"A packer?"
"Yes. He will come, look at your things, provide whatever may be necessary, and pack them all."
So said, so done. The man came, saw, conquered; he brought a trunk, twine, tacks, wrapping paper, and I stood by in admiration while he folded dresses, arranged bonnets, caressingly enveloped flowers in silk paper, fastened refractory bronzes, and muffled my plaster animals with reference to the critical points of ears and noses,—in short, reduced the whole heterogeneous assortment to place and proportion, shut, locked, corded, labelled, handed me the keys, and it was done. The charge for all this was quite moderate.
How we sped across the channel C. relates. We are spending a few very pleasant days with our kind friends, the L.'s, in London.
ON BOARD THE ARCTIC, Wednesday, September 7.
On Thursday, September 1, we reached York, and visited the beautiful ruins of St. Mary's Abbey, and the magnificent cathedral. How individual is every cathedral! York is not like Westminster, nor like Strasbourg, nor Cologne, any more than Shakspeare is like Milton, or Milton like Homer. In London I attended morning service in Westminster, and explored its labyrinths of historic memories. The reading of the Scriptures in the English tongue, and the sound of the chant, affected me deeply, in contrast with the pictorial and dramatic effects of Romanism in continental churches.
As a simple matter of taste, Protestantism has made these buildings more impressive by reducing them to a stricter unity. The multitude of shrines, candlesticks, pictures, statues, and votive offerings, which make the continental churches resemble museums, are constantly at variance with the majestic grandeur of the general impression. Therein they typify the church to which they belong, which has indeed the grand historic basis and framework of Christianity, though overlaid with extraneous and irrelevant additions.
This Cathedral of York has a severe grandeur peculiar to itself. I saw it with a deep undertone of feeling; for it was the last I should behold.
No one who has appreciated the wonders of a new world of art and association can see, without emotion, the door closing upon it, perhaps forever. I lingered long here, and often turned to gaze again; and after going out, went back, once more, to fill my soul with a last, long look, in which I bade adieu to all the historic memories of the old world. I thought of the words, "We have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
These glorious arches, this sublime mystery of human power and skill, is only a shadow of some eternal substance, which, in the ages to come, God will yet reveal to us.