CONWAY CASTLE.

September 13th.--On Monday we went with O'Sullivan to Conway by rail.

Certainly this must be the most perfect specimen of a ruinous old castle

in the whole world; it quite fills up one's idea. We first walked round

the exterior of the wall, at the base of which are hovels, with dirty

children playing about them, and pigs rambling along, and squalid women

visible in the doorways; but all these things melt into the

picturesqueness of the scene, and do not harm it. The whole town of

Conway is built in what was once the castle-yard, and the whole circuit

of the wall is still standing in a delightful state of decay. At the

angles, and at regular intervals, there are round towers, having half

their circle on the outside of the walls, and half within. Most of these

towers have a great crack pervading them irregularly from top to bottom;

the ivy hangs upon them,--the weeds grow on the tops. Gateways, three or

four of them, open through the walls, and streets proceed from them into

the town. At some points, very old cottages or small houses are close

against the sides, and, old as they are, they must have been built after

the whole structure was a ruin. In one place I saw the sign of an

alehouse painted on the gray stones of one of the old round towers. As

we entered one of the gates, after making the entire circuit, we saw an

omnibus coming down the street towards us, with its horn sounding.

Llandudno was its place of destination; and, knowing no more about it

than that it was four miles off, we took our seats. Llandudno is a

watering-village at the base of the Great Orme's Head, at the mouth of

the Conway River. In this omnibus there were two pleasant-looking girls,

who talked Welsh together,--a guttural, childish kind of a babble.

Afterwards we got into conversation with them, and found them very

agreeable. One of them was reading Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy." On

reaching Llandudno, S----- waited at the hotel, while O'Sullivan, U----,

and I ascended the Great Orme's Head. There are copper-mines here, and

we heard of a large cave, with stalactites, but did not go so far as

that. We found the old shaft of a mine, however, and threw stones down

it, and counted twenty before we heard them strike the bottom. At the

base of the Head, on the side opposite the village, we saw a small church

with a broken roof, and horizontal gravestones of slate within the stone

enclosure around it. The view from the hill was most beautiful,--a blue

summer sea, with the distant trail of smoke from a steamer, and many

snowy sails; in another direction the mountains, near and distant, some

of them with clouds below their peaks.

We went to one of the mines which are still worked, and boys came running

to meet us with specimens of the copper ore for sale. The miners were

not now hoisting ore from the shaft, but were washing and selecting the

valuable fragments from great heaps of crumbled stone and earth. All

about this spot there are shafts and well-holes, looking fearfully deep

and black, and without the slightest protection, so that we might just as

easily have walked into them as not. Having examined these matters

sufficiently, we descended the hill towards the village, meeting parties

of visitors, mounted on donkeys, which is a much more sensible way of

ascending in a hot day than to walk. On the sides and summit of the hill

we found yellow gorse,--heath of two colors, I think, and very

beautiful,--and here and there a harebell. Owing to the long-continued

dry weather, the grass was getting withered and brown, though not so much

so as on American hill-pastures at this season. Returning to the

village, we all went into a confectioner's shop, and made a good

luncheon. The two prettiest young ladies whom I have seen in England

came into the shop and ate cakes while we were there. They appeared to

be living together in a lodging-house, and ordered some of their

housekeeping articles from the confectioner.

Next we went into the village bazaar,--a sort of tent or open shop, full

of knick-knacks and gewgaws, and bought some playthings for the children.

At half past one we took our seats in the omnibus, to return to Conway.

We had as yet only seen the castle wall and the exterior of the castle;

now we were to see the inside. Right at the foot of it an old woman has

her stand for the sale of lithographic views of Conway and other places;

but these views are ridiculously inadequate, so that we did not buy any

of them. The admittance into the castle is by a wooden door of modern

construction, and the present seneschal is, I believe, the sexton of a

church. He remembered me as having been there a month or two ago; and

probably, considering that I was already initiated, or else because he

had many other visitors, he left us to wander about the castle at will.

It is altogether impossible to describe Conway Castle. Nothing ever can

have been so perfect in its own style, and for its own purposes, when it

was first built; and now nothing else can be so perfect as a picture of

ivy-grown, peaceful ruin. The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky and

with thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass and weeds

growing on the arches that overpass it, is indescribably beautiful. The

hearthstones of the great old fireplaces, all about the castle, seem to

be favorite spots for weeds to grow. There are eight large round towers,

and out of four of them, I think, rise smaller towers, ascending to a

much greater height, and once containing winding staircases, all of which

are now broken, and inaccessible from below, though, in at least one of

the towers, the stairs seemed perfect, high aloft. It must have been the

rudest violence that broke down these stairs; for each step was a thick

and heavy slab of stone, built into the wall of the tower. There is no

such thing as a roof in any part; towers, hall, kitchen, all are open to

the sky. One round tower, directly overhanging the railway, is so

shattered by the falling away of the lower part, that you can look quite

up into it and through it, while sitting in the cars; and yet it has

stood thus, without falling into complete ruin, for more than two hundred

years. I think that it was in this tower that we found the castle oven,

an immense cavern, big enough to bake bread for an army. The railway

passes exactly at the base of the high rock, on which this part of the

castle is situated, and goes into the town through a great arch that has

been opened in the castle wall. The tubular bridge across the Conway has

been built in a style that accords with the old architecture, and I

observed that one little sprig of ivy had rooted itself in the new

structure.

There are numberless intricate passages in the thickness of the castle

walls, forming communications between tower and tower,--damp, chill

passages, with rough stone on either hand, darksome, and very likely

leading to dark pitfalls. The thickness of the walls is amazing; and the

people of those days must have been content with very scanty light, so

small were the apertures,--sometimes merely slits and loopholes,

glimmering through many feet of thickness of stone. One of the towers

was said to have been the residence of Queen Eleanor; and this was better

lighted than the others, containing an oriel-window, looking out of a

little oratory, as it seemed to be, with groined arches and traces of

ornamental sculpture, so that we could dress up some imperfect image of a

queenly chamber, though the tower was roofless and floorless. There was

another pleasant little windowed nook, close beside the oratory, where

the Queen might have sat sewing or looking down the river Conway at the

picturesque headlands towards the sea. We imagined her stately figure in

antique robes, standing beneath the groined arches of the oratory. There

seem to have been three chambers, one above another, in these towers, and

the one in which was the embowed window was the middle one. I suppose

the diameter of each of these circular rooms could not have been more

than twenty feet on the inside. All traces of wood-work and iron-work

are quite gone from the whole castle. These are said to have been taken

away by a Lord Conway in the reign of Charles II. There is a grassy

space under the windows of Queen Eleanor's tower,--a sort of outwork of

the castle, where probably, when no enemy was near, the Queen used to

take the open air in summer afternoons like this. Here we sat down on

the grass of the ruined wall, and agreed that nothing in the world could

be so beautiful and picturesque as Conway Castle, and that never could

there have been so fit a time to see it as this sunny, quiet, lovely

afternoon. Sunshine adapts itself to the character of a ruin in a

wonderful way; it does not "flout the ruins gray," as Scott says, but

sympathizes with their decay, and saddens itself for their sake. It

beautifies the ivy too.

We saw, at the corner of this grass-plot around Queen Eleanor's tower, a

real trunk of a tree of ivy, with so stalwart a stem, and such a vigorous

grasp of its strong branches, that it would be a very efficient support

to the wall, were it otherwise inclined to fall. O that we could have

ivy in America! What is there to beautify us when our time of ruin

comes?

Before departing, we made the entire circuit of the castle on its walls,

and O'Sullivan and I climbed by a ladder to the top of one of the towers.

While there, we looked down into the street beneath, and saw a

photographist preparing to take a view of the castle, and calling out to

some little girl in some niche or on some pinnacle of the walls to stand

still that he might catch her figure and face. I think it added to the

impressiveness of the old castle, to see the streets and the

kitchen-gardens and the homely dwellings that had grown up within the

precincts of this feudal fortress, and the people of to-day following

their little businesses about it. This does not destroy the charm; but

tourists and idle visitors do impair it. The earnest life of to-day,

however, petty and homely as it may be, has a right to its place

alongside of what is left of the life of other days; and if it be vulgar

itself, it does not vulgarize the scene. But tourists do vulgarize it;

and I suppose we did so, just like others.

We took the train back to Rhyl, where we arrived at about four o'clock,

and, having dined, we again took the rail for Chester, and thence to Rock

Park (that is, O'Sullivan and I), and reached home at about eleven

o'clock.

Yesterday, September 13th, I began to wear a watch from Bennet's, 65

Cheapside, London. W. C. Bennet warrants it as the best watch which they

can produce. If it prove as good and as durable as he prophesies, J-----

will find it a perfect time-keeper long after his father has done with

Time. If I had not thought of his wearing it hereafter, I should have

been content with a much inferior one. No. 39,620.

September 20th.--I went back to Rhyl last Friday in the steamer. We

arrived at the landing-place at nearly four o'clock, having started at

twelve, and I walked thence to our lodgings, 18 West Parade. The

children and their mother were all gone out, and I sat some time in our

parlor before anybody came. The next morning I made an excursion in the

omnibus as far as Ruthin, passing through Rhyddlan, St. Asaph, Denbigh,

and reaching Ruthin at one o'clock. All these are very ancient places.

St. Asaph has a cathedral which is not quite worthy of that name, but is

a very large and stately church in excellent repair. Its square

battlemented tower has a very fine appearance, crowning the clump of

village houses on the hill-top, as you approach from Rhyddlan. The

ascent of the hill is very steep; so it is at Denbigh and at Ruthin,--the

steepest streets, indeed, that I ever climbed. Denbigh is a place of

still more antique aspect than St. Asaph; it looks, I think, even older

than Chester, with its gabled houses, many of their windows opening on

hinges, and their fronts resting on pillars, with an open porch beneath.

The castle makes an admirably ruinous figure on the hill, higher than the

village. I had come hither with the purpose of inspecting it, but as it

began to rain just then, I concluded to get into the omnibus and go to

Ruthin. There was another steep ascent from the commencement of the long

street of Ruthin, till I reached the market-place, which is of nearly

triangular shape, and an exceedingly old-looking place. Houses of stone

or plastered brick; one or two with timber frames; the roofs of an uneven

line, and bulging out or sinking in; the slates moss-grown. Some of them

have two peaks and even three in a row, fronting on the streets, and

there is a stone market-house with a table of regulations. In this

market-place there is said to be a stone on which King Arthur beheaded

one of his enemies; but this I did not see. All these villages were very

lively, as the omnibus drove in; and I rather imagine it was market-day

in each of them,--there being quite a bustle of Welsh people. The old

women came round the omnibus courtesying and intimating their willingness

to receive alms,--witch-like women, such as one sees in pictures or reads

of in romances, and very unlike anything feminine in America. Their

style of dress cannot have changed for centuries. It was quite

unexpected to me to hear Welsh so universally and familiarly spoken.

Everybody spoke it. The omnibus-driver could speak but imperfect

English; there was a jabber of Welsh all through the streets and

market-places; and it flowed out with a freedom quite different from the

way in which they expressed themselves in English. I had had an idea

that Welsh was spoken rather as a freak and in fun than as a native

language; it was so strange to find another language the people's actual

and earnest medium of thought within so short a distance of England. But

English is scarcely more known to the body of the Welsh people than to

the peasantry of France. However, they sometimes pretend to ignorance,

when they might speak it fairly enough.

I took luncheon at the hotel where the omnibus stopped, and then went to

search out the castle. It appears to have been once extensive, but the

remains of it are now very few, except a part of the external wall.

Whatever other portion may still exist, has been built into a modern

castellated mansion, which has risen within the wide circuit of the

fortress,--a handsome and spacious edifice of red freestone, with a high

tower, on which a flag was flying. The grounds were well laid out in

walks, and really I think the site of the castle could not have been

turned to better account. I am getting tired of antiquity. It is

certainly less interesting in the long run than novelty; and so I was

well content with the fresh, warm, red hue of the modern house, and the

unworn outline of its walls, and its cheerful, large windows; and was

willing that the old ivy-grown ruins should exist now only to contrast

with the modernisms. These ancient walls, by the by, are of immense

thickness. There is a passage through the interior of a portion of them,

the width from this interior passage to the outer one being fifteen feet

on one side, and I know not how much on the other.

It continued showery all day; and the omnibus was crowded. I had chosen

the outside from Rhyl to Denbigh, but, all the rest of the journey,

imprisoned myself within. On our way home, an old lady got into the

omnibus,--a lady of tremendous rotundity; and as she tumbled from the

door to the farthest part of the carriage, she kept advising all the rest

of the passengers to get out. "I don't think there will be much rain,

gentlemen," quoth she, "you'll be much more comfortable on the outside."

As none of us complied, she glanced along the seats. "What! are you all

Saas'uach?" she inquired. As we drove along, she talked Welsh with great

fluency to one of the passengers, a young woman with a baby, and to as

many others as could understand her. It has a strange, wild sound, like

a language half blown away by the wind. The lady's English was very

good; but she probably prided herself on her proficiency in Welsh. My

excursion to-day had been along the valley of the Clwyd, a very rich and

fertile tract of country.

The next day we all took a long walk on the beach, picking up shells.

On Monday we took an open carriage and drove to Rhyddlan; whence we sent

back the carriage, meaning to walk home along the embankment of the river

Clwyd, after inspecting the castle. The fortress is very ruinous, having

been dismantled by the Parliamentarians. There are great gaps,--two, at

least, in the walls that connect the round towers, of which there were

six, one on each side of a gateway in front, and the same at a gateway

towards the river, where there is a steep descent to a wall and square

tower, at the water-side. Great pains and a great deal of gunpowder must

have been used in converting this castle into a ruin. There were one or

two fragments lying where they had fallen more than two hundred years

ago, which, though merely a conglomeration of small stones and mortar,

were just as hard as if they had been solid masses of granite. The

substantial thickness of the walls is composed of these agglomerated

small stones and mortar, the casing being hewn blocks of red freestone.

This is much worn away by the weather, wherever it has been exposed to

the air; but, under shelter, it looks as if it might have been hewn only

a year or two ago. Each of the round towers had formerly a small

staircase turret rising beside and ascending above it, in which a warder

might be posted, but they have all been so battered and shattered that it

is impossible for an uninstructed observer to make out a satisfactory

plan of then. The interior of each tower was a small room, not more than

twelve or fifteen feet across; and of these there seem to have been three

stories, with loop-holes for archery and not much other light than what

came through them. Then there are various passages and nooks and corners

and square recesses in the stone, some of which must have been intended

for dungeons, and the ugliest and gloomiest dungeons imaginable, for they

could not have had any light or air. There is not, the least, splinter

of wood-work remaining in any part of the castle,--nothing but bare

stone, and a little plaster in one or two places, on the wall. In the

front gateway we looked at the groove on each side, in which the

portcullis used to rise and fall; and in each of the contiguous round

towers there was a loop-hole, whence an enemy on the outer side of the

portcullis might be shot through with an arrow.

The inner court-yard is a parallelogram, nearly a square, and is about

forty-five of my paces across. It is entirely grass-grown, and vacant,

except for two or three trees that have been recently set out, and which

are surrounded with palings to keep away the cows that pasture in and

about the place. No window looks from the walls or towers into this

court-yard; nor are there any traces of buildings having stood within the

enclosure, unless it be what looks something like the flue of a chimney

within one of the walls. I should suppose, however, that there must have

been, when the castle was in its perfect state, a hall, a kitchen, and

other commodious apartments and offices for the King and his train, such

as there were at Conway and Beaumaris. But if so, all fragments have

been carried away, and all hollows of the old foundations scrupulously

filled up. The round towers could not have comprised all the

accommodation of the castle. There is nothing more striking in these

ruins than to look upward from the crumbling base, and see flights of

stairs, still comparatively perfect, by which you might securely ascend

to the upper heights of the tower, although all traces of a staircase

have disappeared below, and the upper portion cannot be attained. On

three sides of the fortress is a moat, about sixty feet wide, and cased

with stone. It was probably of great depth in its day, but it is now

partly filled up with earth, and is quite dry and grassy throughout its

whole extent. On the inner side of the moat was the outer wall of the

castle, portions of which still remain. Between the outer wall and the

castle itself the space is also about sixty feet.

The day was cloudy and lowering, and there were several little

spatterings of rain, while we rambled about. The two children ran

shouting hither and thither, and were continually clambering into

dangerous places, racing along ledges of broken wall. At last they

altogether disappeared for a good while; their voices, which had

heretofore been plainly audible, were hushed, nor was there any answer

when we began to call them, while making ready for our departure. But

they finally appeared, coming out of the moat, where they had been

picking and eating blackberries,--which, they said, grew very plentifully

there, and which they were very reluctant to leave. Before quitting the

castle, I must not forget the ivy, which makes a perfect tapestry over a

large portion of the walls.

We walked about the village, which is old and ugly; small, irregular

streets, contriving to be intricate, though there are few of them; mean

houses, joining to each other. We saw, in the principal one, the

parliament house in which Edward I. gave a Charter, or allowed rights of

some kind to his Welsh subjects. The ancient part of its wall is

entirely distinguishable from what has since been built upon it.

Thence we set out to walk along the embankment, although the sky looked

very threatening. The wind, however, was so strong, and had such a full

sweep at us, on the top of the bank, that we decided on taking a path

that led from it across the moor. But we soon had cause to repent of

this; for, which way soever we turned, we found ourselves cut off by a

ditch or a little stream; so that here we were, fairly astray on Rhyddlan

moor, the old battle-field of the Saxons and Britons, and across which, I

suppose, the fiddlers and mountebanks had marched to the relief of the

Earl of Chester. Anon, too, it began to shower; and it was only after

various leaps and scramblings that we made our way to a large farm-house,

and took shelter under a cart-shed. The back of the house to which we

gained access was very dirty and ill-kept; some dirty children peeped at

us as we approached, and nobody had the civility to ask us in; so we took

advantage of the first cessation of the shower to resume our way. We

were shortly overtaken by a very intelligent-looking and civil man, who

seemed to have come from Rhyddlan, and said he was going to Rhyl. We

followed his guidance over stiles and along hedge-row paths which we

never could have threaded rightly by ourselves.

By and by our kind guide had to stop at an intermediate farm; but he gave

us full directions how to proceed, and we went on till it began to shower

again pretty briskly, and we took refuge in a little bit of old stone

cottage, which, small as it was, had a greater antiquity than any mansion

in America. The door was open, and as we approached, we saw several

children gazing at us; and their mother, a pleasant-looking woman, who

seemed rather astounded at the visit that was about to befall her, tried

to draw a tattered curtain over a part of her interior, which she fancied

even less fit to be seen than the rest. To say the truth, the house was

not at all better than a pigsty; and while we sat there, a pig came

familiarly to the door, thrust in his snout, and seemed surprised that he

should be driven away, instead of being admitted as one of the family.

The floor was of brick; there was no ceiling, but only the peaked gable

overhead. The room was kitchen, parlor, and, I suppose, bedroom for the

whole family; at all events, there was only the tattered curtain between

us and the sleeping accommodations. The good woman either could not or

would not speak a word of English, only laughing when S----- said, "Dim

Sassenach?" but she was kind and hospitable, and found a chair for each

of us. She had been making some bread, and the dough was on the dresser.

Life with these people is reduced to its simplest elements. It is only a

pity that they cannot or do not choose to keep themselves cleaner.

Poverty, except in cities, need not be squalid. When the shower abated a

little, we gave all the pennies we had to the children, and set forth

again. By the by, there were several colored prints stuck up against the

walls, and there was a clock ticking in a corner and some paper-hangings

pinned upon the slanting roof.

It began to rain again before we arrived at Rhyl, and we were driven into

a small tavern. After staying there awhile, we set forth between the

drops; but the rain fell still heavier, so that we were pretty well

damped before we got to our lodgings. After dinner, I took the rail for

Chester and Rock Park, and S----- and the children and maid followed the

next day.

September 22d.--I dined on Wednesday evening at Mr. John Heywood's,

Norris Green. Mr. Mouckton Mimes and lady were of the company. Mr.

Mimes is a very agreeable, kindly man, resembling Longfellow a good deal

in personal appearance; and he promotes, by his genial manners, the same

pleasant intercourse which is so easily established with Longfellow. He

is said to be a very kind patron of literary men, and to do a great deal

of good among young and neglected people of that class. He is considered

one of the best conversationists at present in society: it may very well

be so; his style of talking being very simple and natural, anything but

obtrusive, so that you might enjoy its agreeableness without suspecting

it. He introduced me to his wife (a daughter of Lord Crewe), with whom

and himself I had a good deal of talk. Mr. Milnes told me that he owns

the land in Yorkshire, whence some of the pilgrims of the Mayflower

emigrated to Plymouth, and that Elder Brewster was the Postmaster of the

village. . . . He also said that in the next voyage of the Mayflower,

after she carried the Pilgrims, she was employed in transporting a cargo

of slaves from Africa,--to the West Indies, I suppose. This is a queer

fact, and would be nuts for the Southerners.

Mem.--An American would never understand the passage in Bunyan about

Christian and Hopeful going astray along a by-path into the grounds of

Giant Despair,--from there being no stiles and by-paths in our country.

September 26th.--On Saturday evening my wife and I went to a soiree given

by the Mayor and Mrs. Lloyd at the Town Hall to receive the Earl of

Harrowby. It was quite brilliant, the public rooms being really

magnificent, and adorned for the occasion with a large collection of

pictures, belonging to Mr. Naylor. They were mostly, if not entirely, of

modern artists,--of Turner, Wilkie, Landseer, and others of the best

English painters. Turner's seemed too ethereal to have been done by

mortal hands.

The British Scientific Association being now in session here, many

distinguished strangers were present.

September 29th.--Mr. Monekton Milnes called on me at the Consulate day

before yesterday. He is pleasant and sensible. Speaking of American

politicians, I remarked that they were seldom anything but politicians,

and had no literary or other culture beyond their own calling. He said

the case was the same in England, and instanced Sir ------, who once

called on him for information when an appeal had been made to him

respecting two literary gentlemen. Sir ------ had never heard the names

of either of these gentlemen, and applied to Mr. Milnes as being somewhat

conversant with the literary class, to know whether they were

distinguished and what were their claims. The names of the two literary

men were James Sheridan Knowles and Alfred Tennyson.

October 5th.--Yesterday I was present at a dejeuner on board the James

Barnes, on occasion of her coming under the British flag, having been

built for the Messrs. Barnes by Donald McKay of Boston. She is a

splendid vessel, and magnificently fitted up, though not with consummate

taste. It would be worth while that ornamental architects and

upholsterers should study this branch of art, since the ship-builders

seem willing to expend a good deal of money on it. In fact, I do not see

that there is anywhere else so much encouragement to the exercise of

ornamental art. I saw nothing to criticise in the solid and useful

details of the ship; the ventilation, in particular, being free and

abundant, so that the hundreds of passengers who will have their berths

between decks, and at a still lower depth, will have good air and enough

of it.

There were four or five hundred persons, principally Liverpool merchants

and their wives, invited to the dejeuner; and the tables were spread

between decks, the berths for passengers not being yet put in. There was

not quite light enough to make the scene cheerful, it being an overcast

day; and, indeed, there was an English plainness in the arrangement of

the festal room, which might have been better exchanged for the flowery

American taste, which I have just been criticising. With flowers, and

the arrangement of flags, we should have made something very pretty of

the space between decks; but there was nothing to hide the fact that in a

few days hence there would be crowded berths and sea-sick steerage

passengers where we were now feasting. The cheer was very good,--cold

fowl and meats; cold pies of foreign manufacture very rich, and of

mysterious composition; and champagne in plenty, with other wines for

those who liked them.

I sat between two ladies, one of them Mrs. ------, a pleasant young

woman, who, I believe, is of American provincial nativity, and whom I

therefore regarded as half a countrywoman. We talked a good deal

together, and I confided to her my annoyance at the prospect of being

called up to answer a toast; but she did not pity me at all, though she

felt, much alarm about her husband, Captain ------, who was in the same

predicament. Seriously, it is the most awful part of my official duty,--

this necessity of making dinner-speeches at the Mayor's, and other public

or semi-public tables. However, my neighborhood to Mrs. ------ was good

for me, inasmuch as by laughing over the matter with her came to regard

it in a light and ludicrous way; and so, when the time actually came, I

stood up with a careless dare-devil feeling. The chairman toasted the

president immediately after the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of

myself in a most flattering manner, something like this: "Great by his

position under the Republic,--greater still, I am bold to say, in the

Republic of letters!" I made no reply at all to this; in truth, I forgot

all about it when I began to speak, and merely thanked the company in

behalf of the President, and my countrymen, and made a few remarks with

no very decided point to them. However, they cheered and applauded, and

I took advantage of the applause to sit down, and Mrs. ------ informed me

that I had succeeded admirably. It was no success at all, to be sure;

neither was it a failure, for I had aimed at nothing, and I had exactly

hit it. But after sitting down, I was conscious of an enjoyment in

speaking to a public assembly, and felt as if I should like to rise

again. It is something like being under fire,--a sort of excitement, not

exactly pleasure, but more piquant than most pleasures. I have felt this

before, in the same circumstances; but, while on my legs, my impulse is

to get through with my remarks and sit down again as quickly as possible.

The next speech, I think, was by Rev. Dr. ------, the celebrated Arctic

gentleman, in reply to a toast complimentary to the clergy. He turned

aside from the matter in hand, to express his kind feelings towards

America, where he said he had been most hospitably received, especially

at Cambridge University. He also made allusions to me, and I suppose it

would have been no more than civil in me to have answered with a speech

in acknowledgment, but I did not choose to make another venture, so

merely thanked him across the corner of the table, for he sat near me.

He is a venerable-looking, white-haired gentleman, tall and slender, with

a pale, intelligent, kindly face.

Other speeches were made; but from beginning to end there was not one

breath of eloquence, nor even one neat sentence; and I rather think that

Englishmen would purposely avoid eloquence or neatness in after-dinner

speeches. It seems to be no part of their object. Yet any Englishman

almost, much more generally than Americans, will stand up and talk on in

a plain way, uttering one rough, ragged, and shapeless sentence after

another, and will have expressed himself sensibly, though in a very rude

manner, before he sits down. And this is quite satisfactory to his

audience, who, indeed, are rather prejudiced against the man who speaks

too glibly.

The guests began to depart shortly after three o'clock. This morning I

have seen two reports of my little speech,--one exceedingly incorrect;

another pretty exact, but not much to my taste, for I seem to have left

out everything that would have been fittest to say.

October 6th.--The people, for several days, have been in the utmost

anxiety, and latterly in the highest exultation about Sebastopol,--and

all England, and Europe to boot, have been fooled by the belief that it

had fallen. This, however, now turns out to be incorrect; and the public

visage is somewhat grim, in consequence. I am glad of it. In spite of

his actual sympathies, it is impossible for a true American to be

otherwise than glad. Success makes an Englishman intolerable; and,

already, on the mistaken idea that the way was open to a prosperous

conclusion of the war, The Times had begun to throw out menaces against

America. I shall never love England till she sues to us for help, and,

in the mean time, the fewer triumphs she obtains, the better for all

parties. An Englishman in adversity is a very respectable character; he

does not lose his dignity, but merely comes to a proper conception of

himself. It is rather touching to an observer to see how much the

universal heart is in this matter,--to see the merchants gathering round

the telegraphic messages, posted on the pillars of the Exchange

news-room, the people in the street who cannot afford to buy a paper

clustering round the windows of the news-offices, where a copy is pinned

up,--the groups of corporals and sergeants at the recruiting rendezvous,

with a newspaper in the midst of them and all earnest and sombre, and

feeling like one man together, whatever their rank. I seem to myself

like a spy or a traitor when I meet their eyes, and am conscious that I

neither hope nor fear in sympathy with them, although they look at me in

full confidence of sympathy. Their heart "knoweth its own bitterness,"

and as for me, being a stranger and all alien, I "intermeddle not with

their joy."

October 9th.--My ancestor left England in 1630. I return in 1853. I

sometimes feel as if I myself had been absent these two hundred and

twenty-three years, leaving England just emerging from the feudal system,

and finding it, on my return, on the verge of republicanism. It brings

the two far-separated points of time very closely together, to view the

matter thus.

October 16th.--A day or two ago arrived the sad news of the loss of the

Arctic by collision with a French steamer off Newfoundland, and the loss

also of three or four hundred people. I have seldom been more affected

by anything quite alien from my personal and friendly concerns, than by

the death of Captain Luce and his son. The boy was a delicate lad, and

it is said that he had never been absent from his mother till this time,

when his father had taken him to England to consult a physician about a

complaint in his hip. So his father, while the ship was sinking, was

obliged to decide whether he would put the poor, weakly, timorous child

on board the boat, to take his hard chance of life there, or keep him to

go down with himself and the ship. He chose the latter; and within half

an hour, I suppose, the boy was among the child-angels. Captain Luce

could not do less than die, for his own part, with the responsibility of

all those lost lives upon him. He may not have been in the least to

blame for the calamity, but it was certainly too heavy a one for him to

survive. He was a sensible man, and a gentleman, courteous, quiet, with

something almost melancholy in his address and aspect. Oftentimes he has

come into my inner office to say good-by before his departures, but I

cannot precisely remember whether or no he took leave of me before this

latest voyage. I never exchanged a great many words with him; but those

were kind ones.

October 19th.--It appears to be customary for people of decent station,

but in distressed circumstances, to go round among their neighbors and

the public, accompanied by a friend, who explains the case. I have been

accosted in the street in regard to one of these matters; and to-day

there came to my office a grocer, who had become security for a friend,

and who was threatened with an execution,--with another grocer for

supporter and advocate. The beneficiary takes very little active part in

the affair, merely looking careworn, distressed, and pitiable, and

throwing in a word of corroboration, or a sigh, or an acknowledgment, as

the case may demand. In the present instance, the friend, a young,

respectable-looking tradesman, with a Lancashire accent, spoke freely and

simply of his client's misfortunes, not pressing the case unduly, but

doing it full justice, and saying, at the close of the interview, that it

was no pleasant business for himself. The broken grocer was an elderly

man, of somewhat sickly aspect. The whole matter is very foreign to

American habits. No respectable American would think of retrieving his

affairs by such means, but would prefer ruin ten times over; no friend

would take up his cause; no public would think it worth while to prevent

the small catastrophe. And yet the custom is not without its good side

as indicating a closer feeling of brotherhood, a more efficient sense of

neighborhood, than exists among ourselves, although, perhaps, we are more

careless of a fellow-creature's ruin, because ruin with us is by no means

the fatal and irretrievable event that it is in England.

I am impressed with the ponderous and imposing look of an English legal

document,--an assignment of real estate in England, for instance,--

engrossed on an immense sheet of thickest paper, in a formal hand,

beginning with "This Indenture" in German text, and with occasional

phrases of form, breaking out into large script,--very long and

repetitious, fortified with the Mayor of Manchester's seal, two or three

inches in diameter, which is certified by a notary-public, whose

signature, again, is to have my consular certificate and official seal.

November 2d.--A young Frenchman enters, of gentlemanly aspect, with a

grayish cloak or paletot overspreading his upper person, and a handsome

and well-made pair of black trousers and well-fitting boots below. On

sitting down, he does not throw off nor at all disturb the cloak. Eying

him more closely, one discerns that he has no shirt-collar, and that what

little is visible of his shirt-bosom seems not to be of to-day nor of

yesterday,--perhaps not even of the day before. His manner is not very

good; nevertheless, he is a coxcomb and a jackanapes. He avers himself a

naturalized citizen of America, where he has been tutor in several

families of distinction, and has been treated like a son. He left

America on account of his health, and came near being tutor in the Duke

of Norfolk's family, but failed for lack of testimonials; he is

exceedingly capable and accomplished, but reduced in funds, and wants

employment here, of the means of returning to America, where he intends

to take a situation under government, which he is sure of obtaining. He

mentioned a quarrel which he had recently had with an Englishman in

behalf of America, and would have fought a duel had such been the custom

of the country. He made the Englishman foam at the mouth, and told him

that he had been twelve years at a military school, and could easily kill

him. I say to him that I see little or no prospect of his getting

employment here, but offer to inquire whether any situation, as clerk or

otherwise, can be obtained for him in a vessel returning to America, and

ask his address. He has no address. Much to my surprise, he takes his

leave without requesting pecuniary aid, but hints that he shall call

again. He is a very disagreeable young fellow, like scores of others who

call on me in the like situation. His English is very good for a

Frenchman, and he says he speaks it the least well of five languages. He

has been three years in America, and obtained his naturalization papers,

he says, as a special favor, and by means of strong interest. Nothing is

so absolutely odious as the sense of freedom and equality pertaining to

an American grafted on the mind of a native of any other country in the

world. A naturalized citizen is HATEFUL. Nobody has a right to our

ideas, unless born to them.

November 9th.--I lent the above Frenchman a small sum; he advertised for

employment as a teacher; and he called this morning to thank me for my

aid, and says Mr. C------ has engaged him for his children, at a guinea a

week, and that he has also another engagement. The poor fellow seems to

have been brought to a very low ebb. He has pawned everything, even to

his last shirt, save the one he had on, and had been living at the rate

of twopence a day. I had procured him a chance to return to America, but

he was ashamed to go back in such poor circumstances, and so determined

to seek better fortune here. I like him better than I did,--partly, I

suppose, because I have helped him.

November 14th.--The other day I saw an elderly gentleman walking in Dale

Street, apparently in a state of mania; for as he limped along (being

afflicted with lameness) he kept talking to himself, and sometimes

breaking out into a threat against some casual passenger. He was a very

respectable-looking man; and I remember to have seen him last summer, in

the steamer, returning from the Isle of Man, where he had been staying at

Castle Mona. What a strange and ugly predicament it would be for a

person of quiet habits to be suddenly smitten with lunacy at noonday in a

crowded street, and to walk along through a dim maze of extravagances,--

partly conscious of then, but unable to resist the impulse to give way to

them! A long-suppressed nature might be represented as bursting out in

this way, for want of any other safety-valve.

In America, people seem to consider the government merely as a political

administration; and they care nothing for the credit of it, unless it be

the administration of their own political party. In England, all people,

of whatever party, are anxious for the credit of their rulers. Our

government, as a knot of persons, changes so entirely every four years,

that the institution has come to be considered a temporary thing.

Looking at the moon the other evening, little R----- said, "It blooms out

in the morning!" taking the moon to be the bud of the sun.

The English are a most intolerant people. Nobody is permitted, nowadays,

to have any opinion but the prevalent one. There seems to be very little

difference between their educated and ignorant classes in this respect;

if any, it is to the credit of the latter, who do not show tokens of such

extreme interest in the war. It is agreeable, however, to observe how

all Englishmen pull together,--how each man comes forward with his little

scheme for helping on the war,--how they feel themselves members of one

family, talking together about their common interest, as if they were

gathered around one fireside; and then what a hearty meed of honor they

award to their soldiers! It is worth facing death for. Whereas, in

America, when our soldiers fought as good battles, with as great

proportionate loss, and far more valuable triumphs, the country seemed

rather ashamed than proud of them.

Mrs. Heywood tells me that there are many Catholics among the lower

classes in Lancashire and Cheshire,--probably the descendants of

retainers of the old Catholic nobility and gentry, who are more numerous

in these shires than in other parts of England. The present Lord

Sefton's grandfather was the first of that race who became Protestant.

December 25th.--Commodore P------ called to see me this morning,--a

brisk, gentlemanly, offhand, but not rough, unaffected and sensible man,

looking not so elderly as he ought, on account of a very well made wig.

He is now on his return from a cruise in the East Indian seas, and goes

home by the Baltic, with a prospect of being very well received on

account of his treaty with Japan. I seldom meet with a man who puts

himself more immediately on conversable terms than the Commodore. He

soon introduced his particular business with me,--it being to inquire

whether I would recommend some suitable person to prepare his notes and

materials for the publication of an account of his voyage. He was good

enough to say that he had fixed upon me, in his own mind, for this

office; but that my public duties would of course prevent me from

engaging in it. I spoke of Herman Melville, and one or two others; but

he seems to have some acquaintance with the literature of the day, and

did not grasp very cordially at any name that I could think of; nor,

indeed, could I recommend any one with full confidence. It would be a

very desirable task for a young literary man, or, for that matter, for an

old one; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less hackneyed

theme than Japan.

This is a most beautiful day of English winter; clear and bright, with

the ground a little frozen, and the green grass along the waysides at

Rock Ferry sprouting up through the frozen pools of yesterday's rain.

England is forever green. On Christmas day, the children found

wall-flowers, pansies, and pinks in the garden; and we had a beautiful

rose from the garden of the hotel grown in the open air. Yet one is

sensible of the cold here, as much as in the zero atmosphere of America.

The chief advantage of the English climate is that we are not tempted to

heat our rooms to so unhealthy a degree as in New England.

I think I have been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own

fireside, and with my wife and children about me,--more content to enjoy

what I have,--less anxious for anything beyond it in this life.

My early life was perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of

life; it having been such a blank that any thereafter would compare

favorably with it. For a long, long while, I have occasionally been

visited with a singular dream; and I have an impression that I have

dreamed it ever since I have been in England. It is, that I am still at

college,--or, sometimes, even at school,--and there is a sense that I

have been there unconscionably long, and have quite failed to make such

progress as my contemporaries have done; and I seem to meet some of them

with a feeling of shame and depression that broods over me as I think of

it, even when awake. This dream, recurring all through these twenty or

thirty years, must be one of the effects of that heavy seclusion in which

I shut myself up for twelve years after leaving college, when everybody

moved onward, and left me behind. How strange that it should come now,

when I may call myself famous and prosperous!--when I am happy, too!

January 3d, 1855.--The progress of the age is trampling over the

aristocratic institutions of England, and they crumble beneath it. This

war has given the country a vast impulse towards democracy. The nobility

will never hereafter, I think, assume or be permitted to rule the nation

in peace, or command armies in war, on any ground except the individual

ability which may appertain to one of their number, as well as to a

commoner. And yet the nobles were never positively more noble than now;

never, perhaps, so chivalrous, so honorable, so highly cultivated; but,

relatively to the rest of the world, they do not maintain their old

place. The pressure of the war has tested and proved this fact, at home

and abroad. At this moment it would be an absurdity in the nobles to

pretend to the position which was quietly conceded to them a year ago.

This one year has done the work of fifty ordinary ones; or, more

accurately, it has made apparent what has long been preparing itself.

January 6th.--The American ambassador called on me to-day and stayed a

good while,--an hour or two. He is visiting at Mr. William Browne's, at

Richmond Hill, having come to this region to bring his niece, who is to

be bride's-maid at the wedding of an American girl. I like Mr. ------.

He cannot exactly be called gentlemanly in his manners, there being a

sort of rusticity about him; moreover, he has a habit of squinting one

eye, and an awkward carriage of his head; hut, withal, a dignity in his

large person, and a consciousness of high position and importance, which

gives him ease and freedom. Very simple and frank in his address, he may

be as crafty as other diplomatists are said to be; but I see only good

sense and plainness of speech,--appreciative, too, and genial enough to

make himself conversable. He talked very freely of himself and of other

public people, and of American and English affairs. He returns to

America, he says, next October, and then retires forever from public

life, being sixty-four years of age, and having now no desire except to

write memoirs of his times, and especially of the administration of Mr.

Polk. I suggested a doubt whether the people would permit him to retire;

and he immediately responded to my hint as regards his prospects for the

Presidency. He said that his mind was fully made up, and that he would

never be a candidate, and that he had expressed this decision to his

friends in such a way as to put it out of his own power to change it. He

acknowledged that he should have been glad of the nomination for the

Presidency in 1852, but that it was now too late, and that he was too

old,--and, in short, he seemed to be quite sincere in his nolo

episcopari; although, really, he is the only Democrat, at this moment,

whom it would not be absurd to talk of for the office. As he talked, his

face flushed, and he seemed to feel inwardly excited. Doubtless, it was

the high vision of half his lifetime which he here relinquished. I

cannot question that he is sincere; but, of course, should the people

insist upon having him for President, he is too good a patriot to refuse.

I wonder whether he can have had any object in saying all this to me. He

might see that it would be perfectly natural for me to tell it to General

Pierce. But it is a very vulgar idea,--this of seeing craft and

subtlety, when there is a plain and honest aspect.

January 9th.--I dined at Mr. William Browne's (M. P.) last, evening with

a large party. The whole table and dessert service was of silver.

Speaking of Shakespeare, Mr. ------ said that the Duke of Somerset, who

is now nearly fourscore, told him that the father of John and Charles

Kemble had made all possible research into the events of Shakespeare's

life, and that he had found reason to believe that Shakespeare attended a

certain revel at Stratford, and, indulging too much in the conviviality

of the occasion, he tumbled into a ditch on his way home, and died there!

The Kemble patriarch was an aged man when he communicated this to the

Duke; and their ages, linked to each other; would extend back a good way;

scarcely to the beginning of the last century, however. If I mistake

not, it was from the traditions of Stratford that Kemble had learned the

above. I do not remember ever to have seen it in print,--which is most

singular.

Miss L---- has an English rather than an American aspect,--being of

stronger outline than most of our young ladies, although handsomer than

English women generally, extremely self-possessed and well poised without

affectation or assumption, but quietly conscious of rank, as much so as

if she were an Earl's daughter. In truth, she felt pretty much as an

Earl's daughter would do towards the merchants' wives and daughters who

made up the feminine portion of the party.

I talked with her a little, and found her sensible, vivacious, and

firm-textured, rather than soft and sentimental. She paid me some

compliments; but I do not remember paying her any.

Mr. J-----'s daughters, two pale, handsome girls, were present. One of

them is to be married to a grandson of Mr. ------, who was also at the

dinner. He is a small young man, with a thin and fair mustache, . . . .

and a lady who sat next me whispered that his expectations are 6,000

pounds per annum. It struck me, that, being a country gentleman's son,

he kept himself silent and reserved, as feeling himself too good for this

commercial dinner-party; but perhaps, and I rather think so, he was

really shy and had nothing to say, being only twenty-one, and therefore

quite a boy among Englishmen. The only man of cognizable rank present,

except Mr. ------ and the Mayor of Liverpool, was a Baronet, Sir Thomas

Birch.

January 17th.--S---- and I were invited to be present at the wedding of

Mr. J-------'s daughter this morning, but we were also bidden to the

funeral services of Mrs. G------, a young American lady; and we went to

the "house of mourning," rather than to the "house of feasting." Her

death was very sudden. I crossed to Rock Ferry on Saturday, and met her

husband in the boat. He said his wife was rather unwell, and that he had

just been sent for to see her; but he did not seem at all alarmed. And

yet, on reaching home, he found her dead! The body is to be conveyed to

America, and the funeral service was read over her in her house, only a

few neighbors and friends being present. We were shown into a darkened

room, where there was a dim gaslight burning, and a fire glimmering, and

here and there a streak of sunshine struggling through the drawn

curtains. Mr. G------ looked pale, and quite overcome with grief,--this,

I suppose, being his first sorrow,--and he has a young baby on his hands,

and no doubt, feels altogether forlorn in this foreign land. The

clergyman entered in his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession

into another room, where the coffin was placed.

Mr. G------ sat down and rested his head on the coffin: the clergyman

read the service; then knelt down, as did most of the company, and prayed

with great propriety of manner, but with no earnestness,--and we

separated.

Mr. G------ is a small, smooth, and pretty young man, not emphasized in

any way; but grief threw its awfulness about him to-day in a degree which

I should not have expected.

January 20th.--Mr. Steele, a gentleman of Rock Ferry, showed me this

morning a pencil-case formerly belonging to Dr. Johnson. It is six or

seven inches long, of large calibre, and very clumsily manufactured of

iron, perhaps plated in its better days, but now quite bare. Indeed, it

looks as rough as an article of kitchen furniture. The intaglio on the

end is a lion rampant. On the whole, it well became Dr. Johnson to have

used such a stalwart pencil-case. It had a six-inch measure on a part of

it, so that it must have been at least eight inches long. Mr. Steele

says he has seen a cracked earthen teapot, of large size, in which Miss

Williams used to make tea for Dr. Johnson.

God himself cannot compensate us for being born for any period short of

eternity. All the misery endured here constitutes a claim for another

life, and, still more, all the happiness; because all true happiness

involves something more than the earth owns, and needs something more

than a mortal capacity for the enjoyment of it.

After receiving an injury on the head, a person fancied all the rest of

his life that he heard voices flouting, jeering, and upbraiding him.

February 19th.--I dined with the Mayor at the Town Hall last Friday

evening. I sat next to Mr. W. J------, an Irish-American merchant, who

is in very good standing here. He told me that he used to be very well

acquainted with General Jackson, and that he was present at the street

fight between him and the Bentons, and helped to take General Jackson off

the ground. Colonel Benton shot at him from behind; but it was Jesse

Benton's ball that hit him and broke his arm. I did not understand him

to infer any treachery or cowardice from the circumstance of Colonel

Benton's shooting at Jackson from behind, but, suppose it occurred in the

confusion and excitement of a street fight. Mr. W. J------ seems to

think that, after all, the reconciliation between the old General and

Benton was merely external, and that they really hated one another as

before. I do not think so.

These dinners of the Mayors are rather agreeable than otherwise, except

for the annoyance, in my case, of being called up to speak to a toast,

and that is less disagreeable than at first. The suite of rooms at the

Town House is stately and splendid, and all the Mayors, as far as I have

seen, exercise hospitality in a manner worthy of the chief magistrates of

a great city. They are supposed always to spend much more than their

salary (which is 2,000 pounds) in these entertainments. The town

provides the wines, I am told, and it might be expected that they should

be particularly good,--at least, those which improve by age, for a

quarter of a century should be only a moderate age for wine from the

cellars of centuries-long institutions, like a corporate borough. Each

Mayor might lay in a supply of the best vintage he could find, and trust

his good name to posterity to the credit of that wine; and so he would be

kindly and warmly remembered long after his own nose had lost its

rubicundity. In point of fact, the wines seem to be good, but not

remarkable. The dinner was good, and very handsomely served, with

attendance enough, both in the hall below--where the door was wide open

at the appointed hour, notwithstanding the cold--and at table; some

being in the rich livery of the borough, and some in plain clothes.

Servants, too, were stationed at various points from the hall to the

reception-room; and the last one shouted forth the name of the entering

guest. There were, I should think, about fifty guests at this dinner.

Two bishops were present. The Bishops of Chester and New South Wales,

dressed in a kind of long tunics, with black breeches and silk stockings,

insomuch that I first fancied they were Catholics. Also Dr. McNeil, in a

stiff-collared coat, looking more like a general than a divine. There

were two officers in blue uniforms; and all the rest of us were in black,

with only two white waistcoats,--my own being one,--and a rare sprinkling

of white cravats. How hideously a man looks in them! I should like to

have seen such assemblages as must have gathered in that reception-room,

and walked with stately tread to the dining-hall, in times past, the

Mayor and other civic dignitaries in their robes, noblemen in their state

dresses, the Consul in his olive-leaf embroidery, everybody in some sort

of bedizenment,--and then the dinner would have been a magnificent

spectacle, worthy of the gilded hall, the rich table-service, and the

powdered and gold-laced servitors. At a former dinner I remember seeing

a gentleman in small-clothes, with a dress-sword; but all formalities of

the kind are passing away. The Mayor's dinners, too, will no doubt be

extinct before many years go by. I drove home from the Woodside Ferry in

a cab with Bishop Burke and two other gentlemen. The Bishop is nearly

seven feet high.

After writing the foregoing account of a civic banquet, where I ate

turtle-soup, salmon, woodcock, oyster patties, and I know not what else,

I have been to the News-room and found the Exchange pavement densely

thronged with people of all ages and of all manner of dirt and rags.

They were waiting for soup-tickets, and waiting very patiently too,

without outcry or disturbance, or even sour looks,--only patience and

meekness in their faces. Well, I don't know that they have a right to be

impatient of starvation; but, still there does seem to be an insolence of

riches and prosperity, which one day or another will have a downfall.

And this will be a pity, too.

On Saturday I went with my friend Mr. Bright to Otterpool and to Larkhill

to see the skaters on the private waters of those two seats of gentlemen;

and it is a wonder to behold--and it is always a new wonder to me--how

comfortable Englishmen know how to make themselves; locating their

dwellings far within private grounds, with secure gateways and porters'

lodges, and the smoothest roads and trimmest paths, and shaven lawns, and

clumps of trees, and every bit of the ground, every hill and dell, made

the most of for convenience and beauty, and so well kept that even winter

cannot cause disarray; and all this appropriated to the same family for

generations, so that I suppose they come to believe it created

exclusively and on purpose for them. And, really, the result is good and

beautiful. It is a home,--an institution which we Americans have not;

but then I doubt whether anybody is entitled to a home in this world, in

so full a sense.

The day was very cold, and the skaters seemed to enjoy themselves

exceedingly. They were, I suppose, friends of the owners of the grounds,

and Mr. Bright said they were treated in a jolly way, with hot luncheons.

The skaters practise skating more as an art, and can perform finer

manoeuvres on the ice, than our New England skaters usually can, though

the English have so much less opportunity for practice. A beggar-woman

was haunting the grounds at Otterpool, but I saw nobody give her

anything. I wonder how she got inside of the gate.

Mr. W. J------ spoke of General Jackson as having come from the same part

of Ireland as himself, and perhaps of the same family. I wonder whether

he meant to say that the General was born in Ireland,--that having been

suspected in America.

February 21st.--Yesterday two companies of work-people came to our house

in Rock Park, asking assistance, being out of work and with no resource

other than charity. There were a dozen or more in each party. Their

deportment was quiet and altogether unexceptionable,--no rudeness, no

gruffness, nothing of menace. Indeed, such demonstrations would not have

been safe, as they were followed about by two policemen; but they really

seem to take their distress as their own misfortune and God's will, and

impute it to nobody as a fault. This meekness is very touching, and

makes one question the more whether they have all their rights. There

have been disturbances, within a day or two, in Liverpool, and shops have

been broken open and robbed of bread and money; but this is said to have

been done by idle vagabonds, and not by the really hungry work-people.

These last submit to starvation gently and patiently, as if it were an

every-day matter with them, or, at least, nothing but what lay fairly

within their horoscope. I suppose, in fact, their stomachs have the

physical habit that makes hunger not intolerable, because customary. If

they had been used to a full meat diet, their hunger would be fierce,

like that of ravenous beasts; but now they are trained to it.

I think that the feeling of an American, divided, as I am, by the ocean

from his country, has a continual and immediate correspondence with the

national feeling at home; and it seems to be independent of any external

communication. Thus, my ideas about the Russian war vary in accordance

with the state of the public mind at home, so that I am conscious

whereabouts public sympathy is.

March 7th.--J----- and I walked to Tranmere, and passed an old house

which I suppose to be Tranmere Hall. Our way to it was up a hollow lane,

with a bank and hedge on each side, and with a few thatched stone

cottages, centuries old, their ridge-poles crooked and the stones

time-worn, scattered along. At one point there was a wide, deep well,

hewn out of the solid red freestone, and with steps, also hewn in solid

rock, leading down to it. These steps were much hollowed by the feet of

those who had come to the well; and they reach beneath the water, which

is very high. The well probably supplied water to the old cotters and

retainers of Tranmere Hall five hundred years ago. The Hall stands on

the verge of a long hill which stretches behind Tranmere and as far as

Birkenhead.

It is an old gray stone edifice, with a good many gables, and windows

with mullions, and some of them extending the whole breadth of the gable.

In some parts of the house, the windows seem to have been built up;

probably in the days when daylight was taxed. The form of the Hall is

multiplex, the roofs sloping down and intersecting one another, so as to

make the general result indescribable. There were two sun-dials on

different sides of the house, both the dial-plates of which were of

stone; and on one the figures, so far as I could see, were quite worn

off, but the gnomon still cast a shadow over it in such a way that I

could judge that it was about noon. The other dial had some half-worn

hour-marks, but no gnomon. The chinks of the stones of the house were

very weedy, and the building looked quaint and venerable; but it is now

converted into a farm-house, with the farm-yard and outbuildings closely

appended. A village, too, has grown up about it, so that it seems out of

place among modern stuccoed dwellings, such as are erected for tradesmen

and other moderate people who have their residences in the neighborhood

of a great city. Among these there are a few thatched cottages, the

homeliest domiciles that ever mortals lived in, belonging to the old

estate. Directly across the street is a Wayside Inn, "licensed to sell

wine, spirits, ale, and tobacco." The street itself has been laid out

since the land grew valuable by the increase of Liverpool and Birkenhead;

for the old Hall would never have been built on the verge of a public

way.

March 27th.--I attended court to day, at St. George's Hall, with my wife,

Mr. Bright, and Mr. Channing, sitting in the High Sheriff's seat. It was

the civil side, and Mr. Justice Cresswell presided. The lawyers, as far

as aspect goes, seemed to me inferior to an American bar, judging from

their countenances, whether as intellectual men or gentlemen. Their wigs

and gowns do not impose on the spectator, though they strike him as an

imposition. Their date is past. Mr. Warren, of the "Ten Thousand a

Year," was in court,--a pale, thin, intelligent face, evidently a nervous

man, more unquiet than anybody else in court,--always restless in his

seat, whispering to his neighbors, settling his wig, perhaps with an idea

that people single him out.

St. George's Hall--the interior hall itself, I mean--is a spacious,

lofty, and most rich and noble apartment, and very satisfactory. The

pavement is made of mosaic tiles, and has a beautiful effect.

April 7th.--I dined at Mr. J. P. Heywood's on Thursday, and met there Mr.

and Mrs. ------ of Smithell's Hall. The Hall is an old edifice of some

five hundred years, and Mrs. ------ says there is a bloody footstep at

the foot of the great staircase. The tradition is that a certain martyr,

in Bloody Mary's time, being examined before the occupant of the Hall,

and committed to prison, stamped his foot, in earnest protest against the

injustice with which he was treated. Blood issued from his foot, which

slid along the stone pavement, leaving a long footmark, printed in blood.

And there it has remained ever since, in spite of the scrubbings of all

succeeding generations. Mrs. ------ spoke of it with much solemnity,

real or affected. She says that they now cover the bloody impress with a

carpet, being unable to remove it. In the History of Lancashire, which I

looked at last night, there is quite a different account,--according to

which the footstep is not a bloody one, but is a slight cavity or

inequality in the surface of the stone, somewhat in the shape of a man's

foot with a peaked shoe. The martyr's name was George Marsh. He was a

curate, and was afterwards burnt. Mrs. ------ asked me to go and see the

Hall and the footmark; and as it is in Lancashire, and not a great way

off, and a curious old place, perhaps I may.

April 12th.--The Earl of ------, whom I saw the other day at St. George's

Hall, has a somewhat elderly look,--a pale and rather thin face, which

strikes one as remarkably short, or compressed from top to bottom.

Nevertheless, it has great intelligence, and sensitiveness too, I should

think, but a cold, disagreeable expression. I should take him to be a

man of not very pleasant temper,--not genial. He has no physical

presence nor dignity, yet one sees him to be a person of rank and

consequence. But, after all, there is nothing about him which it need

have taken centuries of illustrious nobility to produce, especially in a

man of remarkable ability, as Lord ------ certainly is. S-----, who

attended court all through the Hapgood trial, and saw Lord ------ for

hours together every day, has come to conclusions quite different from

mine. She thinks him a perfectly natural person, without any assumption,

any self-consciousness, any scorn of the lower world. She was delighted

with his ready appreciation and feeling of what was passing around him,--

his quick enjoyment of a joke,--the simplicity and unaffectedness of his

emotion at whatever incidents excited his interest,--the genial

acknowledgment of sympathy, causing him to look round and exchange

glances with those near him, who were not his individual friends, but

barristers and other casual persons. He seemed to her all that a

nobleman ought to be, entirely simple and free from pretence and

self-assertion, which persons of lower rank can hardly help bedevilling

themselves with. I saw him only for a very few moments, so cannot put my

observation against hers, especially as I was influenced by what I had

heard the Liverpool people say of him.

I do not know whether I have mentioned that the handsomest man I have

seen in England was a young footman of Mr. Heywood's. In his rich

livery, he was a perfect Joseph Andrews.

In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have carried away

with him a family secret, whereby it was in his power, had he so chosen,

to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret he transmits

to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited throughout all the

intervening generations. At last, the hero of the Romance comes to

England, and finds, that, by means of this secret, he still has it in his

power to procure the downfall of the family. It would be something

similar to the story of Meleager, whose fate depended on the firebrand

that his mother had snatched from the flames.

April 24th.--On Saturday I was present at a dejeuner on board the Donald

McKay; the principal guest being Mr. Layard, M. P. There were several

hundred people, quite filling the between decks of the ship, which was

converted into a saloon for the occasion. I sat next to Mr. Layard, at

the head of the table, and so had a good opportunity of seeing and

getting acquainted with him. He is a man in early middle age,--of middle

stature, with an open, frank, intelligent, kindly face. His forehead is

not expansive, but is prominent in the perceptive regions, and retreats a

good deal. His mouth is full,--I liked him from the first. He was very

kind and complimentary to me, and made me promise to go and see him in

London.

It would have been a very pleasant entertainment, only that my pleasure

in it was much marred by having to acknowledge a toast, in honor of the

President. However, such things do not trouble me nearly so much as they

used to do, and I came through it tolerably enough. Mr. Layard's speech

was the great affair of the day. He speaks with much fluency (though he

assured me that he had to put great force upon himself to speak

publicly), and, as he warms up, seems to engage with his whole moral and

physical man,--quite possessed with what he has to say. His evident

earnestness and good faith make him eloquent, and stand him instead of

oratorical graces. His views of the position of England and the

prospects of the war were as dark as well could be; and his speech was

exceedingly to the purpose, full of common-sense, and with not one word

of clap-trap. Judging from its effect upon the audience, he spoke the

voice of the whole English people,--although an English Baronet, who sat

next below me, seemed to dissent, or at least to think that it was not

exactly the thing for a stranger to hear. It concluded amidst great

cheering. Mr. Layard appears to be a true Englishman, with a moral force

and strength of character, and earnestness of purpose, and fulness of

common-sense, such as have always served England's turn in her past

successes; but rather fit for resistance than progress. No doubt, he is

a good and very able man; but I question whether he could get England out

of the difficulties which he sees so clearly, or could do much better

than Lord Palmerston, whom he so decries.

April 25th.--Taking the deposition of sailors yesterday, in a case of

alleged ill-usage by the officers of a vessel, one of the witnesses was

an old seaman of sixty. In reply to some testimony of his, the captain

said, "You were the oldest man in the ship, and we honored you as such."

The mate also said that he never could have thought of striking an old

man like that. Indeed, the poor old fellow had a kind of dignity and

venerableness about him, though he confessed to having been drunk, and

seems to have been a mischief-maker, what they call a sea-preacher,--

promoting discontent and grumbling. He must have been a very handsome

man in his youth, having regular features of a noble and beautiful cast.

His beard was gray; but his dark hair had hardly a streak of white, and

was abundant all over his head. He was deaf, and seemed to sit in a kind

of seclusion, unless when loudly questioned or appealed to. Once he

broke forth from a deep silence thus, "I defy any man!" and then was

silent again. It had a strange effect, this general defiance, which he

meant, I suppose, in answer to some accusation that he thought was made

against him. His general behavior throughout the examination was very

decorous and proper; and he said he had never but once hitherto been

before a consul, and that was in 1819, when a mate had ill-used him, and,

"being a young man then, I gave him a beating,"--whereupon his face

gleamed with a quiet smile, like faint sunshine on an old ruin. "By many

a tempest has his beard been shook"; and I suppose he must soon go into a

workhouse, and thence, shortly, to his grave. He is now in a hospital,

having, as the surgeon certifies, some ribs fractured; but there does not

appear to have been any violence used upon him aboard the ship of such a

nature as to cause this injury, though he swears it was a blow from a

rope, and nothing else. What struck me in the case was the respect and

rank that his age seemed to give him, in the view of the officers; and

how, as the captain's expression signified, it lifted him out of his low

position, and made him a person to be honored. The dignity of his manner

is perhaps partly owing to the ancient mariner, with his long experience,

being an oracle among the forecastle men.

May 3d.--It rains to-day, after a very long period of east-wind and dry

weather. The east-wind here, blowing across the island, seems to be the

least damp of all the winds; but it is full of malice and mischief, of an

indescribably evil temper, and stabs one like a cold, poisoned dagger. I

never spent so disagreeable a spring as this, although almost every day

for a month has been bright.

Friday, May 11th.--A few weeks ago, a sailor, a most pitiable object,

came to my office to complain of cruelty from his captain and mate. They

had beaten him shamefully, of which he bore grievous marks about his face

and eyes, and bruises on his head and other parts of his person: and

finally the ship had sailed, leaving him behind. I never in my life saw

so forlorn a fellow, so ragged, so wretched; and even his wits seemed to

have been beaten out of him, if perchance he ever had any. He got an

order for the hospital; and there he has been, off and on, ever since,

till yesterday, when I received a message that he was dying, and wished

to see the Consul; so I went with Mr. Wilding to the hospital. We were

ushered into the waiting-room,--a kind of parlor, with a fire in the

grate, and a centre-table, whereon lay one or two medical journals, with

wood engravings; and there was a young man, who seemed to be an official

of the house, reading. Shortly the surgeon appeared,--a brisk, cheerful,

kindly sort of person, whom I have met there on previous visits. He told

us that the man was dying, and probably would not be able to communicate

anything, but, nevertheless, ushered us up to the highest floor, and into

the room where he lay. It was a large, oblong room, with ten or twelve

beds in it, each occupied by a patient. The surgeon said that the

hospital was often so crowded that they were compelled to lay some of the

patients on the floor. The man whom we came to see lay on his bed in a

little recess formed by a projecting window; so that there was a kind of

seclusion for him to die in. He seemed quite insensible to outward

things, and took no notice of our approach, nor responded to what was

said to him,--lying on his side, breathing with short gasps,--his

apparent disease being inflammation of the chest, although the surgeon

said that he might be found to have sustained internal injury by bruises.

he was restless, tossing his head continually, mostly with his eyes shut,

and much compressed and screwed up, but sometimes opening them; and then

they looked brighter and darker than when I first saw them. I think his

face was not at any time so stupid as at his first interview with me; but

whatever intelligence he had was rather inward than outward, as if there

might be life and consciousness at a depth within, while as to external

matters he was in a mist. The surgeon felt his wrist, and said that

there was absolutely no pulsation, and that he might die at any moment,

or might perhaps live an hour, but that there was no prospect of his

being able to communicate with me. He was quite restless, nevertheless,

and sometimes half raised himself in bed, sometimes turned himself quite

over, and then lay gasping for an instant. His woollen shirt being

thrust up on his arm, there appeared a tattooing of a ship and

anchor, and other nautical emblems, on both of them, which another

sailor-patient, on examining them, said must have been done years ago.

This might be of some importance, because the dying man had told me, when

I first saw him, that he was no sailor, but a farmer, and that, this

being his first voyage, he had been beaten by the captain for not doing a

sailor's duty, which he had had no opportunity of learning. These

sea-emblems indicated that he was probably a seaman of some years'

service.

While we stood in the little recess, such of the other patients as were

convalescent gathered near the foot of the bed; and the nurse came and

looked on, and hovered about us,--a sharp-eyed, intelligent woman of

middle age, with a careful and kind expression, neglecting nothing that

was for the patient's good, yet taking his death as coolly as any other

incident in her daily business. Certainly, it was a very forlorn

death-bed; and I felt--what I have heretofore been inclined to doubt--

that it might, be a comfort to have persons whom one loves, to go with us

to the threshold of the other world, and leave us only when we are fairly

across it. This poor fellow had a wife and two children on the other

side of the water.

At first he did not utter any sound; but by and by he moaned a little,

and gave tokens of being more sensible to outward concerns,--not quite so

misty and dreamy as hitherto. We had been talking all the while--myself

in a whisper, but the surgeon in his ordinary tones--about his state,

without his paying any attention. But now the surgeon put his mouth down

to the man's face and said, "Do you know that you are dying?" At this

the patient's head began to move upon the pillow; and I thought at first

that it was only the restlessness that he had shown all along; but soon

it appeared to be an expression of emphatic dissent, a negative shake of

the head. He shook it with all his might, and groaned and mumbled, so

that it was very evident how miserably reluctant he was to die. Soon

after this he absolutely spoke. "O, I want you to get me well! I want

to get away from here!" in a groaning and moaning utterance. The

surgeon's question had revived him, but to no purpose; for, being told

that the Consul had come to see him, and asked whether he had anything to

communicate, he said only, "O, I want him to get me well!" and the whole

life that was left in him seemed to be unwillingness to die. This did

not last long; for he soon relapsed into his first state, only with his

face a little more pinched and screwed up, and his eyes strangely sunken.

And lost in his head; and the surgeon said that there would be no use in

my remaining. So I took my leave. Mr. Wilding had brought a deposition

of the man's evidence, which he had clearly made at the Consulate, for

him to sign, and this we left with the surgeon, in case there should be

such an interval of consciousness and intelligence before death as to

make it possible for him to sign it. But of this there is no

probability.

I have just received a note from the hospital, stating that the sailor,

Daniel Smith, died about three quarters of an hour after I saw him.

May 18th.--The above-mentioned Daniel Smith had about him a bundle of

letters, which I have examined. They are all very yellow, stained with

sea-water, smelling of bad tobacco-smoke, and much worn at the folds.

Never were such ill-written letters, nor such incredibly fantastic

spelling. They seem to be from various members of his family,--most of

them from a brother, who purports to have been a deck-hand in the

coasting and steamboat trade between Charleston and other ports; others

from female relations; one from his father, in which he inquires how long

his son has been in jail, and when the trial is to come on,--the offence,

however, of which he was accused, not being indicated. But from the

tenor of his brother's letters, it would appear that he was a small

farmer in the interior of South Carolina, sending butter, eggs, and

poultry to be sold in Charleston by his brother, and receiving the

returns in articles purchased there. This was his own account of

himself; and he affirmed, in his deposition before me, that he had never

had any purpose of shipping for Liverpool, or anywhere else; but that,

going on board the ship to bring a man's trunk ashore, he was compelled

to remain and serve as a sailor. This was a hard fate, certainly, and a

strange thing to happen in the United States at this day,--that a free

citizen should be absolutely kidnapped, carried to a foreign country,

treated with savage cruelty during the voyage, and left to die on his

arrival. Yet all this has unquestionably been done, and will probably go

unpunished.

The seed of the long-stapled cotton, now cultivated in America, was sent

there in 1786 from the Bahama Islands, by some of the royalist refugees,

who had settled there. The inferior short-stapled cotton had been

previously cultivated for domestic purposes. The seeds of every other

variety have been tried without success. The kind now grown was first

introduced into Georgia. Thus to the refugees America owes as much of

her prosperity as is due to the cotton-crops, and much of whatever harm

is to result from slavery.

May 22d.--Captain J------ says that he saw, in his late voyage to

Australia and India, a vessel commanded by an Englishman, who had with

him his wife and thirteen children. This ship was the home of the

family, and they had no other. The thirteen children had all been born

on board, and had been brought up on board, and knew nothing of dry land,

except by occasionally setting foot on it.

Captain J------ is a very agreeable specimen of the American shipmaster,

--a pleasant, gentlemanly man, not at all refined, and yet with fine and

honorable sensibilities. Very easy in his manners and conversation, yet

gentle,--talking on freely, and not much minding grammar; but finding a

sufficient and picturesque expression for what he wishes to say; very

cheerful and vivacious; accessible to feeling, as yesterday, when talking

about the recent death of his mother. His voice faltered, and the tears

came into his eyes, though before and afterwards he smiled merrily, and

made us smile; fond of his wife, and carrying her about the world with

him, and blending her with all his enjoyments; an excellent and sagacious

man of business; liberal in his expenditure; proud of his ship and flag;

always well dressed, with some little touch of sailor-like flashiness,

but not a whit too much; slender in figure, with a handsome face, and

rather profuse brown beard and whiskers; active and alert; about

thirty-two. A daguerreotype sketch of any conversation of his would do

him no justice, for its slang, its grammatical mistakes, its mistaken

words (as "portable" for "portly"), would represent a vulgar man, whereas

the impression he leaves is by no means that of vulgarity; but he is a

character quite perfect within itself, fit for the deck and the cabin,

and agreeable in the drawing-room, though not amenable altogether to its

rules. Being so perfectly natural, he is more of a gentleman for those

little violations of rule, which most men, with his opportunities, might

escape.

The men whose appeals to the Consul's charity are the hardest to be

denied are those who have no country,---Hungarians, Poles, Cubans,

Spanish-Americans, and French republicans. All exiles for liberty come

to me, if the representative of America were their representative.

Yesterday, came an old French soldier, and showed his wounds; to-day, a

Spaniard, a friend of Lopez,--bringing his little daughter with him. He

said he was starving, and looked so. The little girl was in good

condition enough, and decently dressed.--May 23d.

May 30th.--The two past days have been Whitsuntide holidays; and they

have been celebrated at Tranmere in a manner very similar to that of the

old "Election" in Massachusetts, as I remember it a good many years ago,

though the festival has now almost or quite died out. Whitsuntide was

kept up on our side of the water, I am convinced, under pretence of

rejoicings at the election of Governor. It occurred at precisely the

same period of the year,--the same week; the only difference being, that

Monday and Tuesday are the Whitsun festival days, whereas, in

Massachusetts, Wednesday was "Election day," and the acme of the

merry-making.

I passed through Tranmere yesterday forenoon, and lingered awhile to see

the sports. The greatest peculiarity of the crowd, to my eye, was that

they seemed not to have any best clothes, and therefore had put on no

holiday suits,--a grimy people, as at all times, heavy, obtuse, with

thick beer in their blood. Coarse, rough-complexioned women and girls

were intermingled, the girls with no maiden trimness in their attire,

large and blowsy. Nobody seemed to have been washed that day. All the

enjoyment was of an exceedingly sombre character, so far as I saw it,

though there was a richer variety of sports than at similar festivals in

America. There were wooden horses, revolving in circles, to be ridden a

certain number of rounds for a penny; also swinging cars gorgeously

painted, and the newest named after Lord Raglan; and four cars balancing

one another, and turned by a winch; and people with targets and rifles,--

the principal aim being to hit an apple bobbing on a string before the

target; other guns for shooting at the distance of a foot or two, for a

prize of filberts; and a game much in fashion, of throwing heavy sticks

at earthen mugs suspended on lines, three throws for a penny. Also,

there was a posture-master, showing his art in the centre of a ring of

miscellaneous spectators, and handing round his bat after going through

all his attitudes. The collection amounted to only one halfpenny, and,

to eke it out, I threw in three more. There were some large booths with

tables placed the whole length, at which sat men and women drinking and

smoking pipes; orange-girls, a great many, selling the worst possible

oranges, which had evidently been boiled to give them a show of

freshness. There were likewise two very large structures, the walls made

of boards roughly patched together, and rooted with canvas, which seemed

to have withstood a thousand storms. Theatres were there, and in front

there were pictures of scenes which were to be represented within; the

price of admission being twopence to one theatre, and a penny to the

other. But, small as the price of tickets was, I could not see that

anybody bought them. Behind the theatres, close to the board wall, and

perhaps serving as the general dressing-room, was a large windowed wagon,

in which I suppose the company travel and live together. Never, to my

imagination, was the mysterious glory that has surrounded theatrical

representation ever since my childhood brought down into such dingy

reality as this. The tragedy queens were the same coarse and homely

women and girls that surrounded me on the green. Some of the people had

evidently been drinking more than was good for them; but their

drunkenness was silent and stolid, with no madness in it. No ebullition

of any sort was apparent.

May 31st.--Last Sunday week, for the first time, I heard the note of the

cuckoo. "Cuck-oo--cuck-oo" it says, repeating the word twice, not in a

brilliant metallic tone, but low and flute-like, without the excessive

sweetness of the flute,--without an excess of saccharine juice in the

sound. There are said to be always two cuckoos seen together. The note

is very soft and pleasant. The larks I have not yet heard in the sky;

though it is not infrequent to hear one singing in a cage, in the streets

of Liverpool.

Brewers' draymen are allowed to drink as much of their master's beverage

as they like, and they grow very brawny and corpulent, resembling their

own horses in size, and presenting, one would suppose, perfect pictures

of physical comfort and well-being. But the least bruise, or even the

hurt of a finger, is liable to turn to gangrene or erysipelas, and become

fatal.

When the wind blows violently, however clear the sky, the English say,

"It is a stormy day." And, on the other hand, when the air is still, and

it does not actually rain, however dark and lowering the sky may be, they

say, "The weather is fine!"

June 2d.--The English women of the lower classes have a grace of their

own, not seen in each individual, but nevertheless belonging to their

order, which is not to be found in American women of the corresponding

class. The other day, in the police court, a girl was put into the

witness-box, whose native graces of this sort impressed me a good deal.

She was coarse, and her dress was none of the cleanest, and nowise smart.

She appeared to have been up all night, too, drinking at the Tranmere

wake, and had since ridden in a cart, covered up with a rug. She

described herself as a servant-girl, out of place; and her charm lay in

all her manifestations,--her tones, her gestures, her look, her way of

speaking and what she said, being so appropriate and natural in a girl of

that class; nothing affected; no proper grace thrown away by attempting

to appear lady-like,--which an American girl would have attempted,--and

she would also have succeeded in a certain degree. If each class would

but keep within itself, and show its respect for itself by aiming at

nothing beyond, they would all be more respectable. But this kind of

fitness is evidently not to be expected in the future; and something else

must be substituted for it.

These scenes at the police court are often well worth witnessing. The

controlling genius of the court, except when the stipendiary magistrate

presides, is the clerk, who is a man learned in the law. Nominally the

cases are decided by the aldermen, who sit in rotation, but at every

important point there comes a nod or a whisper from the clerk; and it is

that whisper which sets the defendant free or sends him to prison.

Nevertheless, I suppose the alderman's common-sense and native shrewdness

are not without their efficacy in producing a general tendency towards

the right; and, no doubt, the decisions of the police court are quite as

often just as those of any other court whatever.

June 11th.--I walked with J----- yesterday to Bebington Church. When I

first saw this church, nearly two years since, it seemed to me the

fulfilment of my ideal of an old English country church. It is not so

satisfactory now, although certainly a venerable edifice. There used

some time ago to be ivy all over the tower; and at my first view of it,

there was still a little remaining on the upper parts of the spire. But

the main roots, I believe, were destroyed, and pains were taken to clear

away the whole of the ivy, so that now it is quite bare,--nothing but

homely gray stone, with marks of age, but no beauty. The most curious

thing about the church is the font. It is a massive pile, composed of

five or six layers of freestone in an octagon shape, placed in the angle

formed by the projecting side porch and the wall of the church, and

standing under a stained-glass window. The base is six or seven feet

across, and it is built solidly up in successive steps, to the height of

about six feet,--an octagonal pyramid, with the basin of the font

crowning the pile hewn out of the solid stone, and about a foot in

diameter and the same in depth. There was water in it from the recent

rains,--water just from heaven, and therefore as holy as any water it

ever held in old Romish times. The aspect of this aged font is extremely

venerable, with moss in the basin and all over the stones; grass, and

weeds of various kinds, and little shrubs, rooted in the chinks of the

stones and between the successive steps.

At each entrance of Rock Park, where we live, there is a small Gothic

structure of stone, each inhabited by a policeman and his family; very

small dwellings indeed, with the main apartment opening directly

out-of-doors; and when the door is open, one can see the household fire,

the good wife at work, perhaps the table set, and a throng of children

clustering round, and generally overflowing the threshold. The policeman

walks about the Park in stately fashion, with his silver-laced blue

uniform and snow-white gloves, touching his hat to gentlemen who reside

in the Park. In his public capacity he has rather an awful aspect, but

privately he is a humble man enough, glad of any little job, and of old

clothes for his many children, or, I believe, for himself. One of the

two policemen is a shoemaker and cobbler. His pay, officially, is

somewhere about a guinea a week.

The Park, just now, is very agreeable to look at, shadowy with trees and

shrubs, and with glimpses of green leaves and flower-gardens through the

branches and twigs that line the iron fences. After a shower the

hawthorn blossoms are delightfully fragrant. Golden tassels of the

laburnum are abundant.

I may have mentioned elsewhere the traditional prophecy, that, when the

ivy should reach the top of Bebbington spire, the tower was doomed to

fall. It lies still, therefore, a chance of standing for centuries. Mr.

Turner tells me that the font now used is inside of the church, but the

one outside is of unknown antiquity, and that it was customary, in

papistical time, to have the font without the church.

There is a little boy often on board the Rock Ferry steamer with an

accordion,--an instrument I detest; but nevertheless it becomes tolerable

in his hands, not so much for its music, as for the earnestness and

interest with which he plays it. His body and the accordion together

become one musical instrument on which his soul plays tunes, for he sways

and vibrates with the music from head to foot and throughout his frame,

half closing his eyes and uplifting his face, as painters represent St.

Cecilia and other famous musicians; and sometimes he swings his accordion

in the air, as if in a perfect rapture. After all, my ears, though not

very nice, are somewhat tortured by his melodies, especially when

confined within the cabin. The boy is ten years old, perhaps, and rather

pretty; clean, too, and neatly dressed, very unlike all other street and

vagabond children whom I have seen in Liverpool. People give him their

halfpence more readily than to any other musicians who infest the boat.

J-----, the other day, was describing a soldier-crab to his mother, he

being much interested in natural history, and endeavoring to give as

strong an idea as possible of its warlike characteristics, and power to

harm those who molest it. Little R----- sat by, quietly listening and

sewing, and at last, lifting her head, she remarked, "I hope God did not

hurt himself, when he was making him!"