Punctiliously, according to chivalrous custom, did the gorgeously coated heralds and pursuivants proclaim and enforce the laws of the encounter. Proudly did the combatants take lance in hand and rush to the combat,—with eager eyes and beating hearts did matron and maiden look on husband and lover,—and with boisterous shouts of joy did the crowding populace hail the prowess of the conqueror. The scene was typical of the age. It was an exposition of the spirit predominant in our own land, and throughout Europe. It indicated the martial genius of the nation. It was a spectacle to which the Englishman would point with patriotic vanity,—just as the Roman would point, in the days of his great heroes, to the Campus Martius, and the streets that led to the capitol, crowded with the symbols and attendants of a triumph decreed by the republic as a reward for the valour of her warlike sons. Another prince not indeed occupying the throne, but the loving and honoured consort of the illustrious lady who fills it, has proposed a great English festival for the year 1851, and in union, not merely with popular members of the aristocracy but with distinguished representatives of commercial enterprise, and industrial activity, has sent forth the challenge to all lands, and invited people of all ranks to an earnest rivalry for crowns of pre-eminence. Thither have already arrived the weapons with which the contest is to be decided, while multitudes are wending from the far east and west to witness the array, to decide on who are the winners in this strange conflict, and to award to each the prize he merits. This exhibition of art is beautifully significant of the times in which we live. It shows that the taste for arms is no longer predominant; that it has yielded to predilections more worthy of human nature. Bales of merchandise and piles of manufacture are now beginning to be deemed more worthy of regard and admiration, than blood-stained banners, bruised shields, and splintered spears, with other trophies torn from the vanquished. The gauntlet of war is not flung down before the world, but the gage of peace. To the assemblage in Hyde Park—a fraternal intermingling of the children of all lands, with their interchange of ideas and sentiments, conveyed both to the eye and the ear, and the healthful stimulus thus afforded to the further improvements of the arts of human life—many of us are now pointing, not with pride but with thankfulness to Providence, as interpretations of the new spirit that has come over civilized society. Nor can we omit to add that much as the superiority of the military profession was vaunted in the olden time, and strongly as may linger still in many breasts the remnants of that prejudice, we believe that mankind are coming more and more to see that the palm of preference belongs of right rather to him who deepens the channels of industry, and circulates the streams of commerce. To build up and adorn must be better than to desolate—to nourish, comfort, and gladden, than to fight and destroy; and if armies be still needful to protect and defend, if we want them as a police to sustain and execute the law of nations, let it be remembered that such a view can give martial occupations no precedence in the estimation of the wise and good—as he whose business it is to take captive or to punish the violators of public order can never rank above those who minister directly to the happiness and improvement of their fellow citizens.
Nor should we here forget the enduring character of those peaceful victories won in modern times by discovery and invention, of which multiplied mementoes are afforded in the treasures of the Hyde Park Palace. Most favourably do they stand out in contrast with the evanescent nature of military power and valour. “To whatever part of the vision of modern times,” says sir Humphry Davy, “you cast your eyes, you will find marks of superiority and improvement, and I wish to impress upon you the conviction that the results of intellectual labour or scientific genius are permanent, and incapable of being lost. Monarchs change their plans, governments their objects, a fleet or an army effect their object, and then pass away: but a piece of steel touched by the magnet preserves its character for ever, and secures to man the dominions of the trackless ocean.” All the discoveries of knowledge and their application to practical uses are of this description, and we joyfully compare them with the mouldering trophies of the warrior. The spoils of Cressy and Poictiers have long since perished—even the power which Edward and his soldiers established in France soon declined and disappeared, and long since left behind it only a name in history—but the results of scientific study and artistic toil, which have produced the Great Exhibition of 1851, are destined, we doubt not, to last to a remote period, and to improve the condition and adorn the dwellings of unborn millions of the human family.
In closing this chapter, we may remark that unlike the martial gathering at the tournament of Windsor, the concourse of British subjects at the present festival no longer exhibits the distinctions of feudal society. Lordship and vassalage have happily become numbered among the things that are past. Whatever purposes they might subserve at a certain period, they were badges of imperfect civilization, and have given place to a condition of social order in which, though a graduated scale of rank very properly obtains, the equal rights of men as intellectual and moral beings are beginning to be acknowledged. In this “passage” of arts, “not arms,” the humblest are permitted to display their skill;—not as aforetime, when the contest was confined to the men of high descent, the poorest workman may place his productions beside those of the richest sons of fortune. The man who can make no boast of gentle blood, who can appeal to no roll of ancestry, whose name is but of yesterday, who simply, by dint of using his brains and his muscles, his thoughts and ten fingers, has raised himself into notice is permitted and encouraged to contend with the highest born for the prize of honour in these pacific and generous rivalries. This is not among the least pleasing of the contrasts between past and present.
PART III.
VOICES OF HOPE AND WARNING.
“The barrier flood
Was like a lake, or river bright and fair,
A span of waters: yet what power was there,
What mightiness for evil and for good!
Even so doth God protect us, if we be
Virtuous and wise.”Wordsworth.
The invitation we have given to the world, to send its treasures to enrich and bedeck our Crystal Palace, and its tribes to visit us, for the sake not only of inspecting that great emporium but of witnessing our national conditions under its various aspects, implies a conscious greatness, on the part of our country, sufficient to warrant such a bold and unprecedented step. It would be presumptuous and idle for an inferior state to ask her potent neighbours thus to honour her, and no such state would venture on the experiment. Indeed, the resources necessary for carrying out so formidable an enterprise could not be at its command. Great Britain, while she assumes by her present conduct a high standing in the rank of nations, can with perfect ease justify herself in this respect.
Though the mother isle be a tiny speck on the map of the globe, her colonial dependencies extend over the most remote latitudes. Her entire territory embraces an area of eight millions of square miles, exceeding that of Russia by at least one million. It is double the size of the continent of Europe, and out of every six acres of dry land upon the planet it claims one. Two hundred and forty millions of subjects bow to the sceptre of Queen Victoria, the largest united population in existence, next to China. Including the whole empire, a fifth of the human family are subject to her sway. Of this multitude, two hundred millions dwell in India; so that, if that country only remained under British rule, her Majesty could say to the potentates of Europe, “I am equal to you all; for, taking all the men on the surface of the globe, one at least out of every six owns me as supreme.” [54] In the amount of its revenue, the wealth of its commerce, the activity and productiveness of its manufactures, the intersection of its country by roads, canals, and railways, the cheapness and rapid communication of its postal system, and the number of ships which crowd its ports, England knows no equal. Other elements of greatness which cannot be reduced to statistic calculation are to be added to these, such as our government, institutions, laws, liberties and literature.
Dwelling upon the fact of our national greatness, so obviously suggested to us by what is now taking place, we very naturally pause for a moment to inquire into the causes of this distinction. It is to be expected that a combination of many influences and agencies will be found to have contributed to the result. That it is really so the facts of our history abundantly prove. The present state of Great Britain is, in the first place, to be ascribed in no small degree to the peculiar character of the races of whose offspring our population is in the main composed. The thriving myriads who people the cities, till the fields, man the vessels, and constitute or rule the colonies of our country, are descendants of robust and vigorous Teutonic tribes. Saxon, Danish, and Norman were all allied, and possessed a general resemblance in point of physical and intellectual qualities, connected with specific differences, the blending of which, by the intermingling of these families, could not fail to produce very decided effects upon the character of their posterity. The influence of the peculiarities inherent in the natural constitution of different races, once almost entirely overlooked by historians, and now liable to be exaggerated by writers of a certain school, has stamped the impress of its reality and power with conspicuous breadth and vividness upon modern civilization in the contrast which exists between the people of Teutonic and Celtic origin. Our condition, in the next place, is to be attributed to the physical peculiarities of our native land—to our climate, which cannot have failed to affect not only our natural temperament and health, but to some degree our mental phenomena, and to a greater degree our social habits,—to the configuration, soil, and geological strata of our beautiful island: its scenery giving a certain cast and hue to the colouring of our imagination: its rich lands making us an agricultural community: its metallic and coal mines inviting us to task our manufacturing skill: and its vast range of coast-line, with its facilities for the erection of ports and the construction of harbours, impelling us to engage in maritime enterprise. Our condition is further to be ascribed to our insular position, which has led us to seek the empire of the seas, and often preserved us from being ravaged by invaders; while it has given a stimulus to our commerce, with its peaceful and humanizing tendencies. It is also to be traced to forms of government and modes of society which prevailed during the mediæval age, themselves springing from earlier political and social influences that flowed from Roman and German springs. It is as true of nations as of individuals, that the child is father to the man; and old England—the England which is—must have had its destiny in no small measure shaped by young England—the England which has been. From Roman law and usage, Saxon witenagemotes and courts of justice, Norman baronial assemblies and tribunals, and the welding or fusion of them together, so as to produce in some cases a mutual interpenetration,—from these has arisen our peculiar kind of government, political and legal; which, with all its faults, whether in principle or administration, is an agency to which under Divine providence we owe no small degree of our stability and power. The feudal training of a partly Saxon population, through so long a portion of the middle ages, is a fact of great importance in our history, and of potent bearing on us even at the present hour; and it may be worth while to notice that the modern European empires which were bred in the feudal school—England, France, and Germany—take decided precedence of the states to the north and south, which grew up undisciplined by that rude but effective process of education. Our condition has been further influenced most powerfully by the history of the last four hundred years. By the wars of the Roses, which weakened the aristocracy and strengthened the throne, by the political bearing of the Reformation, the rise and progress of the puritan party in the state, the Civil War, and the Commonwealth under Cromwell, all of which developed popular power, and for a while trampled in the dust both crown and coronet. To all this must be added the Revolution of 1688, which adjusted the relation of the three estates of the realm, so as to secure ever since a tolerable degree of harmony in the mutual working of principles and interests, commonly deemed antagonistic. Past changes are the secret of our present stability; the intestine wars of bygone centuries, which shock us as we read their story, were really the harbingers of the national peace, order, and security on which we recently congratulated ourselves when wild revolutionary hurricanes swept over the thrones and institutions of Europe. Continental states, later in their hour of trial than ourselves, have probably to go through somewhat similar eras of struggle yet, before they can win the order and repose which we have received from the veteran champions of English freedom, during the long fight of the seventeenth century. And, to sum up many other influences in one sentence—our national position and character are to be connected with the study and experience of our venerated forefathers—with their knowledge and wisdom, acquired from what they read in the history of older nations, and what they saw of modern ones—with their genius and practical sagacity, the books they wrote, and the deeds they did—with the inventions of art, and the discoveries of science, and the collision of sentiments, opinions, and principles which have from time to time been freely expressed and canvassed. But the most powerful agency remains to be noticed. Above all, our national greatness is the result of Christianity, which has long had a strong hold upon the hearts of multitudes, and which has indirectly exercised a most beneficial influence on others who have had little regard for its doctrinal principles. The sternness of those German tribes from whom we have sprung was not to be subdued; and those better qualities, which mark us as a people, were not to be produced by any power less than the divine power of the Gospel. Christianity, during the middle ages, even under the disadvantage of working through a corrupt church, was the main stay of social order, and wrought out beautiful results in individual character. In its reformed developments it has mainly contributed to the best and most valued of our social improvements. Our noblest heroes have been inspired by its celestial spirit; our most precious institutions have felt the shapening touch of its divine hand; the best portions of our literature reflect the refulgence of its light. And what there may be of virtue, integrity, honour, benevolence, and piety in our land, is the offspring of the heaven-sent truth written in the Bible. It is not Christianity alone, we grant, which makes us what we are; but, without Christianity, it is utterly impossible to imagine that our civilization should have attained its present zenith. In connexion with the working of those marvels of our time—electric telegraphs—it has been found that when a piece of paper has been dipped in a certain chemical solution, a stream of electricity passed over it will imprint the paper with beautiful tints and dyes. So, we may say, that if the other events and influences we have enumerated have been like the chemical solution to the paper, preparing our country for some high destiny, the introduction of the gospel, and its continuance among us, has been like the electric stream passing over the nation, covering it with the fair and beautiful colours which render it the admiration of the world. Nor should the early period of the introduction and establishment of Christianity amongst us be overlooked; for, if it had been delayed to a later period, it is obvious that the circumstance must have proved exceedingly detrimental to our infant civilization. That early introduction and establishment we are apt to regard as a matter of course, though there was no anterior improbability, in the first centuries of the Christian era, of the religious fate of Great Britain being otherwise than that of Eastern empires. Our Island might have attained a stereotyped condition, as India and China have done, and neither received nor craved the Great Gift of God. Then must our civilization however have been correspondingly poor, imperfect, and weak. The arrival of Christianity in this western corner of the world, some seventeen hundred years ago or more, to instruct us in divine truth, and as a loving nurse to foster and cherish our nascent civilization, then exposed in these rough seas like an infant in an “ark of bulrushes,” was the result of a mission from Him, who is sovereign in all his ways, and who chose us for his high purposes; not because we were “more in number than any people, for we were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved us.”
After reviewing the character and causes of our civilization, it is natural to inquire what will be its coming destiny. However some may idly talk, our civilization is far from being necessarily progressive. The history of the great powers of the ancient world reads us admonitory lessons. It is very affecting, after we have mused on Rome in her palmy pride, and fancied we saw one of her great triumphal processions on its way to the Capitol, so expressive of the warlike genius of the republic, sweeping in a tide of living grandeur through the forum, so rich in architectural splendour, to turn to a sentence like this in Eustace’s Tour:—“The glories of the forum are now fled for ever: its temples are fallen: its sanctuaries have crumbled into dust: its colonnades encumber its pavements, now buried under its remains. A herdsman seated on a pedestal, while his oxen were drinking at the fountain, and a few passengers moving at a distance in different directions, were the only living beings that disturbed the solitude and silence that reigned around.” Equally affecting is it when pondering the story of Athens, once the fairest city of the earth, with her statues and temples and memorial tombs—her orators, philosophers, and poets—the very home of artistic beauty and intellectual refinement,—to hear a traveller remark, as he describes the present state of the once unrivalled Areopagus: “Let us wade through the crisp and bearded barley to the Bema, whence Demosthenes was wont to thunder,”—and to think that where the murmur of his vast audience was once heard no sound is awakened now but the rustling of the ears of corn under the passing wind. Nor less affecting is it to read in the old Hebrew prophet, the son of Buzi,—who saw visions of God by the river Chebar,—the tale of the glory and the doom of Tyre; to see her “situate at the entry of the sea,” when the builders have perfected her beauty, and all her “ship boards” are of “fir trees”—with “cedars from Lebanon” for “masts,”—and “the oaks of Bashan” for “oars”—and “ivory brought out of the Isles of Chittim” for “benches,”—and “fine linen with bordered work from Egypt for sails,”—and “the inhabitants of Zidon and Arrad” for “mariners,”—and they of Persia and Lud and Phut and Arrad are in her army men of war, who “hang their shields upon the wall;” and the merchants “trade in her fairs” “in all sorts of things;”—and she is “replenished and made very glorious in the midst of the seas,” and her “wisdom and her understanding have got her riches and gold and silver,” and “every precious stone is her covering,” and “the princes of the sea” sit on their thrones and wear their “broidered garments,”—and then to read her doom fulfilled to the letter: “Behold I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up, and they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock; it shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.”
To minds of imagination and sensibility, more sombre than sanguine, it is not surprising that with these facts in remembrance the future decline of this great empire should seem probable; and perhaps by such minds a picture of its mother city in some coming age is painted so as to resemble her precursors in the path of grandeur and decay:—And here and there stand a broken arch of one of her bridges, the waters idly rolling on, no richly freighted ships upon their bosom any longer; and yonder are her once proud senate halls, a mouldering heap covered with wild flowers, a solitude like the Roman Coliseum; and around the spot where now the miracle of modern art is crowded by the people of all lands, there stretches a solitary wilderness where the traveller rambles amidst tangled grass and brushwood, and sits down and muses in some quiet dell, left by the dried-up lake of the Serpentine, and haunted by memories of the fall of London. Calm and intelligent reflection however suggests that there is far less of probability than poetry in such anticipations.