_St. James—Wellington—St. Paul’s._
I had been invited by Dr. Wesley, Dean of the Chapel Royal of St.
James’s, to attend service there on Sunday morning. It was the Second
Sunday after Easter. The old clock above the palace gate-way pointed
eight o’clock as I entered the colour-court, and saw the flag of the
regiment on duty, drooping about its staff, inscribed with the names of
famous victories. All the region round about seemed to be fast bound in
slumber. It was the cool, quiet Sunday morning of smoky London, to which
only the most casual glimmer of sunlight gave any warm announcement of
the advancing day. How still it seemed! A solitary sentinel, in scarlet,
stood, six feet high, at the gate. “Service begun yet?” said I; and he
answered, mechanically, “yes, the Duke just gone in.” I passed on;
knocked at the door of the chapel; mentioned the Dean’s name as my
warrant, and was admitted. The beadle, in livery, showed me to a seat,
and after my devotions, I was able to look around. It was a plain place
of worship, and quite small; just large enough for the royal household,
none of whom, however, were now present, the Court being at Buckingham
Palace. The book in my seat was stamped with the royal initial of
William Fourth, and marked for some great officer of the household.
There was one seat between me and the pulpit, the seats running along
the wall, like stalls, and not as ordinary pews. The altar at the end of
the Church, beyond the pulpit, was the conspicuous object of course, and
the window above it—which one might hardly take for an altar-window in
the street-view—gave the chief light to the holy place. Was this the
same chapel in which Evelyn so often anxiously marked the behaviour of
Charles and the Duke of York, at the celebration of the Eucharist? The
place has been much changed, but I indulged the idea of its essential
sameness. On the altar were the usual candlesticks, and the glittering
gold plate of great size and massiveness, in the midst of which was
conspicuous the Offertory-basin, bearing the royal cypher of Queen Anne.
There was no one in the chapel but the beadle and—one other person, in
the seat next me, at my right. There, in a dim corner, directly under
the pulpit—quite crouchingly and drawn together, eyes shut, and white
head bowed down, Roman nose and iron features, and time-worn wrinkles,
all tranquilized—sat in silence the hero of Waterloo. He was in the
plainest morning dress of an English gentleman, frock-coat of blue, and
light trowsers. I scarcely looked at him, and yet gained, in a moment,
an impression of his entire person, which I shall never lose.
Occasionally I could not resist the temptation of a glance at the great
man, but who would venture to stare at the Duke of Wellington in such a
place, and at such a time? The Dean of the chapel entered, with another
clergyman, who was habited for the pulpit. A clerical personage,
attended by two ladies, at the same time, came in as I had done, and,
during the sermon, there were four other persons present. The Dean began
the Communion Service, which surprised me, as I had expected the usual
Morning Prayer. Was the Duke about to communicate? Was I to see him in
the most solemn act of our holy religion? Was I to kneel beside him to
receive the same cup of salvation and bread of life? It gave me solemn
thoughts of our common insignificance, in presence of Him whose majesty
filled the place, and on whose glorious Cross and Passion, I endeavoured
to fix all my thoughts. For ages in this chapel, sovereigns and princes
had literally brought gold and incense, (as they do still, annually, on
the Feast of the Epiphany,) and offered their vows unto the King of
kings; and now, there I knelt with the greatest human being on the
footstool; the first man of the first nation; the great man of the
greatest Empire on which the sun ever shone; a man of blood, of battles,
and of victories, coming as a worshipper of the Prince of Peace, to
crave salvation and receive its pledge! ‘And yet, a greater than Solomon
is here,’ said my inward thought, ‘and therefore let this impressive
moment be a foretaste of that terrible hour when the Judge of all the
earth shall sit upon his throne, and when all worldly glories must
shrink to nothingness before His Majesty.’
I could not but observe the Duke, at the saying of the Nicene Creed. As
usual, in England, he faced about to the East, and at the name of Jesus,
the great Captain of his salvation, he bowed down his hoar head full
low, as if he were indeed a soldier of the cross, and not ashamed to
confess the faith of Christ crucified. The Duke was certainly not as
eminent for sanctity as for his many other qualities; but who shall say
that his worship was that of the formalist, or that the secret of his
soul, which is with God, may not have presented to His eye the
contrition and the faith of a sinner “much forgiven!” Surely, the
splendours which seem so attractive to the superficial, must, long
since, have become burdensome to him; and few, so well as he, have been
able to confirm by experience the faithful witness of inspiration, that
“man at his best estate is altogether vanity.”
The Dean is a grandson of the celebrated Charles Wesley, and I was
somewhat disappointed that he was not the preacher. The text, it seemed
to me, had been selected not without reference to the great person,
whose attendance at the chapel is sometimes solitary, and who having
entered on his eighty-third year on the preceding Thursday, might be
supposed to regard this Sunday as one of more than ordinary solemnity.
“_Though thy beginning was small, thy latter end shall greatly
increase_”—(Job viii:7)—such was the text, and the reverend preacher
dwelt on the approach of death, and spoke of “men covered with worldly
wealth and honours, making their end in remorse and misery.” If the
deafness of the Duke did not prevent his hearing, many parts of the
sermon must have affected him, but he retained the immoveable and drowsy
look of which I have spoken before, and sat close in his corner. The
residue of the service proceeded as usual; five persons, myself and the
beadle included, being the only persons present besides the officiating
clergy. The collection at the Offertory was duly made as in parish
churches, and at the proper time (the beadle opening the doors of our
pews) the altar was surrounded. Supposing that some etiquette might be
observed in such a place, I was very much pleased to find that the
contrary was the case; and that all present were expected to approach
the altar together. The Duke tottered up, just before me, and I knelt
down at his side, just where the beadle indicated my place. Of course I
had other things to think of at such a solemn moment, and I know nothing
of his deportment, at the sacrament, except that it seemed humble and
reverential. When all was over, and the Duke had retired, the Dean, who
had beckoned me to remain, for the consumption of the residue of the
sacrament, expressed great satisfaction at the presence of an American
clergyman, and spoke affectionately of our Church. He told me that the
Duke communicated thus regularly on the first Sunday of every month: and
I was glad, as I left the chapel, that I had been so happy as to see him
for the first time when engaged in such a duty. He is now gone to the
dread realities we there confessed; and there is something peculiarly
touching in the recollection of that morning at St. James’s, when that
cup of salvation, out of which kings and queens have, so often, drank
their weal or woe, passed from his lips to mine. It made me feel, at the
time, both out of place, and yet at home; for what had I to do in a
royal chapel, and in the company of the worldly great? and yet I was
there because it was my Father’s house, and because my right to the
children’s bread is the same as theirs, even the mercy which redeemed
all men’s souls at the same unspeakable price.
When I next saw the Duke of Wellington, I had the honour of being
presented to him, and of observing his person and his manners more
narrowly, in a scene of private festivity. I saw him once again, and
that, too, was at St. James’s, amid all the splendours of the Court,
dressed in his military uniform, and glittering with decorations. Even
there he was the “observed of all observers,” and long will it be before
such another shall be seen amid its splendours, giving, rather than
receiving lustre, in the face of the throne itself. But to have seen the
old hero bowing at the throne of grace, and asking mercy as a miserable
sinner, through the precious blood-shedding of Jesus Christ, will often
be one of the things which I shall most pleasingly recall, when I see
some poor dying cottager, or tenant of a garret, taking into his hand,
with as good a right, the same cup of salvation.
When I first came into the neighborhood of St. Paul’s, I was far more
impressed than I had expected to be with its dingy, but still sublime
exterior. With this Cathedral I had no very agreeable associations.
Erected during the first period of decline in correct taste and sound
theology, subsequent to the Rebellion, it naturally partakes of the cold
formality of the age, and is altogether as Anti-Anglican as pedantry and
an over-estimation of the classical in art could make it. It is in the
style of a Roman Basilica, rather than of an English Church, and is far
more suitable to Tridentine notions, than any Church in England erected
before the Reformation. Still, it is beautiful; I think exceedingly so:
and St. Peter’s, in the Vatican, is as inferior to this, in model, as
this is inferior to St. Peter’s in dimensions and internal magnificence.
I give my opinion boldly, for I feel sure that there can be no just room
for difference of opinion as to this matter. The more I saw of St.
Peter’s, the less was I satisfied with its ill-conceived and awkwardly
developed bulk; while every time I saw St. Paul’s, I found myself more
and more in love with its rich combinations of grace and majesty. How it
came to pass that Michael Angelo and his partners produced only a
magnificent monster, while Sir Christopher Wren came so near producing a
model of magnificence, it may be hard to tell; but though the latter has
its faults, no one can do less than admit, that if the immensity of St.
Peter’s embodied the same outline and proportions which are preserved in
St. Paul’s, the whole effect of the front, as you approach it between
the colonnades of Bernini, would be inconceivably better. St. Paul’s
unfortunately has no such approach; but its great dome looms before you,
as you begin to ascend Ludgate-hill, for all the world like a peak of
the Alps descried through the gorge of Gondo. When the promised
improvements are made in the neighborhood of the churchyard, and when a
better finish and composition of details are adopted at the eastern end,
or choir, of the cathedral, it may safely lay claim to the finest _coup
d’œil_ of its kind in Christendom. Its defects are notorious, but they
appear to me of minor importance; and the double portico, at the west
end, so mercilessly criticised by the mere grammarians of architecture,
strikes me as worthy of high commendation, as a happy license in the
poetry of the art, distinguishing a Christian Church from a heathen
temple. The Pantheon and Madeleine at Paris are doubtless more correct,
but they look—the one as if Voltaire and Rousseau might have ordered it
expressly for their Mausoleum, and the other as if Julian himself had
built it in grateful remembrance of his early friends, the Parisians.
I leave my readers to imagine the sort of enthusiasm with which I first
sauntered about the purlieus of the cathedral, and inquired of my
guide-book the actual site of the old Paul’s Cross, and strove to
conjure up the images, thereto pertaining, by witness of the chronicler.
Alas! how much rather would I have seen the old Paul’s, which poor Laud
so munificently repaired in the ill taste of his day; and that old
pulpit, in which Richard Hooker wagged his venerable head, than all this
Italian and classical display of Wren’s! There is no relish of the past
in it: and it has little that is truly religious in its effect on the
mind. Yet as being St. Paul’s, one feels that a Greek and Roman
composition would not befit any other of the apostles, so well as it
does the one that was a Roman citizen, and the Doctor of the Gentiles.
Going to St. Paul’s to morning service, on Sunday, the fourth of May, I
entered the south transept, and for the first time beheld its interior.
The effect of the immense vault of the dome, as it first struck my
sight, was overpowering—the more so, because at that moment, a single
burst of the organ, and the swell of an _Amen_ from the choir, where
service was already begun, filled the dome with reverberations, that
seemed to come upon me like thunder. I was so unprepared for anything
impressive in St. Paul’s, that I felt a sort of recoil, and the blood
flushed to my temples. I said to an American friend, who happened to be
with me—“after all, ’tis indeed sublime!” I now went forward with
highly excited expectations, and the voice of the clergyman intoning the
prayers, within the choir, increased my anxiety to be, at once, upon my
knees. I glanced at the monument of Howard, and entered beneath the
screen. The congregation seemed immense. A verger led us quite up to the
altar, and as he still found no place, conducted us out into the aisle,
where I passed the kneeling statue of Bishop Heber, with a trembling
emotion of love and admiration, and so was led about and put into a
stall, (inscribed, “Weldland,” with the legend, _Exaudi Domine
justitiam_,) where, kneeling down, I gave myself up to the solemn
worship of God. And solemn worship it was! I never, before or since,
heard any cathedral chaunting, whether in England or on the Continent,
that could be compared to it for effect. The clergyman who intoned the
Litany, knelt in the midst of the choir looking towards the altar. Even
now I seem to be hearing his full, rich voice, sonorously and
articulately, chaunting the suffrage—_by thy glorious Resurrection and
Ascension_—to which organ and singers gave response—_Good Lord deliver
us_—as with the voice of many waters. Then, as the next suffrage was
continued, the throbbings and echoes of this organ-blast supplied a sort
of under-current to its simple tone, at first pouring down from the dome
like the floods of Niagara, and then dying off along the distant nave
and aisles like mighty waves of the ocean. Tears gushed from my eyes,
and my heart swelled to my throat, as this overwhelming worship was
continued. It was all so entirely unexpected! Cold, cheerless, modern,
all but Hanoverian St. Paul’s—who dreamed of such a worship here! Yet
so it was; and I am sure, from subsequent experience, that it is capable
of being made a most attractive cathedral, and a very useful one. Knock
away that detestable screen, and put the organ in a better place;
confine the choir to the clergy, and compel all the canons, singers and
officials of every grade to be there; fit up the Altar end, and make it
new with a pictured window, in keeping with the architecture and
vastness of the place; subdue the light; set the pulpit at the head of
the nave, and let the entire Church be filled with worshippers and
hearers: and then, with a little decoration, and warm colouring to aid
the improved effect, we shall hear no more of the chilliness and poverty
of this august interior. It might be made a great Missionary Church for
the seamen and other laboring classes of the city and port of London;
while the aisles should furnish a succession of chapels, for services at
successive hours, and for Sunday schools, and catechizings. Church
Societies also, such as the S. P. G., might be allowed their chapels, in
which, before sailing, Missionaries might receive the Sacrament, or
offer thanks after arriving at home. One would think, moreover, that a
fitting use might be found for the great balcony, over the lower
portico, at the west-end, if only the Dean and Chapter would imitate the
May-morning hymn of Magdalen, and, in that public place, offer annual
prayers and thanksgivings to God, for the health, peace, and prosperity
of the vast Metropolis, to which they might make themselves the very
centre of spiritual life, by a little inventive effort, in the line of
useful and benevolent reform. Oh, for a besom and a reformer first, and
then for the line and plummet of the builder!
Dean Milman appeared in the pulpit, and preached a well-written sermon
(from Acts xvii. 26,) with evident reference to the influx of divers
nations at the inauguration of the Great Exhibition. But the Apostle,
for whom the cathedral is named, would have preached very differently, I
am persuaded, to the assembled Gentiles. In the congregation, I
discovered many foreign faces, and recognized, (by the familiar tokens
of angular features, goat-locks under the chin, and collars turned
down,) not a few of the more inquisitive and irreverent class of our own
countrymen, who seemed to think the rhetorical powers of the worthy Dean
altogether inferior to those of the stump, the camp-meeting, and the
Tabernacle in Broadway. I must allow that, if such were their
impressions, they are not much to blame. The editor of Gibbon, and of
Horace, has other claims to our respect, and richly deserves an eminent
station in the Academy, or in schools of Taste and Art; but the
orthodoxy of a Hooker, and the zeal of a Whitefield, are the better
qualifications for such a post as the Deanery of St. Paul’s ought to be.
Even a little enthusiasm might be excused in cathedral preaching, as
vastly preferable to the frigid decorum of a style and manner quite too
rigidly harmonious with the Corinthian and classical details of the
surrounding architecture.
The same day I attended Evening Service at St. Barnabas’, Pimlico, of
which everybody has heard something. At this time Mr. Bennett had ceased
to be the incumbent, and I was informed that the less defensible
practices of this Church had been discontinued, in obedience to the
injunctions of the Bishop. I cannot say I saw anything that need have
given great offence, in ordinary times and circumstances: but I saw not
a little which, in the time of apostacies and scandals, would more
inevitably scandalize the weaker brethren, than would many far more
serious sins against charity and brotherly kindness. Had these things
been other than absolutely indifferent in themselves, or had they been
less seemingly imitative of some ceremonies foreign to our primitive
Catholicity, one might have said, at any rate, that they were quite as
tolerable as the corresponding ultraisms of the opposing extreme in the
Church. I certainly tried to feel both charity and fraternal sympathy
for the brethren of St. Barnabas’, for I had heard them well-reported of
for many good works. Yet, my impressions were not altogether favorable.
On the whole, the effect was that of formalism beyond anything I ever
saw in our Communion. The architecture was somewhat too highly charged
with mediævalism for reformed Anglican worship, but would be not less
inappropriate, in several particulars, to modern Romanism. It was
antiquarian, rather than practical in any respect. The service seemed to
be performed in the same æsthetic and almost histrionic spirit, even
where the rubric was strictly complied with. One could not say just what
was inexcusable, and yet felt that little was done unto edifying. The
evil seemed to be that its _good_ was made to be _evil spoken of_, by
the excessive and unnatural, if not unreal way in which it was
exhibited. Good there was, undoubtedly, in the original idea of this
Church, and one scruples to impeach the motive of such displays of zeal
for the glory of God: but we have the positive rule of St. Paul, given
by precept and example, that everything beyond what is the ordinance and
custom of the Church, is to be subordinated to the great work of
evangelizing men compassed with infirmities, and who oppose to the
Gospel the divers prejudices of the Gentile and the Jew. I am very much
afraid the contrary is the rule at St. Barnabas’. After the Evening
Service, the congregation was dismissed without a Sermon. Although the
assembly was far from large, and however true it may be that prayers are
better than preaching, in certain circumstances, I certainly felt that a
few words of exhortation might have added a spirit of reality to the
solemnities, and could not have seemed out of place on the Lord’s Day,
even at Evening Service. Still it is but just to say that the services
are so arranged, in this church, as to secure an average both of
teaching and worship, much greater than is usual elsewhere. With all
this, why cannot a _bonâ fide_ English air of earnestness be given to
the whole thing? Let us have a _living_ ceremonial, at least, and a real
one. The reading which I heard was not English reading: if the preaching
be of the same sort, no wonder the people consider the whole a mere
imitation of foreign performances. An external standard, and not the
spirit of the English rubric, appears to be before the eyes of the
ministers; just as a similar standard, and not the law, seems to have
guided Dr. Lushington in his late decision against them. Strange that
while his judgment demolishes furniture to which nothing but bigotry can
object, he leaves the brazen doors of the chancel, which are repugnant
to common sense, as they almost conceal the altar.
Later in the evening, I attended St. George’s, Hanover-Square, the
Church so distinguished for marriages in high-life, and for a
fashionable _prestige_ altogether. Here one sees _Hanover_ indeed! The
names of its successive Churchwardens are emblazoned on the galleries,
and I observed that they were generally those of noblemen and gentry.
Fashion was much too prominent. A young and well-looking preacher, in
Episcopal robes, appeared in the pulpit, and discoursed articulately,
and with some spirit, (on Rev. xxii. 17,) though not remarkably in other
respects. This was the new Bishop of Nova Scotia, who has since entered
into the labors of his missionary field with great diligence and
success.
I had attended four distinct services in divers parts of the Metropolis
this day, and I was informed that I might easily have attended as many
more. Very different hours are kept in different parishes; and it is not
unusual for one, two, or even three Morning Services to be celebrated in
the same Church, to accommodate different classes of worshippers. Such
is one fruit of the awakened vitality of the Church of England.