On landing, in the morning, I inwardly saluted the dear soil, on which I was permitted at last to place my feet, and on which I could not feel, altogether, a foreigner. I ran the gauntlet of tide-waiters, and the like, without anything to complain of, and, after a bath at the Adelphi, made my way to St. George’s Church. Here, for the first time, I joined in the worship of our English Mother; though it was difficult to conceive myself a stranger, until the expression—“Victoria, our Queen and Governor”—recalled the fact that I was worshipping with the subjects of an earthly Sovereign, as well as among my brethren of the glorious City of God.
A letter awaited me at the Post Office, which invited me to spend my rest-days with a dear friend. So, after a hasty survey of Liverpool, which I did not care to inspect minutely, I took an early evening train for Warwickshire, and was soon speeding athwart highways, and through hedges, towards my friend’s abode. Even my glimpses of England, from the flying carriage, were enough to occupy my mind delightfully: and often did some scene upon the road-side, or in the sprouting fields, recall incidents of history, or passages of poetic description, which filled me with emotion, and greatly heightened my preconceptions of the pleasures before me, in the tour which I thus began.
So it happened that my first night on shore was passed beneath the roof of a pleasant English parsonage. My host had been, for years, my correspondent, and though we had never met before, we counted ourselves old friends. My bed-room had been prepared for me, and furnished with such things, in the way of books and the like, as, it was fancied, would suit my tastes. One window overlooked the Church; and another, over the churchyard, and its green graves, commanded a pretty view of the fields. It was the Holy Week. I was waked every morning by the bell for early prayers. The Bishop of W—— had sent me his permission to officiate, and when I went to Church, it was always as a priest of the One Communion. I was at home: as much so as if I had lived, for years, in the house where I was a guest. We kept the holy time together, and limited our diversions to pleasant and somewhat professional walks. We visited, for example, a parochial establishment, in which some twenty widows were lodged, by the benevolent charity of an individual. Every widow had her own little cottage, and the entire buildings enclosed a square, in which was their common garden. There was also a small chapel; and in each little home there was a text inscribed over the fire-place, encouraging charity, forbearance, and love to God. Here was a quiet Beguinage, built many years ago, and never heard of: but there are many such, in England, dear to God, and the fruits of his Church. I visited also a school founded by King Edward Sixth; and having, on my first landing at Liverpool, paid a visit to its Blue Coat Hospital, founded by a prosperous seaman of the port, and furnishing a noble example to all sea-port cities, I had seen not a little to charm me with the religion of England, before I had been a week on her shores. Our quiet walks through lanes and by-paths, were not less gratifying in their way. The hedges and the fields, gardens and residences, the farms and the very highways, were full of attractions to my eye, and the more so, because my companion seemed to think he could find nothing to show me! He knew not the heart of an American, fond of his mother country, and for the first time in his life coming into contact with old-fashioned things. A heavy wagon, lumbering along the road to market, and inscribed, “John Trott, Carrier, Ashby-de-la-Zouche”—was enough to set me thinking of past and present, of the poetry of Ivanhoe, and the prose of a market-wain; and when I saw a guide-post, which for years had directed travellers “To Stratford,” only twenty miles off, I could almost have bowed to it. A stage coach came along, bearing “Oxford” on its panels; and the thought that it had started that very morning from the seat of the University, and had raised the dust of Stratford-on-Avon, made its wheels look dignified. To enjoy England one must be an American, and a hearty and earnest member of the Anglican Church. Even the cry of “hot cross buns,” which waked me on Good Friday morning, reviving the song of the nursery, and many more sacred associations with the day, made me thankful that I was no alien to the spirit of the solemnities, which even a traditionary cry in the streets tends to fasten upon the heart and conscience of a nation.
Easter morning came at last, and I was up with the sun, and out for a walk. It came with a bright sunrise, and many cheerful notes from morning birds. I was confident I heard a lark singing high up in the air, for though I could not see the little fellow, I could not mistake the aspiring voice. His Easter Carol was a joyous one, and I set it to the familiar words—
Christ, our Lord, is risen to-day,
Sons of men and angels say!
The hedges were just in leaf: here and there the hawthorn had blossomed, but the weather was too cold for its silvery beauty; and one almost pitied the few adventurous flowers, that, like good Churchmen, seemed only to have come out in conscientious regard to the day. I finished my morning walk by a turn or two through the church-yard, every grave of which was sparkling with dews, illuminated by the Easter sun. How forcibly the scene represented the resurrection: “The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.”
As I entered the parsonage, I heard the bells chiming from a distant parish church. My reverend friend met me with the salutation—“the Lord is risen;” to which I could not but fervently respond in the same primitive spirit. We had a festal breakfast, after family prayers, and soon it was time for service. I could willingly have been a worshipper in private, but submitted to the authority of the parson, and became one of his curates for the day. We emerged from the Vestry in due order of the Psalmist—“the singers going before,” men and boys alike in surplices; the latter with red cheeks, and white ribbons to tie their collars, looking like little chubby cherubs, and when they lifted their voices, sounding still more like them. The chancel was neatly decorated; a few flowers placed over the altar, and an inscription on its cloth, “I am the Bread of Life.” With the choral parts of the service I was surprised, as well as delighted. Boys and men all did their parts, in a manner which would have done honor to the authorities of a Cathedral, and I observed that the congregation generally accompanied the choir, especially the children in the galleries. I had never before heard the Athanasian Hymn as part of the regular Service, and I was greatly impressed by its majestic effect. After the Nicene Creed, I ascended the pulpit, and preached “Jesus and the Resurrection,” and then, returning to the Altar, celebrated the Holy Eucharist, according to the English rite, administering to my reverend brethren and the lay-communicants. To this high privilege I was pressingly invited by the pastor himself, in token of entire communion with the Church in America; and thus I was able to join my personal thanksgivings for the mercies of a voyage, and my prayers for my absent flock and family, to a public exercise of the highest functions of my priesthood, at the altar of an English Church.
The many incidents of the day, which afforded me ever fresh delight, might lose their charm, if reduced to narration, or might strike the reader as proofs of my facility to be gratified. But I cannot but mention that, strolling away, in the afternoon, to see how service was performed at another Church, I was gratified to find it filled with devout worshippers of the plainer sort, attentively listening to a very excellent sermon, appropriate to the day. While the preacher was warmly enlarging upon the promise of a glorious resurrection, and I was quite absorbed in his suggestions, I suddenly caught a glimpse, among the crowd of worshippers, of a figure which startled me, as forcibly illustrative of the words of the preacher, “thy dead men shall live.” It was the recumbent effigy of an old ecclesiastic of the fifteenth century, which I had not observed before. As if listening to the preacher, in joyful hope, there it lay upon the tomb, hands clasped placidly together, and looking steadfastly towards heaven! How it seemed to join the hopes of the dead with those of the living, and to give force to every word which fell from the pulpit concerning the glory which shall be revealed in all those who sleep in Jesus!
With Easter-Monday our holidays, in the school-boy sense, began. My reverend friend proposed a visit to the Vicar, to whose patronage he owed his own incumbency of the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, in B——. Off we started on foot, passing through the suburbs of a populous town, and finally emerging into the open country. We came suddenly in sight of the old Church of A——; its beautiful spire and gables admirably harmonizing with the surrounding view, and telling a silent story of long past years. Beyond it, a majestic avenue of elms disclosed at its extremity a mansion of Elizabethan architecture and date; not the less reverend in my associations for the fact that Charles the First slept in it just before Edgehill fight, and that a cannon-ball, still lodged in the stair-case, attests the perilous honor which his Sacred Majesty was thus pleased to bestow on its occupant. The solemn dignity of an old English residence of this kind, had heretofore been to me a thing of imagination; now it was before my eye, not a whit less pleasing in its reality. The rooks were chattering in its venerable trees, which seemed to divide their predilections about equally with the steeple; and I am told that they are such knowing birds, that whenever you see a rookery, you may be sure that there is both orthodox faith, and at least one sort of good-living in the neighborhood.