thought of making St Paul’s the mausoleum of their great men, till they
had crowded Westminster Abbey with the illustrious and the obscure
indiscriminately. They now seem to have discovered the nakedness of this
huge edifice, and to vote parliamentary monuments to every sea captain
who falls in battle, for the sake of filling it as fast as possible.
This is making the honour too common. It is only the name of the
commander in chief which is always necessarily connected with that of
the victory; he, therefore, is the only individual to whom a national
monument ought to be erected. If he survives the action, and it be
thought expedient, as I willingly allow it to be, that every victory
should have its monument, let it be, like the stone at Thermopylæ,
inscribed to the memory of all who fell. The commander in chief may
deserve a separate commemoration: the responsibility of the engagement
rests upon him; and to him the merit of the victory, as far as
professional skill is entitled to it, will, whether justly or not, be
attributed, though assuredly in most cases with the strictest justice.
But whatever may have been the merit of the subordinate officers, the
rank which they hold is not sufficiently conspicuous. The historian will
mention them, but the reader will not remember them because they are
mentioned but once, and it is only to those who are remembered that
statues should be voted; only to those who live in the hearts and in the
mouths of the people. “Who is this?” is a question which will be asked
at every statue; but if after the verger has named the person
represented it is still necessary to ask, “Who is he?” the statue is
misplaced in a national mausoleum.
These monuments are too few as yet to produce any other general effect
than a wish that there were more; and the nakedness of these wide walls
without altar, chapel, confessional, picture, or offering, is striking
and dolorous as you may suppose. Yet if such honours were awarded
without any immediate political motive, there are many for whom they
might justly be claimed; for Cook for instance, the first navigator,
without reproach; for Bruce, the most intrepid and successful of modern
travellers; for lady Wortley Montague, the best of all letter-writers,
and the benefactress of Europe. “I,” said W., who was with me, “should
demand one for Sir Walter Raleigh; and even you, Spaniard as you are,
would not, I think, contest the claim; it should be for introducing
tobacco into Christendom, for which he deserves a statue of pipe-makers’
clay.”
Some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago the best English artists
offered to paint pictures and give them to this cathedral;—England had
never greater painters to boast of than at that time. The thing,
however, was not so easy as you might imagine, and it was necessary to
obtain the consent of the bishop, the chapter, the lord mayor, and the
king. The king loves the arts, and willingly consented; the lord mayor
and the chapter made no objection; but the bishop positively refused;
for no other reason, it is said, than because the first application had
not been made to him. Perhaps some puritanical feeling may have been
mingled with this despicable pride, some leven of the old Iconoclastic
and Lutheran barbarism; but as long as the names of Barry and of Sir
Joshua Reynolds are remembered in this country, and remembered they will
be as long as the works and the fame of a painter can endure, so long
will the provoking absurdity of this refusal be execrated.[17]
Footnote 17:
A story, even less honourable than this to the dean and chapter of St
Paul’s is current at this present time, which if false should be
contradicted, and if true should be generally known. Upon the death of
Barry the painter it was wished to erect a tablet to his memory in
this cathedral, and the dean and chapter were applied to for
permission so to do: the answer was, that the fee was a thousand
pounds. In reply to this unexpected demand, it was represented that
Barry had been a poor man, and that the monument was designed by his
friends as a mark of respect to his genius: that it would not be
large, and consequently might stand in a situation where there was not
room for a larger. Upon this it was answered, that, in consideration
of these circumstances, perhaps five hundred pounds might be taken. A
second remonstrance was made, a chapter was convened to consider the
matter, and the final answer was, that nothing less than a thousand
pounds could be taken.
If this be false it should be publicly contradicted, especially as any
thing dishonourable will be readily believed concerning St Paul’s,
since Lord Nelson’s coffin was shown there in the grave for a shilling
a head.—TR.
The monuments and the body of the church may be seen gratuitously; a
price is required for admittance to any thing above stairs, and for
fourpenny, sixpenny, and shilling fees we were admitted to see the
curiosities of the building;—a model something differing from the
present structure, and the work of the same great architect; a
geometrical staircase, at the top of which the door closes with a
tremendous sound; the clock, whose huge bell in a calm day, when what
little wind is stirring is from the east, may be heard five leagues over
the plain at Windsor; and a whispering gallery, the great amusement of
children and wonder of women, and which is indeed at first sufficiently
startling. It is just below the dome; and when I was on the one side and
my guide on the other, the whole breadth of the dome being between us,
he shut-to the door, and the sound was like a peal of thunder rolling
among the mountains.—The scratch of a pin against the wall, and the
lowest whisper, were distinctly heard across. The inside of the cupola
is covered with pictures by a certain Sir James Thornhill: they are too
high to be seen distinctly from any place except the gallery immediately
under them, and if there were nothing else to repay the fatigue of the
ascent it would be labour in vain.
Much as I had been impressed by the size of the building on first
entering it, my sense of its magnitude was heightened by the prodigious
length of the passages which we traversed, and the seeming endlessness
of the steps we mounted. We kept close to our conductor with a sense of
danger: that it is dangerous to do otherwise was exemplified not long
since by a person who lost himself here, and remained two days and
nights in this dismal solitude. At length he reached one of the towers
in the front; to make himself heard was impossible; he tied his
handkerchief to his stick, and hung it out as a signal of distress,
which at last was seen from below, and he was rescued. The best plan in
such cases would be to stop the clock, if the way to it could be found.
In all other towers which I had ever ascended, the ascent was fatiguing,
but no ways frightful. Stone steps winding round and round a stone
pillar from the bottom up to the top, with just room to admit you
between the pillar and the wall, make the limbs ache and the head giddy,
but there is nothing to give a sense of danger. Here was a totally
different scene: the ascent was up the cupola, by stair-cases and stages
of wood, which had all the seeming insecurity of scaffolding. Projecting
beams hung with cobwebs and black with dust, the depth below, the extent
of the gloomy dome within which we were enclosed, and the light which
just served to show all this, sometimes dawning before us, sometimes
fading away behind, now slanting from one side, and now leaving us
almost in utter darkness: of such materials you may conceive how
terrifying a scene may be formed, and you know how delightful it is to
contemplate images of terror with a sense of security.
Having at last reached the summit of the dome, I was contented. The way
up to the cross was by a ladder; and as we could already see as far as
the eye could reach, there was nothing above to reward me for a longer
and more laborious ascent. The old bird’s-eye views which are now
disused because they are out of fashion, were of more use than any thing
which supplies their place: half plain, half picture, they gave an idea
of the place which they represented more accurately than pictures, and
more vividly than plans. I would have climbed St Paul’s, if it had been
only to see London thus mapped below me, and though there had been
nothing beautiful or sublime in the view: few objects, however, are so
sublime, if by sublimity we understand that which completely fills the
imagination to the utmost measure of its powers, as the view of a huge
city thus seen at once:—house-roofs, the chimneys of which formed so
many turrets; towers and steeples; the trees and gardens of the inns of
court and the distant squares forming so many green spots in the map;
Westminster Abbey on the one hand with Westminster Hall, an object
scarcely less conspicuous; on the other the Monument, a prodigious
column worthy of a happier occasion and a less lying inscription; the
Tower and the masts of the shipping rising behind it; the river with its
three bridges and all its boats and barges; the streets immediately
within view blackened with moving swarms of men and lines of carriages.
To the north were Hampstead and Highgate on their eminences, southward
the Surrey hills. Where the city ended it was impossible to distinguish:
it would have been more beautiful if, as at Madrid, the capital had been
circumscribed within walls, and the open country had commenced
immediately without its limits. In every direction the lines of houses
ran out as far as the eye could follow them, only the patches of green
were more frequently interspersed towards the extremity of the prospect,
as the lines diverged further from each other. It was a sight which awed
me and made me melancholy. I was looking down upon the habitations of a
million of human beings; upon the single spot whereon were crowded
together more wealth, more splendour, more ingenuity, more worldly
wisdom, and, alas! more worldly blindness, poverty, depravity,
dishonesty, and wretchedness, than upon any other spot in the whole
habitable earth.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER XXVIII.
_State of the English Catholics.—Their prudent Silence in the Days of
Jacobitism.—The Church of England jealous of the Dissenters.—Riots
in 1780.—Effects of the French Revolution.—The Re-establishment of
the Monastic Orders in England.—Number of Nunneries and Catholic
Seminaries.—The Poor easily converted.—Catholic Writers.—Dr Geddes._
The situation of the Catholics in England is far more favourable at
present than it has been at any period since the unfortunate expulsion
of James II. There is an opinion prevalent among freethinkers and
schismatics that intolerance is bad policy, and that religious
principles hostile to an establishment will die away if they are not
persecuted. These reasoners have forgotten that Christianity was rooted
up in Japan, and that heresy was extirpated from Spain, by fire. The
impolicy is in half measures.
So long as the Stuarts laid claim to the crown, the Catholics were
jealously regarded as a party connected with them; and even the large
class of Jacobites, as they were called, who adhered to the old family
merely from a principle of loyalty, being obstinate heretics, looked
suspiciously upon their Catholic coadjutors as men whose motives were
different, though they were engaged in the same cause. These men would
never have attempted to restore the Stuarts, if they had not believed
that the Protestant church establishment would remain undisturbed, they
believed this firmly—believed that a Catholic king would reign over a
nation of schismatics, and make no attempt at converting them; so
ignorant were they of the principles of Catholicism. But no sooner had
the Pretender ceased to be formidable than the Catholics were forgotten,
or considered only as a religious sect of less consequence in the state,
and therefore less obnoxious than any other, because neither numerous
nor noisy. In fact the persecuting laws, though never enforced, were
still in existence; and the Catholics themselves, as they had not
forgotten their bloody effects in former times, prudently persevered in
silence.
Fortunately for them, as soon as they had ceased to be objects of
suspicion, the Presbyterians became so. This body of dissenters had been
uniformly attached to the Hanoverian succession; but when that house was
firmly established, and all danger from the Stuarts over, the old
feelings began to revive, both on the part of the Crown and of the
Nonconformists. What they call the connection between civil and
religious freedom, or, as their antagonists say, between schism and
rebellion, made the court jealous of their numbers and of their
principles. The clergy too, being no longer in danger from those whom
they had dispossessed, began to fear those who would dispossess them;
they laid aside their controversy with the Catholics, and directed their
harangues and writings against greater schismatics than themselves.
During such disputes our brethren had nothing to do but quietly look on,
and rejoice that the kingdom of Beelzebub was divided against itself.
It is true, a violent insurrection broke out against them in the year
1780; but this was the work of the lowest rabble, led on by a madman. It
did not originate in any previous feelings, for probably nine-tenths of
the mob had never heard of popery till they rioted to suppress it, and
it left no rankling behind: on the contrary, as the Catholics had been
wantonly and cruelly attacked, a sentiment of compassion for them was
excited in the more respectable part of the community.
The French Revolution materially assisted the true religion. The English
clergy, trembling for their own benefices, welcomed the emigrant priests
as brethren, and, forgetting all their former ravings about Antichrist,
and Babylon, and the Scarlet Whore, lamented the downfall of religion in
France. An outcry was raised against the more daring heretics at home,
and the tide of popular fury let loose upon them. While this dread of
atheism prevailed, the Catholic priests obtained access every where; and
the university of Oxford even supplied them with books from its own
press. These noble confessors did not let the happy opportunity pass by
unimproved; they sowed the seeds abundantly, and saw the first fruits of
the harvest. But the most important advantage which has ever been
obtained for the true religion since its subversion, is the
re-establishment of the monastic orders in this island, from whence they
had so long been proscribed. This great object has been effected with
admirable prudence. A few nuns who had escaped from the atheistical
persecution in France were permitted to live together, according to
their former mode of life. It would have been cruel to have separated
them, and their establishment was connived at as trifling in itself, and
which would die a natural death with its members. But the Catholic
families, rejoicing in this manifest interposition of Providence, made
use of the opportunity, and found no difficulty in introducing novices.
Thus is good always educed from evil; the irruption of the barbarous
nations led to their conversion; the overthrow of the Greek empire
occasioned the revival of letters in Europe; and the persecution of
Catholicism in France has been the cause of its establishment in
England: the storm which threatened to pluck up this Tree of Life by its
roots has only scattered abroad its seed. Not only have many conversions
been effected, but even in many instances the children of Protestants
have been inspired with such holy zeal, that, heroically abandoning the
world, in spite of all the efforts of their deluded parents, they have
entered and professed. Some of the wiser heretics have seen to what
these beginnings will lead; but the answer to their representations has
been, the vows may be taken at pleasure, and broken at pleasure, for by
the law of England such vows are not binding. As if any law could take
away the moral obligation of a vow, and neutralise perjury! May we not
indulge a hope that this blindness is the work of God?
There are at this time five Catholic colleges in England and two in
Scotland, besides twelve schools and academies for the instruction of
boys: eleven schools for females, besides what separate ones are kept by
the English Benedictine nuns from Dunkirk; the nuns of the Ancient
English Community of Brussels; the nuns from Bruges; the nuns from
Liege; the Augustinian nuns from Louvain; the English Benedictine nuns
from Cambray; the Benedictine nuns from Ghent; those of the same order
from Montargis; and the Dominican nuns from Brussels: in all these
communities the rules of the respective orders are observed, and novices
are admitted; they are convents as well as schools. The Poor Clares have
four establishments, in which only novices are received, not scholars;
the Teresians three; the Benedictine nuns one. Convents of monks are not
so numerous; and indeed in the present state of things secular clergy
are better labourers in the vineyard; the Carthusians, however, have an
establishment in the full rigour of their rule. Who could have hoped to
live to see these things in England!
The greater number of converts are made among the poor, who are always
more easily converted than the rich, because their inheritance is not in
this world, and they enjoy so little happiness here that they are more
disposed to think seriously of securing it for hereafter. It is no
difficult thing to make them set their hearts and their hopes upon
heaven. Their own clergy neglect them; and when they behold any one
solicitous for their salvation without any interested motive, an act of
love towards them is so unexpected and so unusual, that their gratitude
prepares the way for truth. The charity also which our holy religion so
particularly enjoins produces its good effect even on earth; proselytes
always abound in the neighbourhood of a wealthy Catholic family. Were
the seminaries as active as they were in the days of persecution, and as
liberally supplied with means, it would not be absurd to hope for the
conversion of this island, so long lost to the church.
Another circumstance greatly in favour of the true religion is, that
there is no longer any difficulty or danger in publishing Catholic
writings. They were formerly proscribed and hunted out as vigilantly as
prohibited books in our own country; but now the press is open to them,
and able defenders of the truth have appeared. This also has been
managed skilfully. To have openly attacked the heretical establishment
might have attracted too much notice, and perhaps have excited alarm;
nor indeed would the heretics have perused a work avowedly written with
such a design. Accordingly the form of history has been used, a study of
which the English are particularly fond. An excellent life of Cardinal
Pole has been written, which exposes the enormities of Henry VIII. and
the character of the wretched Anna Boleyn. Another writer, in a history
of Henry II. has vindicated the memory of that blessed Saint Thomas of
Canterbury, who is so vilified by all the English historians; and Bishop
Milner, still more lately, in a work upon antiquities, has ventured to
defend those excellent prelates who attempted, under Philip and Mary, to
save their country from the abyss of heresy.
A division for a short time among the Catholics themselves was
occasioned by Dr Geddes, a priest of great learning, but of the most
irascible disposition and perverse mind. This man began to translate the
scriptures anew; and, as he avowed opinions destructive of their
authority, as well as of revealed religion, his bishop very properly
interfered, forbade him to proceed, and on his persisting suspended him
for contumacy. He obstinately went on, and lived to publish two volumes
of the text and a third of notes: the notes consist wholly of verbal
criticism, and explain nothing, and the language of the translation is
such as almost to justify a suspicion that he intended to debase the
holy writings, and render them odious. As long as he lived he found a
patron in Lord Petre; but his books are now selling at their just value,
that is, as waste paper; and if his name was not inserted in the Index
Expurgatorius it would be forgotten.
Pope and Dryden, the two greatest English poets, were both Catholics,
though the latter had been educated in the schism.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LETTER XXIX.
_Number of Sects in England, all appealing to the
Scriptures.—Puritans.—Nonjurors.—Rise of Socinianism, and its
probable Downfall._
The heretical sects in this country are so numerous, that an explanatory
dictionary of their names has been published. They form a curious list!
Arminians, Socinians, Baxterians, Presbyterians, New Americans,
Sabellians, Lutherans, Moravians, Swedenborgians, Athanasians,
Episcopalians, Arians, Sabbatarians, Trinitarians, Unitarians,
Millenarians, Necessarians, Sublapsarians, Supralapsarians, Antinomians,
Hutchinsonians, Sandemonians, Muggletonians, Baptists, Anabaptists,
Pædobaptists, Methodists, Papists, Universalists, Calvinists,
Materialists, Destructionists, Brownists, Independants, Protestants,
Hugonots, Nonjurors, Seceders, Hernhutters, Dunkers, Jumpers, Shakers,
and Quakers, &c. &c. &c.[18] A precious nomenclature! only to be
paralleled by the catalogue of the Philistines in Sanson Nazarenzo,[19]
or the muster-roll of Anna de Santiago’s Devils,[19] under Aquias, Brum,
and Acatu, lieutenant-generals to Lucifer himself.
Footnote 18:
It must surely be superfluous to make any comment upon the ignorant or
insolent manner in which synonymous appellations are here classed as
different sects. The popish author seems to have aimed at something
like wit by arranging them in rhymes:—as this could not be preserved
in the translation, and it is a pity any wit should be lost, the
original, such as it is, follows: “_Arminianos, Socinianos,
Baxterianos, Presbiterianos, Nuevos Americanos, Sabellianos,
Luteranos, Moravianos, Swedenborgianos, Athanasianos, Episcopalianos,
Arianos, Sabbatarianos, Trinitarianos, Unitarianos, Millenarianos,
Necessarianos, Sublapsarianos, Supralapsarianos, Antinomianos,
Hutchinsonianos, Sandemonianos, Muggletonianos, Baptistas,
Anabaptistas, Pædobaptistas, Methodistas, Papistas, Universalistas,
Calvinistas, Materialistas, Destruicionistas, Brownistas,
Independantes, Protestantes, Hugonotos, Nonjureros, Secederos,
Hernhutteros, Dunkeros, Jumperos, Shakeros, y Quakeros._”—The author,
to make these names look as uncouth and portentous as possible, has
not translated several which he must have understood, and has retained
the _w_ and _k_.—TR.
This endless confusion arises from the want of some surer standard of
faith than Reason and the Scriptures, to one or both of which all the
schismatics appeal, making it their boast that they allow no other
authority. Reason and the Scriptures! Even one of their own bishops
calls Reason a box of quicksilver, and says that it is like a pigeon’s
neck, or a shot-silk, appearing one colour to me, and another to you who
stand in a different light.
Footnote 19:
These allusions are probably well understood in Spain; but here, as in
many other instances, the translator must confess his ignorance, and
regret that he can give no explanation.—TR.
And for the Scriptures, well have they been likened to a nose of wax,
which every finger and thumb may tweak to the fashion of their own
fancy. You may well suppose how perversely those heretics will wrest the
spirit, who have not scrupled to corrupt the letter of the Gospel. In
many editions of the English Bible _ye_ has been substituted for _we_;
Acts, vi. 3. the Presbyterians having bribed the printer thus to favour
their heresy. Were you to hear the stress which some of these Puritans
lay upon the necessity of perusing the Scriptures, you might suppose
they had adopted the Jewish notion, that the first thing which God
himself does every morning is to read three hours in the Bible.