Who can despair when he thinks of a form like that, so full of life and bliss! Nature, that made such human forms to match the butterfly and the bee on June mornings when the lime-trees are in blossom, has surely enough of happiness in store to satisfy us all, somewhere, some time.
It was pleasant, indeed, to see the treasures of those galleries, of the British Museum, and of so charming a place as Hampton Court, open to everybody. In the National Gallery one finds a throng of nursery-maids, and men just come from their work; true, they make a great deal of noise thronging to and fro on the uncarpeted floors in their thick boots, and noise from which, when penetrated by the atmosphere of Art, men in the thickest boots would know how to refrain; still I felt that the sight of such objects must be gradually doing them a great deal of good. The British Museum would, in itself, be an education for a man who should go there once a week, and think and read at his leisure moments about what he saw.
Hampton Court I saw in the gloom, and rain, and my chief recollections are of the magnificent yew-trees beneath whose shelter—the work of ages—I took refuge from the pelting shower. The expectations cherished from childhood about the Cartoons were all baffled; there was no light by which they could be seen. But I must hope to visit Hampton Court again in the time of roses.
The Zoölogical Gardens are another pleasure of the million, since, although something is paid there, it is so little that almost all can afford it. To me, it is a vast pleasure to see animals where they can show out their habits or instincts, and to see them assembled from, all climates and countries, amid verdure and with room enough, as they are here, is a true poem. They have a fine lion, the first I ever saw that realized the idea we have of the king of the animal world; but the groan and roar of this one were equally royal. The eagles were fine, but rather disgraced themselves. It is a trait of English piety, which would, no doubt, find its defenders among ourselves, not to feed the animals on Sunday, that their keepers may have rest; at least this was the explanation given us by one of these men of the state of ravenous hunger in which we found them on the Monday. I half hope he was jesting with us. Certain it is that the eagles were wild with famine, and even the grandest of them, who had eyed us at first as if we were not fit to live in the same zone with him, when the meat came round, after a short struggle to maintain his dignity, joined in wild shriek and scramble with the rest.
Sir John Soane's Museum I visited, containing the sarcophagus described by Dr. Waagen, Hogarth's pictures, a fine Canaletto, and a manuscript of Tasso. It fills the house once the residence of his body, still of his mind. It is not a mind with which I have sympathy; I found there no law of harmony, and it annoyed me to see things all jumbled together as if in an old curiosity-shop. Nevertheless it was a generous bequest, and much may perhaps be found there of value to him who takes time to seek.
The Gardens at Kew delighted me, thereabouts all was so green, and still one could indulge at leisure in the humorous and fantastic associations that cluster around the name of Kew, like the curls of a "big wig" round the serene and sleepy face of its wearer. Here are fourteen green-houses: in one you find all the palms; in another, the productions of the regions of snow; in another, those squibs and humorsome utterances of Nature, the cactuses,—ay! there I saw the great-grandfather of all the cactuses, a hoary, solemn plant, declared to be a thousand years old, disdaining to say if it is not really much, older; in yet another, the most exquisitely minute plants, delicate as the tracery of frostwork, too delicate for the bowers of fairies, such at least as visit the gross brains of earthly poets.
The Reform Club was the only one of those splendid establishments that I visited. Certainly the force of comfort can no farther go, nor can anything be better contrived to make dressing, eating, news-getting, and even sleeping (for there are bedrooms as well as dressing-rooms for those who will), as comfortable as can be imagined. Yet to me this palace of so many "single gentlemen rolled into one" seemed stupidly comfortable, in the absence of that elegant arrangement and vivacious atmosphere which only women can inspire. In the kitchen, indeed, I met them, and on that account it seemed the pleasantest part of the building,—though even there they are but the servants of servants. There reigned supreme a genius in his way, who has published a work on Cookery, and around him his pupils,—young men who pay a handsome yearly fee for novitiate under his instruction. I was not sorry, however, to see men predominant in the cooking department, as I hope to see that and washing transferred to their care in the progress of things, since they are "the stronger sex."
The arrangements of this kitchen were very fine, combining great convenience with neatness, and even elegance. Fourier himself might have taken pleasure in them. Thence we passed into the private apartments of the artist, and found them full of pictures by his wife, an artist in another walk. One or two of them had been engraved. She was an Englishwoman.
A whimsical little excursion we made on occasion of the anniversary of the wedding-day of two of my friends. They had often enjoyed reading the account of John Gilpin's in America, and now thought that, as they were in England and near enough, they would celebrate theirs also at "the Bell at Edmonton." I accompanied them with "a little foot-page," to eke out the train, pretty and graceful and playful enough for the train of a princess. But our excursion turned out somewhat of a failure, in an opposite way to Gilpin's. Whereas he went too fast, we went too slow. First we took coach and went through Cheapside to take omnibus at (strange misnomer!) the Flower-Pot. But Gilpin could never have had his race through Cheapside as it is in its present crowded state; we were obliged to proceed at a funeral pace. We missed the omnibus, and when we took the next one it went with the slowness of a "family horse" in the old chaise of a New England deacon, and, after all, only took us half-way. At the half-way house a carriage was to be sought. The lady who let it, and all her grooms, were to be allowed time to recover from their consternation at so unusual a move as strangers taking a carriage to dine at the little inn at Edmonton, now a mere alehouse, before we could be allowed to proceed. The English stand lost in amaze at "Yankee notions," with their quick come and go, and it is impossible to make them "go ahead" in the zigzag chain-lightning path, unless you push them. A rather old part of the plan had been a pilgrimage to the grave of Lamb, with a collateral view to the rural beauties of Edmonton, but night had fallen on all such hopes two hours at least before we reached the Bell. There, indeed, we found them somewhat more alert to comprehend our wishes; they laughed when we spoke of Gilpin, showed us a print of the race and the window where Mrs. Gilpin must have stood,—balcony, alas! there was none; allowed us to make our own fire, and provided us a wedding dinner of tough meat and stale bread. Nevertheless we danced, dined, paid (I believe), and celebrated the wedding quite to our satisfaction, though in the space of half an hour, as we knew friends were even at that moment expecting us to tea at some miles' distance. But it is always pleasant in this world of routine to act out a freak. "Such a one," said an English gentleman, "one of us would rarely have dreamed of, much, less acted." "Why, was it not pleasant?" "Oh, very! but so out of the way!"