- house, with four white walls, and the entire floor filled with plain wooden high-backed pews. Fine stained- glass windows and some historic names graven on mural tablets, Sir Walter Raleigh lies in the chancel, relieve the room from absolute sameness and furnish that rest to the eye which one finds so grateful in the churches of Europe, and which he so soon learns to look for. The conduct of the service was correspondingly simple. Both the prayers and the psalms were read so that each word was intelligible. There was neither in- toning nor drawling. Going to St. Margaret's with the consciousness that I was seeing one of the high-places of the Church of England, it was something of a sur- prise to hear the first hymn given out, "Come let us join our cheerful songs With angels round the throne," and to have it followed by " How sweet the name of Jesus sounds In a believer's ear I" two hymns in common use by every denomination in the United States. And both were sung to airs famil- iar in all .Presbyterian and Congregational churches, and the singing was by the entire congregation. Dr. Farrar, a dark, brown -faced man with a pleasant countenance, preached from Galatians, the first verse of the fifth chapter, "the liberty with which Christ hath made us free." It was the broadest of broad-church sermons, the special dangers to Christian freedom from the side of ecclesiastical organization being the drift of the discourse, and at times the argument seemed to press certain practical applications on home issues not immediately discernible to a stranger. I could 180 LONDON. only quote from recollection, and should be afraid to attempt for fear of being charged with misquotation but it is sufficient to say that Canon Farrar was as latitudinarian as St. Paul himself, and would probably have been pronounced unorthodox on the Church ques- tion from many a Baptist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian pulpit in the United States. He went the length of accepting literally the sayings of the New Testament, translating them into the language and applying them to the situation of the day. He is out and out a disciple of St. Paul. Indeed, it is observable how thoroughly Pauline preaching is the rule in the Church of England, which is suffering a kind of recoil from theological disputation, and to-day sees the old doctrinal lines broken at many a point without apparently think- ing of even an effort to defend them. I have mentioned that this sermon seemed to be bearing on some home question of church government or policy not entirely clear to a passing visitor. It is worthy of remark that nearly every sermon I heard in London bore directly on some imminent matter, some great question of modern thought or action, and that the preacher spoke as a lawyer before a bench of judges or a jury does, directly to the point, with the view of convincing some person or persons on a given issue and at that time. I was not fortunate enough to hear Canon Liddon, of St. Paul's Cathedral, who is ranked by many at the head of the London pulpit in the way of combining both scholarship and popular oratorical power. He was sick and off duty during my three visits to London. St. Paul's, although dwarfed in American interest by Westminster Abbey, is to Englishmen probably the greater church of the two, and it is always and for any one a most impressive house of worship. It is the cathedral church of the diocese of London and thr most prominent building in all that huge city, being ir THE LONDON PULPIT. Igl size the third largest church in Christendom. It is the great monument of its architect, Sir Christopher Wren who got $1000 a year for building it. The bishop of London now gets $50,000 a year. The dean of St. Paul's also now receives $10,000 a year, and a staff of canons $5000 a year each, for conducting service in it. Then there are also archdeacons, prebendaries, minor canons, and the usual equipment of lesser officers, chan- cellor, register, and clerks of many kinds. St. Paul's Cathedral stands now right in the heart of business London. Its once cloistered walks are busy marts, and it is a dramatic surprise to pass in a few steps almost, out of the Bank of England, heated, panting with the pulses of the trade of the world, into the cool, calm shades of a still cathedral where the service of worship is nearly always in progress. There are, I think, four services every day, and perhaps more on Sunday, but it would be, it struck me, a glorious asser- tion of religious life if they were made continuous day and night, and this magnificent temple, right in the heart of the dominion of Mammon in this world, were constituted a place where literally "prayer is made to God without ceasing." This idea flashed on me like a wave of emotion within ten minutes after I first entered the great cathedral. I suggested it afterwards to an English clergyman, but could not impart to him my enthusiasm. He thought it would " kill the clergy." I would say, " Kill them." If men can die for their country on a desolate and barren battle-field, why not for the glory of God in a comfortable cathedral ? The service of St. Paul's is a great work of art con- ducted with all the highest accessories of music and ecclesiastical stage effect. It was entirely intoned, and not a word of the priest was intelligible, at least to a non-English stranger. For one not accustomed to the traditional stage delivery of the English altar the tongue might just as well have been Latin or Hebrew. The preacher and reader, however, were perfectly heard. 16 182 LONDON. The ablest sermon I heard in St. Paul's was by the senior canon, Rev. Mr. Gregory. The bishop of the diocese had ordered prayers for good weather in all the churches, and Canon Gregory on this day preached to the order, taking for his theme the whole question of prayer for the specific direction or suspension of the laws of nature. The marked feature of this sermon was the extreme candor and fairness with which the preacher stated the position of his opponents on this matter in all its strength, without the least disposition to contort it or to blink the danger. He fairly admitted that tho ground had shifted since the days of mediaeval thought, and made not the least attempt to hold it by appeals to transmitted ignorance or prejudice, but grappled with the issue in a way that showed a masterly study of the whole range of modern reading. It was the work of a strong man who knew there was a fight ahead and was ready for it. Like nearly all English clergymen, Canon Gregory preaches with a vigor, physical- and intellectual, which tells of the broad foundation of the university and of generous and conscientious care of the body from youth upwards. He is a large man, of hearty address and that rare honesty of expression and manner that in- spires immediate confidence and trust. The close of St. Paul's, in which these canons live in low-roorned old- fashioned houses, with wrought-iron extinguishers and hooks for the link-boys' torches yet attached to their doors, is a most quaint old place which I despair of describing to those who have not seen it or something like it, but it is one of the best living reminiscences of Old London. It is in such out-of-the-way places not in the guide- books, or out of the reach of tourist curiosity, that one gots his freshest and best conception of past England. A.n old castle with the family still in it, their comfort- able e very-day life blending through the slow succes- sion of centuries with the half-barbaric magnificence of their ancestors, a dark gray close with a deanery full of THE LONDON PULPIT. 183 girls inheriting the substantial club comforts of a line of dead abbots and their bachelor monks, are worth all the routine ruins and well-trodden ivy walls in the island. I first heard of the Rev. Charles Haweis many years ago, when I found his " Music and Morals" in the meagre hut of a miner in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, into which I had been driven by stress of weather to pass the night, and the singular contrast of the incident kept his name fixed in my attention. In London, Mr. Haweis is a very popular preacher, and his church rather a fashionable one in its own stratum of society. St. James of Marylebone is an old-fashioned church building such as you see yet in old parts of Philadel- phia and in many of the interior towns of Maryland and Pennsylvania. The old architectural interior has been religiously preserved, low, long galleries, quaint pillars, high wooden pews, but all the plain walls and woodwork are now done over in the glory of modern decorative effect, in gray and red and gold and glass. Indeed, it rather looks MS if an energetic :esthetie club had been let loose on all the walls and wooden fronts. The rear end of the church, which serves as a back- ground for the altar, looks something like a huge il- luminated title-page, so elaborate is it in pictured glass and gold and neutral-tinted panels, all blazoned over with ecclesiastical and religious symbols. The altar itself was a narrow ledge against the base of the great window. On it rested an elaborate cross in opaque glass or some similar material revealing itself very pret- tily with a kind of subdued brilliancy out of a wealth of flowers. Above the ledge arose a large rigid old fashioned square arch or triangle, thus: A. Inside of the arch was a perfect circle of scroll-work of some kind ; inside of the circle a Greek cross, its four even arms touching the circumference, while its centre was a great 184 LONDON. garnet-colored stone or piece of glass, which burned or glittered like a fiery eye, and more 01 less recalled the Shah of Persia or one's boyhood recollections of the "Arabian Nights." The congregation was apparently of the middle class, wealthy, comfortable, and uneducated. It was the most congregational service, however, I have ever seen. The Confession, Lord's Prayer, Creed, and most of the prayers were said by the whole people so well and spiritedly that the voice of the priest was never heard at all save when he sounded the leading note. The psalms of the day and the hymns were sung by the people, who carried on the whole service. In fact, the whole congregation seemed one body, a living being throbbing and pulsating with worship. It was a congregation very easy and pleasant to preach to, if one was its choice. It was harmonious, very earnest, and entirely satisfied with itself. Without knowing anything of them, I should venture the assertion that the body of tlie people are of the same class of society and have a high opinion of their own " culture." Mr. Haweis is a good specimen of the popular preacher toned down by the social limitations of the Church of England. He has all the elements of a stump-speaker, but has never learned to sink the pulpit below the level of the stump, which is the usual work of an American sensational preacher. Mr. Haweis does not even approach this, for neither his education nor Mary] ebone would suffer it ; but somehow his man- ner suggests that under less fortunate conditions of cul- tivation he might have drifted that way. He has the best elements and force of the sensational preacher, without his vulgarity. In person Mr. Haweis is a dark, average-sized man, with black side- whiskers, and of a sanguine, bilious-looking temperament His elocution is very English, apologetic, and with a great deal of hem-ing and haw-ing and aw-ing. His trr.es are also somewhat nasal, which is not English THE LONDON PULPIT. 135 The Roman Catholic pro-cathedral, which is said tc be a kind of provisional tabernacle until the Church can make good its claim to St. Paul's or Westminster, is situated away out on the Kensington road, one-half mile by underground railway from Portland Place, and the aristocratic section of which that place is the centre. It is a fairly capacious but very plain church, with pews, little decoration in the way of planting and stat- uary, and looking not at all in ks interior like the Ro- man churches of Ireland and Italy. Here I went to hear Henry Edward, Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster. Cardinal Manning is a toll, spare man, of feeble frame, with an emaciated and almost pallid face, ren- dered still more wan by hungry, cavernous eyes, the true ecclesiastical type. He called up at once the polit- ical ecclesiastic of the sixteenth century. His wasted features are refined, scholarly, and intellectual. A movable scalp, causing his red skull-cap to move up and down, imparts rather a sinister effect and mars the general impression of his appearance. The thin figure and meagre, fleshless face suggest the mediaeval an- chorite, the sharp, severe outlines the Middle-Age in- quisitor, a man who would be honestly cruel, cruel to himself as well as to others. And Cardinal Manning has been cruel to himself, mercilessly honest to his convictions,' in leaving the green pastures and pleasant waters of the Established Church of England for the arid and unintellectual wastes of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain. There was no lash ion at the pro-cathedral, no good so- ciety, no university, no influence, no cultivation. There were ignorant, new-made wealth and dull credulity and heavy mediocrity, but nothing better. It was a real sacrifice of the highest kind for this cultivated, learned, able man, the flo\ver of English education, to be there. Cardinal Manning's sermon, as indeed was to be expected, was masterly and powerful. It was very 16* 186 LONDON. earnest, and full of the wisdom of an old and wis man. It was severely plain in language and often very practical, but the whole interior train of thought and argument was entirely above the very inferior con- gregation which listened to it. They undoubtedly got good from it, but they never knew the perfection of the work. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to me that the great preacher was preaching two sermons simulta- neously, one in the spirit (o himself and any stray hearer that chanced to drop in, and another in the flesh of the word to the pitiful audience of the pro- cathedral. I tli ink no educated man could have wit- nessed this scene without regret, no matter how widely he might have differed from every word and conclusion of the ex- fellow of Oxford. The text of the sermon was the words, " Gold, frankincense, and myrrh," the subject, "Offering/' the dedication of everything to God ; one's whole self in every part, estate, body, mind. The treatment revealed a great deal of patristic reading, and the language recalled at times the late papal syllabus, " The characteristic of the XIX. century is mental aberration," and the remedy of the cardinal was simple and mechanical : Offer your mind as a sacrifice to God, i.e., to the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Manning's delivery is very defective, and keeps one on the stretch all the time. Owing to loss of teeth, perhaps, one word out of every eight or ten drops out entirely, and, as his sermons are of that un- usual order that one wants to hear every word of them, the loss is very serious. In speaking Cardinal Man- ning clenched the rail of the pulpit-box with both his pallid fists, like an English statesman on the hustings, and ejected rather than delivered his words, as if half embarrassed. He wore a scarlet cap and scarlet robe. In quoting Latin, it was rather significant that he used the continental pronunciation, abandoning the English system of his own university training. The pro-cathedral is not the first Roman Catholic THE LONDON PULPIT. 187 church in London. That is St. George's Cathedral, across the river from Westminster bridge. In this pro-cathedral, when Cardinal Manning preached, the pews were guarded and a sixpence demanded for an ordinary seat, a shilling for the better ones. The ser- mon was preached for a charity, and the money thus secured went to it in addition to the special collection taken up. The force of priests at the altar was not strong. Mass was more reverently gone through than in the perfunctory Italian style, but with less regard to the scenic proprieties, and with an utter want of the sense of dress and dfapery that was thoroughly English. The -preachers with a Transatlantic fame of othei churches were not as conspicuous in the winter of 1879-80 as some years before. Irving, the leader of the famous apostolic movement, was dead. Spurgeon was in Italy in search of health, perhaps of life. The great orator of the Congregational ist denomination was in the divorce court. And so it happens that the view of this letter is confined to the Roman and English State- Churches. In London the pulpit is a much stronger social force than in any city in our country, and the men who fill it take a much greater and more influential share in the general public life. There are reasons in the structure of English society for this. The bishops sit in Parliament, and thus have a direct political influence. Again, the entire body of the clergy is a definite class, entitled always to be heard in a society which rests on a basis of class and is itself only a federation of many class-interests. This priestly class, in its highest rank too, reaches into the peerage It requires a personal knowledge of English life tc know how much this means. Once more, the English clergy have a better and happier education than the main body of ours, which, 188 LONDON. indeed, they share with the leaders of thought of all England, but it works out special advantages in their profession. Owing to a greater breadth of learning, and as its resultant a larger freedom of thought and ex- pression, many of the great intellectual and social ques- tions which are fought outside of the Church with us are fought inside of it here. Then the good fortune of a university education in England is a great blessing which widens with the years. All the best life of Eng- land goes to school either at Cambridge or Oxford. Until more recent years this has been the case almost without exception. The graduates of these two univer- sities divided among themselves all England, and have done so for hundreds of years. Their alumni have been simply a club formed of the leaders in the state, in the Church, in society, in the army, at the bar. England is a small place, where men constantly meet one another. The young university clergyman starts with an acquaintance embracing all that is best in the kingdom, and that will last for life if he is worthy of it. He has, therefore, a much more intimate associa- tion with the whole life of the nation than the American clergyman, who starts from the first in the seclusion of a denominational college and further segregates himself by finishing his education in an admittedly sectarian theological school. Finally, the Established Church itself is an alliance with the politics and good society of the kingdom, and its leaders have necessarily intimate relations with and responsibilities to these interests. There is another solid reason why the clergy of Lon- don should stand to the front of their calling. All England is behind them. The men who preach in St. Paul's and Westminster, at Smithfield or the Temple, and who live at Lambeth Palace, would be less than mortal did they not draw strength and inspiration from the historic theatre of their work. THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. 189 CHAPTER XXI. THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. THE PRIMITIVE INN-YARD STAGE OF OLD ENGLAND DISAPPEARANCE OF THK ENGLISH DRAMA OF THE SOIL THE SAXON PLAY AND TIN: MODERN THEATRE LONDON THEATRES AND LAW-COURT ROOMS HENRY IRVING AT THK LYCEUM THE SCEPTRE OF FASHION SARA BERN- IIAKDT OVER FROM THE THEATRE SEVERAL ancient London inns, with spacious interior court-yards surrounded with galleries in the shape of a continuous porch running around the second story, are still pointed out as the rude and simple play-housed of Old England. The stage here was the pavement of the court-yard. The spectators gathered on the upper porches, or perhaps could even sit at their chamber windows and see and hear the play, as I have done this year in a provincial Italian town, and seen good acting. The servants of the inn and hangers-on clustered in the corners of the court-yard, standing on the ground, or maybe indulging in the kitchen-stools and stable- benches. It is, perhaps, in survival of this tradition that in most of the London theatres of to-day the best part of the house is called the pit, and that seats in it are Fold at a cheap price and fashion rigorously shuns it, The modern pit is the survivor of the old inn court- yard, and the flavor of the stable and kitchen still clings to it. Many of the plays of Shakespeare were brought before the people on just such simple boards, some of them in some of these very inns. This was in the days of Merrie England and of strolling players, the time when England was a play-going nation. She was then Catholic and monarchical in heart. To-day she is 190 LONDON. Protestant and republican, and her native drama is gone. There is something in democracy and Puritanism which drives the theatre out of a national life. The people have risen to higher interests. When the Puritan became ascendant in England he closed up the play- houses, burnt the plays, branded the poor players, and, perhaps, drove them with cropped ears out of the land. They have never come back. England has her theatres to-day, but they are no more an institution of the people. They are simply a conventional amusement of the higher classes common to the world. They flourish only in her cities. The " play" of English literature has disap- peared. A popular love of the drama among the humble body of the people only exists in that condition of civi- lization where there is a high development of the dra- matic element in Church and State. Wherever there are elaborate rites and forms in the Church, and scenic displays in the Government, there the heart of the common people is really moved by its drama, which, however humble it may be, answers to and satisfies a popular craving. A drama of the soil flourishes best when the High-Church principle rules in the Church and the monarchical principle in the State. In Italy to-day, where the people are born actors, the daily ser- vice of the Church is always an impressive picture, and it flowers all the time in imposing "functions" in grand cathedrals so built that the chancel railings enclose a magnificent stage where a hundred or more priests and acolytes can countermarch, intone, swing censers, and group themselves in effective tableaux. From the England of the play and play-houses come down scenic coronations and spectacular openings of Par- liament, which are performed yet to-day, but to irre- sponsive audiences. The whole order of life of the peer- age is, in fact, a colossal play for the amusement and impression of the common people. When the people THE PL A I AND THE THEATRE. 191 get behind the scenes then comes democracy. Democ- racy has come for England, and the drama as a native institution ~has disappeared before it. The old name, even, is gone. The Saxon " play" of the people has given way to the Latin theatrum of fashion. The English theatre of to-day does not differ from the American. The same plays are acted in the same way, and the same kind of people go to hear them, viz., the well-off world of fashion and the very dregs of the cities. The vast body of the people have no more interest in them than have ours. The theatres of London, then-lore, although good in their several ways, oiler no field for the study of Eng- 'ish life except incidentally. The houses themselves were not materially diU'erent from ours, and they seemed to grade themselves fashionable, middle class, low, much as ours do. In this similarity to ours they resemble every other in- stitution whose development in England and our country has been under similar condition-. I took a stroll one day through the law-courts of London under a barrister's guidance, and was surprised to find how little they dif- fered from ours. Even the men in them were the same. There was the little, withered-iip, old lawyer, the portly, substantial, prosperous one, the hurried, full-of-busi- :ulvocate, the hungry, shabby attorney, who lias given up the race, and haunts the court-room by habit; the judge who tried the case himself, and did all the talking; the judge whose docket was always behindhand ; the barrister with unclean linen and un- brushed clothes. They were all there just as they are hitting in the court-rooms of Pennsylvania to-day. It may be that Pennsylvania, accepting the common law in full and the old English system of pleading, and changing very little of anything until within this gen- eration, has carried down something more of the detail of the English court-room than other States, but it is not much. The controlling reason for the likeness is 192 LONDON. that for three hundred years the law, always a con- servative profession, has advanced with equal steps and under nearly equal conditions in England and this country. The American lawyer has added to his pro- fessional labors the burden of politics, which, in Eng- land, has been generally shouldered by another class, but that is about all the difference in their lives. He threw away the wig, also, and that is about all the difference there is in the coup d'ceil of an English and American court-room. And that is a difference to our advantage. I failed entirely to see the dignity and impressiveness which, to the English mind, lies in a horse-hair wig. They give a slovenly and unclean air to a whole room. Few were well kept, none of them looked fresh, and many were nasty. All theatre-going London, in 1879, was divided in its worship of Henry Irving and Sara Bernhardt, both of whom are promised to America, and both of whom have made conquest of the world of fashion as well a f of the stage. Henry Irving has unquestionably achieved a wonder ful success in holding the sustained attention of Lon- don. His plays are mostly of a high order, mainly Shakespearian. His Merchant of Venice has held the stage for hundreds of nights, and there are no symptoms to show that the interest is flagging. One must go a week beforehand to secure seats, and this has been the case for several years. His theatre is the Lyceum, on classic ground just off the Strand. Mr. Irving is a spare, rather fine-looking man, with an intellectual face and the carriage of a gentleman. He has the sem- blance of a bend in his shoulders greater than the reality. When acting you see Henry Irving all the time, but it is not offensive. He blends with his character, but he never loses himself even to the incidents of his appearance. There is, for instance, a certain melo- dramatic air about him, recognizable plainly in his THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. 193 photographs, which never forsakes him and leaves on one a suspicion that he is forever posing. He wears a "melancholy mien," as one who carries around from hour to hour the burden of a great grief, a secret mystery, perhaps even a delicious crime. This manner, however, is one of chaste repression, and the highest finish of subdued refinement. There is not the least suggestion of the possibility of a scene or of anything that might violate the minutest conventionalities of good society. It is an air eminently calculated to charm and interest a sympathetic woman with time on her hands and plenty of money. This charm Mr. Irving has worked, and it is the danger which confronts him now in coming to our country. Although an excellent, conscientious, and scholarly actor, Mr. Irving owes his sovereignty of the London stage to the stamp of aristocratic endorsement set on him personally. Society, in a country where society is thoroughly organized, "has approved him. It has taken him up, it has opened its drawing-rooms to him, it has made it the mode to go to the Lyceum. iiisliops hear him, the clergy of good society discuss him with rcfif/ieuse peeresses; the journal with social ambition hymns his praist-s. It is verv meet and right and proper now in England to hear Henry Irving. Now in this country we have nothing at all to answer to the direct and powerful influence of the English aristocracy in general society. It can take up a pet of any kind, for a mere whim, perhaps, and his fortune is made. And it does take up these pets all the time, and in the most capricious way. Sometimes it is an actor, sometimes it is a clergyman, sometimes it is an artist, sometimes it is a beauty, sometimes even the whim may be to buy at a certain shop or patronize a certain trades- man. Whatever it is, the success of the pet is assured. All London kneels at the feet of the beauty, throngs the theatre of the actor, buys the pictures of the artist, or crowds the shop of the favorite tradesman. Perhaps i n 17 194 LONDON. society even tolerates or half invites a mi Id and cautions snubbing from its pet. This is the perilous position of Henry Irving. He is the pet of London society, and specially of that wing of it which affects to be non- worldly. He stands at the head of the English stage, but how far he owes that position to an arbitrary degree of fashion, and how far to a genuine mastery of his profession, it may take the verdict of an American pub- lic to decide. When Sara Bernhardt first comes on the stage you see a meagre-looking, rather impassive soubrette, with a plain thin face and a body that looks like an unin- teresting fabrication of whalebones and corsets. You are looking anxiously at every entrance for the great actress to make her appearance, when it breaks on you with a disappointment that this inferior young woman is she herself. It can hardly be, it cannot possibly be, but a moment or two and the inexorable caste decides. Yes, it is she, certainly. Soon the " divine skeleton" begins to breathe, the eyes of the soul light up the sunken face, and the worn body clothes itself with flesh and grace. There can be no question as to the Bernhardt's right to her throne. Disendowed with a body carrying which many a rustic girl would give up the village rare, she has placed herself at the head of the actresses of her day, flooded the capitals of two continents with her face, and dictated the mode in dress and adornment of the civilized world. And this resistless power of hers which holds London and Paris at her feet, and sends her fame wherever there is written language, is the more strange that it is so purely intellectual. With none of the sensuous charms of physical attraction, she has nevertheless always made men the slaves of her body. On the stage it is the passion of the soul which achieves her triumphs. You see forever the fiery mind flaming through the frail body. Her power is that wondrous THE PLAY AND THE THEATRE. 195 Hebrew force in civilization which flashes out all through history, and which in our own day we confess in a Disraeli, a Gambetta, a Rothschild, and a Rachel. Almost any woman with Sara Bernhardt's body would look like a faded little seamstress all her life and feel like one. She has set that body on a throne and made all the women in Christendom do homage to it. The experienced modern eye will see modes of dress and little achievements of feminine embellishment in every town of the United States, which were conceived and brought forth solely to rectify certain lines in Miss Bernhardt's physical frame or to draw off attention from certain others that would not be successfully recti- fied. What greater triumph is open to woman than to thus chain her whole sex to her chariot wheels? When Sara Bernhardt came to London success was immediate and assured. The commission of the classic Theatre Franqais the fnvt stage of the world had, perhaps, made this a sure thing, but nevertheless society undertook her cause, and made it a social necessity to have seen her. Under the aegis of His Royal High- ness the Prince of Wales the comparatively Puritan it- drawing-rooms of London were opened, with some qualms it is true, to " Miss Sara Bernhardt and son," and Matthew Arnold in the elaborate pages of the Nine- teenth Century paid the compliments of the world of scholarship and higher letters. As an actress, there is no doubt of her power. Her very presence grows on one with a fascination he cannot understand. There is a finish, a consummate grace, a trained force in every movement and position that throw around her the real histrionic nimbus and estab- lish her divine right to the succession of the sov- ereignty of the stage. Her genius is a perfection of simulation of which, perhaps, our heavier Saxon race is not capable, and therefore admires the more. The special circles which respectively chaperoned Henry Irving and Sara Bernhardt represent rathei 196 IONDON. antipodal elements of London society, but it is all a matter of the upper classes. The people of England know nothing and care nothing for either of the stars that reign in the theatrical firmament. They have nothing to do with the London stage of our day, which is not English. It may be cosmopolitan, electic of the world, better than all England ever did or could afford, but it is not national. LONDON. CHAPTER XXII. THE LONDON TIMES. IN THE FORTRESS OF THE THUNDERER MECHANICAL PLANT AND MANAGEMENT OF THE ESTABLISHMENT PRESSES TYPE-FOUNDING ELECTRIC LIGHT ELECTROTYPING-SHOP THE CANTEEN TELEGRAPHIC SERVICE PRINTING BY EAR NIGHT-WORK THE PAPER OF THE FUTURE AMERICAN AND ENGLISH JOURNALISM. PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE, which sounds so grandly from across the seas, is in London so modest a place that one can readily pass by it unwittingly, as I did, even after having fixed its general locality from the map, and started out to find it. This, however, is not because " the Square" is an inconsiderable structure, but because of the magnitude of London, which is so immense that one only comes to a conception of it slowly and by experience such as this. The Times building is really a massive pile of solid brick of fair architectural effect, which in New York or Philadelphia might be one of the features of the city. In London it is simply lost, crowded .away among square miles of similar structures densely packed and pressed together. Printing-House Square, the castle of the modern THE LONDON TIMES. 197 Thunderer, stands on the reputed site of an old Norman fortress. There is something dramatic in this coinci- dence which makes the spot the suggestive vignette of whole centuries of history, and starts a thousand poetic and philosophic dreams on the local correlation of force. I had had no acquaintance with The Times, but a note of introduction sent by kind thought fulness of a leading New York editor opened widely and hospitably its doors, and I spent a portion of a day most profitably in an exhaustive inspection of its plant and watching somewhat the process of its daily work. Let me tell of some of its wonders. In this letter I shall confine myself chiefly to the mechanical features, as being of most popular interest and best picturing the establishment to the non-profes- sional world. The editorial side is of professional rather than public interest, and, besides, why should the arcana of the profession be laid before those eyes which see not ? I shall avoid also the familiar figures which simply prove a colossal business, and which would be equally impressive in recording the results of a pork-packing or brick-making establishment, and attempt to briefly out- line some of the features which are distinctive to The Times and characteristic. Solidly established for years, founded on the strong bases of the University and the governing classes of England, conducted by men every one of whom is an expert and veteran in the business, The Times enjoys an income that now comes in of itself, and stretching out like some of our great railway companies, it now em- ploys a portion of its surplus revenues every year in buttressing itself, by extending its works out to the per- manent manufacture of its own supplies. These things are permanent investments, not expenses, and, although costly in- the start, in the long course of years save money. 17* 198 LONDON. Let me enumerate some of the most important as illustrative of the scope of the plant. The Times I. Manufactures its own presses. II. Founds its own type. III. Provides its own light electric. IV. Feeds its employees on the spot. V. Has its own electrotyping-shop. VI. Has its own telegraphic service and wires in the main ; and VII. Repair-shops for all these different machineries. All these great shops and offices are under one roof, and the cluster of them, with the other ordinary departments of a newspaper-office, editorial-, composing-, proof-, stereotyping-, making-up-, press-, business-, advertising-, and distribution-rooms, form The Times building. The Walter presses are made here for the market as well as for the proprietor's own paper, and in these shops I found the workmen in the busy clatter of turning out great machines, as in any great factory or foundry. In the press-room of the paper stand eight; six go every night and two stand by as a reserve brigade. Each press prints a whole copy of The Times, both sides, sixteen pages, and at the rate of twelve thousand per hour. The edition, therefore, goes off at the rate of seventy-two thousand per hour. These presses are ranged in three columns in an immense room on the first floor of the building, the enormous weight sup- ported by arches. The paper-room; another large space, is just below the press-room, the paper being hoisted up by a lift (American elevator) into the centre of the press-room. In the spacious paper-rooms below you wander through long avenues of huge rolls of paper, each roll four miles long. I watched at one of the presses the four-mile run of one of these rolls, and it was striking to see how quickly it was clone. Much of the mechanical interest of The Times cen- tres in its type department. I brought away with ma THE LONDON TIMES. 199 some type made under my eye in the founding-room. But that is only the beginning of the wonder. Fol- lowing this type into another department you see it set by machinery. All publishers are familiar with the history of the long effort of Mr. Walter in this direc- tion. Here is the result : One-half of The Times every night is set by ma- chinery. One machine does the work of six to eight skilled compositors. It cannot correct, however, and here is its weak point, or the whole paper would be set with it. As it is, the work is about divided. Doubtful copy and all revisions are done by hand, the steady, regular work by machinery. A young man sits before what looks like a piano- board, with four or five banks of keys all lettered. He plays on these keys with forefingers of each hand rapidly, and the type are as rapidlv shifted into a kind of minute steel galley, the exact width of the body of a type. There is no system of fingering as with piano music, only the two paws fly like lightning. The distributing-machine just reverses the process of the setting instrument, and in the last stage each letter of the alphabet is rapidlv shunted off on to its separate side-track, where they stand like long trains of freight cars in the yard of a colossal depot. It is a wonderful machine, but there are others, 1 think, now surely ap- proaching perfection of much more interest and impor- tance to newspaper property. The last permanent investment of The Times has been the manufacture of its own light on the electric system, using carbon points. The cost for the plant of this has been very great, but it is so far successful, and the cost of now producing light is very moderate. The entire building is lighted by sixteen electric lights, each light of from eight hundred to one thousand candle-power, far more than is needed. Sixteen wires, each starting directly from a battery, are used to dis- tribute the light, and the battery is worked from a solid and powerful steam-engine. This engine had to be built expressly for the electric battery, and its power cannot be used for any other purpose ; the light would waver and be unsteady. Quite thick porcelain globes are used to temper the fierce power of the light, and the dark shadows are in part corrected by reflection from white bowls. I see no reason why the new Edison light should not be attached to this plant, if desirable. This electric manufacture has been an advertisement for The Times, but so far it is not an economy. They have more light than they need or want to have, and the cost of the plant is the capital of a gas company, u<>t a legitimate expense of a newspaper establishment. The employees of The Times are fed in the building, a great saving of time to employer and employed. The canteen consists of a fine large kitchen and two dining-rooms. Food ig supplied at cost rates to the men, " everything except beer, on which is char_r> d a little profit, which saves the canteen always from loss, and the margin of profit, whatever it may be, is alv turned in to an employees' relief fund which we have," it was explained to me, u That is very excellent ; but we do not call beer 'food' in America." The canteen is a very good and saving institution. - ipplies a kind of cheap club to the men, but there could be no better illustration of the difference of habits and manners on the liquor question between the two countries. Here was a careful and conscientious employer furnishing liquor to his force; and, mor*> than that, long rows of bright, burnished pewter ale- mugs, each with " The Times" proudly engraved on its beaming face, greeted my vision as one of the em- bellishments of the canteen. The eleetrotyping-shop is a well-appointed room, equipped with all the modern appliances of the trade, where are made the plates for the weather diagrams published daily in The Times, and also maps, charts, THE LOKDOS TIMES. etc. So well is this shop perfected that a moderate- sized plate can be turned out in a few minutes. Prac- tical newspaper managers will recognize the economy and desirable use of this attachment. The Times has its own wires over much of England and most of the continent, and its own service of them by accomplished correspondents, men of ability and influence. It uses Renter (the Associated Press of Europe), but only partially and as an incident, its pace or more of telegraphic news being generally exclusively its own, and the Reuter news coming in only in a supple- mentary way. It is a common expression among news- paper men in our country that we only use die telegraph largely. I think that the special telegraph service of The Times exceeds that of any American newspaper, saving, possibly, the New York Herald and the Chicago Times. It does not strike the popular and uneducated eye, perhaps, so strongly as ours, because it does not deal in criminal news, small fires, petty accidents, sensations, etc. ; but every morning The times does have a de- spatch from every capital in Europe from a u stick" to a column and a half or two columns in length, giving the political situation of the day and the great business and social features, the matter that statesmen and scholars and leaders read and talk about They are its constituency. Its telegraphic service of special matter averages, I think, about a page a day, and a page of The Times is equal in superficies to over twenty per cent, more than a page of the New York Herald. It is all solid news, too, no padding or whipped cream. The reception of the telegraphic news of The Times is something unique. The lines from the continental capitals, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna, etc., all, of course, converge in one room, and the despatches are received over an instrument that prints. The print- ing, however, serves merely as a record. The despatch, 202 LONDON. as it is received, is read off by the telegraph operatoi to the operator of a type-machine, who plays it off by ear, and the despatch, thus reduced to written form, is supplied to the editors in printed proof. Of course, only the work of responsible correspondents, likely to need no alteration, is honored in this way. It would be too expensive to treat thus matter requiring editing. The type-setting-machine compositors are, of course, a class to themselves, or, rather, to The Times. Every ordinary compositor going on The Times obligates him- self to abandon all Unions or outside organizations. Indeed, in many things the office is exclusive in this way. It does not employ men who serve on other papers, and those who work on The Times are pro- tected in many ways from outside affiliations. As a curious instance of this feeling, I was shown, in a distant portion of the building, a rather desolate, cheerless-looking room for casual employees or tem- porary contributors, " persons that we don't want to mix up with our own men, you know." But all this costly mechanical plant did not make The Times. It was before all these things were, which are but its menial equipment. The being of The Times is in the brain-power and character of its founder and directors. It is a power and an authority and an in- fluence because of their strength and social force. So high is the personal character of the direction of this paper, so judicial and scholarly its editing, so careful and judicious its expression, that it has, at home and abroad, all the responsibility, standing, and influence of a living and responsible man. It has, in fact, the social position, political weight, and personal character of the best-born, best-educated, and highest-minded man in Britain, and in its circulation, therefore, has just the association, relations, and influence which such a man would have. And it has all this and keeps it just because it is owned and edited by just this class of men. THE LONDON TIMES. 203 A marked feature of the place is the large amount of hard work and unremitting attention bestowed un- ceasingly on The Times by its proprietors and editors. Here is an old paper, perhaps the best established in the world. Every man on it holding any responsible position is an expert in the business. The experience of some of them is hereditary. Every employee on the paper is of the highest grade of scholarship or business training, but the managers and editor are working as hard and closely as if they were starting a new enter- prise. Let me give some facts : All the editorial work is done at night, the editors not coming down at all in the daytime. Mr. Chenery, the editor, sees the first paper off the press everv night. Mr. McDonald, the managing publisher, sees the whole edition off the press every night. The paper goes to press at 3.30 A.M., but these men know that from midnight to 3 A.M. is the quarter-deck in action of a morning paper, and they are on it. Mr. Walter's (the main proprietor's) own house is adjoining and runs into The Times building; is substantially a part of it. The dwelling of Mr. Delane, the late editor, stood quite near the office, between Printing- House Square and The Temple. He, too, always was on deck at night until the paper went .down. Both of their dwellings are far down town; infinitely farther from the social life and rest of London than would be Third and Chestnut from that of Philadelphia. But the night is the life of a morning paper. The Times having no long railway routes to travel, as all England is covered in a few hours, and running off its edition at the speed of seventy-two thousand an hour, can afford to wait until a later moment before going to press than a paper of Philadelphia or New York. I may say here, the editors of all kinds each have a room to themselves, and work under all the advantages of seclu- sion and silence. These rooms, nearly every one of 204 LONDON. which I visited, are spacious, often about sixteen by sixteen or twenty feet, and substantially furnished, have high ceilings, are well ventilated and comfortably lighted. They have, in fact, something of the com- fortable air of a university chamber. Another marked feature is the watchful economy practised in the daily management. While all the first- cost or investment expenses have been on the most lib- eral and solid scale, the daily running expenses are very closely guarded. The story of the rags in The Times composing-room, I suppose, is familiar to all interested in the newspaper business, but I saw other things quite as remarkable. For instance, I saw in a comparatively small package the entire waste paper of the previous day's seventy thousand edition of The Times, i.e., the sheets of defective paper or paper spoiled on the press, and it was not as large as often is the waste of a Phila- delphia paper. Per contra, it is to be said the paper is of better quality and less likely to tear or break. The same economy the child of thorough knowledge of the business ran through every department of the es- tablishment, editorial and manufacturing. There was no waste, no splashing, and close saving. The cost of specials and of travelling expenses is much better worked down than with us, indeed, this is so on all English papers. The composing-room is closely watched, no union rules, of course, interfering. Repeat advertise- ments are not distributed and reset as in one of our American newspapers, but held as long as the type re- mains in good order. When I mentioned the custom of a New York journal on this point to The Times manager, he was unaffectedly astonished, exclaiming, Cfest magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre. - The distinguishing characteristic of The Times is solidity. The editorial department, like everything else of in- fluence and weight in England, rests squarely on the university, and what that means it takes some insight THE LONDON TIMES. 205 into the English life to understand. The paper ad- dresses the leaders and thinkers and statesmen of the world, and it must have the best trained power to speak to them. The solid paper that it is printed on is equal to book paper in grade. Three of the sixteen-paged numbers of The Times go to the pound of printing-paper. The proof-reading is perfection, more scholarly and faultless than that of the average American book. Of the solidity of the manufacturing plant this letter has amply spoken. But while everything is solid and perfected on The Times, while every man on it is trained and tried in his profession and there is no experimenting in the business of the establishment, there is no cessation of mental energies or invention, for these men are veterans, stand- ing ready to hold their paper abreast of the times and to seize first the vantage-ground of any new discoveries that might affect the property or the newspaper life. The Times, indeed, lias always been a college of inven- tion and discovery in the newspaper world, spending large; sums of money in reaching after new processes and improvements in machinery or management. Among the achieved results of its labors in this way are the Walter press and the type-setting machine, two enduring monuments. I was rather startled to find in this connection that among the problems revolving in the fecund womb of The Times office was one to which I have for several years given a good deal of thought and some practical labor, viz., the publication simul- taneously of a great daily paper in a dozen cities. That is certainly the newspaper of the future, and the future may be near at hand. There is no excitement or nervous hurry in The Time* building, nothing, perhaps, that would impress an un- skilled visitor, but the mental atmosphere is ve,ry stimulating. In fact, one feels tired and exhausted that familiar experience of our Centennial Exposition 18 206 LONDON. after inspecting honestly its plant and workings, so great are the achieved results, so limitless the range of the thousand suggestions which start themselves in re- viewing in the sympathetic companionship of its own management the first newspaper office of the world. In such a visit one's mind constantly tends to run- ning a parallel between the English journal and the American, but such a contrast is fair to neither, and very illusive. In the first place, the functions or uses of the two papers are very different. As newspapers we undoubtedly excel ; but the English papers do the thinking for their communities in a way that our jour- nals do not, and, as a consequence, their conductors have a higher influence and stronger standing in so- ciety. Then, the English idea of " news" is something very different from ours, and the Continental concep- tion is something different again from either. And the English journals, like English society, are divided by classes between which there is a wide gulf such as does not exist with us. The leading papers are very strong, dignified, scholarly, and powerful ; the lower papers are very low, and the classes do not grade into each other by insensible shades as with us. In fact, the papers of a country are the outcome and development of its life. What that is they will be. A comparative study of the great papers of the world, say The Times of England, Independence Bvlge of Brus- sels, Golos of St. Petersburg, Figaro of Paris, and others of like representative character, will lead one more and more to this conclusion just as far as he gets a real insight to the representative journals themselves, their editorial direction and work, the character of their news and the methods of its presentation, and, finally, the reception and support of the journals by their re- spective communities. LONDON. HISTORIC TAVERNS. 207 CHAPTER XXIII. HISTORIC TAVERNS. IN THE HAUNTS OF SHAKESPEARE AND BEN JONSON THE ENGLISH INN THE TAVKRN CLUBS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES THE SOMERSET TAVERN AND THE JUNIUS LETTERS THE RAINBOW COFFEE-HOI >K DOCTOR JOHNSON AND TIIK MITRE THE CHESHIRE CHEESE THE COCK HISTORY AND POLITICS IN THE INN NAMES OF ENGLAND. ALL through English literature there come down to us certain names of homelike London inns, which, although familiar by their oft recurrence and the flood of associations which sweep through them, the memo- ries and recollections of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, of Goldsmith, Burke, Garrick, Dean Swift, Pope, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gibbon, blufr old Dr. Johnson, Bos- well, Pepys, and a host of worthies, are yet mostly thought of by us only as pictures, as something utterly gone and passed away, like the silent forum or the des- olated mansions of Maecenas. It is, therefore, a pleasant surprise to find many of them here in the flesh, and they are quite worth visit- ing and picturing, as in addition to their intrinsic; interest their existence to-day is thoroughly illustrative of an inside phase of English life. Many of these his- toric taverns exist now almost exactly as they did in the days of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith, less changed iu their outward appearance than would be the doctor or the deathless " Vicar" if living now, while in their inner life and traditions they are essentially the same as a century or more ago. The English tavern never dies. Landlords may come and go, servants grow venerable and pass into local traditions, barmaids bloom and fade into but 208 LONDON. toasts and memories, but " the inn" goes on forever. Heirlooms accumulate on its time-stained walls ; corners and seats grow famous as the men who once claimed them reveal themselves in history ; the genii loci gather with the centuries ; but the inn is fresh and young and warm and cheery forever. I have already mentioned that at Stratford-on-Avon an inn at which Washington Irving rested in 1830, I think, and mentioned in his published letters, still lives on his genial recommenda- tion and deserves it. At Waltham I found an excel- lent country inn reputed through the kingdom, which dates from A.D. 1260, an undoubted case of Bonifacial succession. The Four Swans blazons to-day this ancient date on its quaint signboard, and confidently appeals to a respectable ancestry of six centuries as its best claim to the patronage of the travellers of 1880-1900. So it is with the London taverns of literature. Some of them, it is true, have yielded up the ghost under the inexorable hand of Time, demolished by Boards of Public Improvement, or reconstructed into gilded modern meaninglessness by vulgar enterprise, but many of them yet live, respectable just as they were respect- able of yore, and sober and responsible, with the charac- ter of centuries to maintain. " The Somerset Tavern," the "Cheshire Cheese," the "Rainbow," the "Mitre," and the " Cock," every one of which is grandly illus- trated in English literature and history, are all here yet, living and moving and having their being in the daily life of this our nineteenth century, but bringing down to us in hourly detail something of the daily life of the England of two hundred years ago, and perhaps more. All of these that I have mentioned are found in Fleet Street and along the Strand, and quite near together. They all stand now, however, off the street in courts, or what were once courts, and are reached either through dark archways or by extremely narrow and modest little alleys which a stranger would readily pass un- noticed. Consequently, they are saved from the pro- HISTORIC TAVERNS. 209 fanation of vulgar and ignorant custom. The customers of these inns have mostly come to them by inheritance or congenial introduction. These courts were likely at first gardens, such as stand around the country inn now in most villages. In time, as the town choked the fields, they were built up close around to the very palings of the little garden ; the roses and pansies and marigolds gave way to flagstones and solid pavement, and the hard-stone court was thus developed, the evo- lution of the city. Carpenters' Court in Philadelphia, inclosing the Carpenters' Hall, where the initial Conti- nental Congress sat, is a good American illustration of these still old English courts. The Somerset Tavern stands out clear in the memory of every student of constitutional law and English his- tory. Through the humble hands of its barmaid passed the MSS. of the famous Junius Letters before they saw the light of print. This seems to us a very in- secure and fortuitous mode of communication, but it is a thoroughly traditional English one, and is yet largely used. At many an English inn I have seen stuck in a glass behind the bar or placed upright against the shelf or decanter on the sideboard broad, square letters addressed in the modern conventional English hand to " Mr. Harry Chauncey," or "William Henry Howard, Esqre.," frequenters of the hostelry, who get their home letters here just as their fathers did in the seventeenth century. This unconventional post-office is generally in charge of the barmaid, who is, in fact, an institution of the place, and the " next friend" of everybody who comes about it. The MSS. of the Junius Letters were left at thih Somerset Tavern, addressed to " Mr. Woodfall, printer," who probably ate his midday meal or spent his evenings here. His shop, still here, is about three minutes 7 walk from the tavern and behind it. It is now as then a printing-office, and the name boldly o 18* 210 LONDON. painted on the wall is the same, Woodfall. The letters were left at the tavern by a boy. As a picture this inn is the least interesting of those mentioned. The old house is the same, but it has been remodelled throughout within, after the style of a modern hotel, and a drink ing-saloon of the ordinary pattern pushed out so as to give a street entrance. Historically it is a mere shell. The old "interior" and the charm of the old life are both gone. " The Rainbow," No. 15 Fleet Street, is consecrated with the elusive memories of Shakespeare. Here, too, it is said, came Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher and Donne, and flashed wit and jest and story with the London actors of that long-ago day. The Rainbow, in early history, stood probably in a garden between the Thames and the Strand. The garden pos- sibly became a court; but if so, now the court gone after the garden is built solidly over, and the Rain- bow, away off the street and enveloped in a solid mass of building, is' reached by a long and very narrow pas- sage a mere right of way which opens on Fleet Street almost unperceived. The Rainbow has kept pace with the times, carefully preserving the old features of the place, the old charac- teristics, and the old life. The comfortable building is the same. The old-fashioned bar is still there with the little office, for the Rainbow was and is a spacious hostelry, the two together presided over still by that remarkable young woman who, in the English inn or hotel of average size, does civilly and agreeably and thoroughly the duties of three conspicuous American officials, the hotel-clerk, the barkeeper, and the book- keeper and cashier. The pleasant fire in the open chimney-place and the shining pewter are still there. The perfect but unpretentious service is the same which Englishmen shared with you two hundred years ago. The heavy spotless linen, the clear-cut glass, are prob- HISTORIC TAVERNS. 211 ably of our own day. Here you get a good modern London dinner, based, however, on the old English tradition of two or three plain courses. The wines are traditionally known and excellent, solid in body and in price. Old usages, too, are as far as possible scru- pulously observed. Your haunch of mutton or great roast of beef is wheeled up to your table and your cut taken off in your presence and under your own direction if you are particular. The custom of this place, as I saw it, was of a high and most reputable kind, solid bankers, merchants, and lawyers, apparently doing busi- ness in that locality, the same class of men who for two hundred years have been using it in midday and afternoon. In the evening there is probably more smoke and wine and clinking glasses. The Rainbow lias a further and better-authenticated historical interest as having been a " coffee-house," a younger institution in English history than the tavern, and one that passed at once and largely into literature. The first house opened in London for the drinking of this new beverage was in 1650, the second was in 1652, and was the Rainbow. It figures as a fashionable resort in the Spectator. The drinking of coffee instead of ale or canary was considered rather a swell thing when it was first introduced. It was decried by the common people as effeminate, an affectation of fashion, and a sign of degeneracy on the part of Englishmen, and the coffee- houses were denounced by the lower classes, and looked on very much as our most exclusive club-houses are now. Previously to the opening of the coffee-house the Rainbow seems to have been a book-stand. " At the Signe of the Rainbow in Fleete Streat, near the Inner Temple," is an imprint of the early part of the sev- enteenth century. It is probable that it was in this connection its name became linked with those of Shake- speare and Ben Jonson. The Rainbow is an excellent hostelry of this day, as 212 LONDON. well as of two hundred years ago, and the American traveller who delights in clothing himself with the wealth of the associations of the past as he travels will serve himself well by putting up here, if he chooses this locality of the town, instead of at the common run of hotels advertised in the guides and time-tables. He will be thoroughly comfortable and well fed, and will see at once an English " interior." He will be inside of a real old English inn, not merely honeycombed in a cell of a mammoth modern caravansary. The Mitre lives in tradition as the special haunt of Dr. Samuel Johnson and the brilliant group that clus- ters around his rude, strong person as its central figure, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Boswell, and I suppose it was, for you can see at once the reason of it being chosen as a stated rendezvous. It was a case of natu- ral selection. Goldsmith lived immediately back, in Mitre court ; Dr. Johnson just across the way, in Bolt court ; while Burke had his chambers in the contiguous " Temple," and, I presume, Boswell, too. From the central point of " The Mitre" they could all stagger home at midnight, covering the least possible distance, and with comparative safety. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who perhaps joined them sometimes, on more formal occasions, for he moved more generally in a society in which Johnson did not go, lived quite near, first in St. Martin's Lane, and then in Leicester Square, then & very fashionable neighborhood. The Mitre Tavern is found somewhat off Fleet Street, in Mitre court, a quiet, retired little recess or eddy. In front rolls down from the Strand the troubled current of London life, in the rear the busy waters of the Thames, but the Mitre is as still as a cloister. The suddenness with which in a few feet one can turn, in London, from the surging roar of the noisy, driven streets into absolute stillness is one of the dramatic surprises of the city. Oliver Goldsmith's grave, close by the fa- HISTORIC TAVERNS. 218 mous Norman Round Temple, the altar of the old cru- sading knights, lies only a few hundred yards from his homely tavern, in the hush of a country churchyard. Shut your eyes, and you would almost fancy the fra- grance of the fresh grass and English herbs and expect to hear the birds sing. You look around you and see not a green blade 'or tiny flower or a solitary spot where one might spring, nothing but stone and crumbling effigies and tottering buttresses and high gray walls. Again, out of the thronging precinct of Westminster, throbbing with the pulses of the Parliament of an em- pire, you pass in a few steps into the peaceful cloisters of the Abbey and plunge at once into the Middle Ages. And so the close of St. Paul's and dozens of places. In a part of the spacious building, by the wny, shut- ting off the Mitre court from Fleet Street, but fronting on it, and known as the Mitre property, are found the London offices of the New York Herald, an historical succession worthy of being noted as something more than a passing coincidence. As the representative of the most advanced journalism of the time, The Herald is the legitimate successor of The Rambler, Spectator, and the Idler, and occupies, with something of right, the abandoned tribune of Dr. Samuel Johnson. In the interior of the Mitre, which evidently stands now much as it did a century ago, yoii can readily trace the outline of the scenes which passing allusions in literature and tradition have made so famous^ the dimly-lighted room dedicated by long pre-emption to private uses, the smoke-laden atmosphere, the brandy and hot water, the white-clay pipes and tobacco, the MSS. and current pamphlets, and the long table from whose head, night after night, the stout old Bohemian Tory preached ponderous philosophy, or railed at the Scotch and hurled angry invective against the American traitors making history at Philadelphia and Lexington. A bronze bust of Dr. Johnson fills a niche above the spot where his chair familiarly stood, and placidly re- 214 LONDON. gards to-day those nineteenth-century customers of the Mitre who have curiosity or influence enough to find their way into the little back bar-room, which is the arcanum of the house. It is fair to say that there are several other Mitre taverns in London which claim the honors and prestige of those distinguished literary connections, but the weight of evidence and the argument from localities incline to the one I am describing, and whose cheer I have tested. Contemporary authority of the best kind fixes the Mitre Tavern of Mitre court, Fleet Street, as the site of the traditional Johnsonian symposia. I have no doubt, however, that if the other claimant taverns were in existence at that time Dr. Johnson and his friends gave them a visit. " The Cheshire Cheese," another favorite haunt of Dr. Johnson, well known in history and literature, is perhaps the most unchanged of all these taverns, and fives one the best idea of the life of those old times, t is very plain, and all the marked features of the old style are preserved with fidelity. In fact, it is not preservation, but continuance. I sipped some canary here for a half-hour one night with a friend distin- guished in journalism and politics and deeply versed in the scholarship of English literature, and spent some time watching the custom and incident of the evening, and I am sure that our eyes beheld the very same sights and objects which of old met the vision of Burke and Goldsmith and Garrick, the same men and the same things. It stands in Wine-Office court, just across the street and nearly opposite to Mitre court. One-half of the large room is fitted up with plain, bare, wooden tables of the simplest kind of construc- tion, that would seat four to six persons. Each table stands in a kind of stall, formed by the high, upright HISTORIC TAVERNS. 215 backs of the straight, hard, uncovered seats. The vhole looks like the great wooden pews in our old-fashioned churches. The seats are about as uncomfortable as they can be, but the English as their Parliament House and the church pew (their evolution) attest have little idea of the luxury of rest. A large open space of sanded floor, with arm-chairs and a small table or two of freer position, complete the room. An open chimney-place, with a burning grate, on which fizzled away a kettle of boiling water, gave a cosey and domes- tic air to the room. At the right-hand corner of this fireplace stood the chair of Dr. Johnson. Long white earthen pipes, fresh, and some pouches, evidently private, of tobacco, lay on the mantel-shelf. Two good but somewhat smoke-discolored oil paintings of old ser- vants of the inn hung on the walls. Their legend recited that they were contributed as a mark of respect by gentlemen who frequented the inn, and they were dedicated as special heirlooms to pass with the tavern property. The Cheshire, contrasted with its famous fellows, is "poor but respectable." Everything was extremely plain, simple, and almost coarse, but all was neat, clean, and honest; the quality both of food and wines good for the cost. In this it is, as it has been probably for centuries, thoroughly solid and. English. The cheaper inn in England is not a mere dirty and pre- tentious imitation of a higher class of house. It has its own character and is proud of it, and as far as it goes is solid, good, and honest; and, as a rule, this holds good with other English things than inns, and also with the people. It was from this tavern one day/ when Goldsmith was confined in it by the landlady for his score, and watched by a bailiff outside the door, that Dr. Johnson went out and sold a MS. for him for sixty pounds. The MS. was the " Vicar of Wakefield." " The Cock," 201 Fleet Street, a tavern of the same 216 LONDON. age and general character and uses as the Rainbow or the Mitre, has more modern associations, its sponsor in literature and chiefest treasure being Alfred Ten- nyson, " O plump head- waiter of the Cock I" The plump head-waiter is still living and on duty, and the junior bar of London assure you that the best " bitter" in the town is to be had in this most reputa- ble hostelry, which bears a diploma from the Poet Laureate, "To each his perfect pint of stout." You sit in old-fashioned stalls, as at the Cheshire Cheese, the floors are wooden and uncovered, as at all these taverns, your quarters are rather contracted, but your company eminently respectable. There is some old oak carving over the mantel-piece, and the whole interior is said to be unaltered from the time of James the First. The Cock is nearly opposite the Rainbow, and, like it, imbedded in a conglomerate mass of masonry, representing the resistless encroach- ments of centuries, and you reach it now only by an inconspicuous alley-way. It is now, too, a retreat. It was to the Cock that Pepys was wont to take Mistress Knipp and give her little dinners, much to the distress of his wife. " Thence to the Cock Alehouse and drank and eat a lobster, and mightily merry " it was a Mis- tress Pierce this time, and Pepys faithfully relates the domestic explanations which were necessary to explain these tavern outings, to which he was apparently fonder of treating his neighbors' wives than his own. The Whyte Harte, where Jack Cade's peasant army disbanded, and in whose court-yard Shakespeare's plays were probably acted, is still an extant house. It was burned down in 1676, but was rebuilt in the old style, wooden balconies and all. It was from these interior HISTORIC TAVERNS. 217 wooden balconies that the frequenters of the inn watched the open-air performance below on the rude flag-stoned pavement of the court-yard. It was a rude stage, but a common one, in the simple fashion of those days. George's Coffee-house, at 213 Fleet Street, was fre- quented by Shenstone, u who found his warmest wel- come at an inn." The dead centuries take form and flesh and color and grow wonderfully near as you sit in one of these old hostelries and see the life of London flowing through it very much just as it flowed a hundred years ago, the same walls, the same furniture, the same cheer, the same order and service, and much the same manner of men. It is a little difficult for us to understand in our day the conspicuous part the tavern played in the lives of men whose names now sound so grandly, and whose forms, swelling to historic proportions, are so imposing. We must bear in mind, however, a number of things. Life was certainly somewhat ruder than it is now, and, again, the inn of those days was relatively highec than it is now. It was certainly much higher than our American conception of a country tavern, which, with its " bar-room" and noise, has nothing in common with the quiet, home-like English inn of to-day, the inn of Shenstone and Coleridge. Again, there were no clubs in those days, none at all in our modern sense, and but few of any kind, -and the tavern was the club of the community. Here men of all kinds met and gathered in circles, according to their several tastes, sometimes in the private apart- ments, sometimes in the common room. The "private bar" is now, perhaps, a survival of those usages. Dr. Johnson and his friends frequently, according to tra- dition, sat in the public room, dominating it both by their numbers and by the power and brilliancy of their conversation A stranger would probably have been a K 19 218 LONDON. little crowded down unless he chanced to have been a congenial mind. Here came from evening to evening the young barristers from the adjacent Temple and law inns, the worthy tradesmen of the neighborhood, who lived above their shops and banks (the famous "Childs" bank was close to the Mitre), the writers for the meagre journals of the day. Perhaps a stranger from the country counties occasionally dropped in, or per- chance an adventurous traveller from Penn's far-off Sylvania or Mary Land. The place was the primitive " Saturday Night Club" of a century or more ago, in London, and of a rather humble class. For these great names, we must remember, were not in good society at this tavern stage of their exist- ence. Shakespeare was, in early life at least, something of a vagabond. Ben Jonson was a bricklayer ; some of his work stood very near the Cheshire Cheese. Later down, Dr. Johnson was to the last a congenial Bohemian. He was the old man of the party, who gathered around him young Burke and Garrick and Goldsmith and other young men, unknown, or who had just come up from the country to try their fortunes in famous London town. Boswell was, perhaps, the nearest to the gentleman of the crowd. The fine gen- tlemen of London did not come to these taverns, nor did Burke, likely, and many of the others when they had made their mark and won fame. Tennyson does not now frequent the " Cock." These tavern days that have gone into literature, and by which we know them, were the days of their youth and poverty and obscurity. It is a striking reflection on the eternity and immor- tality of the human side of our existence, and of the littleness or nothingness of business or fashion or co- temporary success, that what lives of these men is the hour they gave to rest and the play of human feeling. The point at which they dropped their routine toil, their daily life of publishers and business and briefs and writs and fees and wages, was the point at which HISTORIC TAVERNS. 219 they touched fame and the common heart of generations and nations yet to come. A few hundred years ago the tavern was the club and the newspaper of the community. But it was also something more. Public opinion not only was formed at these houses, but passed into tradition and was per- petuated by them. One can read the history of all England to-day in the names of its inns. When our English ancestors wished to honor a cause or a man they wrote their names on a tavern signboard and swung it out to posterity. Thus, the St. George and the Green Dragon record the familiar mythic legends of our earliest history ; the White Horse was the victorious standard of the Saxons when they invaded England, the battle-flag of Hen- gist and Horsa; the Angel is a mutilated survival of a favorite old sign, the " Salutation of the Angel" to the Blessed Virgin, recalling a time when the Ave Maria was the evening song of England ; the Saracen's Head is a record of the crusades; the Mitre comes down from the old days of Church and State, and the Church first. Even as late as the last century Boswell, writing of the Fleet Street " Mitre," says Dr. Johnson ap- proved the " orthodox High-Church tone of its name." In the "Cross-Keys," which is still a familiar siini in many towns of Pennsylvania, few of us will recognize the crossed keys of St. Peter, but that is just what they are, the very same sign that may be seen on the front of the great St. Peter's at Rome. The White Swan is the device of Edward of Lancaster and the White Hart of Richard the Second. The humble Blue Pig is a sur- vival of the Blue Boar, the crest of Richard III. The Rose is the badge of the Tudors, and the rose and the portcullis will be found blazoned alike on cathedral and tavern all over England. The Bear is the emblem of the Leicesters, the Antelope of the Bohuns, and, indeed, the family arms of all England are carved and 220 LONDON. painted over all the land on its inns, the rude Herald's College of the people. When once one becomes a little familiar with these crests, it is always easy to tell in what part of the country one is by looking at the village inns. This adoption of the family crest as a tavern sign is very natural, as these country inns are generally kept by retired servants of the great families of the place, a fact which, in turn, accounts largely for their comfort and excellent service. This political nomenclature of the inns is proof that they filled the office of clubs in our communities. There were no Union League and Tammany clubs to gather up and organize political opinion, but the poli- ticians of every faith did have their special taverns, where the men of each cause could meet, strengthen each other, and propagate their ideas. The old Eng- lish feeling had its White Horses, the Church party their Cross-Keys and Mitres, the Xa^ionalists their Crowns and King's Heads. It is solid evidence of the social advance of our land that we have dropped this usage of naming taverns or hotels as an expression either of popular esteem or of political honor. There are a few Washington and Jefferson and Lafayette houses, that have come down from the Revolution, and a scattering Jackson tavern, but the habit about ended with the rude time and life of which Jackson was the last distinguished exponent. We have Lincoln Universities now, but no Lincoln Hotels, and there are no Giant or Sherman or Stan ton or Hancock Taverns, although we have just passed the throes of a civil war. The tavern is no longer a factor in American society. LONDON. SCOTLAND. CHAPTER XXIV. ENTERING SCOTLAND. THE SCOTCH BLOOD IN THE UNITED STATES STRONG STAMP OF THE SCOTCH CHARACTER ON OUR NATION THE ROMAN CATHOLIC AND PRESBYTERIAN CLANS MARGARET WILSON. As you travel north ward from the heated and murky fogs of London a change conies gradually over the scene. The smiling harvests of grain and corn give way to slatternly-looking turnip-fields ; the trains and coaches advertise to run on " lawful days;" the children by the wayside grow barelegged and barefooted ; green hills and meadows are replaced by brown and red ranges, whose infinite lines, stretching out one beyond the other, sweep out against the sky ; the hats of the men diminish to rimless cloth caps ; the petticoats of the women shorten and thicken ; bright shocks of flaming red and fair blond yellow hair vary the rather neutral sameness of tlie English head ; the naked knees of the men emerge; whisky redolent of peat becomes the regular station refreshment, taken with a serious and Bolemn air ; old ladies appear in the cars reading " The Christian Herald," and seeming to find great satisfac- tion therein ; the faces at each passing railway station become more and more reflective, lined, and joyless; red heather, black-footed Cheviot sheep, tartan plaids and half-military kilts greet your eye for the first time on their native heath : you are in Scotland. I have made a pretty thorough tour of this country, which has done so much for our land, and which is it- self so crowded with incident in the history of freedom. Starting from Edinboro', I have travelled by the great 223 224 SCOTLAND. Highland Railway the backbone of Scotland to Inver- ness, the capital of the Highland region ; thence down- ward by the scenic Caledonian chain of lakes, the Rhine of Scotland ; thence from Oban out to lona and through the Hebrides and back ; thence across-country by stage and rail to Aberdeen ; thence back again by a lower route to Stirling ; and then by the classic Lochs Lomond and Katrine into Glasgow, and from there again into Argyllshire. It is interesting and instructive to see how thoroughly the Scotch mind has stamped itself on our country, on our manners, speech, and habit of thought. Although the pure Scotch migration to the United States has been comparatively small as weighed, for instance, against the German or Irish, it has impressed its force more definitely and lastingly than either. It almost seems to be the substratum of our national character. In Scotland one meets all the time customs, usages, tones, inflections of speech, incidents, and little things of all kinds which recall the interior country life of our own land, and show how thoroughly we have been cradled in these hills. It is from these cold, bracing mountains that we get, first and last, and best of all, that unquestionable love of liberty and sense of personal independence which has made us what we are, which may be uncomfortable or unpleasant in some of its man- ifestations and inimical to vast undertakings, but which is the salt of true political and social advancement. Scotland is a land of small undertakings, of small bus- inesses, and of small fortunes, because the Scotchman is not a ready tool or executive instrument for the uses of others ; but then he is free, the head of his own little home, the master of his own movements. While we have secured this strong bone and sinew of the Scotchman as the framework of our new national life, we have clothed it with a much more generous body. We are essentially eclectic and able to take and assimilate the best of all other nations, peoples, and ENTERING SCOTLAND. 225 races. Now, the Scot is a Celt, and the Celtic blood by itself has never attained very great things. It is, how- ever, the very best flux to mix with other bloods. Even crossed with itself it improves. The Scotch-Irishman is a much stronger man and race than either the Scotch or the Irish by itself. It is through this fortunate blend- ing that it affects particularly our national character. The old distinctive characteristics linger longest in the individual. My own blood in one line comes directly from Argyllshire, and I was interested, of course, in studying the characteristics of this especial people, whom I do not think the lapse of the one hundred and eighty years since I left them have much changed. Manners, of course, have softened, ideas have broadened and liberalized, but the old essential tibre and charac- teristics are there yet. It is said of this people; that " they never forget a benefit or forgive a wrong," and this rule of blood, whatever may be thought of it as a rule of morals, is admirably adapted to perpetuate race instincts and individuality. And this is certainly so here. The friendships and hatreds, the loyalties and enmities, of hundreds of years aim are all extant forces yet and part of the common life of the people. Often the remembrance is but senti- mental, as in the feeling for the Stuarts, but it is there still in that form. The Scotch of this dav sing and play the old Jacobite songs with a spirit and feeling and power of emotion that in Celtic Paris would surely evoke a revolution. Families, although they do not murder each other any more, retain the old traditions of feuds in piam memoriam, and the old political divisions are still per- petuated in a variance of faith and Church allegiance. The old loyalist Scottish clans are Roman Catholic yet, staunch and devoted and true. The Protestant ascen- dency in Church and State has not swerved them, and in many parts of Western Scotland you still find small districts rthe.clan territories of. the old. .Stuart lieges 226 SCOTLAND. which are thoroughly Roman Catholic, high and low, poor and rich, for they are all of one family, the chief and his followers. These little sections seem quite an anachronism in stern Presbyterian Scotland, but they serve to show the undying tenacity with which the Scotch blood follows a friend or fights a foe. On a little steamer on one of the Highland lakes I fell in with a young Roman Catholic priest, a gentle- man of education and of gentle birth, an Englishman, but on duty in the snows of Scotland. I told him that " I thought he looked rather cold up here, and was afraid he was sowing seed on pretty rocky soil." He replied, laughing, " that faith would remove even Scotch mountains." Another priest, of more years and with his enthusiasm tempered by larger experience, summed up the situation more practically with the candid statement that " it takes more money to convert a Scotchman than he is worth." When we got to the end of our journey the young priest showed me, with a good deal of pride, quite a noble pile of buildings which were going up as a mon- astery and school, and to which he was attached as one of the brothers. I did not think it right to dampen his religious ardor and hope, even if I had had the heart to do so, but I am very sure that he will not get a Scotch boy in his school sa^e from the old Royalist clans, who are already Catholic, and would remain so without schools or care. As he was an English gentleman, however, his own faith was probably a matter of descent and family pride, I mean in the good sense of that word. It is very curious, indeed, to observe how all along here a man's religion, or his Church relations rather, follow as an obligation to certain family traditions or to a family's position. Even the 4iead of a great house does not presume to lead it or dictate to it in this mat- ENTERING SCOTLAND. 227 ter. He simply accepts the situation to which he has been born, respects the collective sense of his tribe or clan, and puts himself at the head of it. Said a very large Scottish landowner of high rank to me one day walking over his estates : " Two-thirds of my tenants go to the kirk, and I think, therefore, I ought to go, too. Don't you think so ?" I unqualifiedly said u Yes." This gentleman's taste, in all probability, would have led him to prefer personally the highly-finished and artistic service of the Established Church of England, but duty, as the head of an old historical family, led him every Sunday to the bare walls of the little village kirk. Now the country kirk of Scotland is something " bluer" than the old-fashioned Seceder congregations of Pennsylvania in earlv days, harder benches, longer psalms, just as disjointed tunes, longer prayers, longer Scripture readings and more of them, and a ser- mon utterly unrestrained by any sense of time. For the same reason, many of the Scotch nobility are Liberals in politics because their family and clan have been Whigs in past times. Scotland, politically, belongs to the " Liberal" party, lords and people naturally inclining that way by reason of their blood and history. It flows naturally from their almost fierce sense of independence, which shows itself everywhere. I have often talked with very humble members of the " Free Kirk of Scotland," the people's Church. " Is not the difference between you and the Estab- lished Church only one of church government?" " No ; it is something a great deal deeper than a question of government when the queen or the govern- ment can send down a minister to us against our will." " Would such a thing ever be done ? Has it ever been done?" " I don't know. It is enough that it can be done. We will never allow such an authority. It is not right." 228 SCOTLAND. And the feeling with which such words were always uttered showed that it was a real matter of principle and belief, for which the Scotch peasant or croftsman of to-day would sacrifice comfort and advancement, or fight, or, if needs be, die, just as he has done again and again for generations. The memory of these humble martyrs or affiants for the truth is cherished everywhere in Scotland in memorials often touching in their rudeness. Janet Geddes, who drove the Established Church of England out of Scotland with a three-legged stool, is remembered with a good deal of warmth in the popular heart. In this town of Stirling, the central feature of the fine park cemetery which lies grandly on a castellated hill, is a monument to Margaret Wilson, whose story is a household legend in Presbyterian America, and whose death is one of the most wonderful of martyrdoms. This young girl in her teens, tied to a stake in the Sol way tide, died bravely and calmly rather than acknowledge the Episcopal supremacy as a governing power in the Church. She surely did not understand the full scope and grasp of the question, could not by reason of her years and want of education. She only knew that the Stuarts were forcing it on Scotland, that it was a threat to the liberty of her country and a danger to freedom, and she willingly gave her testimony against it, even unto death. The monument which commemorates this grand fact and this great national characteristic is, I regret to say, in the very worst of taste. Some marble figures are inclosed in a glass case on a stone pedestal. The color- less gla?s is bordered with strips of the same material in deep blue and light green, while the wliole body of the monument is plastered over with texts and multi- tudinous Scripture references too bulky for any particu- lar appositeness. This when the whole Bible and all history is ringing with single grand words" that fit the occasion! ENTERING SCOTLAND. 229 The main inscription begins with a gush about " the virgin martyr of the ocean wave," and ends with the information that she chose to die " rather than own to Erastian usurpation." This heroic grave is one of the worst instances of the Scotch want of taste and uncouth tendency to obtrude theological technicalities every- where. While I was looking at this tomb three young Scotch soldiers with kilts were slowly working out the cumber- some inscription, and one, familiar with the story, was trying to tell it to his comrades, apparently recruits. He naturally found some difficulty in this, as u Eras- tianism" was not a garrison word. He struggled bravely with the trouble, however, and summed up the whole matter by assenin^ that she was right any- how, and died because she was. And with a hearty oath the two new boys confirmed the statement lt Ye-, and , she was." And the story and its lesson went rudely down to another generation. I noticed the entire evening I spent in this old graveyard that this grave w surrounded by humble, plain people, reading its barl :::'ous inscription sorrow- fully, and honoring in respectful silence the martyr. Being Scotch, they could not lay a flower on the tomb or kneel in prayer at the grave, as French women or men or Italians would have done at the shrine of their saint; but they were taking it all In, nevertheless. Margaret Wilson died in 1685. Her grave and her memory are as green as if the relentless waters' had gone over her young body only yesterday. They arc the facts of Stirling remembered in the. common heart before all the deeds of the hundred chieftains who have fought around this citadel and made it the central point of Scottish history. Her grave lies in sight of twelve battle-fields of Scotland, but she is the greatest warrior of all. We owe much to Scotland, but this legacy of per- sonal independence and determination, this unwilling- 20 230 SCOTLAND. ness ever to yield, ever to submit to a wrong, ever to compromise, is her best and greatest gift. STIRLING, SCOTLAND. CHAPTER XXV. SCOTTISH NOTES. THE LOWER SIDE OF SCOTCH LIFE SCOTCH WHISKEY AND ITS REIGN THE HARDNESS OF SCOTCH POVERTY HIGHER SCOTLAND SCOTCH THRIFT SCOTCH NEWSPAPERS SCOTCH HOTELS RURAL SCOTLAND GOING FORWARD THE THEO- LOGICAL SCOT. LET me throw together some observations on certain phases of Scotch life and some Scotch institutions as seen in a pretty extended tour of six weeks over all the kingdom. It is a land of sharp contrasts and salient features, the old and the new existing yet side by side, sometimes fusing but sometimes standing apart. I had heard much of the bad condition of the lowest classes in Scotland, but was hardly prepared for the appalling truth as exhibited in the streets of their larger towns. There is a misery and degradation here which is perhaps unequalled in any civilized land. There is a dirtiness that I think surpasses the filth of Italy, and it is unrelieved by bright eyes and smiling faces and beautiful forms and graceful movement. Scotch poverty is simple, sullen, vicious-looking degra- dation. Instead of song and music and pleasing lying, the Scotch lazzaroni are given over to the beastly vices of drunkenness and prostitution, which are fearfully prevalent and whose results are clearly visible on the lower streets of every town of any size in Scotland. Begging, too, is prevalent, and the squalid mendicant, with brutal slouch and rum-burnt visage, stoutly curses and swears at you when you refuse him. SCOTTISH NOTES, 231 So degraded and unclean are the herds who swarm i ^en good streets that in Glasgow, for instance, after slight, I have left the pavement and taken the middle of the street rather than run the risk of being brushed against by beings reeking with the marks and odors of disease, filth, and uncleanness. But the saddest feature of Scotch degradation is the way it seems to harden the individual and drive out everything that is softening or gentle or relieving in human nature. The faces of the poor are pinched, meagre, calculating ; their voices hardened and harsh ; their tones angry and impatient; their eyes sullen and vicious. Everything of light and hope is gone even from the little children ; all i- ungracious and unlovely. The little things start life with this dreadful heritage. Some days since, on the outskirts of Stirling, being in some doubt at the forks of a road, I asked my way of a little girl who, with bare legs, uncombed hair, ill clad, and no bonnet, was swinging alone on the fence, and gave her a few pennies. The child seemed confused at being kindly spoken to, and I fear the gift was an en- tirely new revelation. After recovering from the sur- prise the little thing, with a look of wonder still on her face, and extremely grateful, began to explain the way, offering to go along, and very anxious to do something in return. It was painful to see her evident attempt to speak in pleasant, gentle tones and the inexorable fail- ure. Her voice was already hard and set, and against her will and to her deep mortification and distress the words would only come out in the old harsh, ungracious, ugly tones, the only sounds she knew. Again, this morning in Glasgow, in one of the low streets leading to the great cathedral, which now stands in a dismal and dirty quarter of the town, I heard a squalid, degraded woman, who was carrying a wretched, meagre babe in her arms, both half naked, address it thus : " Shet up your cryin', will you ? I'll choke you ded and brek your hed against the wall. Whust now !" 232 SCOTLAND. The woman was not drunk. It was her own child, and the words, although spoken in a rude and rigid tone, were not unkindly meant. They were, in fact, a Glasgow 1 illaby, the " sounds from home' 7 of this quarter. Much of this utter lowness and degradation of Scotch poverty comes from the frightful habits of drinking which prevail among the poorer classes of men and women, but this will not account for it all, for the drinking itself is, in part, only a result of the degrada- tion. The Scotch people are making an earnest and desperate fight against intemperance all over Scotland, and well they may, for a more shocking exhibition of national drunkenness, I suppose, is not to be seen the world over than that which protrudes itself everywhere on the traveller in this land. You see drunken men reeling in the streets, and, women, too, in broad day- light, and often quite early in the morning. And it is not confined to what might be called the lowest classes. I frequently see venerable-looking old men with white hair, and whose countenances indicate that they have led fairly intelligent and industrious lives, staggering blindly, or, as is more often the case, attempting to hold a drunken argument with any passer-by they can fasten. To-day I saw in this town of Glasgow a very respectable-looking young woman of about thirty, very neatly and quite well dressed, apparently the wife of a well-to-do mechanic, reeling for half a square in mid- day through a crowded street. Old women, gray-haired and bent, their faces bloated and burnt naming red with years of drink, meet you everywhere, and are to an American stranger the marked and most repulsive feature of the begging class. It is needless to say that drinking-shops and small retail shops of liquor " not to be drunk on the premises/' abound in all the streets. Their number is something ghastly ; they are low, dirty, dingy, and squalid, and in front of them hang around all day squads of vicious, SCOTTISH NOTES. 233 criminal-looking young men with that villainous slouch and sullen gait so well known in the police and quarter sessions courts. The drunkenness of Scotland, like its poverty, is something hideous, unrelieved by a single softening feature, even in the way of glamour. There is no attempt to mask it or excuse it or commend it. The gin-shops are not palaces of gas and light, as in other lands, to allure and tempt. They are foul dens, which, in most countries, would repel and disgust, but here they are sought. The Scotch drunkard evidently drinks to be drunk, shamelessly, from the lowest and most brutish of purposes ; and it is this which makes his case so hopeless, and so warmly enlists one's sympathies for the men and women who are fighting the up-hill battle for the redemption of their land from its greatest curse. The cause or causes of the wretched and debased condition of the poorest classes of Scotland is an inter- esting and very difficult social problem, covering a vast range of inquiry, into which there is not time to go in a letter, or perhaps even in a single book. I aim here only to present the facts, not to account for them. In- dependent of its interest as a study in social science, this question has a deeper importance for us Americans, as there is a strong family likeness .between our two civilizations, or conditions of society. Scotland, as we are, is a land of churches and Bibles; a land of schools and newspapers and common education ; a land of read- ing and a general diffusion of average and commonplace information (even the drunken Scotchman is argumen- tative and ludicrously hortatory) ; a land " Liberal" in its politics, and the Liberal party here stands to the Tory as the Republican does to the Democratic in our country, the party of advanced ideas and progress; yet, in one of the first and fundamental trusts of the Church and of the State the care of the poor it has made a complete and terrible failure. I believe, delib- 20* 234 SCOTLAND. erately, that it is far better to-day, better for soul and body, to be an Italian peasant, ignorant, in rags, trodden under in politics, image worshipping, and lying, if you will, but happy, full of the human emotions, with grace of body and movement, able to sing and to speak kindly and lovingly, with the power to enjoy the beautiful in nature and art, than to endure the brutal degradation of Scotch poverty as seen in her cities, a degradation which breeds coarse and debasing vices, crushes the light out of the eyes of its victim, self-respect from his face, and hope from his soul; which not only leaves him nothing to enjoy, but takes away even the power of enjoyment; which robs even childhood of its birthright of love and careless pleasure. But let us turn to something more pleasant. Rural Scotland presents a pleasant contrast to the towns and cities. If there is suffering there at least it is not concentrated. Drink and its attendant evils there are. Country Scotland, with its new granite farm- houses, looks solid, comfortable, and prosperous. In- deed, large portions of it look like a new country, so thoroughly has rebuilding or new building been going on within the present generation. The old thatched mud cottage, rudely built and very humble in appear- ance, is giving way to neat new small buildings of solid masonry, the gray granite looking not merely thrifty, but quite substantial. In many places you see the old quarters still standing, abandoned, perhaps, or used as temporary shelter for cattle or animals, and the cluster of new buildings, trim and comfortable, rising from some better located site on the farm. This is the Scot- land that is going forward. There is a curious, raw-boned, theological oast to the Scotch popular mind which crops out everywhere, and the disposition to obtrude theological technicalities into common life is very marked, and sometimes pro- duces odd effects. I have mentioned how the dramatic martyrdom of Margaret Wilson is blanketed on her SCOTTISH NOTES. 235 tomb as the death of one " who would not own to Eras- tianism." On the gravestones in the cemeteries, instead of a salient clause or effective word from Scripture, are copious references to passages simply by chapter and verse, thus : Deut., c. xxxv., v., vi., or 1st Kings, c. xxiii., v., xviii. Often a stone is fairly covered over with these references, in part to verses and sometimes to whole chapters at once. A favorite mortuary in- scription is a very positive " Covenant" reference im- plying indirectly that this stone evidences a^completed contract, and sometimes with a kind of baldness that rather jars on one's sense of delicacy, to say nothing of reverence. To get the proper effect of an average Scotch cemetery one must go through it Bible in hand, and then it would be several days 7 good work. Again, in a country Scotch church, when the minister announces his text, reads it, and alleges that it comas from a cvr- tain chapter and verse, the whole congregation picks up its Bibles and refers to the place to verify their pas- tor's word or satisfy themselves individually on some other point. In the bookstores and stalls there is a distinctly theo- logical coloring to the volumes and prints exposed for sale. In Edinburgh, for instance, they do not seem to have gotten over the Reformation yet, and are still fighting it out with polemic treatises and newspaper articles. I have noticed also one or two popular peri- odicals which announce a weekly " prophetic" article as among their attractions. In Glasgow I passed a poor blind beggar, who stood by the wayside begging in a rather common and crowded street, and to attract atten- tion was laboriously reading word by word by touch out of a Bible printed in raised letters. He was tugging away in the dust and dirt at a chapter from the Epistle to the Hebrews by way of catching the popular ear. There is one institution in Glasgow worthy of note, the Great Western Cooking Depot. This famed phil- anthropic institution is something like the excellent 236 SCOTLAND. Philadelphia model coffee-houses, its object is to supply cheap food, well cooked, for the poorer classes. It does supply a good plain breakfast, substantial enough for a hungry workiugman, at a cost of six cents of our money, and a dinner, soup, meat, potatoes, and pudding, for nine cents. Now, Glasgow is a city which imports food from us, grain, pork, canned meats, live cattle, dead cattle, dead sheep, tallow, lard, butter, and cheese, and many other articles. If Glasgow, importing from us, can feed \rorkmen at fifteen cents a day, what ought we not to do ? Indeed, in every way the prices of common things seem to be very cheap in Glasgow, and from a super- ficial look at the streets, I should say that the workman making a dollar a day here was as well off as one making say one dollar and forty cents a day in Phila- delphia. I cannot speak as to rents, and base my estimates only on food and clothing. The Scotch newspapers resemble the American nearer than do those of any other country. In the Scotch towns the multiplicity of papers and of readers is quite marked in contrast with England. You see it the mo- ment you cross the line. Towns like Glasgow and Edinburgh, and even much smaller places, all have their crop of dailies, morning and afternoon. On the other hand, these papers tend continually to average and commonplace level, and do not have the weight or influence of the English. They are " snappy" and smart rather than thoughtful and strong, of the terrier rather than the bull-dog style. The reason for this similarity of the Scotch and American paper is a similarity of social structure. There is in Scotland the same vast mass of crude half- education diffused through all the community as with us. I am not speaking in condemnation of the Scotch papers. They answer a very useful and respectable purpose. They supply the kind of food that is wanted for a large lower- and middle-class population of super- SCOTTISH NOTES. 237 ficial intelligence which is ntfmerous in Scotland. In England there is no such class, the lower strata of so- ciety being very ignorant, and not readers of anything. The papers of England, therefore, appeal solely to the upper and governing class, which is a class of educa- tion, the class of the universities, of prestige of birth, of wide experience of men and travel. They are writ- ten by that class for their own class. The Scotch papers necessarily, with some few prominent excep- tions, are not. Scotland shares with us the fortune or misfortune of leading in the drift of modern civilization, which in its present stage is a movement towards the apotheosis of the average and commonplace. Good men of both parties, the Liberal and Conservative, tell me that there is a growing tendency the same way in politics, i.e., to the evolution of commonplace men, the men who make an impression on the crude and half-educated mind. The Scotch hotels of the better kind the large and newly-built houses are more like the American ones than any I have found anywhere in Britain or on the Continent. They have our spacious public provision for comfort nowhere found on the same scale in Euro- pean hostelries, generous wash- and retiring-rooms, billiard-rooms, writing-rooms, reading-rooms, public parlors. While they thus approach the virtues of our system, they also share its vices, defective service, hurry, and a mechanical routine. It is worthy of remark that Scotland, from which we took so much one or two centuries ago, is now taking back from us the new institutions which we have devel- oped under our new condition. I close with a Scottish note of to-day, which illus- trates how thoroughly the old Scottish spirit of integ- rity, the spirit which willingly sacrifices itself for right, the spirit which utterly refuses compromise or half-way settlement with wrong, is alive and burning in Scotland to-day. It is one of the principles of the United Pres- 238 SCOTLAND. byterian Church not to "accept money for sacred uses from unclean hands. They decline to take for God, and as His agent or minister, money that, as far as they can see, has not been honestly made. When the great Glasgow Bank failure took place here some of the directors were members of the United Presbyterian congregations of the city, and one or more of them were large givers, almost the support, I am told, of their particular churches. When, by the judg- ment of the civil courts, these directors were declared to have been guilty of systematic fraud for some years back, their liberal donations were all returned to them, although it more than crippled the congregations who did it. This fact was told me not by any of themselves, but by a learned clergyman of the Established Church of Scotland, who bore honorable testimony to their devo- tion to principle, and their own profession. GLASGOW, SCOTLAND. CHAPTER XXYI. TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. ' THE HIGHLANDS AND THE WEST COAST OF SCOTLAND HOME . OF THE CLAN CAMERON PRESBYTERIAN SCOTLAND OF TO- DAY A SABBATH EVE IN ARGYLESHIRE A KIRK FAIR THE APPLES OF OBAN AT A SCOTCH KIRK THE TROOPER CLAVERHOUSE IN SILK ATTIRE. I STARTED for " lona's holy fane 77 from Inverness, intending to give a summer's month to the bracing storms and sheeted vapors of the Hebrides, seeking health and youth in the shadowy land of Ossianic tra- dition, that land whose song and legend are born in TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 239 one with Highland blood, and which the descendant of Celtic ancestry visits, not as a strange country, but as one going back into the mists and vague eternity of childhood. It is wonderful how human existence, through these nebulous vapors and the cloudy sweep of storm and wind and spray, seems to almost tone and merge itself into the infinite life of the universe. Clouds here encircle the form of our fathers, their voices ride on the winds, and the whole spirit and imagery of Os- sian is as real as the rocks and the waves. Inverness is a central part of departure on the north- east coast of Scotland, although almost in the centre of the northern counties, the great Moray Firth here breaking into the shore for a hundred miles or more. It is a kind of base of supplies for the tourist under- taking a campaign against Ilebridian fogs and tempests, a place where you can buy stout hunters' shoes and sailors' headgear and waterproof and wondrous Scotch tweeds with yawning flaps and capotes. From this point the best road to the west coast lies through the Caledonian canal or water-way, cutting right through the Highlands, and which is formed by connecting several long, narrow lakes by short canals. It is something like the old military water-line in pro- vincial times of our own country, formed by Lake George and Lake Cham plain. This route is known as the Rhine of Scotland, and is always thronged with summer travel. It is wild and beautiful, every hill replete with legend and incident, and to a Scotch- American every town and name recalling home associ- ations. Along here is the home of the Camerons, who are pretty thick in their own section, a thin-faced, active, aggressive race, lords and liegemen, with a common type of feature, like that of the distinguished Pennsyl- vanian family. I also found the Buchanan family face a very marked type through Scotland. Yon see on this route a modest stone shaft, known as the Royal Charlie. 240 SCOTLAND. It is a granite pillar which marks the exact spot where, in 1745, the Clan Cameron, seven hundred strong, raised the standard of Prince Charles Edward, an act which was more plucky than long-headed, as seen in our light, but which might have been a fair political risk one hundred and fifty years ago. Here, also, they show you the dramatic wreck of the house of Lochiel, the very spot on which the last of the name know- ingly accepted death and ruin and the extinction of his family name to save his honor and make good his pledged word by a desperate and hopeless conflict. Of a weather-beaten, kilted Highlander, who stood near me at the time, I asked, " Have you many Camerons about here now ?" " Yes ; a good many." " Do they go much into politics over here ?" " Well," laughing, " we think a good deal of them in this part, and one of them is our member of Parlia- ment just now." "What's his name?" " Donald." In London I looked over the Parliamentary roll, and sure enough the member for Inverness is Donald Cam- eron. This Donald Cameron is a Conservative, while the general political drift of Scotland is strongly Liberal. But the individual Scotchman, as I have before said, never forgets a friend or a foe, and the Clan Cameron of 1879 is staunch to the tradition of 1745. You end the Caledonia Canal route at Oban, " the Charing-Cross of the Highlands," where you make ready to take the seas. It is a remote Scottish village, situated beautifully on a bay, the inland extremity of which its streets encircle very prettily. I got here on Saturday and remained over Sunday, engaging passage in a coasting vessel for Monday to lona. I was anxious to have an interior view of modern Scotch village-life, and very glad of the opportunity to see it here in its TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 241 simplicity, away from the influences of any " great house." We have a conventional idea in many parts of our country that in Scotland the Sabbath begins on Satur- day evening at sunset ; that the aged cotter at that time gets out a ponderous family Bible, collects a cleanly-clad, serious family around him in a picturesque tableau, and begins the devotions, which continue, with slight changes, for twenty-four hours. I had long since given up the " cleanly-clad" touch of this picture, but I held on to the main design. I dined in Oban at six o'clock, and went out on to the streets of the little village at about eight. It was wet and drizzling, of course, but the children of He- bridian mi.-ts pay not the least attention to such light dis- comforts as rain and mud and darkness. Through the leaden, vapory sheets of mist and the obscured clouds I could see the faint lights all around the circular line of the street and hear coming oitt of the dense fogs the sounds of lively music at different points. Pushing out along the water front, all the shops were open, the win- dows lighted, the streets full of young men and women. Bagpipes were going in one place, and farther off a horn and violin band were plaving "Over the River to Charlie" with vim and spirit enough to have started a French barricade. Some young couples strolled with locked hands rather aimlessly from one centre of'.MUind to another, steering expertly between the squads of more or less drunken men. Generally the town was en fite, although after the heavy northern fashion. Barring the drunkenness, with the fishermen and the sailors and the shepherds and the girls and the music and divamy lights on the sea, you might have fancied yourself in Italy had there only been a little moonlight and a few Madonnas. At the far end of the village stood a rude, frame school-house, decked with limp, wet flags, illuminated through the chinks and cracks of the planks, and from L g 21 242 SCOTLAND which the music of fiddles rang merrily Scotch reels and the stirring old rebel Jacobite airs. To all appearances things had gone so far that the Covenanter youths of Scotland were having a Saturday-evening dance just like the simple peasantry of Bretagne. It was not quite so bad, however. Entering, there was no dancing or pro- vision for it. It was only a kirk-fair. The village kirk-house was in need of repairs. The repairs were being made, and the maids and matrons of the kirk were raising or helping to raise 'the funds. The scene within was quite animated, and had the ordinary features of a country church-fair in our land. The girls, being Scotch, were pretty and lithe and bright; the articles of sale as utterly impracticable and valueless as if they had been exposed on aristocratic tables in a city charitable bazaar. There were some matters of detail a little different from our customs. The refresh- ment-table, for instance, had a generous supply of wines and certain gurgling-necked bottles, which, from their familiar national character, I presumed to contain whiskey. It would be unfair, however, to look on this incident as we would on whiskey sold at an American fair or bazaar. Its use is the general habit and custom of the country, and there was no unseemly drinking or noise in the hall. Had you gone into the private house of the clergyman of the kirk whiskey would probably have been offered you as a common mark of hospitality, and I observe that Americans, when in Scotland, however they may moralize at home on the evil consequences, generally take the whiskey. It is an incident of the Ossianic mists, and has been so from the times of the Vi kings. The prominent and popular feature of the kirk-fair, however, was the lottery. Everything was offered in chances and shares, and raffling was evidently the most successful "ways and means" of the enterprise. My companion and myself, assailed on every side, earnestly remonstrated with these enthusiastic young Covenanters, TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 243 representing that we bad been raised as Presbyterians, and could not conscientiously indulge in such practices, even they bring the fair temptation ; further, that in the far-off provinces from which we came all lotteries were criminal oifences; that we could not break the laws of our own country, even in a foreign land, and especially so near to the Sabbath-day. But the young women, as usual, were not amenable to reason. There were half a dozen young male Americans of Puritan training and descent at this village fair that evening, and I fear they all ate of the apples of Oban. Next morning, however, Scotland was herself again, and the Sabbath morning broke upon an Oban as stiff and silent and decorous as if there never had been a violin or a kirk lottery or a Saturday evening fete within its precincts. I went to the Established Kirk, where the old faith and the old worship hold the fort, strong and safe. It was in the main a very familiar scene. The faces wore just the same as you would soe to-day in any country Presbyterian congregation in the Cumberland Vallov. You could pick them all out, elders and deacons, and the men that expected in time to be, the stern, rigid faces that accepted nothing on trust, and weighed every sentence of their preacher in the balances. The sandy features were perhaps in the predominance, but there was a strong infusion of the old "black Celt." Even here the old race characteristics assert their individuality and refuse, closed up together for. centuries, to blend or mingle. Everything was intensely Scotch in look and sound and custom. A McDougall was the chief man of the congregation, the head of the clan on the bay ; an unregenerate young Campbell, who kicked lustily, was forcibly baptized during the services. I sat in the pew of Duncan McGregor. The " local color" was all an artist could pray for. The services of the morning did not differ materially from those of an ordinary Presbyterian or Congrega- 244 SCOTLAND. tional congregation in our land, save in the quantity. I give the order : singing of a hymn, prayer, reading from the Old Testament, singing of a hymn, reading from the New Testament, singing of a paraphrase, the sermon, prayer, singing of a hymn, baptism, singing, benediction, twelve separate exercises. The baptismal services, which was an interpolation in the order of the day, possibly added something. There were some differences in the service and scene between the old Presbyterian usages of our land worth noting. The church building was in cruciform shape, and the saints and angels looked down on you from rich stained-glass windows. The hymnal was a modern collection of two hundred good hymns, many of them those in use in our congregational bodies. The Two Hundredth, however, was the ordinary English 'version of the Te J)eum Laudamus, closing before the Kyrie Eleison clauses. The Apostles 7 Creed and the Lord's Prayer were introduced in the extempore prayers, and the Creed again in the baptismal service. The choir sat in the apse. The preacher was a young man, with red hair parted in the middle, whiskers, and a moustache. He wore the black gown and bands and a purple university hood. He preached a vigorous and able sermon, Old Testament throughout in tone and imagery and train of thought. His delivery was demonstrative and sten- torian, markedly in contrast with the quieter and more scholarly tone of the JJnglish pulpit. It was, however, well suited to the place and the audience, to whom, I think, his effort scholarly and thoughtful in its way was very acceptable. He fired a shot at the pope, of course. I think there are many just such congregations in Pennsylvania to-day, and all through the country, even out in Alamosa, where, three years ago, I saw the atoms of organization arranging themselves, -just such bodies of people listening to just the same doctrines TOWARDS THE HEBRIDES. 245 enforced by just the same argument. The preacher here was, as his hood betokened, a university man, and his sermon gave evidence of greater scholarship and force of trained thought than the average Ameri- can pulpit effort. The stained-glass windows and the definite ecclesiastical architecture showed a broader sense of power and a larger freedom of culture than holds in many of our villages, but they have come in the cities and will spread down. Time was when the saint in the window and the cross of nave and transept was a political emblem, much more than anything else, and the sturdy Presby- terians of Scotland were perfectly right and logical in tearing them down. We are reaping the fruits in our civil freedom and religious liberty now. But the time is past when such things are to be feared, and there is no reason now why all the beauties of art and estab- lished aesthetic principles should not adorn the temples of any faith in our land or England. These changes in the aesthetic development of the form and plan of worship have not weakened the vigor or power of the faith. The old soul was there in the kirk of Oban just as resolute and true, and a good deal broader, and, consequently, stronger than a hundred years ago. It was very interesting to me to trace these simili- tudes or divergencies between the Presbyterianism of the old land and of our own. They mark and record the mental and historical development of the two peoples. There are Presbyterian corners of our land that are to-day perhaps more Scotch than Scotland. We brought over the Scotland of 1700, and hold it there unchanged still, while the General Kirk of Scot- land, changing with history and life of a people, has gone on to something different. On the other hand, there are spots in Scotland which have never changed for a hundred years, and will not for a hundred years to come. The general religious life of both 'ountries 21* 246 SCOTLAND. is, however, I think, under somewhat different condi- tions, moving forward much alike, and with very equal step. The Presbyterian ism of our country and of Scotland to-day is much alike, although it is very different from what it was either here or there a gen- eration ago. But the race holds together in its march. I may mention here a little incident of interest in this connection which I came across during the summer at another point in Scotland. In the drawing-room of the Earl of Strath more at Glamis Castle there hangs with the family portraits a full-length painting of the famous dragoon Claverhouse, whose name was once such a terror to the Covenanters, and whose memory yet is recalled only with unuttered imprecations by their descendants. Much to my surprise, thinking of him only from the conventional conception of Cove- nanter tradition, I found the portrait of an entirely different manner of man. He was sumptuously dressed in a wealth of rich colored silk that in our time would be effeminate, and his forui and carriage bore the un- mistakable impress of a man accustomed to good so- ciety and trained to its amenities. His face was refined, pleasing, and almost gentle, very much the same face as those which gather at the castle to-day, with ladies and flowers and music, for luncheon and lawn-tennis. In this mild, amiable, gentlemanly officer it was impos- sible to see the rough and merciless mosstrooper of Scottish tradition. There is nothing at all vindictive or cruel in the face, and little that is indicative of force. I can only infer that Claverhouse was not the motive- power of his own action. He was probably an amiable kind of man, receptive to the impressions of a stronger will, the ready tool of a firmer hand and more cunning head, one of those men who are good for instruments and to work under and for others. He had even, 'pos- sibly, a strong religious tendency, which exercised itself in following ignorantly and unthinkingly the instruc- tions of any ecclesiastical authority to which he professed JON A. 247 fealty. I do not mean to say that he had ecclesiastical instruction for his savage forays on the Scotch con- venticles, but he was probably taught by his Church, after the unchristian spirit of those times, that it was doing God service to crush out heresy by violence, and lie was honest enough to practise what others only preached. Let us be thankful for our gentler and better times, which enable us to think of this man without anger, and to judge him dispassionately. At this point of Oban I left the mainland for lona, which, with its traditions, as the early seat of our Christianity, the northern ark, when all the world was in chaos under the flood which swept away the Roman Empire and oivili/ation, and Staifa, with its grand " temple not made with human hands," and Ulva's isle, I must leave for another paper. OBAN, SCOTLAND. CHAPTER XXVII. ION A. THE AURORAL LIGHT OF NORTHERN CHRISTIANITY A STORM OFF THE WEST COAST OK SCOTLAND A KUDK WESTMINSTER THE FUNERAL CORTEGE OF FORGOTTEN. LINES OF KINGS MACBETH'S GRAVE A DOVE OF THE CHURCH THE STORY OF ST. COLUMHA THE IRISH SAINTS MILITANT OF OLD IN GAELIC LAND THE HOME OF THE MACLEANS IONA OF TO- DAY THE HOLY PLACE OF DRUID, PAGAN, CHRISTIAN SAILING THE SUMMER SEAS OF SCOTTISH ROMANCE FIN- GAL'S CAVE, THE CATHEDRAL OF THE SEAS LORD ULLIN'S DAUGHTER THE HIGHLANDERS OF THE SEA. " The Hebrid Isles Placed far amid the melancholy main." MONDAY morning broke with a fresh, whistling gale sweeping along the west coast of Scotland, but as that is rather the rule and calm weather the exception on 248 SCOTLAND. the Hebridean seas, our coaster boldly put off from the black, slippery dock at Oban, and headed for the lower- ing and leaden skies. After a rough passage, with no worse disaster than the relentless ravages of the mal de mer, which took down a goodly proportion of the pas- senger-list, the staunch little craft anchored off a reef some distance out from the inhospitable shores of the Holy Island, and we visitors were taken aground in Borne little fisherman's boats. The coaster, which, in summer-time, makes daily trips to lona, lands its pas- sengers in this wise, and after driving them through the main ruins of the island, much as you might con- duct a herd of cattle, sails away again, all in an hour. This seems to have been the unsatisfactory routine from the time of Wordsworth, if I read aright the complaint of some of his verses. Taking heed from the poet's disappointment, rny brother and myself concluded to lay over the night in a humble inn which is found on the island, and, after a day spent at leisure among the Druidic and Christian remains/ to take a fisherman's boat and meet the coasting vessel at some farther point out on its next day's trip, when it was to come down from the north instead of up from the south. This plan, which is the only one by which one can see the place intelligently, and which I would adopt again were I visiting lona another time, in this instance cost us four days' solitary imprisonment on the little island. The storm grew only more furious as night came on, and the next day seemed only to increase in rage. Until Thursday not a vessel ever came in sight, or even put out from Scotland, as we afterwards learned, and not a fisherman dare leave the shore. All the time the entire seas around were lashed with foam f ceaselessly breaking and charging on the giant rocks and deadly reefs with demoniac fury. Sometimes the angry waters seemed forced through clefts or caverns in the rocks, and would shoot up into the air columns of foam and spray apparently several hundreds of feet high. It IONA. 249 was a supremely magnificent spectacle, and it moved all day long and all night to the rhythmic thunders of the mighty surges rumbling awful basses away below the range of the human scale. During the second day the torn and mutilated body of a little boy was washed ashore, utterly unrecognizable and unknown. From the clothing and other indications the fishermen be- lieved it to be some shepherd lad from one of the neighboring islands, snatched from the earth by the angry sea in one of its frenzied inroads. The venerable religious and race associations which centre in lona are familiar to the educated world. It was, stretching back into remote ages whose antiquity cannot now be told, holy ground, a kind of Mecca, or Jerusalem, or Rome, for the savage clans of our fore- fathers who rode the northern seas. Scandinavian, Pict, Scot, Irish, Celt, Gael, revered its soil, worshipped at its altars, and buried their great in its consecrated earth. Dr. Johnson calls it "this awful ground." During the sixth century, when the world was breaking up in the convulsive dissolution of the Roman Empire, this little isle held the light of Christianity and civilization for the new race that was coming on to the scene. It was, undoubtedly, a rude faith and a very meagre civiliza- tion, but it held the spark, such as it was, and kept the flame alive. Perhaps the most touching, certainly the most im- pressive, of all the remains of lona are its rude, kingly graves. In the universal wreck and plunder which marked the savage warfare of our Norse ancestors, all peoples seem to have respected " the Blessed Isle," as it was reverentially called, and the bones of the great and the good were carried there from afar, that they might be safe from spoliation, and await in peace and under holy guard the morning of the resurrection. Tradition says that for centuries the kings of France, and Ireland, and Scotland, and Norway, and of far isles were buried here. Here, also, were brought the 250 SCOTLAND. bishops and lordly abbots of legendary memory. The cemetery of these royal tombs is shown, and the traces of many graves are clearly visible. They lie in long rows, many of them under monumental slabs of an enduring slate, rudely etched with crosses, croziers, and shields and swords and Runic symbols. These slate tombstones have a hard, polished surface, and seem almost imperishable, and much of the etching is bold and spirited. A great Runic cross stretches its pro- tecting arms over this sacred enclosure. It is evident that there has been some restoration in the arrangement of the graves of this yard, and some of the royal tablets are certainly over the wrong bodies ; but the general fact of the long sanctity of the spot and its kingly occupancy is undoubted and established. It is the rude Westminster of the unrecorded history of our race. This was the burying-place, also, of the Lords of the Isles, sung by Sir Walter Scott. Here, too, Mac- beth is buried and his murdered sovereign. Rosse. " Where is Duncan's body ?" Macduff. " Carried to Colmekill'; The sacred storehouse of his predecessors, And guardian of their bones." I should have stated before that the ancient name of lona the name of mediaeval legend and history is I-Columb-Kill, the island of St. Columba of the Church. By the aid of a rude monkish chart or map pre- served on the island, and giving the contour of the shore in its historic days, my brother and myself traced the whole outline of the land, and found the tiny bay or cove which tradition asserts to have been the land- ing-place of these sad processions. It is a narrow, rock-walled entrance of several hundred feet, termi- nating in a few yards of smooth, sandy shore covered with white and richly-colored pebbles worn almost purely round by the endless wash of the waves. I ION A. 251 hear yet the grating rattle of these sounding stones ceaselessly rolling alone for centuries. In good weather small row-boats might land here with comparative safety and in decent quiet. Once on land, a level and sheltered stretch of ground affords an appropriate spot for a temporary halt and any preliminary services. This favored landing is, however, on the opposite shore of the island from the cemetery and ecclesiastical build- ings, the cathedral, convent, and consecrated ground, and in a diagonal direction. They bore, therefore, the bodies of their kings in stately procession a distance of some two miles or more, and over the mountain range, which is crossed by a moderate pass, through which an imperfect road now winds. It was from this far shore of the island that came the precious green stones, which, in the Middle Ages, properly consecrated and blessed, circulated all over Europe as holy amulets. Our enforced confinement on the island, although involuntary, was a pleasant and gainful episode. Four days of the storms of the Scottish seas are a substantial investment in the way of health, and in no other way could we have so entered into the life and spirit of the place. Shut out from the world, its solemn traditions came slowly back out of the ages, and were part of the hour and moment. With this time at our disposal we traced out the whole plan of the primitive ecclesiastical establishment as it stood in the eleventh century, and probably in. the sixth; for the later, or restoration, buildings seem to have been faithfully erected on the site of the ancient sanctuaries built by St. Columba and his disciples, and destroyed by the pagan Danes, A.D. 807, when the whole island was pillaged, the inhabitants slain, the priests sacrificed, and every stone razed to the ground. Of St. Columba, whose name is the savor of this spot, and whose work gave it a place in history, it is difficult to speak truthfully at this time without con- 252 SCOTLAND. veying an erroneous and damaging impression, the lights of his age and ours are so different. He comes down, of course, in the tradition of the Church, en- dowed with all the Christian graces; a priest burning with love ; the "Dove of the Church," as his legendary name tells; a worker of miracles; a teacher of civili- zation; and the legend always closes with the hal- lowing shades of a venerated death-bed, when, full of years and honor, and in the odor of sanctity, the saint went up in. peace and joy to meet his God. These are the shades, and this the coloring of the picture drawn in the convent and mellowed by time and the softening distance of ages. Viewed nearer, the lines are much harsher and less romantic. We now know St. Columba to have been a saint militant of the most aggressive and pugnacious kind, for whom even Ireland was too gentle and peace- ful a land. We know that his record there was one of strife and trouble, and that he finally left it by the advice of his ecclesiastical superior. Even when he had settled lona, reared his triumphant crosses on its soil, erected his convent and set his matin and vesper bells a-ringing over its waves, his life then was probably nearer that of our Indian frontier than of a modern missionary. He had foes within and without; wars with the pagan clans of the North seas and with preda- tory monks of his own faith, eager as he for conquest and adventure. On one occasion some Irish saints of a rival order, having landed, gained a footing in lona, and built their convent and chapel on the far shore of the island ; the dove-like Columba, after some inef- fective controversies, moved in force, with a detach- ment of his saints, against the invading brethren, drove them out, and razed to the ground the offending sanc- tuary, " as was the law in such cases," gravely annotates the faithful chronicler. Every trace of this fated mission is now gone, but from the old. chart one can exactly locate its site, which is, in all respects save a IONA. 253 commanding sweep for its tower and bells over the seas, better than that of St. Columba's. Again, the simple biographer and disciple : " Now a question arose between St. Columba and St. Comgar concerning a church near Coleraine," and it, too, was finally decided by a pitched battle between the fraternities of these pious leaders. I found on this lonely island an old monkish chroni- cle, written in rude, mediaeval Latin, of the life and adventures of St. Columba, extremely interesting and picturesque when read on the spot. Of course, one now can hardly believe in the accuracy or literal truth of much of it, but, like Pompeiian frescoes or Middle- Age tapestries, the whole gave a wonderfully vivid and life-like picture of the daily existence of the time, the habits of the saints, the atmosphere of simple credulity and childish ignorance in which they habitually moved and thought. Everything was rude and humble and primitive, their surroundings and accommodations of the very simplest and most limited kind. St. Columba worked miracles daily and endlessly and on the very slightest provocation, but they were all of the rudest and most humble incident, exorcising the devil out of a milk-pail carried by one of the brothers, holding on a wooden wheel on a cart without a linch-pin, or protecting the working brethren from the cold and snows. The little road from the brothers' house and stables to the church hardly five hundred yards long, and now marked at its angles with a fine Runic cross, the reverent offering of later centuries was a perfect theatre of spiritual manifestations, the angels dividing daily its poor and meagre accommo- dations with the brethren. Jacob's glittering ladder was hardly so grand a roadway. It was a condition of life and thought we can hardly understand, and perhaps cannot do justice to at all. The cold, rude rocks of this barren islet, with their ruder people, were a theatre of the warmest fervency of faith and devo- 254 SCOTLAND. tion. This place was, for these simple, half-barbarian Christians, the very gates of heaven, and they lived from year to year in a kind of sluggish, arctic ecstasis. But this we do know of the heroic saint whose force and fervency of character has thrown his name out of dark ages far into the light and brilliancy of future ones: he was a man of his time and a historic leader. However rude some things may sound to us now, he had all the education and advantages of his period, the education of the schools, of the monastery, of travel and, I think, of arms. He was also a man of good birth, and had the power which always comes from high social relations and experience. He was qualified for his great work and the time in which he did it. His labors were given, not to his own advantage, but for his fellows, and his name still lives. In the very darkest of the Dark Ages, about A.D. 563, Columba, an Irish monk of noble blood, left Ireland, and, sailing northward, sought an unknown island and founded there a monastic home. He brought with him, tradition says, twelve disciples, brother-monks, and his avowed mission was the conversion to Chris- tianity of the Northern pagan kings and the spread of civilization among their tribes. He did convert first Connall, king of the Dalriads, a name even that is lost now. Successively he brought under the standard of the cross the heathen Picts and the Scots, and the savage clans of the Orkneys and even of far-off Ice- land. From this little seat of learning and faith the auroral lights of Northern Christianity were shed in this early century even thus far out toward our own unknown continent. The force of faith and love which St. Columba had centred in this aggressive mission projected itself far out for hundreds and hundreds of years, and its mem- ory will never die now so long as Christianity en- dures. Columba himself died before the century was out. He had entered, by human acclamation, the goodly IONA 255 fellowship of the saints long before death came, and the legend of his departure, as told in the simple Latin of the old chronicle, is a very beautiful and touching story. For three years he had prayed God without ceasing for release, and at last, advised in the night- time that his prayer was granted, he repaired at once, unattended, through the inclement blasts and snow of a boreal winter, to the simple stone altar which had been his life-work and whose future was to be so great, and there, in the act of prayer, ascended to heaven. His body was immediately enshrined in this holy place; the saint was beneath the altar. For two hundred years the fires of faith burned brightly in lona, illuminating the northern horizon. During the chaos of Europe this little island was the lamp of the world. It kept alive in its slender flame learning and civilization ami Christianity. At last, but not until a new civilization was emerging in Europe from the chaos of the old, its fhime, too, was extin- guished in a dramatic tragedy. After hopeless strug- gles, from time to time, with the Scandinavian pagans, long years of fluctuating vicissitudes, of pillages, of escape, of plundering*, of martyrdoms, in 807 the Danes swept the island with ferocious vengeance, destroyed every vestige of building, murdered or carried off the defenceless population, and offered up the priests of Christianity on the triumphant altars of Odin. Then there was night in lona. Generations after, when quieter times came, lona was repeopled by Christian converts, her fanes rebuilt, her altars re-established. It was then she became famous as the remembered cradle of British Chris- tianity. It was then that her very soil came to bear the flavor of sanctity, and that the kings of warring tribes respected it as a common sepulchre. It is the ruins of these times that we now see, some of them as late, probably, as the thirteenth century, that wonder- ful epoch of cathedral -building all over Europe. It is 256 SCOTLAND. from this period that come the impressive monolithic crosses, the slate and granite tombs with kingly helmets and lordly mitres, the emblems of princely abbots at a time in British history when the abbot was a far more important and powerful personage than is the bishop of this age. The lona of to-day is a straggling fisherman's hamlet of a dozen or so houses, with a few more huts for shepherds at solitary points over the island. Everything is rude, and, like the island, meagre, poor, and scanty. The houses are low, but built of tremen- dous thickness of walls, to stand the constant sweep of the wind and the periodic break of tempests. These poor, rude dwellings are covered with thatch, and the thatch secured by a strong network of rope extending over the entire roof, and held to its place by large, heavy bowlders fastened to the ends. Inside the houses everything is simple and primi- tive : stone flags for floors, and sometimes only mud ; a peg or two for the nets and fishing-tackle, a plain stool, some humble kitchen utensils, are generally all the furniture. The cleaning up seems to be done by the ducks and pigs, which have the freedom of the house. So small and confined is the settlement, and the life of the island so much in common, that the animals seem to have lost their fear of mankind, and move around like citizens conscious of their " equal rights." Even the dogs which ran out to meet us in the village and over the bare, heathered hills never plunged out angrily, but came forward for the first time with wag- ging tails, friendly bark, and every demonstration of pleasure, glad to greet a new form. There is no coal on the island and no wood, the bar- ren hills growing only heather, gorse, and nettles. This alone adds fearfully to the poverty of a place that is cold and wet nearly all the year round. I make this note September 2d, and we are having fire every day, IONA. 257 and all day, in our rooms, and outside the poor farmers complain of the lateness of the season. Buttercups, too, are blooming now September instead of May, as with us. This island, three miles long by one to two wide, has an area of two thousand acres, only six hundred of which are capable of cultivation. It yields to its owner, the Duke of Argyll, a rental of four hundred pounds, just a dollar an acre for all the land, good and bad. At least one-half of it is rock, and none of it would be tilled at all by the average American farmer, who would not consider life worth living in its wet sands. When we remember that we can buy in Kansas or Colorado the best wheat-lands in the world at less per acre than the rental for one year of a bleak Scotch sand shore, inaccessible and inclement, we can judge how much better is the lot of the poor man with us than here. Nevertheless, the place has charms of its own for men of this race. The family we are staying with came here five years ago as a matter of choice, and I made the acquaintance of a Scotch stranger on the land- ing who afterwards told me he came here many sum- mers from the love of the place. The language of the island is Gaelic, and the people speak it in a thick, guttural tone, and -with a shy, half- alarmed manner that prevents your even getting at all the real sounds. Seeing no one at all save some tour- ists for a few weeks in the year, the children run around like young savages, barelegged and bare- footed, and with thick, black horse-hair falling from their heads and over their faces, like our Indians. There is no beauty among them, either of face or form. Life is too hard. Little children with hard, unlovely faces follow you on a trot over sharp stones or through coarse wet grass, dirty, unkempt, and almost unclad, to sell their meagre treasures of shells or pebbles. The little girls we saw wore commonly a short petti- r 22* 258 SCOTLAND. coat, not reaching to their knees, and that general I/ partly torn away by exercise and long use. The color of this garment was indiscernible ; the color of their skin was a dark, ruddy red, almost that of our savage. Although the ground of this island is hard and stony, the winds sharp and cutting, and the soil productive of generous crops of thistles, nettles, and thorny plants, its inhab- itants go about with bare feet and legs with impunity, less protected even than the sheep or pigs. There is no corn-mill in lona, and the scanty crop of grain is carried over to an adjoining island to be ground. When this support fails by reason of con- tinued storms or absence of the men fishing, resort is had to the "quern," or hand-mill, the same as men- tioned in the Bible. There are two of these primitive mills on the island. lona is the home of the Macleans, a stalwart tribe well known in Scotch-Irish America. A few genera- tions ago every soul on the island bore this name, but with the dying out of the clan system this has disap- peared, and there are several varieties of family names in lona to-day, all pure Scotch, however. The ruins of lona as they stand to-day are very moderate and modest compared with those of other centres of attraction in this way, the falling walls of the old cathedral, in which you can still trace transept, nave, and the usual chapels, the convent, the conse- crated burial-ground of the kings, another cemetery immediately around the church, the unique crosses at these different points, and the staunch, towering cam- panile from whose open windows the Christian bells hundreds of years ago rang out over the fierce Northern seas. The interest of these modest remains is not in themselves, but in the vast body of associations which they call up and marshal in lengthening hosts that ex- tend back through centuries. In the middle of the island are found some Druidic IONA. 259 remains of traditional interest. These are not seen at all by the visitor who trusts himself to the one-hour tour of the vessel's guide, as they are not on the routine programme, their distance being too great from the landing. Before the times of St. Columba, lona was a famed centre of Druid worship, and the traces of the familiar contour of a Druidic holy of holies are yet visible to patient search, the central mound and the circle of stones, the seats of the angels. We discov- ered their location after a good deal of labor, for much of it is covered with the drift of a thousand years ; but, once ascertained, you can quite definitely locate the tumuli and understand their former relations and uses. The central mound is quite a hill, a sharp, green knob of uniform curve. Later researches, it is claimed, prove that these stone circles all over England were not, as is popularly sup- posed, built by the Druids, who were Celts, but are the work of a far anterior race, the men of the Stone Age. The Stone Age came to an end in Europe about two thousand years before the birth of Christ. Its shortest duration is estimated at a term of two thousand years. This calculation would place the erection of these primi- tive temples, say y about three thousand to four thou- sand years before the Christian era. Other chronolo- gies of the Stone Age would place it still farther hack. lona is one of those remarkable spots which, from prehistoric times, seem always to have been held as sacred localities, points where God came in contact with the world, and where He was worshipped and revealed without regard to creed or chronology of Church speaking " in divers manners in times past/' In spite of the rudeness and simplicity of its modern face, of the meagreness of its remains, of its bleak and forbidding location, it is well worth visiting and study. Few theatres of human history are more impressive. It is one of " the places of the earth." It is a splendid page in the militant history of Christianity. There the 260 SCOTLAND. bloody altars of Thor and Odin have smoked, tended by our Northern ancestors. There God at sundry times in the twilight of the ages spake to our Druid fathers. On Thursday, when the winds were calmed and the angry ocean had quieted down to comparative reason, we hired a fisherman's sail-boat, and, with a pair of small but sinewy Gaelic seamen at the oars, pulled off for a cruise among the neighboring islands to explore the classic seas of school-boy legend and memory. Our morning's destination was Staffa, with its wondrous columnar formation ; our hope, that we might be able to enter with our little boat the surging portal of the grand nave of FingaPs solemn cave. Every wave this morning was crested with associations apd story, behind, the campanile of lona, with Oronsay and Colonsay, twin islets of saints and mediaeval miracles and sacred tradition ; ahead, the frowning masses of Mull, the famous stronghold of the Lords of the Isles, and " Ulva dark" and the broader lands of the Lords of Ullin. ' Oh ! I'm the chief of Ulva's isle, And this Lord Ullin's daughter." We skirted the shores of the tragic escapade, and sailed over the spot where the " waters wild" went over the fated lovers. Fingal's Cave, with its strange basaltic columns, its curiously ecclesiastical effect of Gothic roof, pillared nave, and choir of thundering surges, with its dim religious lights of green and purple and gold reflected from the waves below, is a most impressive and unique sight, but it hardly deserves its relative rank among the wonders of the world gotten from our crude geog- raphies, written at a time when the modern world was unexplored, when America and Australia and Africa and the great table-lands of Inolia and Central Asia were unknown. IONA. 261 This picturesquely imposing cavern is a great cleft in the primeval rock, two hundred and twenty-two feet long, forty-two feet wide at the entrance, and in height sixty-six feet at mean tide. The bottom is always a flood of roaring water. The sides are nearly parallel, and rise up perpendicularly, closing away up in a vaulted roof. They are not plain walls, however, but solid masses of pentagonal and hexagonal columns of wonderful symmetry, and many of them monoliths. They present the eifect of innumerable corridors of columns, aisles and aisles of them. As a picture, the cave most resembles the mighty nave of some great cathedral arched in the foundation-rock. Into this grand church the waves, with a noise far below the range of any human organ, grander and deeper, surge forever forward and backward, singing unto each other in eternal antiphone. Staffa's Island is but a little bit of grass and soil, just enough to respectably cover the basaltic ribs of its great wonder. You can climb to the top of it and get a grand view of the entrance of the cave from over- head. You can climb around the side over hundreds of broken pillars washed down during the ages by the ceaseless violence of the waves, and enter the cavern, finding your way from one rude pedestal to another along the edge of the columnar wall. until you reach about where the altar would be in a church, and here the spot where the thunderous surges break against the massive rock foundation of the island with a noise mightier than that of the waves, and with deep re- sounding bass echoes that never die away. Unfortunately, the condition of the waters was such that the Gaelic fishermen would not attempt to put their boats in, and we had to be content with this kind of view of the cave, landing on the rear of the island and clambering around over the slippery bases denuded of their shafts. This rude Gaelic land of the Argyllshire coast and 262 SCOTLAND. the Hebrides is known as part of the Highlands of Scotland, although, of course, it is on the level of the sea. Highland is now an ethnological rather than a topographical distinction. The people here, too, rude and meagre as is their life, have all the fierce spirit of freedom and the strong self-respect of the clans of the hills. They prove their blood. The only man, woman, or child in all Europe who ever refused a gratuity at my hands was a little Highland boy of lona, and I put it on record to the credit of his land. One who has travelled in Europe will know how much it means. The Scotch have certainly acquired all the world over an unfortunate low-grade reputation for being "canny/ 7 and canny, in the way it has come to be ap- plied as their national characteristic, means only self- ishness and cunning. It certainly, however, does not come from the Highlands. The Highlanders to-day are mostly poor, and they always have been so. They are not a money-making or a money-loving race, and they have always been ready to sacrifice their property for their principles, their reputation, or their vengeance. IONA. NORTHERN ITALY CHAPTER XXVIII. VENICE. ST. MARK'S GRAND GRAVE GRACIOUS INFLUENCES OF THB SEA A CITY SET AS A STAGE SCENE STREET LIFE IN - VENICE THE LARES AND PENATES CHURCH AND STATE THE SACRED BIRDS OF VENICE VENUS APHRODITE. VENICE blazons . as her city arms the Lion of Sir Mark, the winged beast of the Apocalypse, and the selection is appropriate, for in a certain sense the city herself is apocalyptic in being like to no other place on the face of the earth or in the waters under. This lovely city, that floats like a picture on the sea, is in fact and in spirit the splendid mausoleum and monument of St. Mark, the humble shoemaker-evan- gelist. They bore his remains here one thousand years ago from Alexandria, and his worship, the honor of his name, the glory of his legends, became at once the civic life of the town. It was a quaint, mediaeval habit, sug- gestive of the historic life of those times, for all the cities to take to themselves some saint as a local deity, and their existence thenceforth took life and color from his name and spirit, was bound up with it. The city and the saint went on together when once their fortunes were thus joined. He prayed for his people in heaven above, and sometimes came down with spear and shield to fight their battles below. In return they glorified his name on earth. St. Mark sleeps his final rest in the grand cathedral which bears his name and fronts the magnificent piazza San Marco. The cathedral is one of the great churches of the world; the piazza is unique in brilliancy and M 23 265 266 NORTHERN ITALT. splendor and pleasing life, a picture that, perhaps, no other place can offer. The whole city to-day is crested and carved with the images and legends of its patron saint. His lion crouches and sleeps and rears and flies on column and porch and palace and church and pave- ment, and the loyal artists of Venice have faithfully wrestled on canvas and in stone with the kindred beasts of the Apocalypse to do him company. St. Mark is fortunate in his apotheosis. His is the city of poetry and splendor. Just think what Venice gained over the cities of the earth when she was taken under the protection of the sea. "- No grimy locomotive, breathing smoke and soot, can ever go groaning and shrieking through the streets, leaving a trail of black dirt in its offensive rear. No wagons rattle and rumble, no horses clatter with dissonant noise, over her streets and stones. Her sounds are all of music. Washed forever by the slowly falling and rising waters, there is no dust in her streets or on her marble- floored squares : one leaves windows up as safely as in country groves. Being no dust, there is comparatively little dirt. Even rough work hardly soils the clothes of the toilers, and her gondoliers the stable-smelling hackmen and cabbies of other towns do their work to song and in bright, clean linen. Finally, the cool sea-breezes forever sweep her stones, and there are freshness and bracing salt air in-doors and out from morning till night, and till morning again. It is these softening and gracious influences of the sea on its daily life and being that give to Venice her peculiar charm and distinctive beauty. It has been my good fortune to see the city in the splendor of pure sun- shine by day and under the mellowing softness of moon- light by night. It is a picture a dream something one feels too lovely for the prosaic life of mortal men VENICE. 267 The life of all Venice convergas and centres in the grand Square of St. Mark's, and in the evening, it seems then a perpetual scene set for the representation of some grand spectacular opera, only that the proper- ties, instead of being pasteboard, are the finest palaces and architecture in the world, and the music is human life and pleasure. You think the curtain must fall. It does fall towards midnight, but it rises again next evening. Imagine a vast space say in length from the Union League House to the Academy of Music in Philadel- phia, and in width perhaps three times that of Broad Street, paved smooth with marble and blocks of trachyte, shut off from the noise of wheels or horses. On the one side the floating domes of the great By/an- tine cathedral and its grand arched fronts, with their golden mosaics lu.-trous in the night-time, on the other the famous Palace of the Doges, wasteful in magnificence; the towering shaft of the Campanile, with its colonnades of white arches fluttering in the air, and up to whose very pinnacle you could ride a horse, so wonderful is the engineering of the interior ascent ; the three tall red mast-like spires draped with the colors of Italy, columns so ancient and strange that tradition can hardly tell their origin, and all around a continuous chain of stately marble palaces, stained with age and time. Imagine all this, and you have the faint outlines of St. Mark's piazza. Around three sides of the square there runs a covered archway lined with shops and supported by a corridor of col- umns, on which rest the fronts of the palaces. In the evening these shops are brilliantly lighted, a glittering line of fire encircling the piazza. In front of this cor- ridor of columns, when the falling shadows draw towards sunset, hundreds and hundreds of chairs and little tables are set out before the cafes. At these tables citizens and strangers gather in families and parties to eat ices, sip coffee, eau suvr&, light wines, drink beer, and smoke, 268 NORTHERN ITALY. children, women, old men, young, middle-aged, and all. In fact, Venice does its visiting at these tables, and one can pick out the belles of the city at a glance by the dark, bee-like clusters which surpound their mothers' tables. On to this grand stage the whole city throws itself every evening, all classes, all ages, all the world of Venice. A large military band of many pieces takes its station in the centre, and there is good music all evening for everybody, free. In the mean while, those people not sitting, or who do not come to thus enjoy themselves, promenade under the brilliant corridors or down and up the long aisles formed by the masses of chairs, filing, passing, returning, all the evening. If you sit in the front rows of chairs you can see, thus at rest, the whole life of the city stream before you, and it is this scene which is so irresistibly operatic in its effect, the whole town moving and living for an even- ing to music. All classes mingle and jostle, and in such a setting the sailors of all climes, gathered here from East and West, sufficiently rough and prosaic elsewhere, here all washed and clean, look like wandering tenors, disguised noble- men, lost heirs. There pass before you Venetian dames stately in black-lace veils, and demoiselles with wondrous blond hair and the open slipper dear to the heart of feminine Italy ; swarthy Lascars in white cot- ton ; water-girls " with rings on their fingers ;" flower- girls (somewhat mature, another theatrical touch) ; merchants of the Orient all-brilliant in slashed scarlet robes and fez caps; gay gondoliers in blue and white; the d6 bonnair officers of Italy's army in blue and gold; naval officers from the ships in port of all na- tions ; Greeks with their clear-cut cameo-like profiles ; beggars happy for the evening and avoiding "shop" for the moment as a point of honor ; the handsome men of Italy, lithe, active, dark ; travellers of all tongues and lands, labelled with red books ; and the ever-present British female tourist with stout boots, all the world. VENICE. 269 This is the every-night opera f Venice, music, flowers, costumes, statuary, columns, arcaded vistas, moonlights, star, legended trophies, golden paintings. Do we wonder that, with all this luxury as an inheri- tance and education, the Venetian of to-day has grown somewhat indolent, and takes his exercise in sleeping in a gondola or inhaling the fragrance of a flower in some arched and grated palace window? This brilliant panorama lasts till about midnight. At ten o'clock the shops begin to take in their glitter- ing wares and close ; at half-past ten o'clock the music ceases, and the ladies then begin to leave. Shortly after eleven o'clock the place is abandoned to gentlemen. Then the waiters begin to stack up the chairs, the lights one by one go out, and shortly the dark shadows of the pafeces fall on an empty square. Venice goes to bed as early as Philadelphia or Bos- ton or New York, and earlier than Paris or London, notwithstanding all the fascinations of sea-air and moon- light that might well tempt her to stay up all night. It is a commonplace of travellers, and sometimes even of the guide-book, yet to assert that the Venetians turn night into day. There was a time lon^ ago when they did, when the city was powerful and rich, and was lived in and ruled by a class of wealthy and luxurious nobles. Then all this grand square was lined with gambling-rooms and houses of pleasure, and men ate and drank and played and lost their fortunes, and the whole place was a blaze of light until morning. Now, Venice, like the rest of Italy, is poor, and her habits are simple. One of the most marked features of an evening on the piazza is the innocence and ex- treme simplicity of the pleasures of this people. They will spend a whole evening with almost no expendi- ture of money or movement. A tiny cup of coffee will last a gentleman the whole evening, and he appears to be always busy in its consumption. A very small saucer of ice or a small glass of water colored by a drop of 23* 270 NORTHERN ITALY. anisette does the same service for a lady. A single " pony" glass of beer and a two-cent cigar employ an officer of the army for an hour or two. I do not think the average visitor at these cafe's spends ten cents a night. For this he lias a table and chair all t le even- ing, a cool seat, excellent music, the view of the prome- nade, the opportunity to make calls or receive visits, rest, conversation, moonlight, flowers. The flower-girls are a feature and a part of the en- tertainment. They circulate among the chairs with a basket of flowers, giving one to each gentleman for his button-hole and to the ladies with him. This is a gift offered with all the coquetry and compliment in the vender's power. The stranger, who is addressed in French, returns his gift at once in money. The Vene- tians do not, but at intervals, and not at the tables, give their flower-friend some gift. She, in return, regularly decorates them every evening with a little bouquet. There is music all the evening, but, with the national inclination to inaction, no dancing. I have, remarked this all over Italy. On the fe"te-days and in the even- ings in the villages there is always good instrumental music, but the people never dance, only move gently around from place to place, half walking, half standing. Venice's great impression is its street life, so bril- liant, so highly colored, so unlike that of any other city. The commonplace shows of the guide-books are flat and disappointing, the prisons, dungeons, Bridge of Sighs, and so forth. The school-girl glamour thrown over these places is mainly traceable, I suppose, to Byron's sentimental verse. The daily picture of all Venice, however, is some- thing of which one never tires, and which changes ever with the hour. Gondola life is something deliciously dreamy and luxurious in the soft light of day or under the sheen of moon and starlight. Let dark night come and rain, however, and these long, narrow, deep, black boats, seen mysteriously from the faint point of light VENICE. 271 on their prow, take to themselves the likeness of float- ing coffins steered by the shades. The effect is inde- scribably sepulchral. You seem to be alone in the waters of Hades among the spirits. The gondolas are all of a funereal black, painted black, carved in black, with black draperies over the dark cabin. Many cen- turies ago a Venetian law ordered this pattern and color, for a good reason of that time. The laws in Venice do not change, and the gondolas are all black and ghostly to this day. The streets are very narrow and blaze with light. Their narrowness sometimes not over three feet makes a very little light serve to brilliantly illuminate them, and the jets in the shop windows, kept open till late at night, keep them bright and blazing almost without the out-door lamps. Through them the peo- ple surge in constant streams, all nations, all classes, all colors. You study the world, but even the Vene- tians themselves present some strong contrasts, for they in time are made up of the blood of many people. One striking contrast, which you soon note, is that the Venetian men, as a body, are dark, their women blond. The sounds, too, are poly glottal, and everything is international. Venice will likely be, for instance, the tourist's first experience of Greek money, which is cur- rent coin here. At every corner you come are the little shrines and altars to the Virgin and the saints, built in dwelling- houses and over the shops, with lamps burning before them. These bright-colored shrines, with their glass frames and swinging, censer-like lights, produce a very picturesque effect, especially when the niches are reflected by the water. You feel with a new meaning the poetry of the litany, Ave Maria, stdla marls. Indeed, the sea is very gracious and beneficent to Venice, in that it doubles all her beauties and splendors. She has her stars in the heavens and under her feet, her palaces above the earth and under the waters. Her beautiful 272 NORTHERN ITALY. bridges span their solid piers and tremble in the waves below them. Everything has a double form of grace and beauty, a life of marble and a life of motion. To return to the shrines : their images are here, as elsewhere in Italy, the Lares and Penates of the modern Romans, and this domestic worship, perpetual and hourly, and the devotion and love and apparent faitli of the homely service, is something very pleasing and touching. It is only a pleasant illusion, however. The cultus of these shrines is, I fear, but an inherited habit, a custom, a usage, not an intelligent act. I regret to say that no amount of shrines or altars in an Italian shop will prevent your being shamelessly treated there. I do not think a Madonna on the very counter of daily fraud would protect you. In Venice they sell fresh water on the streets in bottles and by the glass, and people are constantly drinking it. I have not seen so much water-drinking in all Europe, and the habit seems to be a confirmed one. There may be an useful hint for temperance societies in this little fact. The cathedral church of St. Mark is perhaps the central architectural feature of Venice; at all events, it divides the honor with the rich Palace of the Doges. It is the great triumph of Romano-Byzantine archi- tecture, and in its profusion of ornament and wealth of decoration mingles the splendors of two civilizations, of the East and of the West. In its shrines are the most precious workmanship of Constantinople, costly gems, rare marbles of Europe, pillars from the temple of Solomon. Under the great altar rests the stolen body of St. Mark. Its treasury of relics contains some of the most precious memorials of faith, a piece of the head of St. John, a fragment of the sacred column of the Passion, a vial of the blood of Christ. Its pictures of the masters and its old statues teach tradition, history, and religion to the people, whose thronging, treading feet for centuries have worn the VENICE. 273 marbles of its floors uneven and fluctuating like the waves of the sea. It is a temple, an eternal monu- ment and lesson to Venice. In the vestibule of this cathedral, itself a stately hall larger and grander than most of the churches of our country, they show three great red, flat stones, forming a broad stairway, as the spot of the historic reconciliation between the Emperor Frederick Barba- rossa and Pope Alexander III., an affair in which the conciliation, as was the fashion of those times, was all on one side. "Non tibi sed Petro" (" Not to you, but to St. Peter"), said the dishonored emperor when he knelt, probably feeling that he was doing something wrong, although he may not have known how great was the magnitude of the trust he was betraying, and which he had better have died to protect. u Mihi et Petro" (" To me and Peter"), said the modest pope. And so it is every where in Europe. There is hardly a great church on the Continent which, in some shape or other, in painting or marble or brass or ostentatious relic, does not contain some deliberate and insolent affront to the civil authority, some perpetual assertion of the claim of Rome to supreme political power. St. Peter's, the first church of the world, is full of them, and they are repeated so systematically everywhere that their presence seems to be the result of a policy and an order. Remember that in Europe the churches are the common schools of the people, who frequent them daily from childhood, studying their pictures, carvings, statues, bronzes, columns, and receiving their first and most lasting impressions from them. I do not wonder any more at Bismarck's relentless and uncom- promising warfare on the ecclesiastical organization of Rome. I only wonder that any strong men who have ever attempted to found a state or been intrusted with the keeping of the civil liberties of the people have not made the same war, and made it more bitterly. Every one knows the story of the civic pigeons of 274 NORTHERN ITALY. Venice, and meets them like old acquaintances when he goes there ; and the birds meet all the world in the same way. They belong to history and legend, and have been translated from their lower life and taken into the fellowship of men. Within an hour of my coming one of these pigeons looked in at my window facing on the grand piazza, and after a few moments' cautious reconnoitring was trustingly and fearlessly feeding from my hand. Seeing what was going on, a whole flock came swiftly trooping in from all sides, en- tirely bankrupting my limited commissariat provision in a moment or two. Many hundreds of years ago some pigeons "assisted 7 ' at a great victory had by the Venetians over Candia, I think, by carrying very important despatches. The victorious general sent them home with the news of his triumph, and grateful Venice adopted the birds as the " wards of the nation." To this time their descendants are fed every day in the great square of St. Mark, at the expense of the city, and no one in Venice ever touches a pigeon. They rest at night in the eaves of the palaces and the cornices of the great cathedral, on triumphal columns and arches, and in the airy arcades of the campanili. They nestle with the winged lions and dart noiselessly through the churches. They brush the sacred altars and the tombs of kings and doges and bishops. They walk the marble pavements in groups and in hundreds, unmolested among throngs of passers. They play with the children and fly up on to your cafe" table for their share of the cake or water. They do just what all other birds and animals would do if man only treated them with humanity, but gave them their "civil rights." Venice is a mirror in which you study the influence of the sea on the human race, on its physical, political, and intellectual development. It has conditioned and determined the physical appearance, the daily life, the history, the art, of this people. VENICE. 275 They were sailors, of course, and became a naval power, and their whole outside history and political relations started from that point and have been condi- tioned by it for ten centuries. The cleanliness and ease of transportation induced luxury and magnificence, a wealth of coloring and costume, which the daily life of no other city could support. One can go anywhere over Venice in a soft dress shoe. The pavements are smooth as floors and spotless, the gondolas are car- peted. The protection to dress is as great out-doors as in. The gorgeous costumes of Titian and Tintoretto and the Venetian school are but the legitimate develop- ment of the social life of a class of nobles in a city built as this is, and drawing on both the Orient and the Oc- cident for treasures of sumptnousness, luxury, and dis- play. Their pictures, of course, breathe the luxurious and color-loving spirit of their time, for they, too, are part of its development, but they arc also portraits, faithful copies of the very picture of the citv. More directly in the famous glass of Venice you see imprisoned the elusive colors of the sea itself. Art has simply taken its lesson from the waves. Again, the moment you enter this town you meet everywhere, at random among all classes, perhaps most noticeably among the poorer, that beautiful female lace which is the glory of Venice, and which her painters have made immortal, a soft sea-shell complexion of delicate loveliness, Titian eyes, and a wealth of golden blond hair, a kind of Venus Aphrodite face. .It is the sea again. And so you may trace endlessly its visible influence here at every turn and every way you look. The old traditional ceremony of state when the new Doge, on behalf of Venice, in solemn form, celebrates its nuptials with the sea and casts into its waters the wedding-ring, is something more than a legend. It is history and fact. Venice the Venetian race is the child of Man by the Sea. 276 NORTHERN ITALY. CHAPTER XXIX. GENOA. THE GREAT DEAD AND THE LITTLE LIVING FIVE HUNDRED YEARS WITHOUT SUNLIGHT THE CROSS OF MALTA POVERTY, WANT, AND WRETCHEDNESS THAT WK CALL THE PICTURESQUE PRIESTS AND SOLDIERS SAN LORENZO AN ITALIAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF THE ITALIANS KAILWAY MANAGEMENT THE MARBLE WEALTH. A SORT of dreamy listlessness falls over one in Genoa, which it is hard to define, and harder still to resist. The weight of the centuries seems to come down, and repress individual action or vigor by dwarfing its results in contrasting them with the movements of ages. Men have lived on this spot in this town for twenty-five hundred years of recorded history; have worked, loved, fought, died. What is one human atom, however brilliant his momentary position or achievement, in all the vast stream of life ! I think this feeling must unconsciously oppress this people, and bar the way to that individual energy and vigor whose sum makes human progress. At all events, they act so. For thousands of years life has gone on quietly or stormily, 'and the Genoese of to-day live and act as if they had thousands of years yet to come, and a day, a week, or year was of no account. Why hurry, with whole centuries yet of time? For this very reason, perhaps, Genoa is such a picturesque and pleasing city. Spared largely from the destructive rush of travel, it preserves somewhat of its mediaeval flavor, and retains the charm of dis- tinctive sight and sound which all European cities are losing so fast. GENOA. 277 It is hard to describe Genoa and its unique life and ways to the American mind used to regularity and construction. You live here from tradition; your houses, your streets, are all handed down from cen- turies. You only accept them ; you are not responsi- ble for them or expected to account for them. There is no city surveyor with a whole digest of brand-new municipal ordinances. No two streets run parallel, and no one street runs for any length in one direction. No two houses stand on the same line. No wall even stands perpendicular. The windows appear where they have a mind to; the doors are mere holes in the wall at any place, behind a buttress or around an angle. I chose for my temporary residence " the Hotel of the Cross of Malta," an old historic pile, consecrated as the head- quarters, hundreds of years ago, of the Knights of Malta, who gathered here to plan their campaigns and embark for the Holy Land. Hardly any two rooms have exactly the same level. The floors are hopelessly involved, and strange doors tempt you to mysterious passages at every corner. The place is yet lordly in its lowered uses. Corridors of marble stairways lined with exotic plants and flowers greet your entrance. You dine and read and smoke in noble rooms twenty feet high, frescoed by great artists, and whose walls are heavy with historic pictures. Statues of great men in bronze and marble look down on yon from pedestals and niches at every turn. As a matter of fact, Scipio Africanus was the first figure which met my eyes as I entered this hotel, and he presided, grave and thought- ful, while I watched the transfer of my baggage and bargained for rooms. This communion of the great dead with the little living is a feature of Italy. At the railway depot in Turin I awaited the lazy pleasure of the custom-house officials in a magnificent hall thirty feet high, frescoed with lovely Cupids and grotesque Bacchuses, larger than life, lit with clusters of handsome chandeliers, and 24 278 NORTHERN ITALY. paved with marble. The other side of the picture was that this ducal palace of a depot was cold and chilly. But one-sixteenth of the jets were lighted, and the place was so dismally gloomy you could hardly read your ticket. A guard stood at each door of this room, and at every possible entrance or doorway in the really vast station-building, and effectually prevented any rapidity of movement. The streets of old Genoa range from three feet to twenty in width. Of course, sunlight never strikes the flagstones of the three-feet avenues. They must be delightful summer resorts, but at this time are rather chilly, even when some parts of the town are bright with warm sunshine and redolent with exotic perfumes. My own room in this aristocratic old hotel has proba- bly never seen the sunshine for five hundred years. When I want sunlight I do as I suppose the old Knights of Malta did, go out and find it on the hills or open piazzas, where the Genoese eat confections and drink the Falernian wines so thoroughly advertised by Horace. In these narrow streets, which close in on each other like Colorado cafions, and where the houses, which, kept at a formal distance on the first floor, kiss each other at the roofs, fountains splash dreamily all day, and the venders of small wares transact their business in song, exactly as in the representation of an opera. All day long and far into the night tenor, baritone, and chorus snatches float into my room, now swelling, now dying away in faint echoes. It is the work of Genoa, the rhythmic labor of Italy, the chant of the poor peo- ple working hard for their daily macaroni. It does not seem to us as if work thus set to music ^md carried on by refrain could be very onerous, and perhaps it is not; although it is certainly ceaseless, but it does not matter much. There is very little work to do, and very many to do it, and the man who hurried through a day's work in an hour would only be idle the rest of the day. GENOA. 279 Out of the window just opposite mine, and only a lew feet from it, all day long there lolls an Italian girl, beautiful, dirty, lazy, badly dressed, and always eating something. Priest and soldier and beggar and donkey and tourist and sailor flow on beneath in a steady stream to slow music. She gazes listlessly on the hu- man current forever, but takes no human interest in it, and shows signs of intelligent life but about once every half-hour, when she retires to a cupboard to fill her pockets again with cake. It is Italy, only the bulk of the people do not have cake, and get along with garlic. There is everything in Genoa to make the place quaint and grotesque. Not only do the dark and nar- row streets refuse to run anywhere with m-tainty, and curve and wind and twist with labyrinthine complex- ity, but they run under and over each other. Occa- sionally a great church tower or spire serves as a land- mark or beacon for a few minutes, but it, too, is soon lost behind a hill or under some huge mediaeval wall, and the situation is more liopcless than ever. It is useless to attempt to know the streets or find one's wav. The Genoese do it by tradition, but for a stranger it is lost time. When I go out I only walk and walk and walk among sights and sounds ever new ami shifting, and when I am tired hire a small boy or a large man it is immaterial which to lead me back to my hotel. This service, from boy or man, costs exactly five mills. In fact, five mills is a very respectable sum here, and with a pocket full of copper centesimi one feels rather princely. In truth, it is very sad to see what a copper coin will do in Italy. It is the only money many of the people ever see. I have had small shopkeepers refuse to take gold because they did not know what it was. We in America in Colorado, Nevada, and California decline daily to take in change the sums which would support a poor Italian in comparative comfort. Could there be any stronger contrast ? 280 NORTHERN ITALY. In fact, amid all the quaintness and picturesque effect of Italy, so pleasing to the passing stranger, it is a de- pressing reflection ever recurring that it is all the result and evidence of an awful poverty, a poverty which the average American is so fortunate that he cannot comprehend. For the unhappy Italian, however, of the lower class, it is his only inheritance and the only legacy he can hope to leave his children. Yet, withal, he sings through life like the plantation negro of American tradition, but his song, as the slave's was, is largely a moan, a minor monotone like the endless cur- rent of the ocean. Better a thousand times the crude, prosaic comfort of our prairie settler than the poetic squalor of Italy, the hopeless slavery of misery and want. It is strange, however, how the result of centuries of ignorance and poverty and oppression is to make a land outwardly picturesque and beautiful. In all Genoa there is hardly a point from which every view is not a picture. You stand anywhere in the old streets, turn in any direction, and you wish you had the painter's pencil. There is a poetic effect of the lines of the buildings as well as in the movement and pose of the people, and when you add the skies of Italy and the fruits, flowers, and perfumes of the Mediterranean, life is a poem, and you feel as if it might be better to live here in bodily poverty than to exist elsewhere under colder suns and a less sympathetic nature. Nevertheless, this loveliness is all on the outside. An army of priests hold the land in spiritual subjec- tion, and heavy siege-guns frown on all the walls. Genoa, in fact, is a huge fortress, compared with which our heaviest fortifications in war times were but toys. Here, as all over Europe, you see heavy artillery mounted in the parks, sweeping the beautiful fields and the busy streets. Between cathedrals and cannon the people have had a poor chance, and their condition after centuries of this kind of guardianship proves it. GENOA. 281 Cardinal Wiseman, in his writings of years ago, claimed especial credit for Italy on the point of her free schools, conducted by the Church, of course. Last Sunday I saw in several churches what we would call a Sabbath-school, and the sight was so novel and different from our own that I thought its description would be interesting. Hearing music in the cathedral church of San Lorenzo the great church here as I was passing it about four o'clock in the afternoon, I entered. It was so dark you could hardly distinguish human figures at first, the wax lights being mere fire-flies in the vast vaulted arches, and the long rows of columns interfer- ing with even their feeble light. Slowly the eye, how- ever, adjusted itself, the shadowy forms became visible, and one could find his way about. Some fifty priests and choristers were chanting a low, wailing music, and with them, out of recesses from every side and aisle, joined the voices of the congregation. The service here is, so far as I have seen, largely congregational, and the Italians being good singers, the effect is artis- tically pleasing, as well as devotional. During this service, which was just closing, I dis- covered that a general interest seemed to centre in the middle of the church, where a crowd was gathered. Moving over to it, I found some thirty children ranged on two lines of rude wooden benches, facing inwards. At each end on chairs, and facing each other, sat two teachers, elderly gentlemen of benign countenance and in priestly vestments. Around the children, who were all of the poorer class, knelt or stood a crowd of their relatives and friends, their mothers, their grandparents, their sisters, their cousins, and their kindly neighbors. Some private soldiers in uniform were among the froup, and other soldiers, with their swords on, were neeling praying near us. A vender of soap and matches had brought in his basket of wares and knelt by it, praying half audibly. Three ladies, well dressed 24* 282 NORTHERN ITALY. and of Italian face and figure, came in, took the group in at a glance, casting a momentary look of curiosity at the foreign-dressed stranger, and then dropped down on their knees in the outskirts of the crowd, with their backs to it, however, and facing some minor altar, and in a moment were deeply absorbed in their own prayers. Near by, a black-eyed baby was dabbling its little hand in the holy-water fountain, its sister and nurse, a laugh- ing girl of about fifteen, trying to teach it to cross itself properly. As the singing ceased and the altar force marched out in procession an ecclesiastical military company the teaching began. The children stood up and answered such questions as were put to them. There were no books used. One of the teachers seemed to be a superior of some kind inspecting the work, and what was probably the stated teacher frequently prompted his pupils. In answer to some question, one of the little ones made some reply which I did not under- stand. Both the priests, or teachers, smiled kindly, and a good-natured laugh broke out from the entire crowd. This crowd, some kneeling, some sitting on the floor, some standing, as was easiest, and a number of them women with infants in their arms, took the liveliest interest in what was going on. A murmur of applause often rewarded some of the children for good and ready answers, and when a child could not answer or was confused, a look of mortification and wounded pride always came over the little group of friends and supporters at its back. The instruction was thoroughly conversational and kindly, but intelligent and earnest. The scene was picturesque and pretty, and you felt the work was doing good. You could not but wonder, however, at its small .^cope compared with the population and the dignity of the machinery. Genoa is a town of over one hundred and sixty thousand souls. San Lorenzo is its cathedral. Attached to this cathedral there is GENOA. 283 an ecclesiastical force which no Protestant church ever has, yet the Bethany Sunday-school in Philadelphia every Sunday brings more children under instruction than are taught in all Genoa for a month, if last Sunday was any metre. There were about thirty in the cathedral, and from forty to fifty more in each of two other churches I visited. There is something inexplicable to us in the devo- tion of the Latin mind. No incongruity of outward circumstances seems to disturb or affect it. There is no consciousness of sight, sound, or smell when once the Italian drops down to pray. Things that would affect us as physically intolerable, or that we would resent as profane intrusion, they do not seem to be even conscious of. Children play on the floors and creep around among the groups of worshippers, or right under the pulpit, while the priest is preaching. Men and women come and go, mutter half-audible prayers, kneel and pray in all directions, facing the altar of their choice; but as long as there is no very loud noise and intentional display of irreverence, it seems to dis- turb no one. We would insist on better outward order at a political meeting. In this beautiful and picturesque city, where every view is a scene striking with arches and terraces and statuary and ruined walls; where the air is redolent with the perfumes of almond and magnolia and orange; where brilliant flowers flash from half-concealed gardens and droop down from balconies and towers ; where light-hearted people, clad in the brightest of colors, go singing all the day long; where the altars of the churches are set with stage effect, and in them music rolls and surges from morning to night ; where the streets, crowded with priests and soldiers in contrasting uniforms, with ragged muleteers and laughing children, present the effect of a continuous carnival, you cannot for the life of you avoid the feeling that the whole thing is a play, an elaborate and well-produced opera, 284 NORTHERN ITALY. whose scenic effects will dissolve, and whose music will hush with the near tinkling of the call-bell as the cur- tain drops. Nevertheless, these people have been living this life for centuries, and their fathers, who were like them, have done some great things. The Italians of to-day are great grown-up children. They have the happy carelessness of children and their outward aban- don, their love for the beautiful, their enjoyment of the moment, their unselfish kindness and sympathy. It is hard for us, perhaps, to understand them or give them due credit for what they can do. With all their immense superiority to us in politeness, in thoughtfulness and personal culture, they reveal, at times, a practical side which, under equal conditions, might prove them to be our equals in even that practi- cal development of which we are so proud, and which exists with us along with so much of coarseness and vulgarity. They have an excellent and efficient army, the result of discipline and organization. Their rail- ways are so much better administered than those of France that you feel the difference the moment you cross the border. I have not often been in a better- managed or more thoroughly well-ordered hotel than that in which I write to-day, and regret to leave to- morrow. In all these matters of physical achievement they are our equals. In the higher culture of mind and heart, in the thousand amenities of life which make human association pleasant and agreeable, they are immeasurably our superiors. In all their common life they carry out the desire to please in a wonderful manner. The railway depot at this place, for instance, is not an altered palace, as are many public buildings here, but was built by the com- pany for its own use. Its conception, however, is not that of a shed as is the conventional American mam- moth depot. It is a noble hall. You sit in waiting- rooms twenty-five feet high or more, frescoed and panelled with excellent painting, and the front of the GENOA. 285 building, in the effect of its rich carvings and marble columns, is more imposing than the Academies of Music and opera-houses of our large cities. It is, too, very spacious, thoroughly well arranged and adapted for its special use. In many of the banks and buildings for business offices you find interior courts of most artistic effect, well lighted, warm with rich flowers, cool and musical with sparkling fountains, and elaborate with carving and statuary. As it is a gateway into Italy, one of the most striking impressions of Genoa is the profusion of statuary and carving which here begins to meet yon. Most of the old palaces have fine work on tlie fronts, and it be- comes more elaborate and imposing inside, where mag- nificent halls and massive stairways, whose entrance is very frequently a pair of colossal, crouching lions, lend from room to room and floor to floor. In the streets, the very walls of the common houses, particu- larly at the corners and over the doorways, at odd angles and in curious niches over little shops you find the images of an innumerable army of saints, the effi- gies often set up in the fashion of a little altar. Through the hotels and banks, and public buildings of every kind, are the statues of great men, modern and old. All this besides the churches and parks and cemeteries and public gardens, which are crowded with rare and costly works. It is this wealth of marble, pure and white, and shaped with exquisite art, that has justly won for this city its well-merited title, "Genoa la Superba." GENOA. 286 NORTHERN ITALY. CHAPTER XXX. PISA. ENTERING INTO TUSCANY TUSCAN CIVILIZATION QUATTBO FABBRICHE THE Civic REPUBLICS NATIONAL BAPTIS- TRIES GROTESQUE CARVING AND FRESCOES THE ARTIST'S LICENSE IN THE CATHEDRALS PISA OF HISTORY AND OF TO-DAY. AT Pisa you enter on the Tuscan civilization, the glory of modern Italy, and modern here means the last thousand years, for these Italians were learned and accomplished people when our Saxon forefathers were rude savages, when England was a forest filled with warring tribes, and the Howards were "hog-wards." It was to Italy that Milton came for travel and polite education when his own country was so rude that it was a question whether to write for it in its own tongue. It was from Italy that Shakespeare borrowed pJots and thoughts when he would seek a higher plane of civili- zation than Tudor England afforded. In fact, until within a very brief time English literature has regularly fed from the crumbs of the table of Italy. It has been the school of letters, manners, and art for the modern world. Pisa is a railway junction where five roads centre. This is equivalent to about ten in the United States, and consequently the traveller need take no thought of how to get there. He will be coming to it all the time, and can always have half a day there and will often be forced to stop over several hours. Happily the railway restaurant is very good, carriages abound at a franc or two an hour, and the wonderful Qnattro Fab- briche are very near. Time need never hang heavily on one's hands, and the beautiful cathedral, with its PISA. 287 close of glittering white architecture, looks handsomer every time it is seen. Pisa itself is rather a modern-looking town com- pared with many of Tuscany. It has no city gates, for instance, nor massive encircling walls, but lies open on the plains, while at Sienna, Orvieto, Rome itself, and many others you enter through huge gates, with ponderous doors which swing heavily open or shut, and are in real use. At Rome the gates remain open until toward midnight, but in some of the country towns they close at eight or nine o'clock ; and once shut for the night they never open till morning. Should any one linger without until after this hour he stays out. Fortunately there is little outside of the walls of an Ital- ian town to tempt a stranger either to ramble or linger. It happens for the case and instruction of tourist and student tliat all that is best in Pi-a is summed up in the celebrated Four Buildings, which are grouped in one spot, a miniature quadrilateral of architecture, and which, taken together, ailbrd an admirable intro- ductory study of Tuscan art and architecture, as the} are representative and finished specimens of the style. Tlirse buildings an the great Cathedral of Pisa, the famous Loaning Tower, which is a detached tower of exquisite symmetry, raised for the purpose of swinging the cathedral bells; a hugo. Baptistry, and a walled Holy Field, or cemetery. All the buildings are of pure white marble, of faultless design and masterly finish, and together constitute a group which is without equal in the world. They illustrate well, too, the wealth which, in the Middle Ages, was lavished on church- buildings, and the splendor and elaborateness of their establishment. Of this splendid group, each one of which is a masterpiece, taking rank among the great buildings of the world, the Cathedral is, of course, the centre; all the others are mere adjuncts to it. The Leaning Tower, or Campanile, is simply a de- tached belfry. This was the customary way of build- 288 NORTHERN ITALY. ing them in the Middle Ages. There are many such in Italy, and one, at least, is now extant in England, at Elstow. The Baptistry is a colossal font under its own separate building. It was a mediaeval usage that all the baptisms in the Republic should take place, not in the several churches, but at the Cathedral. Hence arose rather a necessity for a separate building for this special use, and very naturally an imposing provision for the rite. Specimens of these national fonts remain at Florence and Pistoja. The Campo Santo is but a graveyard, but this one is walled with costly statuary, and the burial-ground made with numberless shiploads of earth brought from Jerusalem. At Florence there is the same magnificent equipment for the cathedral church there, the Campanile, a square tower, rank- ing as the first of its kind in the world. And when this wonderful endowment of a single cathedral is considered, it must be remembered, too, that Pisa is a small place. It has but twenty-six thou- sand inhabitants, and is the centre of a district of about fifty thousand people only. Nevertheless, the Pisans, al- though a little, have been a mighty people. They were great soldiers and sailors in their day, and their physical energy was always animated by the force of education and high culture. There was, therefore, little of lost power in their development, and thus they carried their arms into all parts of the world, and their name into history. At one time they dominated Italy, and through it the world, displaying military and executive genius of the highest kind. The Bonaparte family was of Tuscan descent, and although Napoleon came on the field when the glory of Pisa was but tradition, he seems to have only gathered up and renewed in himself what was once a common inheritance of Tuscan blood. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Pisans are proud of their city and its history. Indeed, Italian history, up to to-day, is but the record of a brilliant constella- tion of civic republics. There has never been a na- PISA. 289 tional growth. Its life has been municipal, and there- fore limited. This spirit exists yet. The Pisan, the Genoese, the Venetian, the Milanese look on each other as foreigners. They have been fighting with each other for a thousand years, and Italian unity to-day is, therefore, a conception rather than a growth. The Pisau's instinctive allegiance is to Pisa, the Genoese to Genoa, just as with us the Virginian's first impulse is to Virginia, the Carolinian's to Carolina. The greater idea of a nation is yet to come. Moreover, our State rights doctrine is but the fruit of a hundred years of rude, provincial existence. The city independence and individuality of Italy is the growth of a thousand years of culture, power, and glorious tradition. We must recognixe this historic fact when we would appreciate properly the wonderful political ability which has brought about the unification of Italy and made it a nation. The Pisa of to-day sleeps in rest and beauty after the toil and achievement of centuries. A summer's sunlight floods the town, and the calm of the clear Arno spreads from street to street. The quiet of a New England Sunday broods over the place, and the picturesque inhabitants, poor but robed with a Tuscan wealth of color, hardly seem to move. They stand around like artistically-grouped figures in tableaux. Indeed, the worship of the tortoise seems to have pre- vailed at Pisa at some time. On the bronze doors of this church, rich in rare and costly work, the tortoise figures again and again, the legend, " tardo sed into" engraven over his elaborately- recorded exploits. It is hard always to trace in their time-stained and quaint figures the incidents of the long story, but the bottom of a door generally winds up with a complacent, self- satisfied tortoise, sitting or sleeping calmly some paces in advance of a very demoralized and apologetic-look- ing stag. In the shop- windows, too, all over the town are alabaster and marble figures of the contented deity. What the legend may be I do not know, but the moral N t 25 290 NORTHERN ITALY. has worked its way into the life of Pisa. The worship has had fruition, and the Pisan of to-day has been absorbed into the soul of his divinity. On entering Italy one immediately begins to come on traces of that singular marriage of impiety and religion which so strongly characterizes the Middle Ages. A traveller tells of finding in an old shop a solid carved crucifix of costly work and worn and stained by long use. On touching a concealed spring there shot out from the long arm of the cross a mur- derous knife. It is mediaBval Italy all over. It was in this town of Pisa, I think, that a verger, unlocking the chancel -railings, took me to the rear of the great altar and showed a nude Eve, of life-size, tempted by the serpent. The picture was a fine painting, but so impure and suggestive that it was considerately kept covered where only priests could study it. This shameless profanation of the churches, which is not uncommon, seems to have been, in part, owing to a singular license enjoyed by the builders and artists, who were allowed to carve or paint almost anything they pleased, and who used this freedom to its widest stretch. Often their work took the form of satire, often it is merely grotesque and vulgar. Sometimes the entire meaning is lost for us. On a famous church door at Verona there is carved a figure of a pig clad in priestly canonicals and reading out of a breviary. In the judg- ment-hall at Pistoja, facing the seat of the judges, there is a fox robed in the judicial ermine. Much of this satire is coarse in the extreme, even to obscenity, but, after reading the literary efforts in this direction of Eras- mus, who was a polished and cultivated man of his time, one need not be surprised at anything from unknown and nameless lampooners. What is stranger to our sense is the use of the cathe- dral for such purposes. It was, evidently, the Punch or Puck of those ages, where, among saints and angels and by noble tombs, the comic artists of the day carved PISA. 291 their satire, their censure, and their fun ; and all uf it very rough to our gentler life. That there were some limits to this strange license is seen in the fact that these odd extravagances are generally partly hidden, being, as a rule, found in dark recesses or under the capitals of columns, or only traceable with difficulty in the secondary lines of frescos, and not visible at all, perhaps, to the careless observer. A favorite field for these grotesque carvings is under the carved scats of the stalls in the choir. Although sleeping in a century that has no more meaning for it, Pisa itself, outside of its marble wonders, is a place full of quiet beauty and picturesque attraction for the American stranger. Here, travelling from the North, he, probably for the first time, comes on a town where all society is strictly classed, and the classi- lieation emphasized by uniforms on the street. The women are all dark and beautiful in their black lac-c and veils. The priests are those of Northern Italy, intellectual in their countenances and looking clean and gentlemanly in their black-silk stockings and silver shoebuckles, alas, how different from their Southern brothers! The gentlemen wear cloaks in brigand fashion. The laboring-men are picturesque in clean blue blouses, and their wives in all the bright, colors of the rainbow. Then comes the army, the handsome infantry-officers in soft blue and white, and the swaggering bermylieri (sharpshooters) in their rolling bandit hats and plumes of black-cock feathers. In the great cathedral at Pisa hangs a massive bronze lamp a group of four figures suspended at a vast distance from the ceiling which, tradition says, gave Galileo the hint of the pendulum. It is not an eccle- siastical relic, but is a shrine of a good deal of interest, My guide told me, with only half-repressed irritation, that the English people always asked after it, and he seemed to regard this conduct as an eccentricity hardly excusable, even in the barbarian forestieri. I think he 292 NORTHERN ITALY. knew the whole history of GaJileo, and considered him yet a dangerous man. But, in spite of his qualms of conscience, he had learned that not an altar in all the cathedral was so prolific of barbarian fees. So he took the heretic silver, and balanced his account with an extra prayer or two. The corridors of grand pillars in this splendid house of God are trophies of war brought away by the Pisans in their conquests in many lands when Pisa was mis- tress of the seas and her ships brought tribute from almost every foreign shore. The cathedral itself is a monument in honor of a great naval victory had near Palermo, and most of the churches commemorate triumph by sea or land against Turk or rival Italian cities. The idea of building a church as the monument of a field of blood is something that has passed out of our American civilization. We could hardly consecrate a cathedral of Gettysburg or a church of the Holy Field of Shiloh, or dedicate an altar to Our Lady of Stone Rwer, but all Europe is full of just such monu- ments. And they could build their temples with pil- laged columns and marbles, adorn them with plundered statues, and, if need be, sanctify the altar with the stolen body of an apostle. SIENA. 293 CHAPTER XXXI. SIENA. AN ENCHANTED TOWN OF THE MIDDLE AGES A LIVING TOMB OF THE PAST THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY IN THK NINETEENTH A MEDIAEVAL SURVIVAL SIENA'S GRAND CATHEDRAL A BROAD-CHURCH TEMPLE THE VANISHED SIBYLS SLEEPING WITH THE SAINTS SOCRATES AND HKKM i:s ENSHRINED IN A CHRISTIAN PANTHEON THE GOLDEN AGE OF TUSCANY THE LOST REPUBLICS OF ITALY AND WK Too? ALL through the interior of Italy there are interest- ing cities towns of from fifteen thousand to forty thousand inhabitants which are more striking in their general effect than Rome, or Genoa, or Naples, or Milan, or any of the cities of travel, and more really instructive in the way of picturing vividly the mediaeval life of Europe. These town? have been kept unspotted from the world. The eager Currents of modern life have never poured through them, and they stand the spared monuments of ages gone by. Of all this group of quaint towns, there is none more curious or picturesquely representative than Siena, a name which is to many, perhaps, only a vague recol- lection, the faint memory of a footnote in some history of art or dictionary of dates. Nevertheless, it was once a grand factor in European history, a centre of art and civil freedom which died out together; then a theatre of fierce passions, intestinal wars, tragedies, tyrannies, and endless and bloody revolutions; then the lifeless quiet of exhaustion. As the modern railway carries you out of the dreary sepulchre of the Roman Campagna, and into the gar- landed and smiling fields of Tuscany, that pleasing land flowing with oil and wine, you see afar off what 25* 294 NORTHERN ITALY. seems to be a huge fortress, throwing out its battle- mented turrets sharply against the sky. As you draw nearer the heavy walls lengthen and broaden and divide into the lines of a town. It is Siena, a solid mass of masonry set on the steep, sharp crest of a hill bristling with bastions and frowning towers. Nearly all of the mediaeval towns are so placed. They were simply fortified camps, and in times when warfare was carried on by hand-weapons the natural site of a fixed camp was the highest hilltop in the neighborhood. From that point it commanded all the country in sight. This was the origin of the castle, cctstellum meaning, etymologically, a little camp, and in time, by the law of the survival of the fittest, the best-located castle be- came the city. As a consequence of this hilltop location, the rail- ways in Central Italy usually do not go into any town, the grades being simply impossible, but land you at a depot bearing the town name, and sometimes some four miles away from it. The hill itself is often shaved down on all sides, so that its native rock may form not only the foundation, but part of the outer walls, of the town which crowns its crest. The smooth face of this wall may thus be one hundred feet in perpendicular height, and one often cannot tell what part is built masonry and what part natural rock. In the case of Siena it is a little better. The train, by a powerful effort, backs up a zigzag something like the celebrated approach to the great St. Louis bridge in our country, and lands you within a mile of the town. At this outside depot you are received in state. The daily ceremony of going to this station, by which Siena touches the outer world, is, I think, a solemn form ob- served with religious care. I was the only hotel pas- senger on the express train, and I am inclined to think the arrivals of that day were a little above the average. Two four-horse vehicles, stately and black, were drawn SIENA, 295 up in line at the gate of the yard. The f , rce of guards and porters and station-men were far more rigid in their demeanor and less cheerful in their manner and movements than a body of average Italian priests and ecclesiastics officiating at mass. When .1 approached the gold-laced and uniformed official in charge of one of the funereal wagons, handed him my baggage receipts, and told him I was going to honor "The Grand Hotel of the Royal Black Eagle" with my presence, he seemed staggered and stunned at the unwonted sound, and by the magnitude of the responsibility so suddenly cast upon him. Recovering from the shock, however, he very soon directed some one else, who in turn ordered still another, to go and get my trunks, and in due time everything was accomplished decently and in order. I entered my hearse-like carriage of state, the empty om- nibus drove off slowly in silence and dignity, three officials mounted my wagon, the procession moved de- corously up the hill towards the town, the gates of the train-yard were softly closed, the station-men sank back in repose, and the quiet of a Sabbath fell upon the Siena depot. About half a mile up you enter the walls of the town, and as the great iron gates close behind you this world is shut out, the nineteenth century, the life that you know. You are shut in with the fourteenth century. You feel an unknown sensation in which the whole life of the mediaeval times envelops you, takes possession of you. You arc in an unburied Pompeii of the Middle Ages. It is, indeed, a most singular and wonderful study. Here is a massive city, full of stately palaces, grand churches, softly-splashing fountains, spacious squares paved with fine stones and ornamented with beautiful columns, its streets thronged with people, children are at play, men move in their shops, soldiers stand guard before the palaces, priests silently steal along the w r ays, but the city is dead, absolutely dead, to all that we 296 NORTHERN ITALY. call life and to all that we know. It has, so far as we can see, no meaning or place in this world now. It exists these people live and move and have their daily being solely by the impulse of a force originally pro- jected in the Middle Ages, and which, never renewed, is lessening every day. Siena is a segment of the Middle Ages projected into the nineteenth century, and held there like a fly in amber. Let us look a little more closely at the wonder- ful picture. Siena is to-day an inland town of some twenty-three thousand or twenty-five thousand inhabi- tants, about the size of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. Hundreds of years ago it had a population of over one hundred thousand souls, busy men of action, soldiers at a time when arms was the great profession, artists of first fame in the world, learned priests and scholars, powerful citizens, merchants trading over all the seas, architects, builders, workers of every kind. These people built their city and their houses for defence and for eternity, with walls from three to twenty feet thick, and they are all there yet. Consequently, the Sienese of to-day live in castles and palaces almost for nothing, and the town remains a perfect mediaeval picture. It is more than a picture : it is a survival. Once inside of Siena, closed in its narrow streets paved with smooth, flat stones joined as regularly as the masonry of the walls that rise up abruptly almost within arm's-length on each side of you, one never sees the green fields or the sky, except as a thin line of blue or soft gray directly overhead. In the night-time there is seen likewise only a segment of the stars. It is a gloomy, sombre city of heavy shadows and cool, moist atmosphere, an atmosphere that breathes forever over stone and cold marble. You see no woodwork in the streets, save, perhaps, an occasional ponderous door, a modern injection and anachronism. The palaces join each other and face on the narrow, irregular streets in long lines as do our houses, but every house is a fort- SIENA. 297 ress, built of massive masonry, sometimes buttressed, its walls capable of resisting cannon. The great stones are firmly set one on and in another till the whole looks like a natural rock. Solid stone benches often stand along the front of the house in the street- way. There are no windows, but only apertures cov- ered with immense wrought-iron grates, and these are very sparing. To the side of each window and door on the lower floor are fastened huge iron spikes, from each one of which hangs a great ring, also of tough wrought-iron. Intelligent Italians of this day could not tell me the ancient use of these fastenings, and for a time they were mysterious puzzles. History seems to show that they were used to stretch great chains across the street in times of fighting. It is impossible to describe the monumental appear- ance of old Siena, or how these ponderous, castellated dwellings call up the life and legend of mediaeval time. These houses have seen tragedies within and troubles without. Men have scaled and stormed them ; men have been flung dead and living from their frowning windows ; seditions, revolutions, and riots have streamed around their base. But through all changes, conspira- cies, revolts, plunder, confiscation, barbarous revenges, depopulation, crime, and fierce passions within, lawless- ness and violence without, their great walls, gigantic, gloomy, severe, have stood passionless and impartial, like the gods of the classic pagans. Every stone seems to tell of the frightful tragedies, the play of ungovern- able passion, the wild license, the desperation of hu- manity, in the dense darkness of the night of supersti- tion, which make even the reading of medieval history so stifling and oppressive. Siena seems to have been forgotten of history, and allowed to stand untouched in the stream of time as its currents washed out almost all over Europe the traces of the worn-out feudal life of the Continent. Until within a few years no railway came near it. The lines 298 NORTHERN ITALY. of trade had changed, and it was left out of the world of commerce and human relations. A new art, a new religion, a new system of government, had come up, and the world knew it no more. It had nothing to give, and dropped out of human care or thought. It was a two days' journey by horse or carriage, through an un- defended country, and men did not come near it. So it remained unchanged. Even now its isolation is curiously strange. It has lived so long out of the world that with a railway at its door it cannot come in. It has no sympathies with our modern life, and our blood will not flow into its corpse. There are but two great hotels, that is, hotels for the use of strangers. I was the first guest for a week at mine. I came alone, ate alone, sat alone in the empty chambers, went away alone. At Rome I had unfortunately left my Baede- ker, covering Central Italy, and was entirely without any detailed information as to the history of the place or local points of interest, only knowing of its great cathedral and its importance as an early school of art. I went out to buy anything that would help me through, either one of the standard guide-books or any local publication, but I could not find even a book-store. I have reason to believe from what I have learned since that there is now such a store in the place, but it is cer- tainly not conspicuous. All along the rather brilliant shops of the Corso or main street I searched for it in vain, and had to come away as poor as I. entered. Again, in the stone-covered porch of the side entrance to the grand cathedral there were posted on the church walls, as is the custom in Italy, public notices, some civil, some ecclesiastical. There were in all but some six or eight on the wall, and one of them was dated as far back as 1870. Only one, I think, bore date of this year. Time has no more any meaning to Siena ; a day is as a hundred years. It is the cathedral which the travellers that find Siena SIENA. 299 corne to see, and it is one of the great churches of Europe, whether you view it in itselt' or in its relation to the history and development of art. This noble edifice was built in the thirteenth century, in the early Italian-Gothic style, in many respects the most effective order of church architecture. It made on me a much stronger and more pleasing impression as a church than St. Peter's, which has something of a polytheistic char- acter, a pantheon for the modern mythology of Rome, orthun the handsome ball-room effect, inside and out, of the graceful Madeleine at Paris. In this remarkable church, which exists now just as it did five hundred years ago, whichever way you look, long aisles of Gothic arched columns stretch away like the trees of the forest. Under them kneeling groups cluster, or entering worshippers move noiselessly for- ward like ants. So great is the grand nave, so wide the dark aisles, so high the fretted ceiling, that you do not hear the feet of rude men and wooden-shod peasant women as they tramp the marble floor. The noble dead of mediaeval ages sleep in their stone coffins about you in peaceful and eternal rest. The organ rolls, the clouds of incense float upward, and by their tombs the same rhythmic prayers ascend that these men heard here in their lifetimes. All around in niches and chapels stand fine statues, not the morbid and ascetic work of a later period, but after the more human fash- ion of the antique, rejoicing in the beauty and loveliness of the human figure. In front, against a dark back- ground of ancient, rich wood-carving panelling the walls and covering the stalls of the choir, stands out the great main altar, splendid in its mass of silver and its hundred lights, glittering with jewels and gleaming crosses, and the gold-worked robes of the priests, and you think of Jupiter come down to see Danse. The time has? passed when religion can be taught or en- forced by dramatic effects. The aesthetic fable of classic legend, and the lower theatrical splendors of the 300 NORTHERN ITALY. mediaeval altar, have both had their day, have both served, perhaps, a useful purpose, and are both equally useless for good in this day and generation. In this old cathedral, where every quaint corner is a study, there is one very curious and striking feature of rare historical interest. We all know that in the earlier history of the Christian Church there was a peculiar veneration and honor for the pagan sibyls. They were held in great esteem, and perhaps some- thing more; but just what were the honors paid them, or how far the respect verged on something higher, is not clear. A great saint, in a great hymn yet used in the burial-service of the Catholic Church, did not scruple to write, " Testo David cum Sibylla," Did they rank with the prophets ? Were they a little lower than the angels ? Here they are all in the great cathedral of Siena with the saints and martyrs, and their presentation is on such a large scale as to make them one of the dis- tinguishing features of the church. On the broad pavement of the two great aisles which flank the nave I found them all in colossal form. Their representa- tion is in fine and almost imperishable etching, the etching done in white stone, inlaid in a surface of black marble. The designs are spirited, free, and strong, and the general effect very impressive. The sibyls them- selves ten or twelve in number, as I remember are all fine, large, comely women, most of them apparently about thirty-five, of full form and rounded contour. The figures are colossal, about four times human size. Each sibyl has a brief legend in old script set in the black ground, giving her shadowy credentials ; some- times it is a sentence from an old classic, sometimes a monkish rescript, reciting the substance of her prophecy or foreshadowing. I much regret that I did not copy SIENA. 301 these. Often they ran about thus : " The [Thracian] sibyl concerning; whom [EpaminondasJ wrote." And that is about all we know of most of them. There they live in marble, the dead goddesses of two religions, and men have to-day only the faintest and most elusive traces of their being. The spirit of that easy-going catholicity of classic Rome which accepted and assimilated the gods of all people lingered long in Italy. In the goodly fellow- ship of this impressive temple are Moses and Samson and Socrates, Solomon and Judas Maccabaeus, and on the pavement near the door, Hermes Trismegistos, that mythical personage whose name carries one far back into the shadows of the morning aeons. Hermes Mercury Thoth the Logos of Egyptian tradition. In fact, this grand old cathedral, out of the world now, sleeping in the cool shades of history, is the most hospitable pantheon I have ever seen. It is a broad- church temple of mediaeval faith, whose doors opened wider and more freely than anything in Anglican England to-day. There are no national limitations to its honors, and it has leaped the bounds of any one religion. The gods and the heroes, the popes and the philosophers, the saints and the martyrs and the leaders, of many times and many people are gathered here ; and they rest among civic crests and municipal standards and flagstaffs and crucifixes carried 'in battle by the victorious Sienese six hundred years a:_!.<. If possible, a visit to this place should cover the sixth day of May, which is the festa of the great St. Catharine of Siena, when her head is exposed for the edification of the faithful, and the whole scene affords an excellent " interior" of Italian life which it is getting harder to see every year. St. Catharine is one of the larger luminaries of the Roman mythology and the djvinity of Siena, remembered here and throughout the Church after the popes and the princes of Sienese splendor have been long forgotten. She is one of the represen- 26 302 NORTHERN ITALY. tative saints of Europe, and her curious story one of the best illustrative studies of mediaeval society and the mediaeval Church. And nowhere can it be studied to more advantage than in its natural setting, this quaint old town. Historically for the student, politically for the thoughtful American citizen, Siena is a point of instruc- tive study, its rise and fall a lesson pregnant with interest. Hundreds of years ago, before the present states and governments of Europe were, it was a centre of learning, art, and civilization, and it was a republic ! From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries Pisa and Siena were the brightest stars in that brilliant historical constellation the lost Republics of Italy. At that time they were the centre of a wonderful revival of art, the seats of a school of painting and sculpture, and particularly architecture, of fine charac- teristics and great promise, whose sudden appearance and equally sudden and complete disappearance have never been yet philosophically explained. It is one of the vexed problems of history. This period has been felicitously called " the Renaissance before the Renais- sance." We know little of this interesting time, and cannot trust that, for it has been written by priests and monkish chroniclers who came into power over its ruins. This we do know, that these little republics threw the morning rays of art and learning and pros- perity and modern civilization over Europe. Men built great cities, carved grand sculptures of force and originality, painted great paintings, traded with distant lands, grew rich and powerful, and governed them- selves. There was freedom and glory and prosperity, but weakness somewhere, for in a brief time the priest took the place of the statesman, and night fell upon Europe. Then came the lethargic stupor of the Middle Ages, unbroken until the Reformation and the Renais- sance. SIENA. 303 This strange episode of tin's time is a social and political tragedy, a catastrophe in the evolution of human advancement. There is one record which remains to tell of the life of this fated people, its architecture. That, fortu- nately, is impartial, accurate, and unimpeachable, for it is itself the product and result of the national life, and it cannot be altered or tampered with. It is here that the cathedral of Siena becomes of historic value, as well as that of Orvieto and the wonderful group of bui Mings at Pisa, of which I have before written. The Pisa of to-day sleeps and is meaningless, but on its confines, in the little field which holds the famed cathedral, baptistery, campanile (Leaning Tower), and Campo Santo, the Pisa of history still lives in beauty and speaks with eloquence. The architecture and sculpture of this time, as it comes down to us, has a positive and distinctive clnr- acter. It is instinct with life, and freshness, and youth. Its material, pure white marble relievos, or the outlines emphasized sometimes in black, gives the work a pecu- liar delicacy and attraction, and not onlv admits but seems to demand the graceful ornamentation and rich- ness of finish which characterize the buildings of this period. They abound in airy colonnades, superim- posed, one row on another, in ranges of arches and arcades often raised into the air in light and graceful columns multiplied and repeated and rejoicing in charm- ing Corinthian capitals and an affluence of leaves and flowers. The fl^ades of some of these churches are a wondrous mass of elegant figures, covering the whole front like a delicate veil of marble lace- work. In all this exuberance and wealth of ornament there is, of course, occasional crudity and immaturity, as there always must be in everything which has yet the power to grow, but you lose it all in the feeling of life and joyousness and freedom. The people who developed this style of architecture were in the youth of their 304 NORTHERN ITALY. political state, strong, active, buoyant, and full of the conscious pleasure of life and the sense of progress. There was freedom of individual action and civil liberty. They had a pleasure in the life and strength of the human body ; they delighted in depicting the beauty and symmetry of its form. Their art was the child of Greece as well as of the hardy Gothic North, and there is often a curious simplicity in the mixture of classic and Christian legend in their sculpture. Their churches are bright with statuary fashioned after the antique, light and graceful with an architecture of delicate lines and tracery that seem to float and carry up the build- ings into the air. They are lavishly dowered with ornament. All that is beautiful in art, all the treasures of wealth, have been poured into them without stint or measure, lovely statues, precious stones, rare paintings, curiously-carved pulpits with whole lives of legend told in marble on their panels, altars that are solid masses of silver. The people who built these churches, so white and pure and delicate, had a cheerful religion, a faith of love and trust and hope. It was something that was the natural outgrowth and development of the sunshine and smiling fields of Tuscany, lustrous with the rich foliage of their olives, and wreathed and fes- tooned and garlanded with grapes. It was the natural incense of happy Italy ascending to heaven, something very different from the slavish superstition and morbid religion that hang like a pall over this land to-day, when men have lost their sense of the living Christ in the worship of His dead body and of death. What might have been the future of Italy and of the Continent and of the world if this auspicious aurora of freedom had not been quenched ! How different might history have been if the republics of Tuscany instead of Rome had guided Italy ! And we too? It is the tragic fate of these early Italian republics which is the European argument against republicanism. Men of learning and experi- ORVIETO. 305 ence in the conduct of affairs meet you with it all the time when you challenge a discussion of our free insti- tutions and form of government. The dead republics of Italy dead in their youth were relatively as powerful as we are ; they carried their arms and com- merce over the known world. Their people were as prosperous as we are ; they had more of learning and cultivation and higher education. But it is the ver- dict of history their institutions and popular form of government tended to develop and bring into power the average and commonplace man. The state fell under the control of this class of men, and went rapidly to pieces. Now, says the European statesman, "Are you in America not travelling the same road?" And it is a pretty hard question to answer. SIENA. CHAPTER XXXII. ORVIETO. THE HILL-SET CITIES OF TUSCANY ASHES OF THE MIDDLE AGES A PALACE WAITING AT TEN FRANCS A DAY MEDIEVAL CRIME AND PAGANISM DEVOTED SERVICE THE LEQEND-FAC.ADED CATHKDRAL OF ORVIETO THE EUROPEAN CATHEDRALS SHARP CONTRAST BETWEEN THE BUILDINGS AND THE WORSHIP IN THEM VlN DU PAYS OF ORVIETO THE WINES OF ITALY A GOOD BISHOP'S DEATH Esf, EST, EST, OF MONTE FIASCONE THE FALERNIAN FIELDS OF HORACE. ORVIETO, like Siena, is the fortressed and castellated crown of a hill frowning with defiant bastions of solid rock, and with great gloomy gates that look treacher- ous and inauspicious. One almost fears to enter their black and yawning shadows, and recalls instinctively the venomous ferocities and merciless passions that w 26* 306 NORTHERN ITALY. scorch the pages of mediaeval Italian history. But the gateways are unguarded now, the threatening parapets empty of helmet or weapon, the ditches dry and dusty and unclean with the foul refuse of a modern Italian town. To violence and the unbridled play of lust and fierce passions have succeeded exhaustion, extinction, ashes. Only the harmless form remains like the skele- ton fibre of a dead and worm-gnawed leaf. These hill-set cities, so distinctive and suggestive, are one of the charms of the lovely landscape of Tuscany, and Orvieto is one of the most picturesque and striking of them all, not even excepting Perugia. Its walls are steep and precipitous, sheering down for hundreds of feet, the solid masonry growing into the hewn tufa rock so that it cannot be seen where the one ends and the other begins. Its battlemented outlines stand clear- cut against the sky, grim walls and clusters of dungeon towers and open campanili and ascending masses of tall Italian dwelling-houses forming a fine gray setting for the white marble relief of the famed cathedral. At sun- set, when the slanting rays fall across the valley, light- ing up the gray tops with a glory, and flooding plain and stream below with glowing color, it is a perfect picture. "The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story ; The long light shakes across the lakes. : They die in yon red sky ; They faint on hill or field or river." There is a shadowy, elusive sketch of Orvieto by Turner in his collection in the National Gallery in London, all slanting lines of sunset and dissolving landscape ; and it is very like, for the whole spirit of the scene is the spirit of Turner's genius. It is Tur- neresque : that best describes it. The picture of Orvieto, however, is all from the out- ORVIETO. 307 side. Once inside, the streets are narrow, dirty, .nean- ingless, and hot. They are commonplace, too, for Tuscany, devoid of legend and special monument, full of smells, wretchedness, and uncleanness. The historic cathedral, brilliant in black and white, is the sole mod- ern attraction. There are other churches in plenty, but they are shabby, uninteresting, and wanting in any special significance. Few strangers find Orvieto, for it is not a halting- place on the modern lines of travel ; nevertheless, the accommodations for the traveller are very good. He can have a whole palace to himself if he wants it, and a whole train of servants, at verv little cost. Orvieto was once a powerful city and tin- home of the Guelphs, a family who built their Imuses as strongholds and sorely needed that style of residence. It is now a deso- late town of a few thousand souls, but the strong rock- walled houses are all there yet, and the dwindled Or- vieto of to-day resembles a small boy struggling in his father's ulster. This effect is very general over all Italy. My hotel was a palace of past generations, desolate and pathetic in its sunken fortunes, but grand yet. The rooms were spacious and stately in height and pro- portions. The walls were pictured in bright color and moving design from top to bottom, a great serial story in fresco that ran through halls and chambers; a tale of lords and ladies, of love and wars, of olive- groves and stormed fortresses, of banquets and knightly halls and fountains and blushing gardens, a reminis- cence of Boccaccio, in fact. Along the solemn stair- ways, in the silent corridors and vast dining-hall, stood marble statues, looking so shut up and lonesome that it seemed as if they must speak at the dear sight of a human face. It was a whole lordly palace waiting for one, and glad to see its lord at ten francs a day. My bedchamber was a grand apartment on the first floor, so nobly high that you lost the demeaning sense 308 NORTHERN ITALY. of there being any one domiciled above you, so long that when you placed your two wax candles in one end of the room you could not see the other. A glory of romantic frescos, too, ran all around the spacious walls. It was well appointed, also ; everything was clean and neat and fresh, a n d my assiduous retainers were only happy when they were bringing in continuous cans of hot water. The baronial floors, however, were all of marble and bare stone, innocent of carpet, rug, or matting, and there was no lock on the doors, that had gone with the centuries, although some huge wrought- iron clamps and hasps showed that one of no little strength had once been necessary. The stone walls, however, were four or five feet thick, and gave an emi- nent feeling of security. The table was full and good, and even elaborate, while the service was excellent. It was more : it was devoted. The traditions of the centuries of the grand- eur and state of the house seemed to come down upon the dignified, stately old servant who officiated as but- ler and footman and ga^on, and he did his best to meet the accumulated responsibilities. He struggled manfully to supply in himself the services of a whole retinue and conceal the deficiency of the troops of servitors that once lined the hospitable halls. At my private apartments he announced in stately form, " The dinner is served, signor," and bent with grave obei- sance as I passed through the solid stone doorway. He disappeared deftly, and as I approached the great door of the old dining-hall there he was again, drawn up in the shadowy similitude of two invisible lines of solemn footmen. I walked between him in serious state, and, lo ! he was behind my chair as I made ready _to sit down to my solitary dinner, served under courtly frescos and statuary and a wealth of drooping flowers. The efforts of this ancient servitor to support the departed glories of the house, his simple fidelity to the name and blood and dignities that had drifted away hundreds of years, ORVIETO. 309 was almost touching. It never relaxed for a moment during the twenty-four hours of my stay, every meal being served with equal state commensurate to its rank in the service of the day. And when on leaving I played my American part in the comedy by giving from the parting "good-hand" a five-franc note, I think the old fellow dreamed for a brief moment that perhaps the good old days of princes and Cencian ladies and brigand cardinals had come back again. In-doors Orvieto was very pleasant and comfortable. Out of doors the sun-baked town is unattractive and worse than comfortless. The whole place, perched on a high mass of rock and forever exposed to the beating rays, is parched and heated. The whole life of the place is dry and miserable. The sweet breath of the fields never blows here. No fragrance of fresh leaves and flowers ever reaches this parched town swung high in the hot air. The streets glare, the walls are the home of the glittering lizard. The whole impression of the place is disappointing, it is so unlike the soft and gentle wine of Orvieto, famous even down to Rome, or the graceful tracery of the cathedral, the two associations of the spot. In solid Siena, with its comfortable bourgeois exist- ence, you seem to feel even at this day something of the real life of the Middle Ages. It is passionless and still, but living yet, although without relation or mean- ing to our time. Orvieto is dead, an extinct volcano, an ashy residuum of mediaeval crime. There is nothing in the history of society more appalling than Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is hard to conceive of it now, impossible to reconstruct it even in imagination. We are all somewhat familiar with the Borgias and the Cencis, whose annals blister the history of Rome and are conspicuous because of that theatre, but all interior Italy was filled with just such great families, of whom the world now knows nothing, 310 NORTHERN ITALY. but who were just as wicked, just as passionate, just as defiant of God and man. They plundered and fought with each other. They poisoned and intrigued and cast each other into merciless prisons. Their very love was defiant and criminal and shameless. The struggles of these families, dissolute, abandoned, and unrestrained by any conventions of society or religion, were the poli- tics of the time. They made popes and added the prostitution of the headship of the visible Church to personal and private vice. It was an age of delirium, a kaleidoscopic whirl of guilt, an age of ungovern- able passions, of barbarous ferocities, of vicious pleas- ures indulged in openly as by pagans. The picture of that day is a confused panorama of morbid superstition and measureless crimes; of masses and miracles and murders; of poisonings and appalling incests ; of fla- gellants; of conspiracies and treacheries ; of dungeons and tortures and atrocious cruelties. This was the Italy of Orvieto. The modern renown of Orvieto is its beautiful cathe- dral, another of those magnificent Italian Gothic struc- tures, all clad in white and edged in black, after the striking fashion of the Pisan, Sienese, and Florentine work. The whole fayade of the front is covered with a white net-work of miniature statuary, the history of the world, apparently, according to medieval tradition, in a series of tableaux. There are thousands of figures. The pictures begin with Adam and Eve. Many of the scenes are ^ recognizable, but quite a number are evidently legends that are now entirely lost. All the designs are intensely realistic, and many of them ex- ceedingly quaint. In the Creation of Eve, for instance, Adam lies in a dead sleep on the ground while God, a venerable old man with a carving-knife, is making a slit in his side with one hand, while with the other He drags out Eve, whose well-cohTured head and shoulders are just visible. The building of this cathedral itself is a curious OR VIE TO. illustration of the wonderful contrasts of its time. It is built in commemoration of a miracle establishing the dogma of transnbstantiation. There was a sceptical priest who doubted the truth of this doctrine. Once, when offering mass, he tempted a physical test of the sacred wafer, when it immediately bled in the five gashes, the great drops of blood falling upon and stain- ing the napkin. The fact of this bleeding is perfectly well authenticated by such evidence as attests the mass of mediaeval church history. It was officially attested by Pope Urban IV., and a cathedral ordered to be built in its honor. Now, the wonderful contrast is between the coarse conception of the miracle and the refined, artistic conception of the cathedral, the bloody thanmaturgy of the altar and the pure and delicate work of the temple. The miracle tells of a barbarous condition of mind and society ; the cathedral, although of the same age, is a work of the highest order of art. And this strong contrast between the men who built the cathedrals and the men who conduct the worship in them confronts one all the time in Europe. The architecture of the buildings is of tin* highest reach