Tired of visiting, dining out, and endless new acquaintances, I
determined yesterday, to encounter, if possible, nobody who would need
to be spoken to, but to see sights all day, and try what mere absorption
would do in the way of mental refreshment. I began with what I presume,
is the most varied show in the world, the _Colosseum_ in the Regent’s
Park. This is such an aggregation of wonders that the visitor must have
very small compassion not to be sorry for everybody who has not been
there, and very large confidence in his powers of description to
undertake to describe it. How so much is represented in so small a
compass is as puzzling as the miracles of clairvoyance. If one were
conjured, bodily, indeed, for five minutes to the ruins of Athens, the
next five minutes left lounging in a Moorish palace, then dropped into
Switzerland, then held in an angel’s lap high over London—winding up
with a wilderness of galleries, aviaries, conservatories, statuary and
grottoes—it would, probably, be not a bit more astonishing than a visit
to the Colosseum, and, of course, not near so agreeable. The guide-book,
by the way, with drawings of everything, which one buys for a shilling
at the door, is rather graphically written, and an extract from it may
help me in conveying an idea of the place:—
“The conservatories are elaborately decorated in the Arabesque style. In
the centre is the Gothic aviary, superbly fitted up with gilt carved
work and looking-glass, such as Isabella of Castile might be supposed to
have constructed amidst the relics of a Moorish palace; or Abu-Abdallah,
with true Arabian gallantry, to have conjured up for the solace of some
fair Christian captive, within the enchanted halls of his own Alhambra.
But of the ingenious and tasteful combination of Moorish and Gothic
architecture, and decoration of this spot, amidst the murmur of
sparkling fountains, the songs of gaily-plumed birds, and the fragrance
of exotic plants and flowers, may transport us in imagination to the
country of the Cid and the borders of the Xenil, we have but to open the
glass door which leads to the exterior promenade; and, in an instant,
the still more picturesque and instructive sight of golden pinnacles and
eastern domes, springing up amongst the marble columns and mouldering
frescoes of ancient Greece and Rome, wafts us at once to the banks of
the Bosphorus or the shores of the Mediterranean. In these days of
steam-navigation, and overland journeys to India, when Parisian
_flâneurs_ are to be met among the ruins of Carthage, and Bond street
loungers in the great desert of Sahara—when, in turning a corner of the
great pyramid you may run against your London friend in a Chesterfield
wrapper, or, in ascending Mount Lebanon, recognize a recent partner at
Almack’s, in all the glory of her last new bonnet from Maradan’s, the
reality of the scene before us is nowise impaired by the modern European
costume of the visitors, and we may sit us down upon this mossy stone,
and look upon them as the latest arrivals by “the Oriental,” _via_ Malta
and Alexandria, or by the “Dampschiff” from Vienna to the “Golden Horn.”
It is perhaps more than half an hour since we flew from the top of St.
Paul’s to the south of Spain, to the shores of the Mediterranean, to the
verge of Christendom. We must hurry home by the shortest cut—through
Switzerland—but not without halting for one moment to gaze from the
windows of an Alpine cottage upon the never-trodden snow, and the hoar
glaciers of Mont Blanc. We enter then the chalet, or Swiss cottage,
guided by the roar of the mountain torrent, which, leaping over the
nearest rocks, comes thundering down the precipices, and, after forming
a small lake in front of the cottage windows, overflows its stony basin,
and with a second fall, disappears in the gulf below.”
This flowery naming-over of the things one sees at the Colosseum is
anything but adequate to the reality—the Swiss valley (which has a
_real_ waterfall, forty-feet high, and a _real_ lake) being,
particularly, a complete illusion. And there is another illusion quite
as complete, which you would scarcely think possible—a view _down upon_
London by night, with all the streets illuminated, the shop-windows
glittering, the markets crowded, and the moon shining over all! I could
not persuade myself that part of it, at least, was not a bit of real
London let in to the view, and I believed in the moon till I had seen it
for half an hour—just such a one being really outside. The guide-book
says:—“We confidently state, that it is next to impossible that any
person can lean over the balustrade for five or six minutes, and mark
the fleecy clouds sailing steadily along, lighted as they come within
the influence of the halo-encircled moon, which has just emerged from
the smoke of the great city, and then fading from sight, or occasionally
obscuring the stars that twinkle here and there in the apparently
illimitable space—we say it is next to impossible that they can, after
such contemplation, recall themselves immediately to the conviction that
the scene before them is but an illusion. Add to this the reflection of
the innumerable lights upon the bridges in the river, and that of the
moon, as the flow of the tide occasionally causes the ripple to catch
for a moment, again to be lost as speedily, the silvery beams of the
rising luminary, the brilliancy of the shops in Cheapside, and on
Ludgate Hill—the colored lights of the chemists in all directions—the
flaring naked gas in the open stalls and markets—the cold, pale,
moonlight on the windows of Christ Church Hospital, and other high and
isolated buildings, and nothing short of reality can equal the amazing
_coup d’œil_ before us.”
I wanted some one to monosyllable-ize to—(for it is as bad to be
astonished alone, as it is to be astonishingly tired of people) but with
this one lack, the morning and the evening—(I returned in the evening,)
were plenitudes of occupation. I felt afterwards, and feel now, as if I
had been to the far countries represented, and up in air and down in
caverns. Many a traveller earns the right _really_ to wear the green
turban, whose impressions and memories are less worth having.
One sight I saw, by the way, that was not “down on the bill.” The centre
of the Colosseum is occupied by a circular gallery, carpeted and filled
with lounges, and in many respects luxurious, _besides_ exhibiting an
admirable collection of statuary. I was standing before a bust of Mrs.
Norton, (the poetess) and comparing its exquisite chiselling with my
remembrance of her beautiful features, when a party of ladies with very
refined, soft voices, approached a statue near by, and began criticising
it. An instinctive feeling of delicacy forbad me to look around, at
first, as the statue was the rude figure of a reclining woman, but a
_very_ masculine guttural following a critical remark, I ventured to
turn my head towards the party. Three ladies, dressed with the most
respectable elegance, one elderly, and the other two, apparently her
daughters, and both pretty, stood in a patronizing tripod—_surrounding
a negro!_ It was a lad of nineteen or twenty, in a jacket and trowsers,
entirely black, and as ugly and ill-shaped a negro as you could easily
find. His hands showed that he had been used to hard work, and he had
evidently newly arrived in London. The ladies were making a pet of him.
One caught hold of his arm, and pointed to a bust, and another pulled
him to see a statue, and they were evidently enjoying the sights, only
through his astonishment. The figure of the naked saint, asleep, with
the cross in her bosom, did _not_ seem to shock the ladies, but _did_
seem to shock the negro. These ladies were probably enthusiasts in
anti-slavery, and had got a _protégé_ who was interesting as having been
a slave. At least, this was the only theory I could build to account for
their excessive interest in him—but one need not be an American to
wonder at their mode of amusing him. I see, daily, blacks, walking with
white women, and occupying seats in the dress-circle of theatres, quite
unnoticed by the English; but it was a degree too much to see a black
boy in a fair way to _have his taste corrupted_ by white ladies!
There is a superb bust of D’Orsay’s father in this collection—by the
Count himself. It represents a magnificent man. My letter is getting
long.