fancy might be the shadow of a spiritual fact. The
dying melt into the great multitude of the Departed as
quietly as a drop of water into the ocean, and, it may
be, are conscious of no unfamiliarity with their new
circumstances, but immediately become aware of an in-
sufferable strangeness in the world which they have
quitted. Death has not taken them away, but brought
them home.
The vicissitudes and mischances of sublunary affairs,
however, have not ceased to attend upon these marble
inhabitants ; for I saw the upper fragment of a sculp-
tured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the lower half
of whom had doubtless been demolished by Cromwell's
soldiers when they took the Minster by storm. And
there lies the remnant of this devout lady on her slab,
ever since the outrage, as for centuries before, with a
countenance of divine serenity and her hands clasped
in prayer, symbolizing a depth of religious faith which
no earthly turmoil or calamity could disturb. Another
piece of sculpture (apparently a favorite subject in the
middle ages, for I have seen several like it in other
Cathedrals), was a reclining skeleton, as faithfully repre-
senting an open-work of bones as could well be expected
in a solid block of marble, and at a period, moreover,
when the mysteries of the human frame were rather to
be guessed at than revealed. Whatever the anatomical
defects of his production, the old sculptor had succeeded
in making it ghastly beyond measure. How much mis-
chief has been wrought upon us by this invariable gloom
of the Gothic imagination ; flinging itself like a death-
n6 OUR OLD HOME
scented pall over our conceptions of the future state,
smothering our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing
dismal efforts to raise the harvest of immortality out of
what is most opposite to it, the grave !
The Cathedral service is performed twice every day :
at ten o'clock and at four. When I first entered, the
choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys,
with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as fresh
as bird-notes) were just winding up their harmonious
labors, and soon came thronging through a side-door
from the chancel into the nave. They were all dressed
in long, white robes, and looked like a peculiar order of
beings, created on purpose to hover between the roof
and pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice, and illu-
minate it with divine melodies, reposing themselves,
meanwhile, on the heavy grandeur of the organ-tones
like cherubs on a golden cloud. All at once, however,
one of the cherubic multitude pulled off his white gown,
thus transforming himself before my very eyes into a
commonplace youth of the day, in modern frock-coat
and trousers of a decidedly provincial cut. This absurd
little incident, I verily believe, had a sinister effect in
putting me at odds with the proper influences of the
Cathedral, nor could I quite recover a suitable frame of
mind during my stay there. But, emerging into the
open air, I began to be sensible that I had left a mag-
nificent interior behind me, and I have never quite lost
the perception and enjoyment of it in these intervening
years.
A large space in the immediate neighborhood of the
Cathedral is called the Close, and comprises beautifully
kept lawns and a shadowy walk, bordered by the dwell-
ings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the diocese. All
this row of episcopal, canonical, and clerical residences,
has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, and well-pro-
tected, though not inaccessible seclusion. They seemed
capable of including everything that a saint could de-
sire, and a great many more things than most of us
sinners generally succeed in acquiring. Their most
marked feature is a dignified comfort, looking as if no
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 117
disturbance or vulgar intrusiveness could ever cross
their thresholds, encroach upon their ornamented lawns,
or straggle into the beautiful gardens that surround
them with flower-beds and rich clumps of shrubbery.
The episcopal palace is a stately mansion of stone, built
somewhat in the Italian style, and bearing on its front
the figures 1687, as the date of its erection. A large
edifice of brick, which, if I remember, stood next to the
palace, I took to be the residence of the second digni-
tary of the Cathedral ; and, in that case, it must have
been the youthful home of Addison, whose father was
Dean of Lichfield. I tried to fancy his figure on the
delightful walk that extends in front of those priestly
abodes, from which and the interior lawns it is sepa-
rated by an open-work iron fence, lined with rich old
shrubbery, and overarched by a minster-aisle of vener-
able trees. This path is haunted by the shades of fa-
mous personages who have formerly trodden it. Johnson
must have been familiar with it, both as a boy, and in
his subsequent visits to Lichfield, an illustrious old man.
Miss Seward, connected with so many literary remi-
niscences, lived in one of the adjacent houses. Tradition
says that it was a favorite spot of Major Andr6, who
used to pace to and fro under these trees, waiting, per-
haps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of Honoria Sneyd,
before he crossed the ocean to encounter his dismal
doom from an American court-martial. David Garrick,
no doubt, scampered along the path in his boyish days,
and, if he was an early student of the drama, must often
have thought of those two airy characters of the "Beaux'
Stratagem-," Archer and Aim well, who, on this very
ground, after attending service at the Cathedral, con-
trive to make acquaintance with the ladies of the comedy.
These creatures of mere fiction have as positive a sub-
stance now as the sturdy old figure of Johnson himself.
They live, while realities have died. The shadowy walk
still glistens with their gold-embroidered memories.
Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found it in St.
Mary's Square, which is not so much a square as the
mere widening of a street. The house is tall and thin,
n8 OUR OLD HOME
of three stories, with a square front and a roof rising
steep and high. On a side-view, the building looks as if
it had been cut in two in the midst, there being no slope
of the roof on that side. A ladder slanted against the
wall, and a painter was giving a livelier hue to the
plaster. In a corner-room of the basement, where old
Michael Johnson may be supposed to have sold books,
is now what we should call a dry-goods store, or, accord-
ing to the English phrase, a mercer's and haberdasher's
shop. The house has a private entrance on a cross-
street, the door being accessible by several much worn
stone-steps, which are bordered by an iron balustrade. I
set my foot on the steps and laid my hand on the balus-
trade, where Johnson's hand and foot must many a time
have been, and ascending to the door, I knocked once,
and again, and again, and got no admittance. Going
round to the shop-entrance, I tried to open it, but found
it as fast bolted as the gate of Paradise. It is mortify-
ing to be so balked in one's little enthusiasms ; but look-
ing round in quest of somebody to make inquiries of, I
was a good deal consoled by the sight of Dr. Johnson
himself, who happened, just at that moment, to be sitting
at his ease nearly in the middle of St. Mary's Square,
with his face turned towards his father's house.
Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the
doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together with
the ponderous melancholy that had so long weighed him
down, the intelligent reader will at once comprehend
that he was marble in his substance, and seated in a
marble chair, on an elevated stone-pedestal. In short, it
was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, and placed here in
1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, the reverend chancel-
lor of the Diocese.
The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much more
so than the mountainous doctor himself) and looks down
upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve feet
high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very
like in feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of John-
son, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several big
books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mistake
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 119
not, he holds a volume in his hand, thus blinking forth
at the world out of his learned abstraction, owl-like, yet
benevolent at heart. The statue is immensely massive,
a vast ponderosity of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor,
indeed, fully humanized, but rather resembling a great
stone-boulder than a man. You must look with the eyes
of faith and sympathy, or possibly, you might lose the
human being altogether, and find only a big stone within
your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three bas-reliefs.
In the first, Johnson is represented as hardly more than
a baby, bestriding an old man's shoulders, resting his
chin on the bald head which he embraces with his little
arms, and listening earnestly to the high-church eloquence
of Dr. Sacheverell. In the second tablet, he is seen rid-
ing to school on the shoulders of two of his comrades,
while another boy supports him in the rear.
The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a great deal
of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is probably
the more alive, because I have always been profoundly
impressed by the incident here commemorated, and long
ago tried to tell it for the behoof of childish readers. It
shows Johnson in the market-place of Uttoxeter, doing
penance for an act of disobedience to his father, com-
mitted fifty years before. He stands bare-headed, a
venerable figure, and a countenance extremely sad and
woe-begone, with the wind and rain driving hard against
him, and thus helping to suggest to the spectator the
gloom of his inward state. Some market-people and
children gaze awe-stricken into his face, and an aged
man and woman, with clasped and uplifted hands, seem
to be praying for him. These latter personages (whose
introduction by the artist is none the less effective, be-
cause, in queer proximity, there are some commodities
of market-day in the shape of living ducks and dead
poultry,) I interpreted to represent the spirits of John-
son's father and mother, lending what aid they could to
lighten his half-century's burden of remorse.
I had never heard of the above-described piece of
sculpture before ; it appears to have no reputation as a
work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves any.
120 OUR OLD HOME
For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could,
under the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan
Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my interest in the
sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening
my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic ten-
derness in the incident of the penance. So, the next
day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one of the few
purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook, to
see the very spot where Johnson had stood. Boswell, I
think, speaks of the town (its name is pronounced Yute-
oxeter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but
the county-map would indicate a greater distance ; and
by rail, passing from one line to another, it is as much
as eighteen miles. I have always had an idea of old
Michael Johnson sending his literary merchandise by
carrier's wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on mar-
ket-day morning, selling books through the busy hours,
and returning to Lichfield at night. This could not pos-
sibly have been the case.
Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects that
I saw, with a green field or two between them and me,
were the tower and gray steeple of a church, rising
among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. A
very short walk takes you from the station up into the
town. It had been my previous impression that the
market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately round about
the church; and, if I remember the narrative aright,
Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father's
book-stall as standing in the market-place, close beside
the sacred edifice. It is impossible for me to say what
changes may have occurred in the topography of the
town, during almost a century and a half since Michael
Johnson retired from business, and ninety years, at least,
since his son's penance was performed. But the church
has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around
it, while the market-place, though near at hand, neither
forms a part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its
throng and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and
surge against the churchyard and the old gray tower.
Nevertheless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 121
from the centre of the market-place to the church-door ;
and Michael Johnson might very conveniently have
located his stall and laid out his literary ware in the
corner at the tower's base ; better there, indeed, than in
the busy centre of an agricultural market. But the pic-
turesque arrangement and full impressiveness of the story
absolutely require that Johnson shall not have done his
penance in a corner, ever so little retired, but shall have
been the very nucleus of the crowd the midmost man
of the market-place a central image of Memory and
Remorse, contrasting with and overpowering the petty
materialism around him. He himself, having the force
to throw vitality and truth into what persons differently
constituted might reckon a mere external ceremony, and
an absurd one, could not have failed to see this necessity.
I am resolved, therefore, that the true site of Dr. John-
son's penance was in the middle of the market-place.
That important portion of the town is a rather spa-
cious and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded by
houses and shops, some of them old, with red-tiled roofs,
others wearing a pretence of newness, but probably as
old in their inner substance as the rest. The people of
Uttoxeter seemed very idle in the warm summer-day,
and were scattered in little groups along the side-walks,
leisurely chatting with one another, and often turning
about to take a deliberate stare at my humble self ;
insomuch that I felt as if my genuine sympathy for the
illustrious penitent, and my many reflections about him,
must have imbued me with some of his own singularity of
mien. If their great-grandfathers were such redoubt-
able starers in the Doctor's day, his penance was no
light one. This curiosity indicates a paucity of visitors
to the little town, except for market purposes, and I
question if Uttoxeter ever saw an American before.
The only other thing that greatly impressed me was the
abundance of public-houses, one at every step or two :
Red Lions, White Harts, Bulls' Heads, Mitres, Cross
Keys, and I know not what besides. These are prob-
ably for the accommodation of the farmers and peasantry
of the neighborhood on market-day, and content them-
122 OUR OLD HOME
selves with a very meagre business on other days of the
week. At any rate, I was the only guest in Uttoxeter
at the period of my visit, and had but an infinitesimal
portion of patronage to distribute among such a multi-
tude of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be
scandalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the
only important affair that I attended to, after coming so
far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and standing
now on the very spot where my pious errand should
have been consummated. I stepped into one of the
rustic hostleries and got my dinner, bacon and greens,
some mutton-chops, juicier and more delectable than all
America could serve up at the President's table, and
a gooseberry pudding : a sufficient meal for six yeo-
men, and good enough for a prince, besides a pitcher of
foaming ale, the whole at the pitiful small charge of
eighteenpence !
Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody had
a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. And
as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my dinner,
it was the wisest thing I had done that day. A sensible
man had better not let himself be betrayed into these
attempts to realize the things which he has dreamed
about, and which, when they cease to be purely ideal in
his mind, will have lost the truest of their truth, the lofti-
est and profoundest part of their power over his sym-
pathies. Facts, as we really find them, whatever poetry
they may involve, are covered with a stony excrescence
of prose, resembling the crust on a beautiful sea-shell,
and they never show their most delicate and divinest
colors until we shall have dissolved away their grosser
actualities by steeping them long in a powerful men-
struum of thought. And seeking to actualize them
again, we do but renew the crust. If this were other-
wise if the moral sublimity of a great fact depended
in any degree on its garb of external circumstances,
things which change and decay it could not itself be
immortal and ubiquitous, and only a brief point of time
and a little neighborhood would be spiritually nourished
by its grandeur and beauty.
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 123
Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled
with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old quaffer
of that excellent liquor stir up his cup with a sprig of
some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile I found my-
self still haunted by a desire to get a definite result out
of my visit to Uttoxeter. The hospitable inn was called
the Nag's Head, and standing beside the market-place,
was as likely as any other to have entertained old
Michael Johnson in the days when he used to
come hither to sell books. He, perhaps, had dined on
bacon and greens, and drunk his ale, and smoked his
pipe, in the very room where I now sat, which was a
low, ancient room, certainly much older than Queen
Anne's time, with a red-brick floor, and a white-washed
ceiling, traversed by bare, rough beams, the whole in
the rudest fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did it
lack ornament, the walls being hung with colored en-
gravings of prize oxen and other pretty prints, and the
mantel-piece adorned with earthenware figures of shep-
herdesses in the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael
Johnson's eyes might have rested on that self-same
earthen image, to examine which more closely I had
just crossed the brick pavement of the room. And,
sitting down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced
through the open window into the sunny market-place,
and wished that I could honestly fix on one spot rather
than another, as likely to have been the holy site where
Johnson stood to do his penance.
How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not
have marked and kept in mind the very place ! How
shameful (nothing less than that) that there should be
no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and
touching a passage as can be cited out of any human
life ! No inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse
of Scripture on the wall of the church ! No statue of
the venerable and illustrious penitent in the market-
place to throw a wholesome awe over its earthliness, its
frauds and petty wrongs of which the benumbed fingers
of conscience can make no record, its selfish competition
of each man with his brother or his neighbor, its traffic
I2 4 OUR OLD HOME
of soul-substance for a little worldly gain! Such a
statue, if the piety of the people did not raise it, might
almost have been expected to grow up out of the
pavement of its own accord on the spot that had been
watered by the rain that dripped from Johnson's gar-
ments, mingled with his remorseful tears.
Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that there
were individuals in the town who could have shown me
the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson performed
his penance. I was assured, moreover, that sufficient
interest was felt in the subject to have induced certain
local discussions as to the expediency of erecting a
memorial. With all deference to my polite informant,
I surmise that there is a mistake, and decline, without
further and precise evidence, giving credit to either of
the above statements. The inhabitants know nothing,
as a matter of general interest, about the penance, and
care nothing for the scene of it. If the clergyman of
the parish, for example, had ever heard of it, would he
not have used the theme, time and again, wherewith to
work tenderly and profoundly on the souls committed
to his charge ? If parents were familiar with it, would
they not teach it to their young ones at the fireside, both
to insure reverence to their own gray hairs, and to pro-
tect the children from such unavailing regrets as John-
son bore upon his heart for fifty years ? If the site were
ascertained, would not the pavement thereabouts be
worn with reverential footsteps ? Would not every
town-born child be able to direct the pilgrim thither?
While waiting at the station, before my departure, I
asked a boy who stood near me, an intelligent and
gentlemanly lad, twelve or thirteen years old, whom I
should take to be a clergyman's son, I asked him if
he had ever heard the story of Dr. Johnson, how he
stood an hour doing penance near that church, the
spire of which rose before us. The boy stared and
answered,
"No!"
" Were you born in Uttoxeter ? "
" Yes."
LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER 125
I inquired if no circumstance such as I had mentioned
was known or talked about among the inhabitants.
" No," said the boy ; " not that I ever heard of."
Just think of the absurd little town, knowing nothing
of the only memorable incident which ever happened
within its boundaries since the old Britons built it, this
sad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot (for I
found it holy to my contemplation, again, as soon as it
lay behind me) in the heart of a stranger from three
thousand miles over the sea ! It but confirms what I
have been saying, that sublime and beautiful facts are
best understood when etherealized by distance.
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON
WE set out at a little past eleven, and made our first
stage to Manchester. We were by this time suf-
ficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright and
sunny one ; although the May sunshine was mingled with
water, as it were, and distempered with a very bitter
east wind.
Lancashire is a dreary county, (all, at least, except its
hilly portions,) and I have never passed through it with-
out wishing myself anywhere but in that particular spot
where I then happened to be. A few places along our
route were historically interesting ; as, for example, Bol-
ton, which was the scene of many remarkable events in
the Parliamentary War, and in the market-square of
which one of the Earls of Derby was beheaded. We
saw, along the wayside, the never-failing green fields,
hedges, and other monotonous features of an ordinary
English landscape. There were little factory villages,
too, or larger towns, with their tall chimneys, and their
pennons of black smoke, their ugliness of brick-work,
and their heaps of refuse matter from the furnace, which
seems to be the only kind of stuff which Nature cannot
take back to herself and resolve into the elements, when
man has thrown it aside. These hillocks of waste and
effete mineral always disfigure the neighborhood of
iron-mongering towns, and, even after a considerable
antiquity, are hardly made decent with a little grass.
At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef-
field and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather
better than that through which we had hitherto passed,
though still by no means very striking ; for (except in
the show-districts, such as the Lake country, or Derby-
shire) English scenery is not particularly well worth
looking at, considered as a spectacle or a picture. It
126
PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON 127
has a real, homely charm of its own, no doubt ; and the
rich verdure, and the thorough finish added by human
art, are perhaps as attractive to an American eye as any
stronger feature could be. Our journey, however, be-
tween Manchester and Sheffield was not through a rich
tract of country, but along a valley walled in by bleak,
ridgy hills extending straight as a rampart, and across
black moorlands with here and there a plantation of
trees. Sometimes there were long and gradual ascents,
bleak, windy, and desolate, conveying the very impres-
sion which the reader gets from many passages of Miss
Bronte's novels, and still more from those of her two
sisters. Old stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a
while, an old church-tower, were visible : but these are
almost too common objects to be noticed in an English
landscape.
On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the
country is seen quite amiss, because it was never in-