Wrestled with danger, pain, distress,
Hunger, and cold, and nakedness,
And every form of fear;
To feel his love their only joy.
To tell that love their sole employ."
The highest ambition of James Montgomery was, then, to do that by his pen which his brethren did by word of mouth. He had not abandoned that great object to which he had as an orphan been, as it were, dedicated by those good men in whose hands he had been left; he had only changed the mode of attaining it. At the very time that he quitted their tranquil asylum and broke forth into the world, he was, unknown to himself and them, following the unseen hand of Heaven. His lot was determined, and it was not to go forth into the wilderness of the north or south, of Labrador or South Africa, but of the active world of England. There wanted a bold voice, of earnest principle, to be raised against great oppressions; a spirit of earnest duty, to be infused into the heart of poetic literature; and a tone of heavenly faith and confidence given to the popular harp, for which thousands of hearts were listening in vain; and he was the man. That was the work of life assigned to him. He was to be still of the Unitas Fratrum—still a missionary;—and how well has he fulfilled his mission!
Fulneck, the chief settlement of the Moravian Brethren in England, at which we have seen that Montgomery continued till his sixteenth year, is about eight miles from Leeds. It was built about 1760, which was near the time of the death of Count Zinzendorf. It was then in a fine and little inhabited country. It is now in a country as populous as a town, full of tall chimneys vomiting out enormous masses of soot, rather than smoke, and covering the landscape as with an eternal veil of black mist. The villages are like towns, for extent. Stone and smoke are equally abundant. Stone houses, door-posts, window-frames, stone floors, and stone stairs, nay, the very roofs are covered with stone slabs, and when they are new, are the most complete drab buildings. The factories are the same. Where windows are stopped up, it is with stone slabs. The fences to the fields are stone walls, and the gate-posts are stone, and the stiles are stones, reared so close to one another, that it is tight work getting through them. Not a bit of wood is to be seen, except the doors, water-spouts, and huge water-butts, which are often hoisted in front of the house, on the level of the second floor, on strong stone rests. The walls, as well as wooden frames in the fields, are clothed with long pieces of cloth, like horses, and women stand mending holes or smoothing off knots in them, as they hang. Troops of boys and girls come out of the factories at meal-times, as blue as so many little blue devils—hands, faces, clothes, all blue, from weaving the fresh-dyed yarn. The older mill-girls go cleaner and smarter, all with colored handkerchiefs tied over their heads, chiefly bright red ones, and look very continental. Dirty rows of children sit on dirty stone door-sills, and there are strong scents of oat-cake and Genoa oil, and oily yarn. There is a general smut of blackness over all, even in the very soil and dust. And Methodist chapels—Salems and Ebenezers—are seen on all hands. Who, that has ever been into a cloth-weaving district, does not see the place and people?
Well, up to the very back of Fulneck, throng these crowds and attributes of cloth manufacturing. Leaving the coach and the high-road, I walked on three miles to the left, through this busy smoke-land, and a large village, and then over some fields. Everywhere were the features of a fine country, but like the features o the people, full of soot, and with volumes of vapor rolling over it. Coming, at length, to the back of a hill, I saw emerging, close under my feet, a long row of stately roofs, with a belfry or cupola, crowned with a vane in the center. These were the roofs of the Moravian settlement of Fulneck, the back of which was toward me, and the front toward a fine valley, on the opposite slope of which were fine woods, and a fine old brick mansion. That is the house, and that the estate of a Mr. Tempest, who will have no manufactory on his land. This is the luckiest tempest that ever was heard of; for it keeps a good open space in front of Fulneck clear, though it is elbowed up at each end, and backed up behind with factories, and work-people's houses; and even beyond Mr. Tempest's estate, you see other tall, soot-vomiting chimneys rearing themselves on other ridges; and the eternal veil of Cimmerian smoke-mist floats over the fair, ample, and beautifully wooded valley, lying between the settlement and these swarthy apparitions of the manufacturing system, which seem to long to step forward and claim all—ay, and finally to turn Fulneck into a weaving-mill, as they probably will, one day.
The situation, were it not for these circumstances, is fine. It has something monastic about it. The establishment consists of one range of buildings, though built at various times. There are the school, chapel, master's house, etc., in the center, of stone, and a sister's and brother's house, of brick, at each end, with various cottages behind. A fine broad terrace-walk extends along the front, a furlong in length, being the length of the buildings, from which you may form a conception of the stately scale of the place, which is one-eighth of a mile long. From this descend the gardens, playgrounds, etc., down the hill for a great way, and private walks are thence continued as far again, to the bottom of the valley, where they are further continued along the brook-side, among the deep woodlands. The valley is called the Tong Valley; the brook, the Tong; and Mr. Tempest's house, on the opposite slope, Tonghall.
At the left hand, and as you stand in front of the building, looking over the valley, lies the burial-ground, or, as they would call it in Germany, the "Friedhof," or court of peace. It reminded me much of that of Herrnhut, except that it descends from you, instead of ascending. It is covered with a rich green turf, is planted round and down the middle with sycamore-trees, and has a cross-walk, not two or three, like Herrnhut. I asked Mr. Wilson, the director, who walked with me, whether this arrangement had not, originally, a meaning—these walks forming a cross. He said he believed it had, and that the children were buried in a line, extending each way from the center perpendicular walk, along the cross-walk, from a sentimental feeling that they were thus laid peculiarly in the arms of Jesus, and in the protection of his cross. The grave-stones are laid flat, just as at Herrnhut, and of the same size and fashion. Here, however, we miss that central row of venerable tombs, of the Zinzendorf family, and those simple memorial stones lying around them, every one of which bears a name of patriarchal renown in the annals of this society of devoted Christians. Yet, even here, we can not avoid feeling that we walk amid the ashes of the faithful descendants of one of the most remarkable and most ancient branches of God's church, whose history Montgomery has so impressively sketched in a few lines:—