CHAPTER X. THE NELSON MONUMENT.
The following day being dry, we walked out to view the wonders of this great commercial city of England, Liverpool. The side-paths were filled with an active and busy population, and the main streets thronged with heavily-laden waggons, conveying to the docks the manufactures of the country, or carrying inward the productions of foreign nations. It was an animating and busy scene.
“This,” said Mr. Hopewell, “is solitude. It is in a place like this, that you feel yourself to be an isolated being, when you are surrounded by multitudes who have no sympathy with you, to whom you are not only wholly unknown, but not one of whom you have ever seen before.
“The solitude of the vast American forest is not equal to this. Encompassed by the great objects of nature, you recognise nature’s God every where; you feel his presence, and rely on his protection. Every thing in a city is artificial, the predominant idea is man; and man, under circumstances like the present, is neither your friend nor protector. You form no part of the social system here. Gregarious by nature, you cannot associate; dependent, you cannot attach yourself; a rational being, you cannot interchange ideas. In seeking the wilderness you enter the abode of solitude, and are naturally and voluntarily alone. On visiting a city, on the contrary, you enter the residence of man, and if you are forced into isolation there, to you it is worse than a desert.
“I know of nothing so depressing as this feeling of unconnected individuality, amidst a dense population like this. But, my friend, there is One who never forsakes us either in the throng or the wilderness, whose ear is always open to our petitions, and who has invited us to rely on his goodness and mercy.”
“You hadn’t ought to feel lonely here, Minister,” said Mr. Slick. “It’s a place we have a right to boast of is Liverpool; we built it, and I’ll tell you what it is, to build two such cities as New York and Liverpool in the short time we did, is sunthin’ to brag of. If there had been no New York, there would have been no Liverpool; but if there had been no Liverpool, there would have been a New York though. They couldn’t do nothin’ without us. We had to build them elegant line-packets for ‘em; they couldn’t build one that could sail, and if she sail’d she couldn’t steer, and if she sail’d and steer’d, she upsot; there was always a screw loose somewhere.
“It cost us a great deal too to build them ere great docks. They cover about seventy acres, I reckon. We have to pay heavy port dues to keep ‘em up, and pay interest on capital. The worst of it is, too, while we pay for all this, we hante got the direction of the works.”
“If you have paid for all these things,” said I, “you had better lay claim to Liverpool. Like the disputed territory (to which it now appears, you knew you had no legal or equitable claim), it is probable you will have half of it ceded to you, for the purpose of conciliation. I admire this boast of yours uncommonly. It reminds me of the conversation we had some years ago, about the device on your “naval button,” of the eagle holding an anchor in its claws—that national emblem of ill-directed ambition and vulgar pretension.”
“I thank you for that hint,” said Mr. Slick, “I was in jeest like; but there is more in it, for all that, than you’d think. It ain’t literal fact, but it is figurative truth. But now I’ll shew you sunthin’ in this town, that’s as false as parjury, sunthin that’s a disgrace to this country and an insult to our great nation, and there is no jeest in it nother, but a downright lie; and, since you go for to throw up to me our naval button with its ‘eagle and anchor,’ I’ll point out to you sunthin’ a hundred thousand million times wus. What was the name o’ that English admiral folks made such a touss about; that cripple-gaited, one-eyed, one-armed little naval critter?”
“Do you mean Lord Nelson?”
“I do,” said he, and pointing to his monument, he continued, “There he is as big as life, five feet nothin’, with his shoes on. Now examine that monument, and tell me if the English don’t know how to brag, as well as some other folks, and whether they don’t brag too sumtimes, when they hante got no right to. There is four figures there a representing the four quarters of the globe in chains, and among them America, a crouchin’ down, and a-beggin’ for life, like a mean heathen Ingin. Well, jist do the civil now, and tell me when that little braggin’ feller ever whipped us, will you? Just tell me the day of the year he was ever able to do it, since his mammy cut the apron string and let him run to seek his fortin’. Heavens and airth, we’d a chawed him right up!
“No, there never was an officer among you, that had any thing to brag of about us but one, and he wasn’t a Britisher—he was a despisable Blue-nose colonist boy of Halifax. When his captain was took below wounded, he was leftenant, so he jist ups and takes command o’ the Shannon, and fit like a tiger and took our splendid frigate the Chesapeake, and that was sumthing to brag on. And what did he get for it? Why colony sarce, half-pay, and leave to make room for Englishers to go over his head; and here is a lyin’ false monument, erected to this man that never even see’d one of our national ships, much less smelt thunder and lightning out of one, that English like, has got this for what he didn’t do.
“I am sorry Mr. Lett [Footnote: This was the man that blew up the Brock monument in Canada. He was a Patriot.] is dead to Canada, or I’d give him a hint about this. I’d say, ‘I hope none of our free and enlightened citizens will blow this lyin’, swaggerin’, bullyin’ monument up? I should be sorry for ‘em to take notice of such vulgar insolence as this; for bullies will brag.’ He’d wink and say, ‘I won’t non-concur with you, Mr. Slick. I hope it won’t be blowed up; but wishes like dreams come contrary ways sometimes, and I shouldn’t much wonder if it bragged till it bust some night.’ It would go for it, that’s a fact. For Mr. Lett has a kind of nateral genius for blowin’ up of monuments.
“Now you talk of our Eagle takin’ an anchor in its claws as bad taste. I won’t say it isn’t; but it is a nation sight better nor this. See what the little admiral critter is about! why he is a stampin’ and a jabbin’ of the iron heel of his boot into the lifeless body of a fallen foe! It’s horrid disgustin’, and ain’t overly brave nother; and to make matters wus, as if this warn’t bad enough, them four emblem figures, have great heavy iron chains on ‘em, and a great enormous sneezer of a lion has one part o’ the chain in its mouth, and is a-growlin’ and a-grinnin’ and a-snarling at ‘em like mad, as much as to say, ‘if you dare to move the sixteen hundredth part of an inch, I will fall to and make mincemeat of you, in less than half no time. I don’t think there never was nothin’ so bad as this, ever seen since the days of old daddy Adam down to this present blessed day, I don’t indeed. So don’t come for to go, Squire, to tarnt me with the Eagle and the anchor no more, for I don’t like it a bit; you’d better look to your ‘Nelson monument’ and let us alone. So come now!”
Amidst much that was coarse, and more that was exaggerated, there was still some foundation for the remarks of the Attache.
“You arrogate a little too much to yourselves,” I observed, “in considering the United States as all America. At the time these brilliant deeds were achieved, which this monument is intended to commemorate, the Spaniards owned a very much greater portion of the transatlantic continent than you now do, and their navy composed a part of the hostile fleets which were destroyed by Lord Nelson. At that time, also, you had no navy, or at all events, so few ships, as scarcely to deserve the name of one; nor had you won for yourselves that high character, which you now so justly enjoy, for skill and gallantry. I agree with you, however, in thinking the monument is in bad taste. The name of Lord Nelson is its own monument. It will survive when these perishable structures, which the pride or the gratitude of his countrymen have erected to perpetuate his fame, shall have mouldered into dust, and been forgotten for ever. If visible objects are thought necessary to suggest the mention of his name oftener that it would otherwise occur to the mind, they should be such as to improve the taste, as well as awaken the patriotism of the beholder. As an American, there is nothing to which you have a right to object, but as a critic, I admit that there is much that you cannot approve in the ‘Nelson Monument.’”