The general interest felt in this country in the author of Ion, may excuse my particular mention of a party at Lady Talfourd’s, in which the literary and legal professions were more fully represented. Here one saw the Barons of Westminster-Hall in their proper persons, without the burthen of robes and wigs: while moving about the rooms, one encountered a poet or popular novelist, and not least, the amiable host himself. He made kind inquiries concerning several of my distinguished countrymen, and touching upon matters of law, paid a very high compliment to the ability and legal skill with which the trial of Professor Webster had been managed in Boston. Judge Talfourd appeared then in the prime of life, and inspired me with respect by his modest but dignified personal demeanour. He has since died a death, on the bench, more impressive than that of heroes on the field.
With regard to the tone of society in general, I think every stranger must be struck with its elevation, whether intellectually or morally considered. An English gentleman is generally highly educated. Society consists of cultivated persons, male and female, whose accomplishments are not displayed, but exist as a matter of course, and as essential to one’s part in the duties and civilities of life. No one ventures to feel better informed than his neighbour, and hence there is a general deference to other men’s opinions, and a reserve in expressing one’s own, which is highly significant of extreme civilization and refinement. Such a state of society, however, has its drawbacks. Character often becomes neutralized, and genius itself dulled and flattened, where to distinguish one’s self is felt to be an impropriety, and where the manifestation of decided thought or feeling would be eccentric, and even rude. Hence I observed a sort of uniformity in manner and expression, which is sometimes depressing; and when upon some private occasion, I discovered that the smooth, quiet personage whom I had seen only in the dull propriety in which the pressure of company had held him, like a single stone in an arch, was a man of feeling, of taste, of varied information, and accurate learning, I said to myself—‘what a lamentable waste is here!’ This man who should have been enriching the world with his stores of erudition and of reflection, has never conceived of himself as having anything to impart, or by which his fellow-man should profit. His accomplishments are, like his fortune and respectability, his mere personal qualifications for a position in society, in which he is contented merely to move, without shining, or dispensing anything more than the genial warmth of good humour and benevolence. There are thousands of such men in England, living and dying in the most exquisite relish of social pleasures, and deriving daily satisfaction from their own mental resources, but contributing nothing to the increase of the world’s intellectual wealth, and never dreaming of their attainments as talents which they are bound to employ. They live among educated men—knowledge is a drug in their market: of course they know this or that, but so does everybody else, and what have they to confer? It would be an impertinence for them (so they seem to feel) to teach or to dictate an opinion. Dr. Johnson has left a remark, in the records of his biographer, upon this tendency of refinement to abase individual merit, and I am sure a dogmatist like himself would not now be supported in English society. So very odd and unaccountable a phenomenon, even were his manners less forbidding, would be intolerable in intelligent circles, to say nothing of those of splendour and fashion. England exhibits just now the smooth and polished surface of a social condition which has no marked inequalities. Even rank fails to create those chasms and elevations which were once so striking and formidable. Gentlemen are very nearly alike, whatever their antecedents. All are well-informed, all have travelled, all are well-bred, and alike familiar with the world. The Universities, too, have done not a little to assimilate characters. Minds have been fashioned in one mould, and opinions shaped by one pattern. Even language and expression, and personal carriage are reduced to a common formula. I closely watched the pronunciation of thorough-bred men, and often drew them into classical quotations, to observe their delicacy in prosody, and their manner of pronouncing the Latin. I prefer very much the German or Italian theories of classical orthoepy; but for mere longs and shorts, there is no such adept as an English tongue. They carry it into the vernacular, however, against all analogy, and often startle an American by what seems elaborate pedantry and affectation. You are confounded by an allusion to Longfellow’s Hyperion—accent on the penultimate; or you are puzzled by the inquiry whether any doctrinal differences exist between the English and American Churches—second syllable made studiously long! Yet the man would be thought an intolerable ass who should display his knowledge of purely French or Teutonic derivatives, by a similar deference to etymology: and no one thinks of carrying out this principle in all words of like analogy. Usage, however, with all its caprices, settles every dispute; and we Americans have no resource but conformity, unless we prefer to appear provincial. English usage must be the law of the English tongue, and the fashions of the court and capital are the standard of usage.
Among the authors of England, I had desired to see especially Mr. Samuel Rogers, who is now the last survivor of a brilliant literary epoch, and whose long familiarity with the historical personages of a past generation, would of itself be enough to make him a man of note, and a patriarch in the republic of letters. Though now above ninety years of age, he still renders his elegant habitation an attractive resort, and I was indebted to him for attentions which were the more valuable, as he was, at that time, suffering from an accident, and hence peculiarly entitled to deny himself entirely to strangers. His house, in St. James’s-street, has been often described, and its beautiful opening on the Green Park is familiar from engravings. Here every Englishman of literary note, during the last half century, has been at some time a guest, and if its walls could but Boswellize the wit which they have heard around the table of its hospitable master, no collection of Memorabilia with which the world is acquainted, could at all be compared with it. Here I met the aged poet, at breakfast; Sir Charles and Lady Lyell completing the party. He talked of the past as one to whom the present was less a reality, and it seemed strange to hear him speak of Mrs. Piozzi, as if he had been one of the old circle at Thrale’s. When a boy, he rang Dr. Johnson’s bell, in Bolt Court, in a fit of ambition to see the literary colossus of the time, but his heart failed him at the sticking point, and he ran away before the door was opened. Possibly the old sage himself responded to the call, and as he retired in a fit of indignation, moralizing on the growing impertinence of the age, how little did he imagine that the interruption was a signal tribute to his genius, from one who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, should be himself an object of veneration as the Nestor of Literature!
CHAPTER XVII.
Oxford—Martyrs—Boat-race.
My reader will be ready to forget London for a time; and perhaps also to accompany me on an excursion. I went to Oxford, for a few days, to keep some appointments, and found it far more delightful than before, as the men were all up, and everything looking bright and lively. The trees in the gardens and meadows were in fine leaf; and many shrubs in full blossom, so that what Nature has done for Oxford began to be as apparent as the enchantments it derives from Art. In the gardens of Exeter College I observed a Virginia creeper, luxuriantly covering the walls, and had a good opportunity of contrasting its effect with that of the ivy, for which, in our country, it is so generally substituted. It is certainly more cheerful, but lacks the dignity of its sullen rival. There is a fig-tree trained against the college walls, said to be that favourite of one of its former worthies, which a graceless Soph once stripped of its fruit, leaving only a single fig, which he labelled, “a fig for Dr. Kennicott.” Many are the minor traditions of Oxford, of a similar sort. Every tree and shrub seems to have a history, and “green memories” are here something more than a figure of speech.
A Sunday at Oxford affords one, at least, the opportunity for constant attendance upon Divine Service. I went, at 7 o’clock, to St. Mary’s, where the Holy Eucharist was celebrated, and where I thankfully received the Sacrament, with a considerable number of the parishioners, and members of the University. After breakfast, at Jesus College, I returned to St. Mary’s, to hear the Bampton Lecturer—Mr. Wilson, of St John’s. The lecture was delivered, of course, before the University, the Undergraduates filling the gallery, and the Dons the nave below. The lecturer, preceded by the bedels, entered in company with the Vice-Chancellor, to whom he bowed, as he turned to the pulpit stairs. Mounting to his place, and covering his face with his cap, he offered his private prayers, and then began the bidding-prayers, in the usual form—making special mention of St. John’s College, and of its benefactors, “such as were Archbishop Laud, etc.” But let no one imagine that this was an instance of spontaneous reverence for the Anglican Cyprian, for the lecture which followed might have moved the very bones of the martyr in his grave, so utterly did it conflict with the doctrines of the Church. It was evidently received with great dissatisfaction. It was decidedly clever, as to form and structure; but savoured of Bunsenism quite too much for the taste of a genuine Churchman. It was read in a dull, dry manner, more befitting the doctrine than the occasion. But, I must own that I greatly admire this way of University preaching; and the freedom of a sermon, thus delivered, by itself, apart from the service, and as a distinct thing, having its own time and object. Subsequently, the Church having been emptied, and filled again by a different congregation, the parochial service and sermon went on in all respects, as usual. Then, in the afternoon, there was a sermon before the University, preceded by the bidding-prayers, as in the morning; save that the preacher made special mention of Oriel College, of which he was a member, commemorating its benefactors, “such as were King Edward the Second, etc.” Then followed a powerful sermon, which evidently produced a great sensation. The Church was crowded, for the preacher was a general favourite. His manner was earnest, and often eloquent: and, in tones of most solemn and vigorous rebuke, he protested against the slavish dependence to which the State seemed resolved to reduce the Church. The Gorham case seemed to be in the preacher’s mind, and perhaps the flagrant elevation to the Episcopate of Dr. Hampden.
The parochial service again followed; after which I dined in the Hall of Oriel, where I met the preacher among his old collegians, and greatly enjoyed the company in general. After dinner, we went to service in the College Chapel; and after this there were still services in several places, though I did not attend them. It would have been hard to have named an hour in the whole day when services were not going on somewhere in this City of Holy Places.
In the Common-room of Oriel, I met with a very agreeable person, to whom I owed not a little of subsequent pleasure, and to whom I became warmly attached. At his instance, during the week, I substituted the more recherché pleasure of a visit to Nuneham Courtenay, for the more ordinary cockney pilgrimage to Blenheim. I went in his company, and in his own carriage, and had no reason to regret my adoption of his advice. The grounds of Nuneham are proverbial for the beauty of genuine English landscape, and a range in this noble park affords continual prospects of cultivated fields, and snug hamlets, and the silvery windings of the Isis through the meads. The gardens and shrubbery are interspersed with urns and tablets and inscriptions, in the Shenstone style, and among them I observed a cenotaph of the poet Mason. The taste of the more artificial charms of Nuneham is somewhat antiquated, and smacks of the Hanoverian age, now happily departing: but it does one good to see these things, as illustrating the period to which they belong. I was all the time thinking of Jemmy Thomson, as I rambled among the elms and yews of Nuneham; and especially when I came to a clump of those spreading beeches, with smooth columnar trunks, on which his swains were wont to endite their amatory verses. Glimpses of Oxford, which one catches now and then, add a special charm to this noble demesne, and the Thames glitters here and there in the view to enliven a broad survey of rural scenery, which can hardly be said to lack anything appropriate to its English character. The Church of Nuneham is the grand mistake. It looks like a fane erected to the goddess of the wood, by some ancient Grecian, and provokes something less pleasing than a smile, when one learns that it is the successor of a genuine old English church, which was judged a blemish to the classical charms of the house and gardens. Of the rectory, although it is of modern design, I can speak with more satisfaction. It is a charming residence, such as an American parson seldom inhabits, but which one loves to see others enjoying, and adorning with every domestic grace. Here we lunched, substantially, concluding our repast with gooseberry-tart and cream, such as no one ever tastes except in England; thus gaining a conception of the rich glebe and pasturage of Nuneham, which a more sentimental tourist might fail to carry away from a mere feast of the eye.
We visited the parish-school, and I was particularly struck with the neatness and order of the little academy, and not less with the exactness of the instruction. The children of the peasantry were the scholars, and, instead of jackets, the boys nearly all wore the little plaited shirt of coarse brown linen, so familiar to us from pictures, but so unlike anything worn by American children, however humble in station. They were very closely examined by their teachers, and their answers were generally correct. America was pointed out on the map, and when I was introduced to the little urchins as an American, it was amusing to see their surprise. They seemed to pity me for living so very far away! Then they were catechized. It did me good to hear the familiar words, so often uttered by little voices around the chancel rails of my own parish-church, now repeated, in the same way, by these little English Christians. Some of the subsidiary questions amused me, and not less the answers, especially those under the phrase—“to honour and obey the Queen, and all that are put in authority under her.” Then came the clause—“to order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters.” “And who are your betters?” asked the master: to which, “Lady Waldegrave,” and other names of the gentle inhabitants of Nuneham Courtenay, were most loyally responded. In practical matters of a more strictly religious character, the questions and replies were highly gratifying, and often caused the tears to spring in my eyes, in view of the manifold blessings which such instructions cannot fail to convey to a nation, and to the souls of all who receive them. Alas! for the schools of our country, where the children come together under the blight of divers creeds, or of utter unbelief, and where in solemn deference to the spirit of sect and party, religion is daily less and less a tolerated element in the training of immortal souls!