LETTER VII.
Tired of visiting, dining out, and endless new acquaintances, I determined yesterday, to encounter, if possible, nobody who would need to be spoken to, but to see sights all day, and try what mere absorption would do in the way of mental refreshment. I began with what I presume, is the most varied show in the world, the Colosseum in the Regent’s Park. This is such an aggregation of wonders that the visitor must have very small compassion not to be sorry for everybody who has not been there, and very large confidence in his powers of description to undertake to describe it. How so much is represented in so small a compass is as puzzling as the miracles of clairvoyance. If one were conjured, bodily, indeed, for five minutes to the ruins of Athens, the next five minutes left lounging in a Moorish palace, then dropped into Switzerland, then held in an angel’s lap high over London—winding up with a wilderness of galleries, aviaries, conservatories, statuary and grottoes—it would, probably, be not a bit more astonishing than a visit to the Colosseum, and, of course, not near so agreeable. The guide-book, by the way, with drawings of everything, which one buys for a shilling at the door, is rather graphically written, and an extract from it may help me in conveying an idea of the place:—
“The conservatories are elaborately decorated in the Arabesque style. In the centre is the Gothic aviary, superbly fitted up with gilt carved work and looking-glass, such as Isabella of Castile might be supposed to have constructed amidst the relics of a Moorish palace; or Abu-Abdallah, with true Arabian gallantry, to have conjured up for the solace of some fair Christian captive, within the enchanted halls of his own Alhambra. But of the ingenious and tasteful combination of Moorish and Gothic architecture, and decoration of this spot, amidst the murmur of sparkling fountains, the songs of gaily-plumed birds, and the fragrance of exotic plants and flowers, may transport us in imagination to the country of the Cid and the borders of the Xenil, we have but to open the glass door which leads to the exterior promenade; and, in an instant, the still more picturesque and instructive sight of golden pinnacles and eastern domes, springing up amongst the marble columns and mouldering frescoes of ancient Greece and Rome, wafts us at once to the banks of the Bosphorus or the shores of the Mediterranean. In these days of steam-navigation, and overland journeys to India, when Parisian flâneurs are to be met among the ruins of Carthage, and Bond street loungers in the great desert of Sahara—when, in turning a corner of the great pyramid you may run against your London friend in a Chesterfield wrapper, or, in ascending Mount Lebanon, recognize a recent partner at Almack’s, in all the glory of her last new bonnet from Maradan’s, the reality of the scene before us is nowise impaired by the modern European costume of the visitors, and we may sit us down upon this mossy stone, and look upon them as the latest arrivals by “the Oriental,” via Malta and Alexandria, or by the “Dampschiff” from Vienna to the “Golden Horn.” It is perhaps more than half an hour since we flew from the top of St. Paul’s to the south of Spain, to the shores of the Mediterranean, to the verge of Christendom. We must hurry home by the shortest cut—through Switzerland—but not without halting for one moment to gaze from the windows of an Alpine cottage upon the never-trodden snow, and the hoar glaciers of Mont Blanc. We enter then the chalet, or Swiss cottage, guided by the roar of the mountain torrent, which, leaping over the nearest rocks, comes thundering down the precipices, and, after forming a small lake in front of the cottage windows, overflows its stony basin, and with a second fall, disappears in the gulf below.”
This flowery naming-over of the things one sees at the Colosseum is anything but adequate to the reality—the Swiss valley (which has a real waterfall, forty-feet high, and a real lake) being, particularly, a complete illusion. And there is another illusion quite as complete, which you would scarcely think possible—a view down upon London by night, with all the streets illuminated, the shop-windows glittering, the markets crowded, and the moon shining over all! I could not persuade myself that part of it, at least, was not a bit of real London let in to the view, and I believed in the moon till I had seen it for half an hour—just such a one being really outside. The guide-book says:—“We confidently state, that it is next to impossible that any person can lean over the balustrade for five or six minutes, and mark the fleecy clouds sailing steadily along, lighted as they come within the influence of the halo-encircled moon, which has just emerged from the smoke of the great city, and then fading from sight, or occasionally obscuring the stars that twinkle here and there in the apparently illimitable space—we say it is next to impossible that they can, after such contemplation, recall themselves immediately to the conviction that the scene before them is but an illusion. Add to this the reflection of the innumerable lights upon the bridges in the river, and that of the moon, as the flow of the tide occasionally causes the ripple to catch for a moment, again to be lost as speedily, the silvery beams of the rising luminary, the brilliancy of the shops in Cheapside, and on Ludgate Hill—the colored lights of the chemists in all directions—the flaring naked gas in the open stalls and markets—the cold, pale, moonlight on the windows of Christ Church Hospital, and other high and isolated buildings, and nothing short of reality can equal the amazing coup d’œil before us.”
I wanted some one to monosyllable-ize to—(for it is as bad to be astonished alone, as it is to be astonishingly tired of people) but with this one lack, the morning and the evening—(I returned in the evening,) were plenitudes of occupation. I felt afterwards, and feel now, as if I had been to the far countries represented, and up in air and down in caverns. Many a traveller earns the right really to wear the green turban, whose impressions and memories are less worth having.
One sight I saw, by the way, that was not “down on the bill.” The centre of the Colosseum is occupied by a circular gallery, carpeted and filled with lounges, and in many respects luxurious, besides exhibiting an admirable collection of statuary. I was standing before a bust of Mrs. Norton, (the poetess) and comparing its exquisite chiselling with my remembrance of her beautiful features, when a party of ladies with very refined, soft voices, approached a statue near by, and began criticising it. An instinctive feeling of delicacy forbad me to look around, at first, as the statue was the rude figure of a reclining woman, but a very masculine guttural following a critical remark, I ventured to turn my head towards the party. Three ladies, dressed with the most respectable elegance, one elderly, and the other two, apparently her daughters, and both pretty, stood in a patronizing tripod—surrounding a negro! It was a lad of nineteen or twenty, in a jacket and trowsers, entirely black, and as ugly and ill-shaped a negro as you could easily find. His hands showed that he had been used to hard work, and he had evidently newly arrived in London. The ladies were making a pet of him. One caught hold of his arm, and pointed to a bust, and another pulled him to see a statue, and they were evidently enjoying the sights, only through his astonishment. The figure of the naked saint, asleep, with the cross in her bosom, did not seem to shock the ladies, but did seem to shock the negro. These ladies were probably enthusiasts in anti-slavery, and had got a protégé who was interesting as having been a slave. At least, this was the only theory I could build to account for their excessive interest in him—but one need not be an American to wonder at their mode of amusing him. I see, daily, blacks, walking with white women, and occupying seats in the dress-circle of theatres, quite unnoticed by the English; but it was a degree too much to see a black boy in a fair way to have his taste corrupted by white ladies!
There is a superb bust of D’Orsay’s father in this collection—by the Count himself. It represents a magnificent man. My letter is getting long.