VISIT TO TWO ENGLISH COMMON SCHOOLS.
In compliance with our desire to visit an English common school, we
were driven from the castle to a village in the vicinity, in which was
a school for boys under the guidance of the British Foreign Society,
and one for girls under the control of the National, or State Church,
Society. The school-house of the former was a simple but tasteful stone
building, standing a little one side, but not fenced off, from the
principal street, with a few large trees and a playground about it. The
interior was all in one room, except a small vestibule. It was well
lighted, the walls were plastered and whitewashed, and had mottoes,
texts of Scripture, tables, charts, &c., hung upon them; there was
no ceiling, but the rafters of the roof, which was high-peaked, were
exposed; the floor was of stone. There were long desks and benches
all around against the wall, and others, the form of which I do not
remember, filling up the most of the body. The house and furniture was
much too small and scanty for the number of scholars present, and the
labour of the teacher must have been very arduous.
[Sidenote: _COMMON SCHOOLS._]
The boys all rose as we entered, and remained standing during our
visit, a request from us that they might be seated not being regarded.
Classes in arithmetic, geography, and spelling were examined before us.
The absence of all embarrassment, and the promptness and confidence of
the scholars in replying to our questions was remarkable. In mental
arithmetic great proficiency was shown in complicate reductions of
sterling money. In geography their knowledge of America was limited
to the more important points of information, but so far as it went
was very accurate and ready. With regard to Great Britain, their
information was very minute. The boys were particularly bright,
ready-witted, and well-behaved, and surprisingly free from all
excitement or embarrassment before strangers.
The schoolmaster was also parish-clerk, and his pay from the two
offices was about $500 a year.[24] I judged that he had intended to
make teaching his business for life, and had thoroughly prepared
and accomplished himself for it. His manner to us, and two or three
incidents which it would be impossible to relate, gave me the
impression that his position in society was far from being a pleasant,
or what we should deem a proper one for a teacher.
[24] Advertisements for common-school teachers, “capable to instruct
in reading, writing, arithmetic, and the principles of the Christian
religion,” appear in the Times, offering salaries of from $150 to $800,
with lodging and board.
The “National School” for girls was a building of more highly finished
architectural character, and had a dwelling for the schoolmistress
attached to it. The whole school was engaged in sewing when we entered,
the mistress, assisted by some of the older scholars, going from one
to another, giving instructions and examining the work. It was not
interrupted by our entrance, though the girls all rose, curtseyed, and
continued standing. There were one hundred and thirty present in a
room about twelve yards by six in area. The girls were neatly, though
exceedingly plainly, dressed, and were generally very pleasing in their
appearance. They seemed well instructed, and without the least want of
desirable modesty, showed much more presence of mind, and answered
our questions with more promptness and distinctness than any school of
girls I ever visited before.
Both schools are conducted on the Lancasterian plan.[25]
[25] I propose, in some future letter, to give a general account of the
English common schools.
APPENDIX A.
We were leaning over the gunwale, where I had been watching the
curious, nebulous-like life that was revealed in the sea-fire splashing
from the ship’s sides, and our conversation turning upon this, we
talked of a number of marine mysteries. He believed that there was a
large class of animated nature fitted to exist only in dense waters
at the depths of the ocean, and which only appeared on the surface
when in a diseased state. He had great confidence that such must be
the case, and he cited several cases, known to naturalists, where
nature has very peculiarly fitted animals and vegetables to enjoy life
under circumstances in which nothing could exist of the more ordinary
organisms. I remarked that there was a wonderful connection and fitting
together of one thing to another, through the whole of nature, as if it
were all designed together, and every part contrived with reference to
all the rest; to which he assented.
“And does not that irresistibly impress you with the idea of a
reasoning mind having constructed it for certain purposes of his own,
to which purposes all this working together must have reference?”
“Humph! Suppose it does. Say every thing must have a cause, and call
the cause of the world, God, if you like. What do they stop there for?
I want to know what’s the cause of God; what is God’s God. You see, you
must back up farther for that cause.”
“But we can take one step. Suppose we do take that, and see what we can
make of it first. There must be, or there seems likely to have been, a
constructing mind—a will—above us—”
“An imaginary something that put the world together. Well, suppose
there is.”
“That put our minds and bodies together, that made us with our own
peculiar characters and wills, distinct apparently from each other’s
and from His.”
“Well, well!—that created us. Suppose he did; what’s the good of saying
that, if you don’t know any thing more. What did he create us for?—what
is he going to make of us?—what’s the will he put into my body going
to do for him?—what did he want to make me so for, and you a different
way, and a hog in another way for? My will _is_ independent of his; I
know nothing about his will, and I have nothing to do with him. I can
talk to you, and you talk back, and I can see you, and I know you; but
him, supposing there is such a being, I know nothing about, and what’s
the use, like a fool, of talking of him by name as if I did?”
“My dear fellow, how do I know there’s such a place as Liverpool? I
never have seen it any more than I have God. From the evidence of my
senses I know nothing of it; and yet I am fool enough (if you please
to call me so) to come aboard this ship with provisions for sixty
days, calculating that in that time I shall be carried to an imaginary
something which I talk about by the name of Liverpool.”
“I reckon you will in twenty if this wind holds.”
“I think it likely, but what do I know about it?—actually nothing,
except that you and others tell me you have been there, and that the
ship will go there, and I have faith enough in your word, and the
promises of the captain, to put but here where I have never been
before, and don’t know from any thing I can see, any more than a fool,
where or what it is I am being taken to. Now, though I never saw this
being with the creating will, which we will call God, I can tell you
something more about him, not that I actually know, only I have heard—”
“Heard! heard! how?”
“Why, people tell me and I’ve read, just as I have read travellers’
accounts of Liverpool, that there was a man once that professed to know
all about it,—in fact, that he made it all himself—”
“Made it himself, a man! I thought we agreed to call the maker of it,
God.”
“Very well; out of this form of a man, for so it is described, there
expressed itself—a mind, declaring itself to be the same mind that
made the world; and that it had entered that form that it might tell
us in the language, not only of the lips and tongue and breath, but in
all the language of all the members in all the actions of a man, what
he thought it desirable for us to know about him,—the God; about his
purposes in creating the world and us, and what now he wanted of us.
Something of this he said in words, Hebrew words, which some of the
people translated into Greek, and they have been again turned into
English, and in this way I have read considerable of it; but more he
told in the actions of the life of that man. If a stranger comes to me,
and says that he loves me, I don’t well know what he means, for there’s
all sorts of love, and some of it not worth many thanks. I should be
still more uncertain if he spake in the Chinese tongue, and it had to
be carried through Portuguese into English; but if I had been detected
in some disgraceful crime, and every body scorned and hissed at me,
and a man should come, alone of all a crowd, and lift me out of the
dust where I lay in expectation of death, and cheer me with hopeful
and encouraging words, I should not need to be told that he loved me,
to be grateful to him; and if you were an Indian, and it was told to
you in Choctaw, you’d understand it exactly as I would, and have no
mistake and no doubt about what he meant. Now supposing the great power
and wisdom that contrived and executed this world, and all we know of
material things, was showing itself in that man that so pretended,
and we have a reliable account of the way he lived, we can infer what
at least is the general character and tendency of his motives and
purposes, and judge pretty well what he wants of us.”
“But is it not altogether more likely a man making such pretensions,
was an impostor?”
“We must judge of that too by his character as displayed otherwise than
in professions. Now what do we find? An earnest, serious man, seemingly
living only to do and be good; subduing extraordinary temptations of
passion and ambition; helping and healing the sick, and the crippled,
and the outcast, in season and out of season; speaking his mind truly
and freely, no matter who he hits; persevering in what he thinks is
right, and just, and merciful, though it is disreputable and directly
in the teeth of the prevailing standard of morals; sticking to it,
though he is misunderstood, reproached, and forsaken for it, as a
wilful, stubborn fanatic, by his friends, and it destroys his influence
over all the respectable part of the community.”
“Good for him, by jingo! They didn’t _excommunicate_ him, did they? If
it had been in the United States or in England, they would have said he
was damned, body and soul, past recovery, and utterly unworthy of the
means of grace!”
“They said the devil was in him and turned him out of the synagogue,
which is much the same, I take it.”
“Right—I never thought of that; he must have been a true honest man.”
“Just such a man as you would like to be yourself Mr. C., only a
great deal more so—a thorough-going brave man of the people, an
out-and-out democrat, fraternizing with the very lowest classes, and
seeing and trying all sorts of life. More than that, sir, he could
endure misrepresentation and the ingratitude and unfaithfulness of
friends without impatience; and finally, to realize his purpose more
effectually, he could suffer without wavering the severest mental
and bodily agony, and at length could die, without the least stain
of inconsistency on his noble, manly character, not as you might be
willing to on the barricades, but alone, and by slow process of law.”
“All right, sir, and a true man, call him what you will.”
“A true man, sir, and no time-server, and now, what taught he? That
goodness, truth, and love, and happiness are one and inseparable.
Further, that all the good in the universe is a commonwealth (kingdom
of God), and that one’s enjoyment of it cannot be separate from
another’s. He always seemed to think every body else’s good just as
much his business as his own, and taught his followers to find their
happiness in that of others; always to do that for others which they
would have done for themselves.”
“And that’s just what they don’t do.”
“They don’t pretend they do, but they believe it’s the right plan, and
they wish to and try to, and they say he never did any other way. His
whole life, as it is described to us, does seem to be in accordance
with the idea, and if no other man’s ever was, so much the better for
him. Perfect love always guiding him, entire annihilation of self,
selfish purpose all merged in desire for the general good of mankind.”
“A very nice model of a man, no doubt, _if_——one must believe the
story; but you see I don’t.” Here he went off into a long and laboured
attack upon the Bible as being called an infallible guide, and upon
the theory of plenary inspiration. If it teaches one thousand men one
doctrine, and one thousand other men, of an average equal capacity,
directly the opposite doctrine, he would like to know what it
infallibly guided to—and so on: some few of his points being fair and
reasonable, some of them utterly absurd, and the greater part of his
argument mere narrow-minded cavilling and play upon words. I attempted
very little reply, as it was evident he was perfectly at home on the
subject, and would sail tack for tack with me all night, if he lost
confidence in his opinions on one gaining more on another. At length
he fell into a fierce tirade upon the character of the Apostles. He
thought them cunning, selfish plotters, “the same as their descendants,
our reverend aristocrats, that cannot find any better way of living
than by pulling wool over the poor workies’ eyes, while they draw fat
salaries from their pockets.”
“A nice, lazy, comfortable sort of life they seem to have had of it,
don’t they?” I answered. “A jolly life, to be sure, loafing about
with their fat salaries. You remember what Dr. Paul’s was: ‘Of the
Jews five times forty stripes save one, thrice beaten with rods, once
stoned, shipwrecked, &c., weariness, painfulness, &c., &c.’—So runs his
receipt! very _fat_, all that, isn’t it? Now, are you not ashamed of
yourself? Talk about ‘aristocratic parsons!’ Every one of them started
a working man—not one even of the _bourgeoisie_ among them, unless it
was that same Paul, and he had his trade, and worked honestly at it
to pay his travelling expenses. You call them aristocratic. What do
you mean! Why, sir, they were democratic socialists, and the worst
sort, ‘having all things in common,’ the record of their acts says.
And they seem to have had a sufficiently generous spirit to make the
idea _work_, while all your modern communists only make themselves
ridiculous whenever they attempt it.”
He laughed aloud, and said that he wouldn’t say another word against
the Apostles, if I would admit that they were socialists. They
certainly were not aristocrats. “But,” he complained, “that does not
make them infallible guides, by a long shot. I want you to answer my
arguments against the infallibility of the Bible, if you can.”
“I don’t wish to,” I said; “it is not at all necessary. Suppose
you can detect a few inconsistencies, misquotations, and puzzling
expressions in the New Testament. The books have come a long journey
between them and us, and have passed through various hands. Wouldn’t
it be strange if there were not some things knocked out of them and
a few tacked on? You know there are three biographies of Christ,
written by different persons, among whom you cannot find any evidence
of conspiracy or collusion, while there is much to the contrary. Yet
are they not consistent in every essential particular? I think they
are; and I am convinced the writers meant to give an honest, fair,
and correct account of what _He_ said and did within their personal
knowledge. Now, when they report, as each of them frequently do, that
he took upon himself the authority and omniscience proper only to God,
in instructing and governing them; when they make him declare that in
that life of his flesh was the Spirit of God manifest, they must have
so understood him. He probably meant them to, and as he was a wise,
good, and true man, we can have reasonable faith that, in some fair and
honest understanding of the words, it was so. What if there is room for
some difference of opinion, as to the _precise_ meaning of language, so
written in a narrative, two or three times translated, and that through
heathen tongues, and God only knows how many times copied by humanly
imperfect hands. I am willing you should understand it as seems, on
the whole and in sincerity, most natural to you. I say that I do not
believe it will make any very essential difference in your idea of
God, but that you will still see him, through Christ, a God of eternal
Truth, Justice, Love—a Father worthy of your deepest reverence and
affection.”
“Suppose I did; and when you’ve done and said all, what good is it? But
I tell you, you don’t convince me of the inspiration of the Bible.”
“I don’t now undertake to convince you of it. If it does not appear
evident to you on the face of it that it is an inspired production, I
don’t think I can bring you to it by argument. All I ask of you now
is to look upon those three men, Matthew, Luke, and John, simply as
honest biographers. Suppose Hume, Gibbon, or Jared Sparks had described
such a character, made such a character to appear in the life of some
historical personage with regard to whom they had had facilities to be
particularly well informed, would you not respect, honor, love—yes, and
worship—”
“No, no! I’d worship nothing human.”
“But you would worship divine qualities, and, so far as these go to
make up the character of a man, you would worship them in him—”
“Yes, the divine qualities, not the human.”
“Not the human—purely human; nobody asks you to. But here is a man who,
in all his actions for thirty years, you cannot suppose to have been
governed by any motives inconsistent with justice, magnanimity, and
benevolence. His life is described with a good deal of minute detail,
but you cannot find that he ever said, or thought, or did a single
mean, unmanly, ungentlemanly thing. A man who avoided kingly honors;
who did not labor for riches; who neither sought nor avoided the
luxuries of life; who endured to be forsaken of his friends; who put
up with contempt, reproach, and ridicule; who was always going about
doing good, without either ostentation or secrecy—a man so great and
true, as he appears among the pettifogging saints of the day, in the
case of the adulterous woman, or at the picking of corn on the Sabbath,
or in his ideas of morality as brought out in his sermon on the mount,
so simple, so grand, so truly divine—do you think, can you think—that
such a man would be mean enough and wicked enough to declare a most
monstrous falsehood, and stick to it all his life, suffer all sorts of
shame, and finally die ignominiously rather than give it up? No, sir;
that man was no impostor!... Nor is there any thing that looks like
the fanatic or crazy man about him either. Yet he plainly thought, and
had some good reason for thinking, that in all his peculiar character
he was exhibiting the peculiar qualities of God. And were not those
qualities such as are consistent with the highest wisdom that we can
conceive of? And what _good_, you were asking, does it do us to believe
in them? If you had never seen your father, but your elder brother
should say: ‘Father is like me in all that you like in me, in all that
you love me for’—you would not need to see your father face to face,
but would love him, and would lovingly respond to his will, and when he
sent for you to come home, you would look forward to meeting him, not
with dread, but with a joyful trust. If you can have as much faith in
the word of that noble man as I have in yours and the captain’s about
this ship’s going towards Liverpool, you will love and worship him, and
strive to be like him.”
“Christ said he _was_ God, which is nonsense, and I don’t swallow it.”
“Look here! When I tell you that I am a man, what do I mean? A man
has two legs, two arms, and two eyes; suppose I had but one leg, one
arm, and one eye, would it be nonsense to call me a man? Or suppose
that I had twelve fingers instead of ten, or my body all covered with
hair, would it be nonsense to call me a man because I had more than
the ordinary qualities of a man? I might call myself a hirsute, but I
should still be a man.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Why, I mean that because Jesus Christ asserted himself to be God it
does not follow that he asserted himself nothing but God, or even that
he exhibited the whole of God, but that he spoke in the name of God,
with the authority of God, that the word of God was spoken in him. It
is absurd for us, and evidently was never intended that we should, take
the exact weight and measure of the words of his familiar conversation,
and reduce it to the English standard, from the simple narratives of
Hebrews writing in the Greek tongue. You can understand it so as to
make it nonsense if you are determined to, but that’s your nonsense and
not Christ’s. There is plenty of room to fight over it if you like,
but was that what it was intended for? You may understand it somewhat
differently from me, but _practically_, if you believe it at all, will
the difference in our understanding of it make an essential difference
in our lives? I believe that Channing and Calvin, standing at two
opposite theoretical extremes with regard to this, both showed in their
characters the influence of a common faith in the divinity of Christ.”
“You do? You don’t suppose Channing believed in the divinity of Christ?
You ought to know better than that.”
“He might not express his belief in that way, because that mind had
got to be employed technically to denote a different view from his,
but plainly it was the God revealed in Christ to whose service he gave
his life. You must remember that language is a human and exceedingly
imperfect and inefficient means of conveying thought. Neither Calvin
nor Channing believed that in Christ was the whole of God concentrated
and made manifest to us, or that God was and could be revealed to us in
no other way; but both believed that in Christ God was speaking, that
in Christ’s life, far more truly and distinctly than in any other, was
uttered the true and eternal and soul-saving word of God. ‘In truth, in
love, in all that deserves your love, your gratitude, your adoration,
and whole-hearted devotion, I AM.’”
We were both silent for a few moments, and then he laughed.
“What’s the matter?” said I.
“I am afraid you are getting into the bond of iniquity; don’t you know
that’s very dangerous the way you talk. ’Tisn’t orthodox by a long
shot.”
“I’ve no particular passion for being called orthodox,” I replied.
“You haven’t, eh? What is your religion then?”
“That of Christ, I wish it to be.”
“No, but what do you believe in?”
“The God revealed in Christ.”
“Pshaw! What sect—what church do you run with?”
“None of your business—that is, the question’s not in order.”
“But, good heavens, man! I want to know what you pretend to believe.
What do you want to have me believe? Was he very God of very God, all
God and all man, or only half God and half man, or a whole man and no
God, only an extra-inspired prophet, or what? There’s no use talking
with you till I know where you stand.”
“What do you want to bother with such nonsense for? Christians
themselves don’t agree about those matters. I won’t answer you. You
admitted that you had seen enough in the ordinary works of God to
impress you with the belief of a designing wisdom above us, and you
asked me how any one could know any more than that. Now I tell you:
Look to Christ, his most perfect work. Believe, if you like, that in
him—his life—God is manifest only in the same way that he is in all
the works of his hand, as you would be in yours, as Powers is in the
Greek Slave, and Bell and Brown are in this ship, only he must be
peculiarly manifest in man (created in his image), and most distinctly
and obviously manifest in the man most perfect and altogether lovely,
the express image of his person. Mustn’t he? Take him as a sheer man,
if you will, not even a prophet, simply a wise man—the wisest and best
man. Must not his pure heart, his self-forgetful spirit, his wisdom who
spake as never man else spake, have attained to the best and truest
idea of God? Must not that be, in the first place, the most reasonable
relation for us to assume towards God—that in which he placed himself—a
son to a loving, personally-interested father—a Father whose almighty
power moves only in love? If that’s the utmost you can make out of
the life of Christ, why, take that; don’t lose so much good of it
because others can take more. But if you can take more than that, and
it’s better for you to call him—what is it you say? ‘very God of very
God?’—not merely seen as manifested in the man Christ, but peculiarly,
indescribably, incomprehensibly, and contradictorily both God and man
and neither man or God—have it so, and welcome. Describe him in Latin,
or Hebrew-Greek, if you like it better than plain English. It may seem
one thing in the dim, religious light of worship, and another in the
flickering lamplight of study, but you will find both the same in the
clear daylight of life. After all, it is the Word that is wanted, and
not the image through which it is spoken. Look at Christ in whatever
way you can read that Word with the most faith. I care not in what
language you receive it, so you can translate it into love, joy, faith,
long-suffering, goodness, peace, meekness, and temperance (the fruits
of the Spirit).” He was laughing again and I asked, “What is there
ridiculous about this, Mr. C.?”
“Why, I don’t know as there’s any thing—don’t know as I can object to
it, only—eh, ha! ha!”
“Only what?”
“Don’t you think if your minister heard you talking so, he’d
be—rather—hauling you over the coals, eh?”
“My minister! What under the sun has my minister got to do with it? I
am not a Roman Catholic.”
“What the devil are you, any how?”
“I’ve told you.”
“Well, you arn’t what I call a Christian. What do you call me an
infidel for?”
“I never called you an infidel; infidel means unfaithful. God only
knows whether you are unfaithful to your light or not. That’s none of
_my_ business.”
“Well, but now do you believe in fore-ordination and total depravity?
Do you hold to salvation by grace?”
“I believe, certainly, that if a man is not saved it is because, as
Christ said, he ‘_would not_.’ I believe that every man shall be judged
according to his works, and so did Christ—”
“Ah, then you don’t go those doctrines. Now—”
“I don’t want to discuss them with you.”
“Why, you can’t believe them—it’s inconsistent.”
“I don’t much think it is, but if it was—”
“What’s that striking—eight bells? I declare it’s twelve o’clock.”
“Wait a bit, let me tell you a story, and then we will turn in. I
once fell in with an old Quaker. He was the first one I ever met to
converse with: a simple-hearted, honest man, and I was glad of a chance
to talk with him about his society. He finally spoke of some of their
doctrines, and defended them in a sensible, manly way that I liked.
He took up a Bible and showed me how some idea of his that I doubted
about was sustained in it. I turned over a leaf or two further, and
showed him another passage that I thought pretty flatly opposed his
understanding of the verse he had brought as proof, and said, ‘What
do you make of that?’ He looked at it a moment, read each side of it,
didn’t say any thing, shook his head, and sighed, and I began to feel
ashamed of myself for troubling him with it. At length his face lighted
up, and he turned to me with a beautiful smile and said softly, ‘I can
see the truth the Lord testified to in the verse I showed thee, but for
this I have not yet sight enough. If thee cannot yet see the truth that
cometh to me from the verse I showed thee, wilt thee not be content to
also wait for thy light?’ Now, Mr. C., I advise you to take what truth
you can find; and if other people profess to believe what seems to you
absurdities, don’t be so sorry for them as not to let them enjoy the
benefit of what light they have got; don’t yourself be so foolish as
to shut your eyes to what of God’s word is plainly enough set before
you in Christ, because you have not turned over the next page and
can’t see through the whole book at once. I don’t want you to try to
force upon yourself any belief that is unnatural, and which honestly
appears illogical to you. No kind of heresy is so bad as hypocrisy.
I think those Christians were exceedingly wrong that felt that the
sacredness and chief power of their religion consisted so much in the
doctrines which they had agreed together to stand by, that they must
summarily exclude you from their fellowship when you began to question
the soundness of them. On the other hand, I must tell you that I think
you are equally wrong to hold them and their opinions in contempt, and
to have such entire confidence, as you seem to, that you are yourself
right. The fact that so many men differ with you, whom you cannot help
respecting as having equal powers of mind and equally good spirit with
yourself, should at least make you hold your opinions with humility.”
“Well! Now let’s go and see them heave the log. She’s going a bit
faster; the fog isn’t so thick as ’twas either. Hallo! there’s that old
Irishwoman again. She always gets in behind the harness cask to say her
prayers. You will hear her muttering there for two or three hours every
night.”
“She must have strong faith.”
“Faith in the devil! Fear and ignorance, I call it. She’s a good old
thing though, I must say. She takes care of that sick woman’s child as
if it were her own; and last night she asked the doctor to let her darn
his stockings, and he did, the conceited old dandy.”
“She has a good deal of true religion, then, for all her ignorance and
fear.”
“Then it’s true religion to believe in the Pope and the Virgin Mary!”
“Oh no! oh no! ‘True religion before God is this: to visit the widows
and fatherless in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted in
the world.’ Yet it may be worth your while, Mr. C., to consider whether
she would have been as likely to pity that sick mother, and take care
of her child, if she hadn’t been in the habit of praying in this way
every night, although in her ignorance she addresses the mother of
Christ instead of the Father. Good-night.”
APPENDIX B.
The chapter on the disposition of the people of England towards the
United States was written before, and not in anticipation of the
coming of Kossuth to this country. The general discussion of the
subject which that event has occasioned makes it proper for me to
mention this. Opinions opposing the views I have presented having
been expressed by several persons in honorable positions, for one at
least of whom I entertain the highest respect, I wish to repeat that,
during five months that I travelled in Great Britain, in almost every
day of which time I heard the United States talked about with every
appearance of candor and honesty, I do not recollect ever to have heard
any expression of hostile feeling (except from a few physical-force
Chartists, with regard to slavery) towards our government or our
people, and only from a few stanch church-and-state men against our
principles of government. Perhaps the highest eulogy on Washington
ever put in words was written by Lord Brougham. The Duke of Wellington
lately took part in a banquet in honour of American independence. I
myself attended a Fourth-of-July dinner in an old palace of George
III., and saw there a member of Parliament, and other distinguished
Englishmen, drink to the memory of Washington, and in honour of the
day. Having observed that Mr. Howard was threatened with a mob, for
keeping an English ensign flying from a corner of the Irving House, I
will add that I more than once saw the American ensign so displayed in
England, without exciting remark; and I know one gentleman living in
the country who regularly sets it over his house on the Fourth of July,
and salutes it with gun-firing and festivities, so that the day is well
known, and kindly regarded by all his neighbours, as “the American
holiday.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
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Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
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Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a
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Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 23: “villanous” replaced with “villainous”
44: “pilots to” replaced with “pilots do”
116: “bombasti” replaced with “bombastic”
206: “SMUTHY” replaced with “SMUTTY”
210: “tileery” replaced with “tilery”
223: “gods” replaced with “goods”
244: “begun” replaced with “began”.