"——the sounding cataract
Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to him
An appetite;—"
and confessed that to him
"——the meanest flower that blows could give
Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."
Yet notwithstanding all this, he was constrained to acknowledge when he stood upon Westminster Bridge, and saw the vast, dingy metropolis of Britain wearing like a garment the beauty of the morning, that
"Earth has not anything to show more fair,—
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty."
When I was a young man, it was my delight to brush with early steps the dew away, and meet the sun upon the upland lawn. There was a romantic feeling about it that I liked, and I did not object to wet feet. But I have long since put away that depraved taste, although the recent application of India rubber to shoeing purposes has obviated the inconvenience of its gratification. Now, I am contented if I can find a level pavement and a clean crossing, and will gladly give up the woods and verdant fields to less prosaic and more youthful people. Your gout is a sad interferer with early poetical prejudices—but in my own case it has shown me that all such things, like most of our youthful notions, are mere fallacies. It has convinced me that the poetical abounds rather in the smoky, narrow streets of cities, than in the green lanes, the breezy hills, and the broad fields of the country. Like the toad, ugly and venomous, that fell disease is not without its jewel. It has reconciled me to life in town, and has shown me all its advantages and beauties.
If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," then are the crowded streets of the city more improving and elevating to us (if rightly meditated upon) than the academic groves. If you desire society,—in a city you may find it to your taste, however fastidious you may be. If you are a lover of solitude, where can you be more solitary than in the very whirl of a multitude of people intent upon their own pursuits, and all unknown to you! That honey-tongued doctor, St. Bernard, said that he was never less alone than when alone—a sentiment which, in its reversed form, might be uttered by any denizen of a metropolis. I always loved solitude: the old monastic inscription was always a favourite motto of mine:—
"O beata solitudo!
O sola beatitudo!"
But I have never found any solitude like the streets of a large city. I have walked in the cool, quiet cloister of Santa Maria degli Angeli, built amid the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, and—though my footfall was the only sound save the rustling of the foliage, and the song of the birds, and the bubbling of a fountain which seemed tired with its centuries of service, and which seemed to make the stillness and repose of that spacious quadrangle more profound—I could not feel so perfectly alone there as I have often felt in the thronged Boulevards or the busy Strand. Place a mere worldling in those holy precincts, and he would summon mentally around him the companions of his past pleasures, and his worldliness would be increased by his thus being driven to his only resources for overcoming the ungrateful quiet of the place. Introduce a religious man to those consecrated shades, and his devotion would be quickened; he would soon forget the world which he had not loved and which had not loved him, and his face would soon be as unwrinkled, his eye as serene, as those of the monks who dwell there. But place either of them in the most crowded thoroughfare of the city, and the worldling would be made for a time as meditative as the other. When I was a child, I delighted to watch the busy inhabitants of an ant-hill, pursuing their various enterprises with an intentness almost human; and I should be tempted to continue my observations of them, were it not that the streets of my native city offer me a similar, but a more interesting study. Xerxes, we are told, shed tears when he saw his army drawn up before him, and reflected that not one of all that mighty host would be alive a century after. Who could ride from Paddington to London Bridge, through the current of human life that flows ceaselessly through the streets of that great city, without sharing somewhat in the feelings of that tender-hearted monarch?
What are all the sermons that ever were preached from a pulpit, compared to those which may be found in the stones of a city? When we visit Pompeii and Herculaneum, we are thrilled to notice the ruts made by the wheels of chariots centuries ago. The original pavement of the Appian Way, now for some distance visible, carries us back more than almost any of the other antiquities of Rome, to the time when it was trodden by captive kings, and re-echoed with the triumphal march of returning conquerors. I pity him in whom these things awaken no new train of thought. The works of man have outlived their builders by centuries, and still remain a solemn testimony to the power and the nothingness which originated them. Nineveh, Thebes, Troy, Carthage, Tyre, Athens, Rome, London, Paris, have won the crown in their turn, and have passed or will pass away. The dilapidated sculptures of the former have been taken to adorn the museums of the latter, and crowds have gazed and are gazing on them with curious eyes, unmindful of their great lesson of the transitoriness of the glory of the world. These are, indeed, "sermons in stones"; but, like most other sermons, we look rather at their style of finish, than at the deep meaning with which they are so pregnant.