Baltimore—Catholic Cathedral—St. Mary’s—College Sermons—Infant School
As we advanced towards Baltimore the look of cultivation increased, the
fences wore an air of greater neatness, the houses began to look like
the abodes of competence and comfort, and we were consoled for the loss
of the beautiful mountains by knowing that we were approaching the
Atlantic.
From the time of quitting the Ohio river, though, unquestionably, it
merits its title of “the beautiful,” especially when compared with the
dreary Mississippi, I strongly felt the truth of an observation I
remembered to have heard in England, that little rivers were more
beautiful than great ones. As features in a landscape, this is
assuredly the case. Where the stream is so wide that the objects on the
opposite shore are indistinct, all the beauty must be derived from the
water itself; whereas, when the stream is narrow, it becomes only a
part of the composition. The Monongahela, which is in size between the
Wye and the Thames, is infinitely more picturesque than the Ohio.
To enjoy the beauty of the vast rivers of this vast country you must be
upon the water; and then the power of changing the scenery by now
approaching one shore, and now the other, is very pleasing; but
travelling as we now did, by land, the wild, rocky, narrow, rapid
little rivers we encountered, were a thousand times more beautiful. The
Potapsco, near which the road runs, as you approach Baltimore, is at
many points very picturesque. The large blocks of grey rock, now close
upon its edge, and now retiring to give room for a few acres of bright
green herbage, give great interest and variety to its course.
Baltimore is, I think, one of the handsomest cities to approach in the
Union. The noble column erected to the memory of Washington, and the
Catholic Cathedral, with its beautiful dome, being built on a
commanding eminence, are seen at a great distance. As you draw nearer,
many other domes and towers become visible, and as you enter
Baltimore-street, you feel that you are arrived in a handsome and
populous city.
We took up our quarters at an excellent hotel, where the coach stopped,
and the next day were fortunate enough to find accommodation in the
house of a lady, well known to many of my European friends. With her
and her amiable daughter, we spent a fortnight very agreeably, and felt
quite aware that if we had not arrived in London or Paris, we had, at
least, left far behind the “half-horse, half-alligator” tribes of the
West, as the Kentuckians call themselves.
Baltimore is in many respects a beautiful city; it has several handsome
buildings, and even the private dwelling-houses have a look of
magnificence, from the abundance of white marble with which many of
them are adorned. The ample flights of steps, and the lofty door
frames, are in most of the best houses formed of this beautiful
material.
This has been called the city of monuments, from its having the stately
column erected to the memory of General Washington, and which bears a
colossal statue of him at the top; and another pillar of less
dimensions, recording some victory; I forget which. Both these are of
brilliant white marble. There are also several pretty marble fountains
in different parts of the city, which greatly add to its beauty. These
are not, it is true, quite so splendid as that of the Innocents, or
many others at Paris, but they are fountains of clear water, and they
are built of white marble. There is one which is sheltered from the sun
by a roof supported by light columns; it looks like a temple dedicated
to the genius of the spring. The water flows into a marble cistern, to
which you descend by a flight of steps of delicate whiteness, and
return by another. These steps are never without groups of negro girls,
some carrying the water on their heads, with that graceful steadiness
of step, which requires no aid from the hand; some tripping gaily with
their yet unfilled pitchers; many of them singing in the soft rich
voice, peculiar to their race; and all dressed with that strict
attention to taste and smartness, which seems the distinguishing
characteristic of the Baltimore females of all ranks.
The Catholic Cathedral is considered by all Americans as a magnificent
church, but it can hardly be so classed by any one who has seen the
churches of Europe; its interior, however, has an air of neatness that
amounts to elegance. The form is a Greek cross, having a dome in the
centre; but the proportions are ill- preserved; the dome is too low,
and the arches which support it are flattened, and too wide for their
height. On each side of the high altar are chapels to the Saviour and
the Virgin. The altars in these, as well as the high altar, are of
native marble of different colours, and some of the specimens are very
beautiful. The decorations of the altar are elegant and costly. The
prelate is a cardinal, and bears, moreover, the title of “Archbishop of
Baltimore.”
There are several paintings in different parts of the church, which we
heard were considered as very fine. There are two presented by Louis
XVIII; one of these is the Descent from the Cross, by Paulin Guirin;
the other a copy from Rubens, (as they told us) of a legend of St.
Louis in the Holy Land; but the composition of the picture is so
abominably bad, that I conceive the legend of its being after Rubens,
must be as fabulous as its subject. The admiration in which these
pictures are held, is an incontestable indication of the state of art
in the country.
We attended mass in this church the Sunday after our arrival, and I was
perfectly astonished at the beauty and splendid appearance of the
ladies who filled it. Excepting on a very brilliant Sunday at the
Tuilleries, I never saw so shewy a display of morning costume, and I
think I never saw any where so many beautiful women at one glance. They
all appeared to be in full dress, and were really all beautiful.
The sermon (I am very attentive to sermons) was a most extraordinary
one. The priest began by telling us, that he was about to preach upon a
vice that he would not “mention or name” from the beginning of his
sermon to the end.
Having thus excited the curiosity of his hearers, by proposing a riddle
to them, he began.
Adam, he said, was most assuredly the first who had committed this sin,
and Cain the next; then, following the advice given by the listener, in
the Plaideurs, “Passons au deluge, je vous prie;” he went on to mention
the particular propriety of Noah’s family on this point; and then
continued, “Now observe, what did God shew the greatest dislike to?
What was it that Jesus was never even accused of? What was it Joseph
hated the most? Who was the disciple that Jesus chose for his friend?”
and thus he went on for nearly an hour, in a strain that was often
perfectly unintelligible to me, but which, as far as I could comprehend
it, appeared to be a sort of expose and commentary upon private
anecdotes which he had found, or fancied he had found in the Bible. I
never saw the attention of a congregation more strongly excited, and I
really wished, in Christian charity, that something better had rewarded
it.
There are a vast number of churches and chapels in the city, in
proportion to its extent, and several that are large and well- built;
the Unitarian church is the handsomest I have ever seen dedicated to
that mode of worship. But the prettiest among them is a little _bijou_
of a thing belonging to the Catholic college. The institution is
dedicated to St. Mary, but this little chapel looks, though in the
midst of a city, as if it should have been sacred to St. John of the
wilderness. There is a sequestered little garden behind it, hardly
large enough to plant cabbages in, which yet contains a Mount Calvary,
bearing a lofty cross. The tiny path which leads up to this sacred
spot, is not much wider than a sheep-track, and its cedars are but
shrubs, but all is in proportion; and notwithstanding its fairy
dimensions, there is something of holiness, and quiet beauty about it,
that excites the imagination strangely. The little chapel itself has
the same touching and impressive character. A solitary lamp, whose
glare is tempered by delicately painted glass, hangs before the altar.
The light of day enters dimly, yet richly, through crimson curtains,
and the silence with which the well-lined doors opened from time to
time, admitting a youth of the establishment, who, with noiseless
tread, approached the altar, and kneeling, offered a whispered prayer,
and retired, had something in it more calculated, perhaps, to generate
holy thoughts, than even the swelling anthem heard beneath the
resounding dome of St. Peter’s.
Baltimore has a handsome museum, superintended by one of the Peale
family, well known for their devotion to natural science, and to works
of art. It is not their fault if the specimens which they are enabled
to display in the latter department are very inferior to their splendid
exhibitions in the former.
The theatre was closed when we were in Baltimore, but we were told that
it was very far from being a popular or fashionable amusement. We were,
indeed, told this every where throughout the country, and the
information was generally accompanied by the observation, that the
opposition of the clergy was the cause of it. But I suspect that this
is not the principal cause, especially among the men, who, if they were
so implicit in their obedience to the clergy, would certainly be more
constant in their attendance at the churches; nor would they, moreover,
deem the theatre more righteous because an English actor, or a French
dancer, performed there; yet on such occasions the theatres overflow.
The cause, I think, is in the character of the people. I never saw a
population so totally divested of gaiety; there is no trace of this
feeling from one end of the Union to the other. They have no fêtes, no
fairs, no merry makings, no music in the streets, no Punch, no
puppet-shows. If they see a comedy or a farce, they may laugh at it;
but they can do very well without it; and the consciousness of the
number of cents that must be paid to enter a theatre, I am very sure
turns more steps from its door than any religious feeling. A
distinguished publisher of Philadelphia told me that no comic
publication had ever yet been found to answer in America.
We arrived at Baltimore at the season of the “Conference.” I must be
excused from giving any very distinct explanation of this term, as I
did not receive any. From what I could learn, it much resembles a
Revival. We entered many churches, and heard much preaching, and not
one of the reverend orators could utter the reproach,
“Peut-on si bien precher qu’elle ne dorme au sermon?”
for I never even dosed at any. There was one preacher whose manner and
matter were so peculiar, that I took the liberty of immediately writing
down a part of his discourse as a specimen. I confess I began writing
in the middle of a sentence, for I waited in vain for a beginning. It
was as follows:-
“Nevertheless, we must not lose sight of the one important, great, and
only object; for the Lord is mighty, his works are great, likewise
wonderful, likewise wise, likewise merciful; and, moreover, we must
ever keep in mind, and close to our hearts, all his precious blessings,
and unspeakable mercies, and overflowings; and moreover we must never
lose sight of, no, never lose sight of, nor ever cease to remember, nor
ever let our souls forget, nor ever cease to dwell upon, and to
reverence, and to welcome, and to bless, and to give thanks, and to
sing hosanna, and give praise,”—and here my fragment of paper failed,
but this strain continued, without a shadow of meaning that I could
trace, and in a voice inconceivably loud, for more than an hour. After
he had finished his sermon, a scene exactly resembling that at the
Cincinnati Revival, took place. Two other priests assisted in calling
forward the people, and in whispering comfort to them. One of these men
roared out in the coarsest accents, “Do you want to go to hell
tonight?” The church was almost entirely filled with women, who vied
with each other in howlings and contortions of the body; many of them
tore their clothes nearly off. I was much amused, spite of the
indignation and disgust the scene inspired, by the vehemence of the
negro part of the congregation; they seemed determined to bellow louder
than all the rest, to shew at once their piety and their equality.
At this same chapel, a few nights before, a woman had fallen in a fit
of ecstasy from the gallery, into the arms of the people below, a
height of twelve feet. A young slave who waited upon us at table, when
this was mentioned, said, that similar accidents had frequently
happened, and that once she had seen it herself. Another slave in the
house told us, that she “liked religion right well, but that she never
took fits in it, ’cause she was always fixed in her best, when she went
to chapel, and she did not like to have all her best clothes broke up.”
We visited the infant school, instituted in this city by Mr. Ibbertson,
an amiable and intelligent Englishman. It was the first infant school,
properly so called, which I had ever seen, and I was greatly pleased
with all the arrangements, and the apparent success of them. The
children, of whom we saw about a hundred, boys and girls, were between
eighteen months and six years. The apartment was filled with all sorts
of instructive and amusing objects; a set of Dutch toys, arranged as a
cabinet of natural history, was excellent; a numerous collection of
large wooden bricks filled one corner of the room; the walls were hung
with gay papers of different patterns, each representing some pretty
group of figures; large and excellent coloured engravings of birds and
beasts were exhibited in succession as the theme of a little lesson;
and the sweet flute of Mr. Ibbertson gave tune and time to the
prettiest little concert of chirping birds that I ever listened to.
A geographical model, large enough to give clear ideas of continent,
island, cape, isthmus, et cetera, all set in water, is placed before
the children, and the pretty creatures point their little rosy fingers
with a look of intense interest, as they are called upon to shew where
each of them is to be found. The dress, both of boys and girls, was
elegantly neat, and their manner, when called upon to speak
individually, was well-bred, intelligent, and totally free from the
rude indifference, which is so remarkably prevalent in the manners of
American children. Mr. Ibbertson will be benefactor to the Union, if he
become the means of spreading the admirable method by which he had
polished the manner, and awakened the intellect of these beautiful
little Republicans. I have conversed with many American ladies on the
total want of discipline and subjection which I observed universally
among children of all ages, and I never found any who did not both
acknowledge and deplore the truth of the remark. In the state of Ohio
they have a law (I know not if it exist elsewhere), that if a father
strike his son, he shall pay a fine of ten dollars for every such
offence. I was told by a gentleman of Cincinnati, that he had seen this
fine inflicted there, at the requisition of a boy of twelve years of
age, whose father, he proved, had struck him for lying. Such a law,
they say, generates a spirit of freedom. What else may it generate?
Mr. Ibbertson, who seems perfectly devoted, heart and head to the
subject, told me that he was employed in organizing successive schools
that should receive the pupils as they advanced in age. If he prove
himself as capable of completing education, as he appears to be of
beginning it, his institution will be a very valuable one. It would,
indeed, be valuable any where; but in America, where discipline is not,
where, from the shell, they are beings “that cannot rule, nor ever will
be ruled,” it is invaluable.
About two miles from Baltimore is a fort, nobly situated on the
Patapsco, and commanding the approach from the Chesapeak bay. As our
visit was on a Sunday we were not permitted to enter it. The walk to
this fort is along a fine terrace of beautiful verdure, which commands
a magnificent view of the city, with its columns, towers, domes, and
shipping; and also of the Patapsco river, which is here so wide as to
present almost a sea view. This terrace is ornamented with abundance of
evergreens, and wild roses innumerable, but, the whole region has the
reputation of being unhealthy, and the fort itself most lamentably so.
Before leaving the city of monuments, I must not omit naming one reared
to the growing wealth of the country; Mr. Barham’s hotel is said to be
the most splendid in the Union, and it is certainly splendid enough for
a people more luxurious than the citizens of the republic appear yet to
be. I heard different, and, indeed, perfectly contradictory accounts of
the success of the experiment; but at least every one seemed to agree
that the liberal projector was fully entitled to exclaim,
“’Tis not in mortals to command success;
I have done more, Jonathan, I’ve deserved it.”
After enjoying a very pleasant fortnight, the greater part of which was
passed in rambling about this pretty city and its environs, we left it,
not without regret, and all indulging the hope that we should be able
to pay it another visit.