“Visions of Glory, spare my aching sight;
Ye unborn ages crowd not on my soul.”
When the services were over, it took some time to emancipate myself from the spell of the place, and I wandered to and fro in the Abbey. A dear friend, a fellow of Oriel College, caught me by the hand, and pointed to the slab beneath my feet. It covered Samuel Johnson. “Surely old Samuel’s bones must have been stirred to-day by the Church’s Jubilee,” said I, “but don’t think you have shown me his grave for the first time; I already know all the choice spots in this floor, and have knelt on that very slab, and given God thanks for his servant Samuel.”
I dined that day with a party of zealous Churchmen, and supporters of the S. P. G.; and, in the evening, went to an ecclesiastical conversazione at Willis’ Rooms. We drove, in a private carriage, through Hyde Park and St. James’s, and were set down at “Almack’s” as superbly as if we had come on as gay an errand as is the more usual one of its visitors. But those brilliant rooms were now thronged with a graver company, the object of the festivity being to do honour to foreign ecclesiastics and pastors, who might be in London on occasion of the Jubilee and the Crystal Palace. I was presented to the Primate, who conversed with a simplicity of manner the most impressive, and invited me to Lambeth with a sort of cordiality, the very reverse of that stateliness and etiquette which it was not unnatural to expect in the address of one so exalted in station. I was much pleased with his venerable appearance, and accepted the kind appointment of an hour, which he named, for my visit to the Archiepiscopal palace, with peculiar pleasure. His Grace was surrounded by his brother Bishops, among whom I saw, for the first time, the Archbishop of Dublin; a prelate of acknowledged talent, but whose gifts would have better fitted the Academy than the throne of a Primate. An Oriental Archimandrite completed the group in this quarter; and other parts of the rooms swarmed with solemn looking men, talking German and French with their English entertainers, or vainly essaying civilities in Low Dutch and Danish. One of these personages, who looked as if he might have figured, with credit to himself, at the Synod of Dort, attacked me in the dialect of the Flemings, to my utter consternation. I could only stammer out a little gibberish, as a reply, and precipitately sounded a retreat, in utter distrust of my ability to sustain a further conversation with my unknown colloquist to mutual satisfaction. I soon afterward made the acquaintance of the Chevalier Bunsen, with whom, as one of the curiosities of the age, I was not sorry to have this opportunity of exchanging a few words. The Chevalier is at home on every subject, and I found him communicative on the favourite topic which I ventured to start, by referring to a common friend, whom he had known very well in Rome. One after another I encountered, during the evening, many eminent and agreeable personages, among whom were officers of the army, dignitaries of the Church, several Bishops, and the Earl of Harrowby. The company was altogether a brilliant one, in spite of the polemical figures who constituted so important a part of it; and the stars and decorations of the nobility, and of foreign officials, were quite conspicuous, among the white neckerchiefs and black broadcloth of the ecclesiastics and pastors.
I breakfasted, next morning, with the Rector of St. Martin’s in the Fields, and then accompanied him, on a visiting tour, about his parish. First, I went to the parish-school, which had lately been rebuilt, and was deemed a model. Prince Albert, who interests himself in such things, was to visit it that very day, and I was kindly asked by the Rector to be of the company, but was otherwise engaged. One of the peculiarities of this building was its ingenious contrivance of a play-ground—if that may be so called, which was some fifty or sixty feet above the earth. Land being costly in the parish of St. Martin’s, the building was planned with a double roof, the lower one being flat, and surrounded with a high fence, affording a safe and ample space for the recreation of the children; while the roof above them served as an awning against the sun, or as a shelter from the rain. A fine view, and as pure an atmosphere as London can afford, were additional advantages of the arrangement. Next, we visited the parochial baths and wash-houses, in which the poor have the best opportunity for washing and drying clothes, and also of keeping their persons in a neat and wholesome condition, at the cost of a few pennies. The benevolence and utility of the establishment must be obvious. Next the Rector took me to see Coleman, one of his parishioners, who was then in his 102d year, and a fine and healthy-looking man at that. What is better, he is unfeignedly pious, and joined devoutly in the prayers which were offered by his pastor, responding with fervour, and saying, in reply to one of his questions—“I know that my Redeemer liveth.” This aged Christian owes his serene and consoling faith, under God, to his early training in the charity school, established in this parish by Archbishop Tennison. He was a pupil in that school when George the Second died, and remembers the tolling of the great bell of St. Paul’s, to announce the event. He also remembers the Coronation of George the Third, and the procession, which he saw as it went to the Abbey, on that occasion. Think of his living to see, as he did, the procession of Victoria to the Crystal Palace, with the same pair of eyes! It was gratifying to hear his testimony to the vast improvement in manners which has been going on in London since he was a boy. He remembers the nights and days which Hogarth has so frightfully depicted; and he says, too truly, that to be a gentleman, was to be a rake, almost universally, when he was a boy. “It was as much as one’s life was worth,” he says, “to walk the streets, at night, in those days.” The same day, I heard Mr. Sydney Herbert remark, in his speech at St. Martin’s Hall, that this age is reputed better than its antecessors, chiefly because, while it cares not what a man may be at heart, it compels him to be decent.
This meeting at St. Martin’s Hall, by the way, must not be forgotten. It was part of the Jubilee. Prince Albert presided, and did so, I must allow, in a very princely style, so far as his personal bearing was concerned. As he entered, which he did with great dignity, the whole assembly rose, and sang God Save the Queen. This struck me as exceedingly handsome and appropriate: but I was not so well pleased with the fulsome adulation with which some of the speakers, afterwards, seemed to think it necessary to bedaub him. He was himself guilty of a flagrant breach of propriety, as it struck me, in alluding to William of Orange, who happened to be on the throne when the Charter of the S. P. G. was signed and sealed, as “the greatest sovereign who ever reigned in Great Britain.” To this ill-judged compliment to one of the foreign adventurers who have succeeded in planting themselves in British palaces, a few gaping mouths in the auditory ejaculated the response, “hear, hear”—for which the sentence was evidently a studied catch: but I am glad to say that the greater part of the assembly was not such as to be so entrapped. It was a failure, absolutely, though the Times reported “great applause,” as a matter of course. When a prince condescends to set up for a critic upon royalty, he deserves no better success: and the ill taste of this particular attempt, on such an occasion, seemed to me offensive in the extreme. It is plain that the prince has learned his historical alphabet from Macaulay, and has studied no further: but I considered this straw as indicative of a coming wind, with which the founder of the House of Coburg should not have threatened the Church so soon. He may yet reap the whirlwind himself, or bequeath it to his children: for it is evident, to me, that amiable and estimable as he is, in many respects, and beloved as he is by a loyal people as the consort of their Queen, he is an alien to true British feeling, and an enemy to the Anglican Church. He would Germanize the nation if possible; above all, he longs to Bunsenize the national religion.
On the whole, I found myself too much of an American Churchman to relish this meeting. It was humiliating to see the venerable Archbishop paying such deference to one who, though so nearly allied to the throne, is in no wise entitled to especial homage from so august a personage as the Primate of all England: and I considered it insufferable that such official personages as Lord John Russell, and Earl Grey, should be chief speakers, merely because of their position, although flagrant enemies of the Church’s holiest principles. A more turgid piece of bombast than the former delivered, I have never chanced to hear, and his whole appearance was, to me, ludicrously revolting. It must not be supposed, however, that the meeting went off without effect. It was nobly redeemed by admirable speeches from Sydney Herbert, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Inglis, and the Earl of Harrowby, as well as from the Bishops of Oxford and London. Lord Harrowby, in particular, reflecting on the Walpoles and the Graftons of former ministerial epochs with just severity, gave Lord John some wise counsels, while apparently congratulating him on his widely different policy, in patronizing Missions! Mr. Sydney Herbert was truly eloquent, and threw out several sparkling abstractions, which greatly raised my estimate of his mental power; but the natural orator, among them all, was the Bishop of Oxford, whose delightful voice, pleading for the creation of a staff of native Missionaries in Africa, India, and China, infused a thrill of feeling through every heart, as he wound up with the scriptural example of those whose first transports, in receiving the Gospel, found vent in the expression—“We do hear them speak, in our tongues, the wonderful works of God.”
As duly appointed, I waited on the Archbishop at Lambeth, and was received with very little ceremony, into his study,—a spacious apartment, plainly furnished, and overlooking the garden of the Palace. His manner was, as before, extremely simple and affable; and he conversed upon divers ecclesiastical subjects with an appearance of zeal, and with a general tone of elevated churchmanship, for which he is certainly not celebrated as a Primate. It was with the profoundest reverence that I listened to the successor of Augustine and of Cranmer; and not without deference did I venture to express myself, in his presence, even on American subjects. As I rose to depart, he followed me to the door of the room, with something exceedingly winning and paternal in his farewell; and kindly invited me to dine with him, on a day which he named, as the only one when he expected to be at home for some time. This pleasure I was forced to deny myself, owing to a previous engagement; and I accordingly concluded my visit to Lambeth, at this time, by going the usual rounds in company with an official, to whom His Grace committed me. My readers may well imagine my emotions in surveying the Lollard’s Tower, the gallery of historic portraits, the library, and other apartments, of this most interesting pile; but perhaps they might not wholly appreciate the feelings with which I knelt in the chapel, and returned thanks for our American Episcopacy, on the spot where it was imparted to the saintly White. I lingered, for a long time, in the gardens, thinking of Laud, of Juxon, and of Sancroft; and dwelling, with peculiar gratification in my imagination, upon the scenes between Laud and “Mr. Hyde,” of which these gardens were the witness, as mentioned in the pictured pages of Clarendon.
The solemn octave of the Jubilee included Sunday the 22d of June, on which day special sermons were preached in many pulpits, in London, and collections made in behalf of the Society. I received an appointment to preach at Bow Church, and accordingly did so, taking as a text Genesis ix. 27, and endeavouring to show that the existence of our own Church, in the Western World, is a fulfilment of the prophecy, “God shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem.” But a greater privilege awaited me in the evening of the same day, when it was my happy lot to perform a similar duty, in the Temple Church, standing in Hooker’s pulpit, and preaching to a congregation of the highest intelligence and character, upon the spread of the Church in America. It was a fine afternoon, and that glorious Church was filled with such an assembly as I had never before seen gathered together on an occasion of ordinary worship. Besides the Bishops of Winchester and Edinburgh, who happened to be present, with the Master of the Temple, and other clergy, the benchers were numerously represented, and the finest legal talent of the empire was undoubtedly there collected. To judge by the large attendance of ladies, (some of them of the highest rank,) the Templars were also accompanied by their families: to whom, I suppose, the music furnishes a powerful attraction, as it is justly celebrated; and the organ, though selected two hundred years ago, by the critical ear of the bloody Judge Jeffreys, is of a tone proverbially sweet. The attendance of strangers, drawn together by the same attraction, was also very large, the round church as well as the choir, being apparently filled. I was much moved by the anthem—“Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King”—and when it was time for me to ascend the pulpit, and to preach to such an Areopagus, it may be imagined that it was not without feelings of emotion, such as I had never before experienced in the performance of my official duties. That old historic spot, where Hooker had struggled to preserve the falling Church of a single kingdom, was now occupied by my pilgrim feet; and coming from a new world, I was to attest, before such an assembly, and in the presence of God, the blessings which that noble struggle had secured, not to England only, but through her to the wilds of America, and to the unborn generations of a new and mighty people in another hemisphere. The text was the prophecy of David, (Psalm xlv. 17,) “Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children, whom thou mayest make princes in all lands:” and it was my effort, (as I trust I may say, without too free a personal confession) to improve so interesting an opportunity, in commending my country to the respect of those who heard me, while confessing the just claims upon her gratitude, of the Mother land, from which she is proud to derive the blessings of the Gospel, and the institutions of enlightened freedom, guarded by the supremacy of law. After service, the Master of the Temple, taking me into his adjoining residence, showed me a table which once belonged to his great predecessor, Hooker, and allowed me to sit down in Hooker’s chair. He also showed me some memorials of Bishop Heber, whose missionary labours in India he had assisted, as his chaplain. The evening was passed under the domestic roof of Dr. Warren, the eminent bencher, whose remarkable production, “Ten thousand a-year,” has added to his other distinctions, that of reforming the romance literature of the age, and of introducing a tone of high Christian morality, in place of that fashionable depravity which Bulwer had caught from Byron, and substituted for the decent propriety of Scott. To his polite hospitalities I was indebted for some of my happiest hours in London: and the conclusion of this Holy Day was rendered memorable by many warm expressions of regard for my country and her Church, inspired by his conversation, in the genial society of his family and friends.