Had I challenged my friend to show me a genuine Roger-de-Coverley picture in real life, as the entertainment of my holiday, I must have admitted myself satisfied with this scene at A——. Not only did the old hall, and the church, in all particulars, answer to such a demand; not only did a river run by the church-yard; not only were fields beyond, with cattle grazing, corn sprouting, and hedges looking freshly green; but when I entered the church-yard gate, lo! a rustic party, in holiday trim, were hanging about the old porch, awaiting the re-appearance of a bridal train, which had just gone in. It wanted but the old Knight himself and his friend the Spectator, to make the whole scene worthy of the seventeenth century.
I entered the church, and found it in all respects just such an interior as I had longed to see; apparently the original of many a pleasing print, illustrating Irving’s “Sketch-Book” and similar works, the delight of my childhood, and still affording pleasure in recollection. Its ample nave, widened by rows of aisles, terminated in the arch of a long chancel, at the altar of which stood not only one matrimonial couple, but actually five or six, whom two curates were busily uniting in the holy bonds of wedlock. When the procession returned from the altar, they passed into the vestry to register their names, and one of the curates coming to the door of the church, found another group of villagers, at the font, presenting a child for baptism. Following my friend into the vestry, I was presented to the Vicar himself, who seemed the genius loci in all respects; a venerable gray-haired old gentleman, in his surplice, full six feet in stature, and worthy to sit for a portrait of Dr. Rochecliffe, in Woodstock. It was now time for service, and I was desired to robe myself, and accompany him into the chancel, two curates, the clerk, and some singers leading the way. I was put into a stall, marked with the name of some outlying chapelry of the parish, and appropriate to its incumbent when present. The chancel was filled with monuments, of divers ages and styles. At my left hand lay the effigies of a knight and his good dame, in Elizabethan costume; beyond were a pair of Edward III.’s time; opposite were figures of the period of Henry VI. and much earlier; the knights all in armor, and some with crossed legs, as a token that they had fought in Palestine. The service was intoned by one of the curates, in a severe old tone, authorized in Archbishop Cranmer’s time, which the Vicar afterwards assured me was very ancient, and the only genuine music of the Church of England. When the service was concluded, there was a churching to be attended to, at the south porch of the church, and to this duty one of the curates was deputed, while the Vicar himself detained us in the chancel with an enthusiastic antiquarian illustration of the monuments, to which I was a most willing listener. Here slept the de Erdingtons, and there the Ardens: such and such was their story; and such and such were the merits of the sculpture. Chantrey had visited these figures, and assured him that they were the finest in the kingdom; and if I imagined, at the time, that such was merely Sir Francis’ courtesy to the worthy Vicar, I hope I may be forgiven, for some subsequent acquaintance with such things inclines me to believe the sculptor was sincere. On the walls were the heavy tablets of the Hanoverian period, and our attention was directed to the marked decline of art, from the period of the Crusades down to the Georges, growing worse and worse till George Fourth’s time, which improved the existing style, and was succeeded by a period of rapid return to correct taste and principle. Of all this the Church itself bore witness. Here the worthy man pointed out marks of its various stages of decline: here were barbarous repairs; there a sad blunder of old Church-wardens; here a wanton mutilation of Hanoverianism in 1790, when the very worst things happened to the holy and beautiful house; and there, at last, was a fine restoration of our own times.
We were next conducted to the church-yard, the Vicar having doffed his surplice, and assumed his usual habit, which partook of the dignity and taste of its wearer in a pleasing degree. His hat was specially ecclesiastical, and turned up at the sides, and over his cassock and bands he wore a clerical surtout, so that as he strode over the graves, in his small-clothes, displaying a finely proportioned leg, his entire figure might have been thought contemporary with that of his brother of Wakefield. We now learned the history of the Church, its great tithe, and its various plunderings under successive bad kings. We viewed the tower and spire from every possible point of vantage, and then went round the walls to see where a window had been blocked up, or a doorway broken through, or a pointed arch displaced for a square-headed debasement of the Tudor period. I never found before so good a “sermon in stones.” An ancient yew-tree was pointed out as having afforded boughs, before the reformation, for the celebration of Palm-Sunday. We adjourned to the Vicarage, where luncheon was served in the Library, a room filled with the choicest volumes; and then we were dismissed for a walk, promising to return, for our dinner, at five o’clock.
Our road soon brought us to E ——, where a Romish Chapel had been lately erected, by a man of fortune, in minute and extravagant reproduction of Mediævalism. It was a thing for a glass case; a piece of admirable art; a complete Pugin; and no doubt in the middle ages would have been a very suitable thing for its purposes; but, in our day, it seemed as little suited to Rome as to Canterbury. The Pope himself never saw such a place of worship, and would scarcely know how to use it; and it was chiefly interesting to me as enabling me to see, at a glance, what the finest old Parish Churches of England had been in the days of the Plantagenets. At any rate, they were never Tridentine, and they were always Anglican. This beautiful toy had a frightful Calvary in the church-yard; but the interior was adorned with the finest carvings in Caen stone, and brilliant colorings and gildings à la Froissart. The pulpit was adorned with the story of Becket, in very delicate sculpture, and around the Church were stations, or representations of the different stages of the Passion, carved elaborately in wood, and beautifully colored. The Virgin’s Altar and Chapel were gems of art; and, of course, replenished with striking proofs that they “worship and serve the creature more than the Creator.” I turned away heart-sick, that such unrealities of a dead antiquity could be employing the whole soul of any Englishman, and even tempting some into apostacy from the simple but always dignified Church of their ancestors. Let taste be the handmaid of religion, and all is well: but here was religion led captive by antiquarian fancy.
Many other objects of interest filled up our day. We made a complete circuit, crossing green fields, leaping ditches, and breaking through hedges. Up hill and down dell, and through fragrant country lanes; here a river, and there a pool; now a farm, and then a mill. Yellow gorse was in flower by the road-sides. We met many parties of village people enjoying their Easter sports, and dressed in holiday attire. This day, at least, it seemed merry England still. We came to Witton Manor-house, and thence caught a distant view of the spire, towards which it grew time to return. Immense elms, of darker look than those of New-England, beautified the view in every direction; and the landscape was diversified by many smaller trees, marking the water-courses. We came out, at last, by the old Hall, the exterior of which we closely examined, imagining the scene around its gates when the royal Stuart came to be its guest. Like many other mansions of the olden time, it is deserted now; and the deepening twilight in which we viewed it, harmonized entirely with the thoughts which it inspired. So we returned to the Vicarage, and again were warmly welcomed. At dinner we were presented to Mrs. ——, the Vicar’s wife, who seemed to take the liveliest interest in my country and its Church, and kindly to appreciate my own enjoyment of the events of the day. After dinner the Vicar lighted his long pipe, and continued his exceedingly interesting discourse about the olden time. I could see that he was no admirer of the Crystal Palace, and all that sort of thing. I had met a laudator temporis acti, whose character and venerable appearance gave him a right to lament the follies of our own age; and seldom have I enjoyed more keenly any intellectual treat than I did his arm-chair illustrations of past and present, as compared together. On his favorite topics of Church-music and Architecture he was very earnest and intelligent. The Northamptonshire Churches, he assured me, were the finest in England; and kindly introducing me to the summa fastigia rerum, he took me to the very garret, to hunt up some superb plates of his favorite localities. When I bade adieu to this Vicarage, it was as one leaves an old friend. Such hospitality, and such heart afforded to a stranger! Thus early had I found that old English manners are not yet extinct, and that the fellowship of the Church admits even a foreigner to their fullest enjoyment. It was eleven o’clock when we reached the no less hospitable home from which I started in the morning.
CHAPTER II.
Easter Holidays—Lichfield and Dr. Johnson.
My reverend friend accompanied me to Lichfield, as our occupation for Easter-Tuesday; kindly expressing his desire to have a share in the enthusiasm, with which he justly imagined the first sight of an ancient cathedral would inspire a visiter from America. And although Lichfield is by no means one of the most impressive specimens of English cathedral architecture, as it is small, and not very well kept, I was very glad to begin my pilgrimage to the cathedrals with this venerable Church, the see of the primitive and apostolic St. Chad; the scene of some of the most severe and melancholy outrages of the Great Rebellion; and the sacred spot, in which some of the earliest and most durable impressions were made upon the character of the truly great Dr. Johnson. Familiar with all I expected to see, so far as books and engravings could make me so, it was thrilling to set out for my first visit to such a place, and I was obliged to smother something like anxiety lest the reality should fall far below anticipation. How would it strike me, after all? I was to tread, at last, the hallowed pavement of an ancient minster, in which the sacrifices of religion had been offered for centuries, and occupying a spot which had been drenched with the blood of primitive martyrs; I was to join in the solemn chant of its perpetual services; I was to go round about its walls, and mark well its bulwarks, and survey its towers, and to trace the tokens of those who had once set up their banners there, and broken down its carved work with axes and hammers, and defiled the place of its sanctuary. No English mind, to which ancient things have been familiar from birth, could possibly have appreciated my inward agitation at the prospect of such a day; and, as I took my seat in the train, I could not but wonder at the indifference of my fellow-passengers, to whom booking for Lichfield was an every-day affair, and whose associations with that city were evidently those of mere business, and downright matter-of-fact.
The three spires, crowning the principal towers of the Church, soon came in sight, and beneath its paternal shadow were clustered the humbler roofs of the town. How like a hen gathering her chickens under her wings, is a true cathedral amid the dwellings which it overshadows, and how completely is its true intent set forth by this natural suggestion of its architecture! I had never, before, seen a city purely religious in its prestige, and I felt, as soon as my eyes saw it, the moral worth to a nation of many such cities scattered amid the more busy hives of its industry. On alighting, I could not but remark to my companion, the still and Sabbath-like aspect of the city. “It is generally so,” he answered, “with our cathedral towns; they are unlike all other places.” This is their reproach in the eyes of the economist; but such men never seem to reflect that the cathedral towns owe their existence to the fact they are such, and would, generally, have no population at all, but for their ecclesiastical character. Why can they not see, besides, that such a place as Lichfield is as necessary to a great empire, as a Sheffield? It bred a Johnson—and that was a better product for England than ever came out of a manufactory of cotton or hardware. Probably, just such a mind could have been reared only in just such a place. “You are an idle set of people,” said Boswell to his master, as they entered Lichfield together. “Sir,” replied the despot, “we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.”
But here at length is the cathedral, and service is going on! A moment’s survey of its western front, so old, so enriched with carvings and figures, so defiant of casual observation, and so worthy of careful study—and we pass inside—and here is the nave, and the massive and dim effect of the interior—somehow not all realized at once, and yet overpowering. We reach the choir, and a verger quietly smuggles us within. After a moment’s kneeling, we observe that the Epistle is reading, and the service about to close. In a few minutes my first impressions of worship in a cathedral are complete, and they are very unsatisfactory. I had reached the sanctuary too late for the musical parts of the solemnity, and there was rather a deficiency than an excess of ceremonial, in the parts I saw. A moment’s inspection convinced me that Lichfield Cathedral is, by no means, over-worked by its Dean and Chapter. Alas! I said to myself, what we could do with such a foundation in my own city, in America! We might have such a school of the prophets as should be felt in all the land: we would make it the life of the place; the seat of perpetual preachings, and prayers, and catechizings, and councils; a citadel of power to the faith, and a magazine of holy armor and defences for the Church. Why do not these worthy Canons wake up, and go to work, like genuine sons and successors of St. Chad?