After a very cursory inspection of the ill-judged sculpture in the nave and transepts, and a more affectionate visit to the statue of Howard, to the kneeling figure of Heber, and that of Bishop Middleton, which represents him as confirming two Indian children, I had time to survey the crypts before the Evening Service. Here lie Reynolds, and West, and Lawrence, and several of their brothers of the Academy; and here, in a sort of chapel, which admits the external air and light through a grating, lies the architect himself—the truly great Sir Christopher.
“Lie heavy on him earth, for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee!”
But now you come to the circular vault, upheld by massive pillars, and lighted partially from the dome above, but more strongly by gas-burners, where you stand before the sepulchre of Nelson. The sarcophagus is an empty relic of Cardinal Wolsey’s ambition, but looks so modern, that one is tempted to believe he ordered it in prophetic spirit, expressly for its present purpose. After all, it is not Nelson’s sepulchre, for he is buried under it. The hero and the ecclesiastic have alike been compelled to accept a “little earth for charity,” and this hollow semblance of a coffin dangles like that of Mohammed, between them. Alas! that Nelson’s tomb should suggest any meaner thoughts than those of his genius and glory; but it was in fact a relief to turn to the simple monument of Collingwood, and to be able to say, here lies not only a decaying hero, but a slumbering Christian.
I looked for the monument of Dr. Donne with especial interest. You grope amid interesting relics of old St. Paul’s, a fragment of Lord Chancellor Hatton’s effigy, a piece of Dean Colet’s, and another of Sir Nicholas Bacon’s. At last, in one corner of a dismal cell, feebly lighted by a grated window from without, you see the old worthy, in his shroud, precisely as Walton describes the figure, but leaning against the wall like a ghost, or rather like one of the dried corpses in the Morgue, on the Great St. Bernard. You think of his truly heavenly mind, and strange life; of his rusty old poetry, and sound old sermons; of his ancestor, Sir Thomas More, and of his descendant, William Cowper. It is strange that no one ever thinks of Cowper as the inheritor of this double genius, and as owing some features of his intellect not less to the rhyming Dean of St. Paul’s, than to the author of Utopia. One would hope that under the Deanship of another poet, the graceful and scholarly Milman, this one historic relic of the old cathedral, and of a brother of the sacred lyre, might be set in a fitter place, or at least more decently erected in the place where it now seems irreverently set aside to moulder and be forgotten.
The Thames Tunnel was pronounced, by Canning, “the greatest bore in England:” he was bored to death by applications for Government aid in completing it, and hence spoke feelingly. It is now apparently done, though not finished, and is a cockney wonder, well worth a visit. Were it only in actual use as a thoroughfare under the bed of the Thames, thus realizing the original conception, it would not be without an element of true sublimity; but to see it degraded to a miserable show, scarcely paying for its keeper, and serving only to enable the visitor to say that he has walked under the Thames, is enough to justify one in naming it a folly. Its uses, however, may even yet be demonstrated to be great, and I cannot but feel that this noble work has not been executed for naught. It will even yet have a history. Pity it is that the Duke of Wellington had no occasion to use it, in planning the defences of the city on the memorable tenth of April, 1848. It needed but the passage of a single regiment, under his command, through this mysterious excavation, for actual purposes of surprise and stratagem, to give the place a charm forever; and had such a passage been by chance accomplished in the night, and led by the Duke in person, for the sake of some masterly result, a new and romantic interest would have been added as well to his own marvellous story, as to that of the Tunnel itself. If the caverny wine vaults of the London Docks were but connected with the Tunnel on one side, and the Tower on the other, so that there might be a sub-marine passage to the Tower, from the Surrey side, it would at least furnish associations of a military character to this daring achievement of Brunel.
Such were some of the random suggestions of my fancy, as I descended the shaft, on the Wapping-side. I entered the dark hole, with a vague realization of the descent of the Trojan hero into the shades of old. The first glance reveals a narrow street, with very narrow side-walks, or trottoirs, arched over with masonry, which is quite devoid of anything remarkable in itself. It is here and there a little damp-looking, but not more so perhaps than tunnels under ground. Gas burns along the dismal vault, but hardly lights it; enabling one to amuse himself with the thought of seeing fire beneath a river, and to pick his way comfortably; but otherwise only rendering darkness visible. The corresponding way, or the other half, is quite filled up with stalls and shops, in which they offer, here a raree-show, and there refreshments. A wretched grinding organ fills the cavern with doleful music, and little peddlers offer things for sale. So few, however, seem to be passing, that one wonders how they find it worth while to carry on this mermaid merchandise. You are so bored with their importunity, that it is not without an effort that you compose yourself, and reflect that fishes are swimming, and that the keels of countless ships, with the wealth of nations in their holds, are passing over your head, and that the very smallest breach in the arch above would “hurl an ocean on your march below.” This is the one great idea of the Tunnel. I passed through and emerged at Rotherhithe, and then descending, returned in the same way. It occurred to me, what if Guy Fawkes the Second should fill this place with gunpowder, and touch off the magazine, by electric telegraph, just as a royal fleet was passing the critical point! Strange to say, it might be so arranged, by means of the telegraph and Cardinal Wiseman, that the Pope himself, sitting in his armchair at the Vatican, might produce this terrible explosion in the Thames; and I suppose he is quite as likely to do it, as he is to effect the other results which he and the Cardinal (or the Cardinal and he) are actually attempting.
The shipping which one beholds in the vicinity of the Tunnel, is such as to produce a powerful impression upon the mind, in favour of the vast scale on which the commerce of London is maintained with the whole world. Truly—“the harvest of the river is her revenue, and she is a mart of nations.” As compared with the port of New-York, the narrowness of the river here rather increases than lessens the effect, bringing the forest of masts and the bulk of steamers close together, while, in our great harbour, they are stretched along such a circuit of shore, or anchored in such an expanse of water, as materially diminishes the general impression of multitude and immensity. It must be remembered, however, that in estimating the tonnage of London, a vast number of vessels are included which are never thought of at the Custom-house in New-York. Thus, our river craft, which supply the city with produce for the market, such as eggs, poultry and the like, with the whole fleet of our domestic steamers, go for nothing with us; while on the contrary, the hoys that bring the like from the Low Countries and the coast of France, with the steamers that ply to other British ports, are all religiously reckoned in the commercial lists of the British Metropolis. With this abatement, one is surprised to see how respectable a proportion the tonnage of New-York bears to that of the populous Tyre of England; a proportion which is probably destined to a direct reversal at no distant period, when once the Pacific and the Australian and Asiatic coasts are fairly opened to our direct trade through the Isthmus of Darien.
CHAPTER XV.
London Sights and By-places.