This then was England—the England of which all the world had heard so much—the fortress of the deep: slow to engage in warfare: resolute when once engaged: unconquerable: inexpugnable: with a vitality that defied time and change: with a progress which had something sublime in its calm, fearless, equable march. This was the England which had twice produced the conquerors of France, which had subjected a world to the influence of its science and its literature; whose sails were on every sea; whose arms were in each hemisphere; whose name was a redoubted passport in every land; whose language was spoken on the coasts of every continent. This then was England! And those rocky cliffs, and rugged peaks, in their grand, silent majesty, seemed to me the image and the emblem of the people.
As we slowly sailed on, keeping very near the coast, to get the most favorable wind, and under the directions of a pilot, steering in and out amongst banks, which added the interest of some peril to the general charm of the scenery, the aspect of the country softened. Beautiful green slopes, rich woods, gay looking towns, a picturesque country-house here and there, and a group of cottages crowning a bold cliff or nested at its foot, were seen all along the line of coast, and the very first sight of that country filled the mind with ideas of home comfort, and sweet domestic peace, and the rich prosperity of an industrious, law-fearing people, and an equable, but firm government, more strongly than the aspect of any other land I had ever seen. Oh! how all my prepossessions vanished before that sight—and when about nine o’clock I persuaded Father Bonneville to come upon deck, as we were proceeding calmly up a channel between two lands, both plainly visible, the good old man would hardly believe his eyes that this fair, sunshiny, beautiful country, was the England of which he had so often heard.
It is the most extraordinary fact I know, that no foreigner whom I have ever met with, who has never visited England, (and comparatively few of those who have,) has had the slightest idea of what the land really is, or what are its inhabitants. A Frenchman knows more of what is passing beyond the equator, than he knows of what exists on the other side of the narrow British channel.
The slow progress we made, which was not increased in speed in the least by the cursing and swearing of the pilot—one of the most blasphemous fellows I ever met with—rendered it late in the evening before we approached Portsmouth, whither we were bound to deliver a large cargo of various sorts of wood, to be employed experimentally, in the works of the great naval arsenal there established. It was some occasion of rejoicing, or of ceremony—as far as I recollect, some Prince, or great man, or foreign minister, was taking his departure from the port—and as we approached Spithead, where a number of enormous castle-like vessels were lying, the thunder of cannon from the forts seemed to make the very irresponsive sea echo.
We landed as speedily as possible; and I cannot say that the aspect of humanity did not somewhat detract from the impression of the approach. We were surrounded by a number of greedy and clamorous people, each of whom seemed to have some peculiar object to serve, and escaped from them with difficulty, into a lumbering, dirty, and foul-smelling vehicle, with a broken window, and straw under our feet. We had obtained the name of a good inn, however, and thither we ordered the coachman to drive. The appearance of the place, as we passed through the streets, was somewhat like that of the lower part of Boston; but when we reached the hotel, the aspect of all things was very different, and I must confess much more agreeable. There was a neatness, a comfortableness, an attention without servility which was very pleasant. Two rooms were shown to Father Bonneville and myself as our sleeping rooms, where every thing was clean, precise, and regular, giving one for the first time a complete notion of what is meant by the term snug. In each there was firing ready laid and only waiting to be lighted, and in the sitting-room, which was large and handsome, and connected with one of the bed-rooms, the grate was already blazing with a bright coal fire. We were scarcely installed when a waiter, with an apron as white as snow, and a linen jacket without a spot upon it, came in with a long paper in his hand, which he called a bill of fare, and asked us to choose what we would have for dinner. As Father Bonneville’s stomach was still somewhat under the influence of the sea, I selected what I thought would suit him best, and with a rapidity, truly marvellous, the table was laid with a bright clean damask cloth, and abundance of silver and glass, the fire was poked, bread, and supernumerary plates and dishes set upon a sideboard, and in three minutes after, two waiters appeared, bringing in various articles of food, while a somewhat stately personage at their head, dressed in black coat and black silk stockings, carried a silver covered dish, which he placed at the top of the table.
I had chosen plainly enough, and the cookery was plain also; but the very look of the viands, their tenderness, their excellence, might have provoked gluttony in an anchorite.
Even good Father Bonneville recovered his appetite, and a glass of wine, though savoring too much of brandy, for either his palate or my own, aided in raising his spirits which had been somewhat depressed before.
Leaning his head gently on one side after the cloth was cleared away and the waiters had disappeared, with fine, clear, tall lights upon the table, the curtains closely drawn, and the fire crackling and sparkling, and making strange faces for us in the grate, he began to talk to me about England, in a sort of dreamy memory-like manner, which made me for a moment fear that the good old man’s brain had suffered from grief, and sickness, and time, and that he was slightly wandering.
“It will be fifty years, Louis,” he said, “on the twentieth of this month, since I was last in this land of England. It was a very different land then—or I have much forgotten it. True, I saw not much of the country; for my life was in the capital—a great gloomy city, as it seemed to me, with grand and splendid things going on in it, but which—being excluded from most of them by profession—seemed like pictures in what they call a phantasmagoria, where suddenly out of grim darkness, richly robed figures rush upon you, and are lost again in a moment.”
“I never knew you had been in England, my dear friend,” I replied. “You never told me so, I think.”