Thus it is in the sculptured marble you may in Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, and the old cathedrals of the country, read England's history again, and seem to approach nearer, and have a more realizing sense of her great men and their deeds, than from the pages of the printed volume.
In the rush of sight-seeing we had nigh forgotten Guildhall, the home of Gog and Magog, and the City Hall of London. And, in truth, it is really not much of a sight to see, in comparison with the many others that claim the visitor's attention; but we drifted down to the end of King Street one day, which carried us straight into the entrance of Guildhall, at the end of the street. The great entrance hall is quite imposing, being about one hundred and fifty feet long, fifty wide, and fifty high, lighted with windows of painted glass, while at one end, in a sort of raised gallery, stand the big wooden figures of the city giants, Gog and Magog. Around this great hall are several monuments and groups; among them, those to the Earl of Chatham, Wellington, and Nelson, and statues of Edward VI., Queen Elizabeth, and Charles I. The hall is used for elections, city meetings, and banquets—those noted feasts at which turtle soup is supposed to be so prominent a feature in the bill of fare.
There are in London quite a number of the buildings or halls of the guilds or trade associations of old times—nearly fifty, I believe. Many of the trades have ceased to exist—their very names almost obsolete. For instance, the association of loriners, united girdlers, and the bowyers. The members of some of these old corporations or guilds are by no means all artisans, and about all they have to do is to manage the charities and trust funds that have descended to them. They meet but once or twice a year, and then in the old hall, furbished up for the occasion. The very best of good eating and drinking is provided, and perhaps, on certain anniversaries, the curious records and annals of the old society are produced, and, perchance, some old anniversary ceremony gone through with.
Some of the societies have rare and curious relics, which are brought out on these occasions. For instance, the fish-mongers have the dagger with which Wat Tyler was stabbed by one of its members; the armorers and braziers some fine old silver work; and the barber surgeons a fine, large picture, by Holbein, representing Henry VIII. presenting the charter to their company. In Goldsmiths' Hall we saw a splendid specimen of the goldsmiths' work, in the shape of a gold chandelier, weighing over one thousand ounces. This hall was rebuilt in 1834, although the goldsmiths owned the site in 1323. By an act of Parliament, all articles of gold or silver must be assayed or stamped by this company before being sold.
In Threadneedle Street, appropriately placed, we saw Merchant Tailors' Hall, built about 1667; and in the old hall of this company James I., and his son Prince Henry, once dined with the company, when verses composed especially for the occasion by Ben Jonson were recited. Here, in Threadneedle Street, is the Bank of England, sometimes called the "Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," which is also one of the sights of the metropolis, and covers a quadrangular space of nearly four acres. Armed with a letter of introduction from one of the directors, or, more fortunate, in company with one of them, if you chance to enjoy the acquaintance of any of those worthies, you can make the tour of this wonderful establishment, finishing with the treasure vault, where you have the tantalizing privilege of holding a million or two dollars' worth of English bank notes in your hand, and "hefting" ingots of gold and bricks of silver.
Then there are twenty-four directors to this bank, and about a thousand persons employed in it: clerks commence at the age of seventeen, receiving fifty pounds per annum for their service, and the salary of a chief of department is twelve hundred pounds. Some old, gray-headed men that we saw, who had grown round-shouldered over their ledgers, we were informed had been in the employ of the bank for over forty years. The operation of collecting the specie for a bank note, which I tested, is one requiring considerable red tape and circumlocution. You go from clerk to clerk, registering your address and date of presentation of notes and their number, till finally you reach the individual who is weighing and shovelling out sovereigns, who passes out the specie for the paper. These notes, after being once presented, are never re-issued, but kept on hand, first having the signatures torn off, for seven years, and then burned. We visited the storehouse of these "relics of departed worth," in the bank, where millions of tatterdemalions were heaped up, awaiting their fiery doom.
That royal gift of Cardinal Wolsey to Henry VIII.—Hampton Court Palace—is not only noted for its associations of bluff King Hal and the ambitious cardinal, but as being the residence of several of the most celebrated of the British sovereigns. The estate went into the clutches of Henry in 1526. It is about twelve miles from Hyde Park, in London, and the palace covers about eight acres of ground. It was here that Edward VI. was born, and his mother, Jane Seymour, died a few days after; and it was here that Catharine Howard first appeared as Henry VIII.'s queen, in 1540; and in this palace the licentious brute married his sixth wife, Catherine Parr; here Edward VI. lived a portion of his short reign, Queen Mary spent her honeymoon, and Queen Elizabeth visited. Charles II. was here during the plague in London; and Oliver Cromwell saw one daughter married and another die beneath its roof; Charles II. and James II., William III. and George II., have all lived and held court in this famous old place, which figures so frequently in the pages of English history; and so short a distance is it from London, and so cheap are the excursion trains, that, on a pleasant day a mechanic, his wife, and child may go out, visit the magnificent old palace, all its rooms, see all its paintings, its superb acres of lawn, forests, garden, fountains, court-yards, and walks for two shillings (the railroad fare to go and return for the three). All at Hampton Court is open free to the public; they may even walk, run, and roll over on the grass, if they like, if not rude or misbehaved. Many spend a whole holiday in the palace and its delightful grounds, and on the pleasant Sunday afternoon I visited them, there were, at least, ten thousand persons present; yet, so vast is the estate, that, with the exception of the passage through the different rooms, which are noted as picture galleries, there was no feeling as of a crowd of visitors.
The guides, who went through the different apartments, explaining their history, and pointing out the celebrated and beautiful paintings, asked for no fee or reward, although many a visitor drops a few pence into their not unwilling hands.
Entering the palace, we went by way of the King's Grand Staircase, as it is called, the walls and ceilings covered with elegant allegorical frescoes, and representations of heathen deities—Pan, Ceres, Jupiter, Juno; Time surrounded by the signs of the zodiac, and Cupids with flowers; Fame blowing her trumpet, and Peace bearing the palm branch; Bacchus with his grapes, and Diana seated upon the half moon; Hercules with his lion skin and club, and Ganymede, on the eagle, presenting the cup to Jove. From this grand entrance, with necks aching from the upward gaze, we came to the Guard-room, a spacious hall, some sixty feet in length, with muskets, halberds, spears, and daggers disposed upon the walls, forming various fantastic figures.
From thence the visitor passes into the first of the series of state apartments, which is entitled the King's Presence Chamber, and, after looking up at the old chandelier, made in the reign of Queen Anne, suspended from the ceiling, the guide begins to point out and mention a few of the leading pictures in each room. As there are eighteen or twenty of these rooms, and over a thousand pictures suspended upon the walls, to say nothing of the florid and elaborate decorations of the ceilings by Verio, the number is far too great to be inspected satisfactorily at a single visit; and upon many scarce more than a passing glance can be bestowed as you pass along with the group of sight-seers. I jotted in my note-book several of those before which I halted longest, such as Charles I. by Vandyke, Ignatius Loyola by Titian, and the portraits of beauties of Charles II.'s gay court, which are one of the great attractions of the collection. These portraits were painted by Sir Peter Lely, and some of them very beautifully executed: here are the Princess Mary, as Diana; Anne Hyde, Duchess of York; the Duchess of Richmond, whom Charles wanted to marry, and, if she looked like her portrait, we applaud his taste in female beauty; the sprightly, laughing face of Nell Gwynne; Lady Middleton, another beauty, but a frail one; and the Countess of Ossory, a virtuous one amid the vice and licentiousness of the "merry monarch's" reign.