Graham's Magazine, Vol. XL, No. 4, April 1852

by Various

I arrived in London. They told me there was nobody in London. It was not the season in which the higher classes were in London. Besides which, the cholera was there; and all well-to-do people, who were able, had fled from the infected city. And that indeed might be the reason why there seemed to me to be so many out of health—why that pale countenance of want was so visible. Certain it is, that it became to me as a Medusa’s head, which stood between me and every thing beautiful and great in that great capital, the rich life and physiognomy of which would otherwise have enchanted me. But as it was, the palaces, and the statues, and the noble parks, Hampstead and Piccadilly, and Belgravia and Westminster, and the Tower, and even the Thames itself, with all its ever-changing life, were no more than the decorations of a great tragedy. And when in St. Paul’s, I heard the great roar of the voice of London—that roar, which, as it is said, never is silent, but merely slumbers for an hour between three and four o’clock in the morning—when I heard that voice in that empty church, where there was no divine worship, and looked up into its beautiful cupola, which was filled by no song of praise, but only by that resounding, roaring voice, a dark chaotic roar, then seemed I to perceive the sound of the rivers of fate rolling onward through time over falling kingdoms and people, and bearing them onward down into an immeasurable grave! It was but for a moment, but it was a horrible dream!

One sight I beheld in London which made me look up with rejoicing, which made me think “that old Yggdrasil is still budding.” This was the so-called metropolitan buildings; a structure of many homes in one great mass of building, erected by a society of enlightened men for the use of the poorer working class, to provide respectable families of that class with excellent dwellings at a reasonable rate, where they might possess that which is of the most indispensable importance to the rich, as well as to the poor, if they are to enjoy health both of body and soul—light, air, and water, pure as God created them for the use of mankind. The sight of these homes, and of the families that inhabited them, as well as of the newly-erected extensive public baths and wash-houses for the same class, together with the assurance that these institutions already, in the second year of their establishment, returned more than full interest to their projectors, produced the happiest impression which I at this time received of England. These were to me as seed of the future, which gave the promise of verdant shoots in the old tree.—

Nevertheless, when I left the shores of England, and saw thick autumnal fog enveloping them, it was with a sorrowful feeling for the Old world; and with an inquiring glance of longing and hope, I turned myself to the New.

Two years passed on—a sun-bright, glowing dream, full of the vigor of life—it was again autumn, and I was again in England. Autumn met me there with cold, and rain, and tempest, with the most horrible weather that can be imagined, and such as I had never seen on the other side of the globe. But in social life, everywhere throughout the mental atmosphere, a different spirit prevailed. There I perceived with astonishment and joy, there it was that of spring.

The Crystal Palace was its full-blown, magnificent blossom—and like swarms of rejoicing bees flew the human throng upon the wings of steam, backward and forward, to the great world’s blossom; there all the nations met together, there all manufactures, there all industry, and every kind of product, unfolded their flowers for the observation and the joy of all; a Cactus grandiflora, such as the world had never till then seen.

I perceived more clearly every day of my stay in England, that this period is one of a general awakening to a new, fresh life. In the manufacturing districts, in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, every where, I heard the same conversation among all classes; prosperity was universal and still advancing. That pale countenance of want, which had on my first visit appeared to me so appalling, I now no longer saw as formerly; and even where it was seen stealing along, like a gloomy shadow near to the tables of abundance, it appeared to me no longer as a cloud filled with the breath of cholera, darkening the face of heaven, but rather as one of those clouds over which the wind and sun have power, and which are swallowed up, which vanish in space, in the bright ether. . . .

The low price of grain, the consequence of free-trade, has produced this change: and it was universally acknowledged. The only objection I heard brought against the low price of corn was this, “The people are become proud and careless; I have seen great pieces of bread thrown out into the streets!”

Yet bread alone had not really done all this; a nobler bread is required for man in order that he may fully derive the benefit even of the outward material bread. Nor had free-trade alone done all this either; there is also another power besides this which has been operative in that general awakening, in that wholesome spirit which I perceived in England.

If this power were to be symbolized by art, it would present us with a female figure—a beautiful woman with the child at her breast, is the symbol which art makes use of, to express human love. And, perhaps, art is right in so doing. And perhaps it is the female principle in human nature, which, in the present new life in England, enables the man’s hand to accomplish the work; because from the most remote antiquity, has a male deity been chosen to represent trade, and navigation and mining, and all occupation of the earth. But, so says one of the oldest sagas of the world—when the divine life revealed itself on the earth, a divine pair came forth. In a lotus-flower which ascended from the waters of the Nile, were born at the same time Osiris and Isis, and together they went forth to bless the earth.

I saw the truth of this saga confirmed by what I beheld in England. But in speaking of this, I shall especially linger on the new proofs thereof, in the new Institutions which promise a more beautiful future to the human race; not upon the old and insufficient, however good they may be, but upon the new, because it is upon the new that my eye has been especially directed.