possessing a particle of merit in the way of the arts, are very
curious by their conceits, and as proofs of the tastes of our
forefathers. Truly, there is little to be said in favour of the
latter, it being quite evident that, as a nation, England was never
so near the golden age, in every thing connected with intellect, as
at this moment Hitherto, nearly all her artists of note, have been
foreigners, but now she is getting a school of her own, and one that,
sustained by her wealth and improved by travelling, bids fair shortly
to stand at the head of them all.
Westminster Abbey, exclusively of Henry VIIth’s Chapel, which
scarcely appears to belong to the edifice, although attached to it,
is by no means either a very rich, or a very large, edifice of its
kind. Still it is a noble structure, and its principal fault, to my
eye, is that pinched and mean appearance of its towers, to which I
have elsewhere alluded, externally; and internally the manner in
which it is broken into parts. The chapels have a cupboard character,
that well befits English snugness. The greatest charms of the Abbey
are its recollections and its precious memorials of the mighty dead.
As respects the latter, I should think it quite without a rival,
but you must look elsewhere for descriptions of them. In travelling
through Europe, one is occasionally startled by meeting the name
of Erasmus, or Galileo, or Dante, or of some other immortalised by
his genius; but these monuments are scattered not only in different
countries and cities, but often in the different churches of the same
place. There is moreover a homely air and a rustic simplicity, here,
in the quiet, unpretending stones, that line the walls and flagging
of the Poet’s Corner, and which almost induce one to believe that he
is actually treading the familiar haunts of the illustrious dead. The
name of Shakspeare struck me as familiarly as if I had met it beneath
a yew, in a country churchyard.
On leaving the Abbey we went to look at the Parliament-Houses, and
Westminster Hall. These buildings are grouped together, on the other
side of the street, lying on the banks of the river. They form
a quaint and confused pile, though, coupled with their eventful
history, their present uses, and some portions of architectural
beauty and singularity, one of great interest. Now, that my eye has
become accustomed to Gothic cathedrals, I find myself looking at the
Hall, with more feeling, than even at the old church.
Westminster Hall is the oldest and finest part of the pile. It dates
from the time of William II., though it has been much improved and
altered since, especially about the year 1400. Its style may be
properly referred to the latter period, though, the rude magnificence
of the thought, perhaps, better comports with the former. You know
it was intended as the banqueting hall of a palace. When we remember
that this room is two hundred and seventy feet long, ninety high,
and seventy-four wide, we are apt to conceive sublime things of the
state of an ancient monarch. But, it is all explained by the usages
of the times. The hall, or knight’s hall, in the smaller baronial
residences, was more than half the dwelling. In some instances, it
was literally the whole of one floor of the tower, the recesses of
the windows being used as bed chambers at night. Although we have no
records of the time when the English nobles lived in this primitive
manner, it is reasonable to suppose that they did no better, for that
civilization which is now so perfect, is far from being the oldest of
Europe.
These halls were formerly appropriated to the purposes of the whole
establishment, the noble and his dependents using the same room and
the same table, making the distinction of “the salt.” Then a court,
at which the courtier invariably appeared with a train of armed
followers, had need of space, not only to entertain those who came to
protect their lords, but those who were present to see they did no
violence.
If one gets a magnificent idea of the appliances of royalty from this
hall, he gets no very exalted one of the comforts of the period. The
side walls are of naked stone, there is no floor, or pavement, and
bating its quaint gothic wildness, the roof has a strong affinity
to that of a barn. On great occasions it requires a good deal of
dressing, to make the place, in the least, like a room. A part of
it, just then, was filled with common board _shantys_, which, we
were told, were full of records, and a line of doors on one side,
communicates with the courts of law.
It is said that Westminster Hall is the largest room in Europe, that
is unsupported by pillars, the roof being upheld by the ordinary
gothic knees, or brackets. This may be true, though the great hall
of the Stadt House, at Amsterdam, and that of the Palazzo Gran Duca
at Florence, both struck me as finer rooms. There is also a hall at
Padua which I prefer, and which I think is larger, and there are many
in the Low Countries, that, on the whole, would well compare with
this. The great gallery of Versailles, the hall of Louis XIV., is
certainly not near as large, but in regal splendour and cost, this
will no more compare with that, than a cottage will compare with a
hotel. The uses, however, were very different.
I shall not attempt to give you any accurate notion of the
arrangement of the rest of this pile. There is a garden on the river,
and a house which is occupied by the speaker. We went into St.
Stephen’s chapel, the House of Lords, the painted chamber, robing
room, star chamber, &c., &c., but, after all, I brought away with me
but a very confused idea of their relative positions.
St. Stephen’s is literally a small chapel, or church, having been
constructed solely for religious purposes. The commons have assembled
in it, originally, exactly as our associations occasionally use the
churches. It has the regular old-fashioned side and end galleries,
the speaker’s chair occupying the usual situation of the pulpit. The
end gallery is given up to the public, but the side galleries, though
not often used, are reserved for the members. The _bar_ is in a line
with the front of the end gallery, and of course immediately beneath,
while the _floor_ of the house occupies the rest of the lower part
of the building. I should think the whole chapel internally might be
about fifty-five feet long, by about forty-one or two wide. The floor
I paced, and made it nearly forty feet square. It is not precisely
of these dimensions, but more like thirty-nine feet by forty-one or
two. A good deal of even these straitened limits is lost, by a bad
arrangement of seats behind the speaker’s chair, which is about a
fourth of the way down the chapel; these seats rising above each
other, like the transoms of a ship. The clerks are seated at one
end of a long table in the centre of the room, and the benches run
longitudinally, being separated into four _blocks_. They have backs,
but nothing to write on. The distance between the table and the
seats next it, may be three feet. It is sufficiently near to allow
members on the first bench to put their feet against it, or on it,
an attitude, that is often assumed. The treasury bench is the one
nearest the table, on the left, looking from the gallery, and the
leaders of opposition sit on the right. The chair of the speaker has
a canopy, and is a sort of throne. The wood is all of oak, unpainted;
the place is lighted by candles, in very common brass chandeliers,
and the whole has a gloomy and inconvenient air. Still it is not
possible to view St. Stephen’s with any other feelings than those of
profound respect, its councils having influenced the civilized world,
now for more than a century. I name this period, as that is about the
date of the real supremacy of the parliament in this government. The
chapel, however, has been used as its place of meeting, since the
reign of Edward VI., or near three centuries. It is said that one
hundred and thirty strangers can be seated in the end gallery. Small
iron columns, with gilded Corinthian capitals, support the galleries.
The House of Lords is a very different place. The room may be about
the size of St. Stephen’s, though I think it a little smaller, and
there is no gallery.[1] The throne, by no means a handsome one, is
a little on one side, and the peers sit on benches covered with red
cloth, in the centre, and within a railing. These benches occupy
three sides of an area in the centre, while the throne stands on
the fourth. In front of the latter are the wool sacks, which are a
species of divan that do not touch a wall. Every thing is red, or
rather crimson, from throne down. There is a table, and places for
the clerks, in the area. The chancellor is by no means as much cared
for as the speaker. The seat of the latter is quite luxurious, but
the former would have rather a hard time of it, were it not for a
sort of false back that has been contrived for him, and against which
he may lean at need. It resembles a fire-skreen, but answers its
purpose.
The celebrated tapestry is a rude fabric. It must have been woven
when the art was in its infancy, and it is no wonder that such ships
met with no success. It is much faded, which, quite likely, is an
advantage rather than otherwise. “The tapestry which _adorns_ these
walls” was a flight of eloquence that must have required all the
moral courage of Chatham to get along with. Like so much of all
around it, however, one looks at it with interest, and not the less
for its very faults.
I can tell you little of the adjuncts of the two houses of
parliament. The rooms were all sufficiently common, and are chiefly
curious on account of their uses, and their several histories. The
eating and drinking part of the establishment struck me as being
altogether the most commodious, for there is a regular coffee-house,
or rather tavern, connected with them, where one can, at a moment’s
notice, get a cup of tea, a chop or a steak, or even something better
still. In this particular, parliament quite throws congress and the
_chambers_ into the back ground. A dinner is too serious a thing
with a Frenchman to be taken so informally, and then both he and the
American are content with legislating in the day time. The late hours
frequently drive the members of parliament to snatch a meal where
they can. Tea is a blessed invention for such people, and Bellamy’s
is a blessed invention for tea.
After visiting Westminster, we gave part of a day to St. Paul’s.
This is truly a noble edifice. Well do I remember the impression it
made on me, when, an uninstructed boy, fresh from America, I first
stood beneath its arching dome. I actually experienced a sensation
of dizziness, like that one feels in looking over a precipice.
When I returned home, and told my friends, among other traveller’s
marvels, that the steeple of Trinity could stand beneath this dome,
and that its vane should not nearly reach its top, I was set down
as one already spoilt by having seen more than my neighbours! It is
surprisingly easy to get that character in America, especially if one
does not scruple to tell the truth. I was much within the mark as to
feet and inches, but I erred in the mode of illustrating. Had I said
that the dome of St. Paul’s was a thousand feet high, I should have
found a plenty of believers, but the moment I attempted to put one
of our martin’s boxes into it, self-love took the alarm, and I was
laughed at for my pains. This was two-and-twenty years ago: have we
improved much since that time?
Although I no longer looked on St. Paul’s with the fresh and
unpractised eyes of 1806, it appeared to me now, what in truth it is,
a grand and imposing edifice. In many respects it is better than St.
Peter’s, though, taken as a whole, it falls far short of it. When the
richness of the materials, the respective dimensions, the details,
and the colonnade of St. Peter’s are considered, it must be admitted
that St. Paul’s is not even a first class church, St. Peter’s
standing alone; but I am not sure that the cathedral of London is
not also entitled to form a class by itself, although one that is
inferior.
The architecture of St. Paul’s is severe and noble. There is very
little of the meretricious in it, the ornaments, in general,
partaking of this character, both in their nature and distribution.
A pitiful statue of Queen Anne, in front of the building, is the
most worthless thing about it, being sadly out of place, without
mentioning the monstrosity of the statue of a woman in a regular
set of petticoats, holding a globe in her hand, and having a crown
on her head. I am not quite sure she is not in a hoop. Had she been
surrounded by a party of “the nobility and gentry,” dressed for
Almacks, the idea would have been properly carried out. Ladies who
are not disposed to go all lengths, had better not be ambitious of
figuring in marble.
The interior of St. Paul’s was too naked, perhaps, until they began
to ornament it with monuments. I remember it nearly in that state,
not more than half a dozen statues having been placed, at my first
visit to London. There are now many, and as they are all quite of the
new school, they are chaste and simple. This church promises to throw
Westminster Abbey, eventually, in the shade.
Of course we ascended to the whispering gallery. The effect is much
the same as it is in all these places. I do not think Sir James
Thornhill, who painted the dome, with passages from the life of
St. Paul, a Michael Angelo, or even a Baron Gros, though, like the
latter, he painted in oil. The colours are already much gone, which,
perhaps, is no great loss.
I ought to have said that we came up, what our cicerone called a
“geometry stair-case,” of which the whole secret appeared to be,
that the steps are made of stones of which one end are built into a
circular wall. This “geometry stair-case” greatly puzzled my friend,
the traveller, Mr. Carter, who agreed with the cicerone that it was
altogether inexplicable. It is a wonder to be classed with that of
the automaton chess-player. The effect, however, is pleasing.
Not satisfied with the whispering gallery, we ascended to another
on the exterior of the dome, where we found one of the most
extraordinary bird’s eye views of a town, I remember ever to have
seen. The day was clear, cool, and calm, and, of course, the vapour
of the atmosphere floated at some distance above the houses. The
whole panorama presented a field of dingy bricks, out of which were
issuing thousands of streams of smoke, ascending in right lines to
the canopy of murky vapour above. The effect was to give this vast
dusty-looking cloud, the appearance of standing on an infinity of
slender vapoury columns, which had London itself for their bases.
In a small district around the cathedral, there also arose a
perfect _chevaux de frise_ of spires and towers, the appendages of
the ordinary parish churches, of which London proper contains an
incredible number. Some one said that three hundred might be counted
from the gallery, and really it did not strike me that there could be
many less.
Seen in this manner, London offers little to be mentioned in
comparison with Paris. It has no back ground, wants the grey angular
walls, the transparent atmosphere, the domes and monuments, for we
were on the only one of the former, and the general distinctness,
necessary to satisfy the eye. It was not always easy to see at all,
in the distance, and the objects were principally tame and confused.
I like mists, feathery, floating, shadowy mists, but have no taste
for coal-smoke.
We were much amused with a remark of a good woman, who opened
some of the doors above. There were sundry directions to visitors
to pay certain stipulated prices, only, for seeing the different
parts of the edifice. All the English cicerones have a formal,
sing-song manner of going through their descriptions, that is often
the greatest source of amusement one finds, but which nothing but
downright mimicry can make intelligible to those who have not heard
it. The woman, in question, without altering the key, or her ordinary
mode of speaking, concluded her history, with saying, “by the rules
of the church, I am entitled to only two pence for showing you this,
and we are strictly prohibited from asking any more, but gentlefolks
commonly give me a shilling.” They have a custom here of saying that
such and such an act is _un-English_, but I fancy they will make an
exception in favour of this.
If you are as much puzzled, as I was myself once, to understand in
what manner such huge churches can be used, you will be glad to have
the matter explained. In all Catholic cathedrals, you already know,
there are divers chapels, that are more or less separated from the
body of the building, in which different offices are frequently
staying at the same time. Near the centre, or a little within the
head of the cross (for this is the form they all have) is the choir.
It is usually a little raised above the pavement, and is separated
from the rest of the nave by a screen, by which it is more or less
enclosed on the other sides. In this choir are performed all the
cathedral services, the preaching taking place in a different part
of the church; usually from movable pulpits. Frequently, however,
these pulpits are fixtures against a pier, the size of the edifice
rendering their appearance there of no moment.
In St. Paul’s there is the screen and the choir, as at Canterbury.
But instead of the canons or prebend’s stalls, only, there are
also pews for a congregation. There are, moreover, a pulpit and
a reading-desk, and, the organ forming part of the screen, an
organ-loft for the choir. In this chapel, or “heart” of the church,
then, is the usual service performed. In Catholic cathedrals, you
will understand that laymen, except in extraordinary cases, are not
admitted within the choir, and the organ is almost always at the end
of the nave, over the great door, and beneath an oriel window. The
cathedrals at Canterbury and Westminster, were both built for the
Catholic worship, and they had their private chapels; but St. Paul’s
having arisen under the Protestant régime, is a little different.
I believe there are private chapels in this building, but they are
detached and few. After excepting the church or the choir, and the
parts appropriated more properly to business, the remainder of this
huge edifice can only be used on the occasions of great ceremonies.
There are, however, a utility and fitness in possessing a structure
for such objects, in the capital of a great empire, that will readily
suggest themselves. There is something glorious and appropriate in
beholding the temple of God rearing its walls above all similar
things, which puts the shallow and pettifogging sophistry of
closet-edifices and whittling sectarianism to manifest shame.
The absence of the side chapels gives a nobleness to the centre of
St. Paul’s, that is rather peculiar to itself. It is true that the
choir, with the screen, which partially cuts off the side aisles,
in some measure intercepts the view, and the eye nowhere embraces
the whole extent, as in St. Peter’s; a fact, that, coupled with
its vast dimensions, must always render the _coup d’œil_ of the
interior of the latter, a wonder of the world. But few churches
show, relatively, as grand a transept and dome, as this. Apart from
the dimensions, which, exclusively of the colonnades, the Vatican,
and the sacristy, are in all things, about one-sixth in favour of
St. Peter’s, the difference between the _coups d’œil_ of the two
churches, exists in the following facts. On entering St. Peter’s, the
eye takes in, at a glance, the whole of the nave, from the great door
at one end, to the marble throne of the pope, at the other. In St.
Paul’s, this view is intercepted by the screen, and the appliances
of protestant worship just mentioned. In St. Peter’s, there is
everywhere an ornate and elaborate finish, of the richest materials,
while the claims of St. Paul’s to magnificence, depend chiefly on the
forms and the grandeur of the dimensions. In St. Peter’s, all the
statuary, monuments, and other accessories, are on a scale suited
to the colossal grandeur of the temple, the marble cherubs being in
truth giants. Whereas, in St. Paul’s, individuals being permitted to
erect memorials in honour of their friends, the proportions have been
less respected.
To conclude, St. Paul’s, in the severity and even in the purity of
its style is, in some few particulars, superior to the great Roman
Basilica; but, these admissions made, it will not do to urge the
comparison further, since the latter in size, material, details,
and in the perfection of its subordinate art, has probably never
been approached, as a whole, since the foundations of the earth
were laid. St. Paul’s, like all Protestant churches, is wanting in
the peculiar and grateful atmosphere of the temple. Still, like all
large edifices, it is temperate, being cooler in summer and warmer
in winter, than those that are smaller. At least, so it has always
appeared to me.
Our visit happened to be made during the season of festivals, and
more than a usual number of the officials were loitering about the
church. Who they were, I cannot say, but several of them had the
sleek, pampered air of well-fed coach horses; animals that did
nothing but draw the family to church on Sundays, and enjoy their
stalls. There was one fellow, especially, who had an unpleasantly
greasy look. He was in orders, but sadly out of his place, nature
having intended him for a cook.
LETTER V.
TO RICHARD COOPER, ESQ. COOPERSTOWN.
The ice once broken, visitors began to appear at my door, and since
my last, I have been gradually looking nearer and nearer, at the part
of the world which it is usual to call society. A friend who knew
England well, remarked to me, just before we left Paris—“you are
going from a town where there is little company and much society, to
one where there is no society and much company.” Like most ambitious
and smart sayings, that aim at sententiousness, there is some truth,
blended with a good deal of exaggeration, in this. It is easy enough
to see that association of all degrees, is more laboured, less
graceful, and less regulated by reasonable and common sense motives
in London, than, in Paris. It is usual to say, that as between us
and England, the latter having prescribed and definite degrees of
rank, its upper classes have less jealousy of place, and of intrusion
on their rights, than the same classes in America, and that society
is consequently under less restraint. There is some truth in this
opinion, as relates to us; but when England comes to be considered in
connection with other European nations, I think the consequences of
such a comparison are exactly the other way.
On the continent of Europe, nobility has long formed a strictly
social _caste_. Its privileges were positive, its landmarks distinct,
and its rules arbitrary. It is true, all this is gradually giving way
before the spirit of the age, and the fruits of industry, but its
effects are every where still to be traced. There is no more need of
jealousy of the intrusion of the inferior in most European capitals,
than in America there is distrust of the blacks forcing their way
into the society of the whites. France is an exception to this rule,
perhaps, but the _pêle mêle_ produced by the revolution has been so
complete, that just now one says and thinks little of origin and
birth, from sheer necessity. It is too soon for things to fall into
the ordinary channels, but when they do we shall probably see the
effects of a reaction. Nothing can keep society unsettled, in this
respect, but constant and rapid changes of fortunes, and, apart from
revolutions, France is a country in which there is not likely to be
much of these.