Scences and Thoughts in Europe

Preface

. Certain classes of books are such favorites, that nearly the whole responsibility of publishing them should be borne by the public. The eagerness with which they are read is a premium on their production. The traveller in foreign lands finds the privacy of his letters and journal encroached upon while writing them, by the thought that they may be turned into " copy " for the printer. To so many others has this happened, that the possibility of its happening to himself cannot be kept out of his mind, spotting, it may be, the candor of his statements. Afterwards, when he iias been at home long enough for the incidents of his jour ney to grow by distance of time into reminiscences, what he wrote on the spot comes upon him with unexpected freshness and distinctness. Himself gets information and entertainment from the perusal of his notes, letters and diary.

In this state of semiself-complacency, the public urgently invites him to its broad tables — invites him through the kindness wherewith it has loaded so many of his book-blazoned fellow-travellers. He begins to criticise his manuscript ; to shape it by excisions, by additions ; to calculate quantity ; to confer with a popular publisher, — who is of course in close league with the public, — until at last, he finds that his manuscript has been made away with and in its stead he has proof sheets. His private doings VI

PREFACE.

. and seeings, and thinkings, and feelings, are about to cease to be private and to become public, and himself is to be thrust in every page personally before the world by the printers, notwithstanding his constant endeavor to merge his individuality, and, like modest editors, to multiply and disperse himself by means of the indefinite we. He is in the case to claim the favor that is shown at a feast to a guest especially summoned for the entertainment of the company. The host is the public, whose part it is to bear with his waywardness, to be indulgent towards his short comings, to overlook his deficiencies. The author of the following little volume scarcely need add, that this claim of the author-guest is strong in proportion as he possesses the one virtue, the rare virtue, of brevity. March, 1846.

Ambleside, Westmoreland County, England, July 29th, 1840, Wednesday Evening. My Dear Three weeks since, I was in America : I am now writing to you from an English village, distant but a mile from the dwelling of Wordsworth. Between noon and evening we have come to-day ninety miles ; first by railroad from Liverpool to Lancaster, where we took outside seats on a coach to Kendall, and thence by postchaise fourteen miles to Ambleside. An American just landed in England wants more than his two eyes to look at the beautiful, green "old country." For several miles the road lay along the bank of Lake Windermere, sleeping in the evening shadows at the feet of its mountains, whose peaks were shrouded in mist, except that of Nabscar, on whose southern side near its base stands the Poet's house. So soon as we were established in the clean little inn, I walked out, about eight o'clock, on the road that passes Wordsworth's door.

Meeting a countryman, when I had been afoot ten or fifteen minutes, I asked him, — " How far is it to Mr. Wordsworth's V " Only a quarter of a mile." The wood-skirted road wound among gentle hills, that on one side ran quickly up into mountains, so that the house was not in view ; and having resolved not to seek him till to-morrow, I turned back with the tall laborer, who told me he was working at Wordsworth's. We passed a lady and gentleman on foot, who both gave a friendly salutation to my companion. " That," said he, " is Mr. Wordsworth's daughter." Thursday Evening. This morning, at ten, Nabscar still wore his nightcap of mist, but as the wind then hauled, in sailor's phrase, to the north from the southwest, which is the rainy quarter here, he was robed before noon in sunshine, to welcome on his breast a far-travelled homager.

I spent an hour to-day with Wordsworth. His look, talk, and bearing, are just what a lover of his works would wish to find them. His manner is simple, earnest, manly. The noble head, large Roman nose, deep voice, and tall spare figure, make up an exterior that well befits him. He talked freely on topics that natu rally came up on the occasion. He proposed that we should walk out into his grounds. What a site for a poet's abode ! One more beautiful the earth could scarcely offer. A few acres give shifting views of the Paradise about him, embracing the two lakes of Windermere and Grasmere. Would that you could have heard him sum up in hearty English the characteristics of the bounteous scene ! We passed a small field of newly-cut hay, which laborers were turning ; — " I have been at work there this morning," said Wordsworth, " and heated myself more than was; prudent."

In the garden a blackbird ran across our path : " I like birds better than fruit," said he * " they eat up my fruit, but repay me with their songs." By those who, like you, appreciate Wordsworth, these trifles will be prized as significant of his habits. I would not record them, did I believe that himself, — with knowledge of the feelings which to us make them valuable, — would regard the record as a violation of the sacred privacy of his home. A literary caterer might have seized upon much thai would better have served a gossiping hireling's purpose. Saturday, August Ist, 1840. Yesterday evening we spent three hours at Rydal Mount, the name not of the mountain near whose base is Wordsworth's WORDSWORTH. 3 dwelling, but of the dwelling itself. We went, by invitation, early. Wordsworth, soon after we arrived, familiarly took me through the back gate of his enclosure, to point out the path by which I might ascend to the top of Nabscar, — a feat I purposed attempting the next day.

On our return, he proposed a visit to Rydal Fall, a few hundred yards from his door in Rydal Park. On learning that five weeks since we had stood before Niagara, an exclamation burst from his lips, as if the sublime spectacle were suddenly brought near to him. "But, come," said he, after a moment, " I am not afraid to show you Rydal Fall, though you have so lately seen Niagara." As for part of the way he walked before us in his thick shoes, his large head somewhat inclined forward, occasionally calling our looks to tree or shrub, I had him, as he doubtless is in his solitary rambles for hours daily, in habitual meditation, greeting as he passes many a flower and sounding bough, and pausing at times from self-communion, to bare his mind to the glories of sky and earth which ennoble his chosen abode.

At the end of our walk a short descent brought us to the door of a small, stone, wood-embowered structure, the vestibule, as it were, to the temple. Entering, the waterfall was before us, beheld through a large regular oblong opening or window which made a frame to the natural picture. The fall was not of more than twenty-five feet, and the stream only a large brook, but from the happiest conjunction of water, rock and foliage ; of color, form, sound and silvan still life ; resulted a scene, decked by nature so choicely, and with such delicate harmony, that you felt yourself in one of Beauty's most perfect abiding-places. The deep voice of Wordsworth mingled at intervals with the sound of the fall. We left the spot to return to his house. The evening was calm and sunny ; we were in an English Park in the bosom of mountains ; we had come from a spot sanctified by Beauty, and Wordsworth walked beside us.

The walls of the drawing-room and library, connected by a door, in which, with the affable kindness of a refined gentlewo man, Mrs. Wordsworth received ourselves and a few other guests, were covered with books and pictures. Wordsworth showed me many editions of the British Poets. He put into my hands a copy of the first edition of Paradise Lost, given him by Charles Lamb. He spoke copiously, and in terms of admiration, of Alston, whom he had known well. In connection with Alston, he mentioned his " friend Coleridge." The opportunity thus offered of leading him to speak of his great compeer, was marred by one of the company giving another turn to the conversation. Wordsworth, throughout the evening, was in a fine mood. His talk was clear and animated ; at times humorous or narrative. He narrated several lively incidents with excellent effect.

We sat in the long English twilight till past nine o'clock. Sunday Morning, August 2d, 1840. Yesterday was pleasantly filled in making an excursion to Colistone Lake, in rowing on Windermere, and in strolling in the evening through the meadows around Ambleside. At every pause in our walk, the aspect of the landscape varied, under the control of the chief feature of the scenery, the encircling mountains with their vast company of shadows, which, as unconsciously changing your position you shift the point of view, open or close gorges and valleys, and hide or reveal their own tops, producino* the effect of a moving panorama. But a week since, we were on the ocean. — a month since, in the new world, — now, on the beaten sod of the old, youno- Ameri cans enjoying old England. Every object within sight, raised by the hand of man, looks touched with antiquity ; the grey stone wall with its coping of moss, the cottage ivy-screened, the Saxon church tower.

Even what is new, hasn't anew look. The modern mansion is mellowed by architecture and tint into keeping with its RYDAL CHURCH. 5 older neighbors. To be old here, is to be respectable, and time honored is the epithet most coveted. You see no sign of the doings of yesterday or yesteryear : the new is careful of obtruding itself, and comes into the world under matronage of the old. But the footprint of age is not traced in rust and decay. We are in free and thriving England, where Time's accumulations are shaped by a busy, confident, sagacious hand, man co-working with Nature at the " ceaseless loom of Time," so that little be wasted and little misspent. The English have a strong sympathy with rural nature. The capabilities of the landscape are de veloped and assisted with a loving and judicious eye, and the beautiful effects are visible not merely in the lordly domain or secluded pleasure-ground, where a single mind brings about a pre-determined end, but in the general aspect of the land.

The thatched cottage, the broad castle, the simple lawn, the luxurious park, the scattered hamlet, the compact borough, all the features which make up the physiognomy of woody, mossy, rain-washed, England, harmonize with nature and with one another. Sunday Afternoon, 2 o'clock. We walked this morning to Rydal Church, which is within almost a stone's throw of Wordsworth's dwelling. Through a cloudless sky and the Sabbath stillness, the green landscape looked like a corner of Eden. In the small simple church there were not more than sixty persons, the congregation, as Words worth told us afterwards, consisting of fourteen families. When the service was over, Wordsworth, taking us one under each arm, led us up to his house. After a short visit we took our final leave. In these three days, I have spent several hours at different times with Wordsworth.

I have listened to his free and cordial talk, walked with him, beheld the beautiful landscape of West moreland with the aidance of his familiar eye, and have been the object of his hospitality, more grateful to me than would be that of his sovereign. The purpose of our visit to Ambleside being accomplished, we leave this in half an hour. Oxford, Wednesday Morning, August 5th, 1840. A glance at the map of England will show you what a flight we 've made since Sunday. For most of the way 't was literally a flight, being chiefly by steam. Yet have we had time to tarry on the road, and give ourselves up tranquilly without hurry to deep and gentle impressions. Leaving Ambleside on Sunday afternoon, our road ran for ten miles along the eastern shore of Lake Windermere, which lay shining at our side, or sparkling through the foliage that shades the neat dwellings on its border.

From the mountains of the lake region we passed suddenly into the flats of Lancashire, and at dark reached Lancaster, too late to get a good view of, what we had however seen as we went up from Liverpool, the castle, founded by " Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster." Between nine and three o'clock on Monday, a railroad bore us from Lancaster, on the north-west coast, to Coventry (which Fal staff marched through) in Warwickshire, the very heart of Eng land. We passed through, but did not stop at Birmingham. The sight and thought of these great overworked underfed workshops are oppressive. An invalid has not the nerves to confront the gaunt monster, Poverty, that dragging along its ghastly offspring, Squalor and Hunger, stalks so strangely through this abundant land. There is nothing like a " locomotive " for giving one a first vivid view of a country.

Those few hours left on my brain a clear full image of the face of England, such as can be had by no other means. Town, river, village, cottage, castle, set all in their native verdure, are so approximated by rapidity of move- WARWICK CASTLE. 7 ment, as to be easily enclosed by the memory in one frame. The ten miles between Coventry and Warwick, a stage-coach carried us on its top, passing through Kenilworth village, and giving us a glimpse of the famous ruins. Beautiful to behold is England on a sunny summer's day ; so clean, so verdant, so full of quiet life, so fresh, wearing so lightly the garland of age. What a tree ; — that cottage, how fragrant it looks through its flowers ; — the turf about that church has been green for ages. Here is a thatched hamlet, its open doors lighted with rosy faces at the sound of our wheels ; — this avenue of oaks sets the imagination to building a mansion at the end of it.

What town is that clustered around yon huge square tower ? and the ear welcomes a familiar name, endeared by genius to the Ame rican heart. Such is a half hour of one's progress through time enriched England, the mother of Shakspeare and Cromwell, of Milton and Newton. Yesterday morning we walked to Warwick Castle, which lies just without the town. There stands the magnificent feudal giant, shorn of its terrors ; its high embattled turrets dis armed by Time's transmuting inventions ; its grim frowns converted to graceful lineaments ; its hoarse challenges to gentle greetings ; there it stands, grand and venerable, on the soft green bank of Avon, guarded by man's protecting arm against the level ling blasts of antiquity, not less a token of present grandeur than a monument of former glories.

As slowly as the impatient attendant would let us, we loitered through the broad lofty halls and comfortable apartments, from whose walls flash the bright heads of Vandyke. Through the deep windows you look down into the Avon, which flows by the castle and through the noble park. We lingered on the green lawn, enclosed within the castle walls, and in the smooth grounds without them, and we hung about the towers of the dark old pile until noon, when we walked back to the inn, having enjoyed without drawback, and with more than fulfilment of cherished expectations, one of the grandest spectacles old Europe has to offer. At one we were approaching Stratford on Avon, distant eight miles from Warwick. Fifteen years since I was on the same ground. But Shakspeare was to me then but a man, to whom greatness had been decreed by the world's judgment.

I was not of an age to have verified for myself his titles : I had not real ized by contemplation the immensity of his power : my soul had not been fortified by direct sympathy with his mighty nature. But now I felt that I was near the most sacred spot in Europe, and I was disappointed at the absence of emotion in my mind. Here Shakspeare was born, and here he lies buried. We stood above his bones : on the marble slab at our feet, we read the lines touching their rest, invoking a curse on him who should disturb them. We sat down on a bench within a few feet of the sacred dust. We walked out by a near door past tomb-stones to the edge of the Avon. The day was serene and bright. We returned, and gazed again on the simple slab. 'Twas not till we had quitted the church, and were about to pass out of the yard, that a full consciousness of the holiness of the place arose in me.

For an instant I seemed to feel the presence of Shak speare. We walked slowly back towards the inn. In this path he has walked ; at that sunny corner he has lounged ; — but 'twas like clutching at corporeal substance in a dream, to try to call up a familiar image of Shakspeare. Objects around looked unsubstantial ; what the senses beheld wore the aspect of a vision • the only reality was the thought of Shakspeare, which wrapped the mind in a vague magical sensation. Between three and four o'clock we were on the way to Oxford smoothly rolling over an undulating road, under a cloudless sky, through the teeming, tree-studded fields. We passed through Woodstock, and for several miles skirted the Park of Blenheim. 'Twas dark ere we entered Oxford. The coach whirled us past OXFORD 9 square upon square of majestic piles and imposing shapes, and we alighted at the inn, suddenly and strongly impressed with the architectural magnificence of Oxford.

We are going out to get a view by sunlight ere we set off for London, which we are to reach before night. London, August 10th, 1840. From the top of the coach, which carried us eight miles to the Great Western Railroad, I looked back upon the majestic crown of towers and spires, wherewith, — as if to honor by a unique prodi gality of its gifts, the high, long enduring seat of learning, — the genius of architecture has encircled the brow of Oxford. At a speed of thirty to forty-five miles an hour, we shot down to Windsor, where we again quitted the railroad for a post-chaise, wishing to enter London more tranquilly than by steam. By the road from Windsor it is hard to say when you do enter London, being encased by houses miles before you reach Picca dilly. Some cities are begirt with walls, some with public walks, some merely with water ; but London, it may be said without solecism, is surrounded by houses.

At last the " West End " opens grandly to view through Hyde Park. What a look of vastness, of wealth, of solid grandeur ! We are passing the house of Wellington, and there to the right, across the Green Park and St. James's, are the towers of Westminster Abbey. We are in the largest and wealthiest city of the world, the capital of the most vast and powerful empire the earth has ever known. We can now give but a few days to London, barely enough to get a notion of its material dimensions and outward aspects. Size, activity, power, opulence, fill with confused images the wearied brain when the stranger's laborious day is over. The streets of London seem interminable ; its private palaces are countless ; its population consists of many multitudes. Through its avenues flow in counter-currents, from morn till midnight, 2* the streams which send and receive from the ends of the earth, the life-blood of a commerce, which all climes and continents nourish.

From within its precincts issue words, that, sped to the four quarters of the globe, are laws to more than one hundred millions of men. Thither are the ears of states directed ; and when in the Senate, that for ages has had its seat in this still growing capital, the prime minister of England speaks, all the nations hearken. Of the wealth, strength, bulk, grandeur of the realm, London is the centre and palpable evidence. See the docks in the morning, and drive round the Parks in the afternoon, and you behold the might and magnificence of Britain. From this endless throng I was withdrawn yesterday to a scene, a sketch of which will, I know, have for you especial interest. I drove to Highgate Hill, and alighted at the house of Mr. Gil man. From the servant who opened the door I learnt that he had been dead several months.

Mrs. Oilman was at home. I was shown into a neat back drawing-room, where sat an elderly lady in deep mourning. I apologized for having come to her house : it was my only means of getting tidings of one I had known well many years before in Gottingen, and who, I was aware, had been a friend and pupil of Mr. Coleridge durinohis stay under her roof. She made a sign to the servant to withdraw, and then gave way to her emotion. " All gone, all gone !" were the only words she could at first utter. My friend had been dead many years, then Coleridge, and lastly her husband. I was much moved. Mr. had been a son to her: to have been intimate with him was a favorable introduction to herself. She showed me several of Mr. Gilman's books, filled with notes in Coleridge's handwriting, from which are taken many passages of the " Re mains."

In another room was his bust ; and in another a fine picture by Alston, given by him to his great friend. She put into my hands a sonnet in manuscript, written and sent to her by COLERIDGE. 11 Alston, on the death of Coleridge, — the most beautiful thing of the kind I ever read. In the third story is the chamber opened by the most cordial and honorable friendship to the illustrious sufferer, and by him occupied for many years. There was the bed whereon he died. From the window I looked out over a valley upon Caen Wood. Here, his lustrous eyes fixed in devout meditation, Coleridge was wont to behold the sunset. Mrs. Gilman tired not of talking of him, nor I of listening. I thought, how happy, with all his cha grins and disappointments, he had been in finding such friends. You recollect with what affection and hearty thankfulness he speaks of them.

They could sympathize with the philosopher and the poet, as well as with the man. Mrs. Gilman's talk told of converse with one of England's richest minds. To me it was a bright hour, and with feelings of more than esteem for its lonely inmate, I quitted the roof where, in his afflicted old a^ the author of Christabel had found a loving shelter. In a I was again in the whirl of the vast metropolis. I shall bear away from it no more vivid or grateful recollection than that of yester day's visit. Few men have had more genius than Coleridge, more learning, or more uprightness, and in the writings of none is there more soul. His poetry will live with his language. As a prose writer, he is a conscientious seeker of truth, a luminous expounder of the mysteries of life ; and the earnest student of his pages, without accepting in full either his Theology, or his Philosophy, or his Politics, finds himself warmed, instructed and exalted.

Leamington, September, 1840. The day after the date of my last, we lest London for Leam ington in Warwickshire, where we have been for a month. There are times when one can neither write nor even read, I begin to fear that I shall not have many moods for work in Europe. To say nothing of health, one's mind is constantly beset by superficial temptations. All kinds of trifling novelties impor tune the attention. And even when settled for weeks in the same lodging, one is ever possessed by the feeling of instability. My reading at Leamington has been chiefly of newspapers. From them, however, something may be learnt by a stranger. They reflect the surface of society ; and as surfaces mostly take their shape and hue from depths beneath them, one may read in newspapers somewhat more than they are paid for printing.

Even the London " Satirist," that rankest sewer of licentiousness, has a social and political significance. It could only live in the shade of an Aristocracy. The stomach of omnivorous scandal were alone insufficient to digest its gross facts and fabrications. The Peer is dragged through a horse-pond for the sport of the plebeian. The artisan chuckles to see Princes and Nobles wallow ing in dirt, in print. The high are brought so low that the low est can i'^B at them: the proud, who live on contempt, are pulled down to where themselves can be scorned by the basest. The wit consists chiefly in the contrast between the elevation of the game and the filthiness of the ammunition wherewith it is assailed ; between the brilliancy of the mark and the obscurity of the marksman. A register is kept of Bishops, Peeresses, Dukes, Ambassadors, charged with being swindlers, adulterers, buffoons, panders, sycophants * and this is one way of keeping Englishmen in mind that all men are brothers.

It is a weekly sermon, suited to some of the circumstances of the times and people, on the text " But many that are first shall be last." England looks everywhere aristocratical. A dominant idea in English life is possession by inheritance. Property and privilege are nailed by law to names. A man, by force of mind, rises from lowliness to a Dukedom : the man dies, but the Dukedom lives, and lifts into eminence a dullard perhaps, or a reprobate. The soul has departed, and the body is unburied. Counter to the ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. 13 order of nature, the external confers instead of receiving life • and whereas at first a man made the Dukedom, afterwards 'tis the Dukedom that makes the man. Merit rises, but leaves be hind it generations of the unmeritorious not only to feed on its gains, but to possess places that should never be filled but by the deserving.

In an hereditary aristocracy the noble families form knots on the trunk of a nation, drawing to themselves sap which, for the public health, should be equally distributed. Law and custom attach power and influence to names and lands : whoso own these, govern, and so rigid and cherished are primogeniture and entail, that much of them is possessed without an effort or a natural claim. The possessor's whole right is arbitrary and artificial. To ascribe the short-comings of England to the aristocratic principle, were as shallow as to claim for it her many glories. In her development it has played its part according to her constitutional temperament ; but her development has be_i_*_*icher and healthier than that of her neighbors, because her aristocracy has had its roots in the people, or rather because (a false aristocracy having been hitherto in Europe unavoidable) her people have been manly and democratic enough not to suffer one distinct in blood to rear itself among them.

Compare English with any other aristocracy, and this in it is notable and unique ; it does not form a caste. It is not, like the German, or Russian, or Italian, a distinct breed from that of the rest of the nation ; nay, its blood is ever renewed from the veins of the people. This is the spring of its life ; this has kept it in vigor ; this strengthens it against degeneracy. It sucks at the breast of the mighty multitude. Hence at bottom it is, that the English Peer is in any part of the world a hio-her personage than the German Count or Italian Prince. He cannot show pedigrees with them, and this, a cause of mortification to his pride, is the very source of his superiority. From this cause, English Aristocracy is less far removed than any other in Europe from a genuine Aristocracy, or government of the Best, of which, however, it is still but a mockery.

It is not true that all the talent in the realm gravitates towards the House of Lbrds, but some of it does • and as such talent is, of course, in alliance with worldly ambition, the novi homines in Parliament are apt not to be so eminent for principle as for intellect. Until men shall be much purer than they have yet been, no na tion will, under any form of polity, throw up its best men into high places. The working of the representative system with us has revealed the fact, that with free choice a community chooses in the long run men who accurately represent itself. Should therefore Utopia lie embosomed in our future, instead of the pre sent very mixed assemblage, our remote posterity may look for a Congress that will present a shining level of various excellence. Only, that should so blessed an era be in store, Congresses and all other cunning contrivances called governments will be super fluous.