I dare not say that it was a piece of Working-Men's College good-fellowship,—but, led either by that or by English hospitality, one of the gentlemen who officiated, to whom I had introduced myself with no privilege but that of a "fellow-commoner" at the College, not only showed me every courtesy there, but afterwards offered me every service which could facilitate my objects in London. This fact is worth repeating, because it shows, at least, what is possible in such an institution.
After an introduction so cordial, it may well be supposed that I often looked in on the College of an evening. If I were in that part of the town when evening came on, I made the Library my club-room, to write a note or to waste an hour. I am sure, that, had it been in my power, I should have dropped in often,—so pleasant was it to watch the modest work of the place, and the energy of the crowded rooms,—and so new to me the aspects of English life it gave. I felt quite sure that the College was gaining ground, on the whole. I can easily understand that some classes drag,—perhaps some studies, which the managers would be most glad to see successful. But, on the whole, there seems spirit and energy,—and of course success.
My travelling companion, Chiron, is fond of twitting me as to the success of one of the "social meetings" to which I dragged him, promising to show him something of working-men's life. We arrived too early. But the Secretary told us that the garden was lighted up for drill, and that the working-men's battalion was drilling there. It was under the charge of Sergeant Reed, a medal soldier from the Crimea. At that time England was in one of her periodical fits of expecting an invasion. For some reason they will not call on every able-bodied man to serve in a militia;—I thought because they were afraid to arm all their people,—though no Englishman so explained it to me. They did, however, call for volunteers from those classes of society which could afford to buy uniforms and obtain "practice-grounds three hundred yards in length." This included, I should say, about eleven of the thirty-seven castes of English society. It intentionally left out those beneath,—as it did all Ireland. Mr. Hughes, however, seized on it as an admirable chance for his College,—its common feeling, its gymnastics,—and many other "good things," looking down the future. In general, the drills which were going on all over England were sad things to me. This idea of staking guineas against sous, when the contest with Napoleon did come,—staking an English judge, for instance, with his rifle, against some wretched conscript whom Napoleon had been drilling thoroughly, with his, seemed and seems to me wretched policy. But—if it were to be done this way—of course the best thing possible was to work as widely as you could in getting your recruits; and,—if England were too conservative to say, "We are twenty-eight millions, one-fifth fighting men,"—too conservative to put rifles or muskets into the hands of those five or six million fighters,—the next best thing was to rank as many as you could in your handful of upper-class riflemen. However, I offered my advice liberally to all comers, and explained that at home I was a soldier when the Government wanted me,—was registered somewhere,—and could be marched to San Juan, about which General Harney was vaporing just then, whenever the authorities chose. So it was that I and Chiron stood superior to see Sergeant Reed drill thirty-nine working-men. Mr. Hughes was on the terrace, teaching an awkward squad their facings.
Sergeant Reed paraded his men,—and wanted one or two more. He came and asked Mr. Hughes for them,—and he in turn told us very civilly, that, if "we knew our facings," we might fall in. Alas for the theory of the Landsturm! Alas for the fame of the Massachusetts militia! Here are two of the "one hundred and fifty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty non-commissioned officers, musicians, artificers, and privates" whom Massachusetts that year registered at Washington,—two soldiers for whom somebody, somewhere, has two cartridge-boxes, two muskets, two shoulder-straps, and the rest;—here is an opportunity for them to show the gentlemen of a foreign service how much better we know our facings than they theirs,—and, alas, the representative two do not know their facings at all! We declined the invitation as courteously as it was offered. Perhaps we thus escaped a prosecution under the Act of 1819, when we came home,—for having entered the service of a foreign power. Certainly we avoided the guilt of felony, in England; for it is felony for an alien to take any station of trust or honor under the Queen,—and when Mr. Bates and Louis Napoleon were sworn in as special constables on the Chartists' day, they might both have been tried for felony on the information of Fergus O'Connor, and sent to some Old Bailey or other. None the less did we regret our ignorance of the facings, and, after a few minutes, sadly leave the field of glory.
My last visit to the Working-Men's College was to attend one of Mr. Maurice's Sunday-evening classes, and this was the only occasion when I ever appeared as a student. It was held at nine in the evening,—out of the way, therefore, of any Church-service. There gathered nearly twenty young men, who seemed in most instances to be personally strangers to each other. Mr. Maurice is so far an historical person that I have a right, I believe, to describe his appearance. He must be about fifty years old now. He looks as if he had done more than fifty years' worth of work,—and yet does not look older than that, on the whole. His hair is growing white; his face shows traces of experience of more sorts than one, but is very gentle and winning in its expression, both in his welcome, and in the vivid conversation which is called his lecture. He sat at a large table, and we gathered around it with our Testaments and note-books. The subject was the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews,—the conversation turning mostly, of course, on the "rest" which the people of God enter into. This is not the place for a report of the exposition, at once completely devout and completely transcendental, by which this distinguished theologian lighted up this passage for that cluster of young men. But I may say something of the manner of one so well known and so widely honored among a "present posterity" in America, for his works. He read the chapter through,—with a running commentary at first,—blocking out, as it were, his ground notion of it. This was the first ébauche of his criticism; but you felt after its details without quite finding them. In a word, the impression was precisely the uneasy impression you feel after the first reading of one of his sermons or lectures,—that there is a very grand general conception, but that you do not see how it is going to "fay in" in its respective parts. One of the students intimated some such doubt regarding some of the opening verses,—and there at once appeared enough to show how frank was the relation, in that class at least, between the teacher and the pupils. Then began the real work and the real joy of the evening. Then on the background he had washed in before he began to put in his middle-distance, and at last his foreground, and, last of all, to light up the whole by a set of flashes, which he had reserved, unconsciously, to the close. He dropped his forehead on his hand, worked it nervously with his fingers, as if he were resolved that what was within should serve him, went over the whole chapter in much more detail a second time, held us all charged with his electricity, so that we threw in this, that, or another question or difficulty,—till he fell back yet a third time, and again went through it, weaving the whole together, and making part illustrate part under the light of the comment and illumination which it had received before,—and so, when we read it with him for the fourth and last time, it was no longer a string of beads,—a set of separate verses,—Jewish, antiquated, and fragmentary,—but one vivid illustration of the "peace which passeth all understanding" into which the Christian man may enter.
With this fortunate illustration and exposition of the worth and work of the Working-Men's College my connection with it closed. It seems to me a beautiful monument of the love and energy of its founder. Perhaps we are all best known through our friends, or, as the proverb says, "by the company we keep." Let the reader know Mr. Maurice, then, by remembering that he is the godfather of Tennyson's son,—
"Come, when no graver cares annoy,
Godfather, come and see your boy,"—
that Charles Kingsley has a Frederic Maurice among his children,—and that Thomas Hughes has a Maurice also. The last was lost, untimely, from this world, in bathing in the Thames. The magnetism of such a man has united the group of workers who have formed the Working-Men's College. We need not wonder that with such a spirit it succeeds.
EMANCIPATION IN RUSSIA.
Two great nations are peculiarly entitled to be considered modern in their general character, though each is living under ancient institutions. They are the United States and Russia. Neither of these nations is a century old, regarded as a power that largely affects affairs by its action, and into the composition of each there enters a great variety of elements. The United States may be said to date from 1761, just one hundred years ago, when the American debate began on the question of granting Writs of Assistance to the revenue-officers of the crown. The struggle between England and America was then commenced in the chief court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the Declaration of Independence was but the logical conclusion of the argument of James Otis; but that conclusion would not have established anything, had it not been confirmed by the inexorable logic of cannon. The last resort of kings was then on the side of the people, and gave them the victory. The fifteen years that passed between the time when James Otis spoke in Boston and the time when John Adams spoke in Philadelphia belong properly to our national history, and should be so regarded. The grandson and biographer of John Adams says that Mr. Adams "was attending the court as a member of the bar, and heard, with enthusiastic admiration, the argument of Otis, the effect of which was to place him at the head of that race of orators, statesmen, and patriots, by whose exertions the Revolution of American Independence was achieved. This cause was unquestionably the incipient struggle for that independence. It was to Mr. Adams like the oath of Hamilcar administered to Hannibal. It is doubtful whether Otis himself, or any person of his auditory, perceived or imagined the consequences which were to flow from the principles developed in that argument. For although, in substance, it was nothing more than the question upon the legality of general warrants,—a question by which, when afterward raised in England, in Wilkes's case, Lord Camden himself was taken by surprise, and gave at first an incorrect decision,—yet, in the hands of James Otis, this question involved the whole system of the relations of authority and subjection between the British government and their colonies in America. It involved the principles of the British Constitution, and the whole theory of the social compact and the natural rights of mankind."