and plane down the waves! " The joke may not read



UP THE THAMES 231

very brilliantly ; but I make bold to record it as the only
specimen that reached my ears of the old, rough water-
wit for which the Thames used to be so celebrated.
Passing directly along the line of the sunken Tunnel, we
landed in Wapping, which I should have presupposed to
be the most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming
with old salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely,
and cheerful life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a
cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpic-
turesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants : the
latter comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a
single unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land-sharks,
who get a half-dishonest livelihood by business connected
with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults (as petty drinking
establishments are styled in England, pretending to con-
tain vast cellars full of liquor within the compass of ten
feet square above ground) were particularly abundant,
together with apples, oranges, and oysters, the stalls of
fishmongers and butchers, and slop-shops, where blue
jackets and duck trousers swung and capered before the
doors. Everything was on the poorest scale, and the
place bore an aspect of unredeemable decay. From this
remote point of London, I strolled leisurely towards the
heart of the city ; while the streets, at first but thinly
occupied by man or vehicle, got more and more thronged
with foot-passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all-per-
vading and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack
courage, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as
the gentlest reader would lack patience, to undertake
a descriptive stroll through London streets ; more espe-
cially as there would be a volume ready for the printer
before we could reach a midway resting-place at Char-
ing Cross. It will be the easier course to step aboard
another passing steamer, and continue our trip up the
Thames.

The next notable group of objects is an assemblage of
ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the midst
of which rises prominently one great square tower, of a
grayish hue, bordered with white stone, and having a
small turret at each corner of the roof. This central



232 OUR OLD HOME

structure is the White Tower, and the whole circuit of
ramparts and enclosed edifices constitutes what is known
in English history, and still more widely and impressively
in English poetry, as the Tower. A crowd of river-
craft are generally moored in front of it ; but if we look
sharply at the right moment under the base of the ram-
part, we may catch a glimpse of an arched water-en-
trance, half submerged, past which the Thames glides
as indifferently as if it were the mouth of a city-kennel.
Nevertheless, it is the Traitor's Gate, a dreary kind of
triumphal passage-way, (now supposed to be shut up and
barred forever,) through which a multitude of noble and
illustrious personages have entered the Tower, and found
it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Passing
it many times, I never observed that anybody glanced at
this shadowy and ominous trap-door, save myself. It is
well that America exists, if it were only that her vagrant
children may be impressed and affected by the historical
monuments of England in a degree of which the native
inhabitants are evidently incapable. These matters are
too familiar, too real, and too hopelessly built in amongst
and mixed up with the common objects and affairs of life,
to be easily susceptible of imaginative coloring in their
minds ; and even their poets and romancers feel it a toil,
and almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of
what seems embodied poetry itself to an American. An
Englishman cares nothing about the Tower, which to us
is a haunted castle in dreamland. That honest and ex-
cellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. R. James, (whose
mechanical ability, one might have supposed, would nour-
ish itself by devouring every old stone of such a struc-
ture,) once assured me that he had never in his life
set eyes upon the Tower, though for years an histori;
novelist in London.

Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voyage,
we will suppose ourselves to have reached London Bridge,
and thence to have taken another steamer for a farther
passage up the river. But here the memorable objects
succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare but a
single sentence even for the great Dome, though I deem



UP THE THAMES 233

it more picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, than St.
Peter's in its clear blue sky. I must mention, however,
(since everything connected with royalty is especially in-
teresting to my dear countrymen,) that I once saw a large
and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded and ornamented,
and overspread with a rich covering, lying at the pier
nearest to St. Paul's Cathedral ; it had the royal banner
of Great Britain displayed, besides being decorated with
a number of other flags ; and many footmen (who are
universally the grandest and gaudiest objects to be seen
in England at this day, and these were regal ones, in a
bright scarlet livery bedizened with gold lace, and white
silk stockings) were in attendance. I know not what
festive or ceremonial occasion may have drawn out this
pageant ; after all, it might have been merely a city-
spectacle, appertaining to the Lord Mayor ; but the sight
had its value in bringing vividly before me the grand old
times when the sovereign and nobles were accustomed
to use the Thames as the high street of the metropolis,
and join in pompous processions upon it; whereas, the
desuetude of such customs, nowadays, has caused the
whole show of river-life to consist in a multitude of
smoke-begrimed steamers. An analogous change has
taken place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus
have crowded out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus
life gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and
appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of its
gold lace among the wealthier classes, and to make itself
decent in the lower ones.

Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now
wearing as decorous a face as any other portion of Lon-
don; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick squares of
the Temple, with that historic garden, close upon the
riverside, and still rich in shrubbery and flowers, where
the partisans of York and Lancaster plucked the fatal
roses, and scattered their pale and bloody petals over so
many English battlefields. Hard by, we see the long
white front or rear of Somerset House, and, farther on,
rise the two new Houses of Parliament, with a huge
unfinished tower already hiding its imperfect summit in



234 OLD HOME

the smoky canopy, the whole vast and cumbrous edi-
fice a specimen of the best that modern architecture can
effect, elaborately imitating the masterpieces of those
simple ages when men " builded better than they knew."
Close by it, we have a glimpse of the roof and upper
towers of the holy Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral
pile on the opposite side of the river is Lambeth Palace,
a venerable group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of
brick, but with at least one large tower of stone. In our
course, we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges,
and, emerging out of the black heart of London, shall
soon reach a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames,
if I remember, begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted
innocence. And now we look back upon the mass of
innumerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers,
columns, and the great crowning Dome, look back, in
short, upon that mystery of the world's proudest city,
amid which a man so longs and loves to be : not, per-
haps, because it contains much that is positively admi-
rable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the world
has nothing better. The cream of external life is there ;
and whatever merely intellectual or material good we
fail to find perfect in London, we may as well content
ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no farther on
this earth.

The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old
town endowed with a prodigious number of pot-houses,
and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for
public amusement. The most noticeable thing, however,
is Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Greenwich, was
founded, I believe, by Charles II., (whose bronze statue,
in the guise of an old Roman, stands in the centre of the
quadrangle,) and appropriated as a home for aged and
infirm soldiers of the British army. The edifices are of
three stories with windows in the high roofs, and are
built of dark, sombre brick, with stone edgings and fac-
ings. The effect is by no means that of grandeur, (which
is somewhat disagreeably an attribute of Greenwich
Hospital,) but a quiet and venerable neatness. At each
extremity of the street-front there is a spacious and hos-



UP THE THAMES 235

pitably open gateway, lounging about which I saw some
gray veterans in long scarlet coats of an antique fashion,
and the cocked hats of a century ago, or occasionally a
modern foraging-cap. Almost all of them moved with a
rheumatic gait, two or three stumped on wooden legs,
and here and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of
one of these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger
could be admitted to see the establishment, he replied
most cordially, "O yes, Sir, anywhere! Walk in and
go where you please, up-stairs, or anywhere ! " So I
entered, and, passing along the inner side of the quad-
rangle, came to the door of the chapel, which forms a
part of the contiguity of edifices next the street. Here
another pensioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peace-
able and Christian demeanor, touched his three-cornered
hat and asked if I wished to see the interior ; to which
I assenting, he unlocked the door, and we went in.

The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted
roof, and over the altar is a large painting in fresco, the
subject of which I did not trouble myself to make out.
More appropriate adornments of the place, dedicated as
well to martial reminiscences as religious worship, are
the long ranges of dusty and tattered banners that hang
from their staves all round the ceiling of the chapel.
They are trophies of battles fought and won in every
quarter of the world, comprising the captured flags of all
the nations with whom the British lion has waged war
since James II. 's time, French, Dutch, East Indian,
Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and American, collected
together in this consecrated spot, not to symbolize that
there shall be no more discord upon earth, but drooping
over the aisle in sullen, though peaceable humiliation.
Yes, I said " American " among the rest ; for the good
old pensioner mistook me for an Englishman, and failed
not to point out (and, methought, with an especial em-
phasis of triumph) some flags that had been taken at
Bladensburg and Washington. I fancied, indeed, that
they hung a little higher and drooped a little lower than
any of their companions in disgrace. It is a comfort,
however, that their proud devices are already indistin-



236 OUR OLD HOME

guishable, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and
the kind offices of the moths, and that they will soon
rot from the banner-staves and be swept out in unrecog-
nized fragments from the chapel-door.

It is a good method of teaching a man how imper-
fectly cosmopolitan he is, to show him his country's flag
occupying a position of dishonor in a foreign land. But,
in truth, the whole system of a people crowing over
its military triumphs had far better be dispensed
with, both on account of the ill-blood that it helps to
keep fermenting among the nations, and because it
operates as an accumulative inducement to future gen-
erations to aim at a kind of glory, the gain of which has
generally proved more ruinous than its loss. I heartily
wish that every trophy of victory might crumble away,
and that every reminiscence or tradition of a hero, from
the beginning of the world to this day, could pass out of
all men's memories at once and forever. I might feel
very differently, to be sure, if we Northerners had any-
thing especially valuable to lose by the fading of those
illuminated names.

I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may have
been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guerdon of
all the silver I had in my pocket, to requite him for hav-
ing unintentionally stirred up my patriotic susceptibili-
ties. He was a meek-looking, kindly old man, with a
humble freedom and affability of manner that made it
pleasant to converse with him. Old soldiers, I know
not why, seem to be more accostable than old sailors.
One is apt to hear a growl beneath the smoothest cour-
tesy of the latter. The mild veteran, with his peaceful
voice, and gentle, reverend aspect, told me that he had
fought at a cannon all through the Battle of Waterloo,
and escaped unhurt ; he had now been in the hospital
four or five years, and was married, but necessarily
underwent a separation from his wife, who lived out-
side of the gates. To my inquiry whether his fellow-
pensioners were comfortable and happy, he answered,
with great alacrity, " O yes, Sir ! " qualifying his evidence,
after a moment's consideration, by saying, in an un-



UP THE THAMES 237

dertone, " There are some people, your Honor knows,
who could not be comfortable anywhere." I did know
it, and fear that the system of Chelsea Hospital allows
too little of that wholesome care and regulation of
their own occupations and interests which might as-
suage the sting of life to those naturally uncomfortable
individuals by giving them something external to think
about. But my old friend here was happy in the hos-
pital, and by this time, very likely, is happy in heaven,
in spite of the bloodshed that he may have caused by
touching off a cannon at Waterloo.

Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of
Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the Crys-
tal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sunshine like
an imaginary structure, an air-castle by chance de-
scended upon earth, and resting there one instant before
it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap-bubble touch un-
harmed on the carpet, a thing of only momentary visi-
bility and no substance, destined to be overburdened and
crushed down by the first cloud-shadow that might fall
upon that spot. Even as I looked, it disappeared. Shall
I attempt a picture of this exhalation of modern inge-
nuity, or what else shall I try to paint ? Everything in
London and its vicinity has been depicted innumerable
times, but never once translated into intelligible images ;
it is an " old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told.
While writing these reminiscences, I am continually im-
pressed with the futility of the effort to give any creative
truth to my sketch, so that it might produce such pictures
in the reader's mind as would cause the original scenes
to appear familiar when afterwards beheld. Nor have
other writers often been more successful in representing
definite objects prophetically to my own mind. In truth,
I believe that the chief delight and advantage of this
kind of literature is not for any real information that it
supplies to untravelled people, but for reviving the recol-
lections and reawakening the emotions of persons already
acquainted with the scenes described. Thus I found an
exquisite pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tucker-
man's " Month in England," a fine example of the way



238 OUR OLD HOME

in which a refined and cultivated American looks at the
Old Country, the things that he naturally seeks there,
and the modes of feeling and reflection which they excite.
Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though truth of
coloring may be somewhat more efficacious. I mpressions,
however, states of mind produced by interesting and re-
markable objects, these, if truthfully and vividly recorded,
may work a genuine effect, and, though but the result of
what we see, go farther towards representing the actual
scene than any direct effort to paint it. Give the emo-
tions that cluster about it, and, without being able to
analyze the spell by which it is summoned up, you get
something like a simulachre of the object in the midst of
them. From some of the above reflections I draw the
comfortable inference, that, the longer and better known
a thing may be, so much the more eligible is it as the
subject of a descriptive sketch.

On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side-en-
trance in the time-blackened wall of a place of worship,
and found myself among a congregation assembled in one
of the transepts and the immediately contiguous portion
of the nave. It was a vast old edifice, spacious enough,
within the extent covered by its pillared roof and over-
spread by its stone pavement, to accommodate the whole
of church-going London, and with a far wider and loftier
concave than any human power of lungs could fill with
audible prayer. Oaken benches were arranged in the
transept, on one of which I seated myself, and joined, as
well as I knew how, in the sacred business that was going
forward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice of
the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and
both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, where
he and all of us were bodily included within a sublime
act of religion, which could be seen above and around us
and felt beneath our feet. The structure itself was the
worship of the devout men of long ago, miraculously pre-
served in stone without losing an atom of its fragrance
and fervor ; it was a kind of anthem-strain that they had
sung and poured out of the organ in centuries gone by ;
and being so grand and sweet, the Divine benevolence



UP THE THAMES 239

had willed it to be prolonged for the behoof of auditors
unborn. I therefore came to the conclusion, that, in my
individual case, it would be better and more reverent to
let my eyes wander about the edifice than to fasten them
and my thoughts on the evidently uninspired mortal who
was venturing and felt it no venture at all to speak
here above his breath.

The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader
recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is built
of rich brown stone ; and the whole of it the lofty
roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed arches
appears to be in consummate repair. At all points where
decay has laid its finger, the structure is clamped with
iron, or otherwise carefully protected ; and being thus
watched over, whether as a place of ancient sanctity, a
noble specimen of Gothic art, or an object of national
interest and pride, it may reasonably be expected to
survive for as many ages as have passed over it already.
It was sweet to feel its venerable quietude, its long-endur-
ing peace, and yet to observe how kindly and even cheer-
fully it received the sunshine of to-day, which fell from
the great windows into the fretted aisles and arches that
laid aside somewhat of their aged gloom to welcome it.
Sunshine always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches,
and castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affec-
tionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it accords
to edifices of later date. A square of golden light lay on
the sombre pavement of the nave, afar off, falling through
the grand western entrance, the folding leaves of which
were wide open, and afforded glimpses of people passing
to and fro in the outer world, while we sat dimly envel-
oped in the solemnity of antique devotion. In the south
transept, separated from us by the full breadth of the
minster, there were painted glass windows, of which the
uppermost appeared to be a great orb of many-colored
radiance, being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels
whose glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole
emanating from a cross in the midst. These windows
are modern, but combine softness with wonderful brill-
iancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw



2 4 o OUR OLD HOME

that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were
almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yellow
with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memorials of
such men as their respective generations deemed wisest
and bravest. Some of them were commemorated merely
by inscriptions on mural tablets, others by sculptured bas-
reliefs, others (once famous, but now forgotten generals or
admirals, these) by ponderous tombs that aspired towards
the roof of the aisle, or partly curtained the immense arch
of a window. These mountains of marble were peopled
with the sisterhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and
classic figures in full-bottomed wigs ; but it was strange to
observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities into
the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying itself
by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. Methinks
it is the test of Gothic sublimity to overpower the ridicu-
lous without deigning to hide it ; and these grotesque
monuments of the last century answer a similar purpose
with the grinning faces which the old architects scattered
among their most solemn conceptions.

From these distant wanderings, (it was my first visit
to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have taken
it all in at a glance,) my eyes came back and began
to investigate what was immediately about me in the
transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal of Can-
ning's statue. Next beyond it was a massive tomb, on
the spacious tablet of which reposed the full-length
figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an inscription
announced to be the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle,
the historic Duke of Charles I.'s time, and the fan-
tastic Duchess, traditionally remembered by her poems
and plays. She was of a family, as the record on her
tomb proudly informed us, of which all the brothers
had been valiant and all the sisters virtuous. A recent
statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new marble as white as
snow, held the next place ; and near by was a mural
monument and bust of Sir Peter Warren. The round
visage of this old British admiral has a certain interest
for a New Englander, because it was by no merit of his
own, (though he took care to assume it as such,) but by



UP THE THAMES 241

the valor and warlike enterprise of our colonial fore-
fathers, especially the stout men of Massachusetts, that
he won rank and renown, and a tomb in Westminster
Abbey. Lord Mansfield, a huge mass of marble done
into the guise of a judicial gown and wig, with a stern
face in the midst of the latter, sat on the other side of
the transept ; and on the pedestal beside him was a fig-
ure of Justice, holding forth, instead of the customary
grocer's scales, an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is
an ancient and classic instrument, undoubtedly ; but I
had supposed that Portia (when Shylock's pound of flesh
was to be weighed) was the only judge that ever really
called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and Fox were in
the same distinguished company ; and John Kemble,
in Roman costume, stood not far off, but strangely
shorn of the dignity that is said to have enveloped
him like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the eva-
nescent majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long
endurance of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb ;
though, on the other hand, almost every illustrious per-
sonage here represented has been invested with more
or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In truth, the
artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in his touch,
making evident a heretofore hidden dignity in the actual
form) feels it an imperious law to remove his subject as
far from the aspect of ordinary life as may be possible
without sacrificing every trace of resemblance. The
absurd effect of the contrary course is very remarkable
in the statue of Mr. Wilberforce, whose actual self, save
for the lack of color, I seemed to behold, seated just
across the aisle.

This excellent man appears to have sunk into him-
self in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over
his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other
under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his
nose, or to some equally familiar purpose; while his
exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on
one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest complacency,
as if he were looking right into your eyes, and twigged
something there which you had half a mind to conceal



242 OUR OLD HOME

from him. He keeps this look so pertinaciously that
you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, and bethink
yourself what common ground there may be between
yourself and a stone image, enabling you to resent it. I
have no doubt that the statue is as like Mr. Wilberforce