recall myself to his remembrance by sending him a
little essay on " Health " by my brother-in-law, the late
Dr. John C. Warren, together with two of my own
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 31
addresses and speeches, — one of them, that in which
as Speaker of the House of Representatives of the
United States I had announced the death of Ex-Presi-
dent John Quincj Adams.
His acknowledgment is too characteristic to be
omitted from these reminiscences : —
London, April 20, 1848.
My dear Mr. Winthrop, — Recall yourself to my remem-
brance is what you cannot do, for I must first forget you, and
forget the many pleasant hours I have passed in your com-
pany. The first volume (on Health) I have read again and
again with no less profit than pleasure, and the second who
can leave till he has read it ?
They would have been precious gifts, come whence they
might, and I need not say how highly I shall value them on
every account, for their own sake and for yours.
But are you now condemned to listen, and am I never
again to hear you ? Being now acquainted with your voice,
I could now hear you when you spoke, and, deaf as I am,
catch every syllable from your lips when it came across the
Atlantic.
What strange events are now passing in the Old World !
May they not extend to the New !
Yours with great regard,
Samuel Rogers.
A thousand thanks for your very affecting address in
Congress. J. Q. A. has sat with me more than once as my
guest at the very table on which I am now writing.
Rogers has often been called surly and cynical, and
he certainly knew how to show his teeth on occasions.
He liked to say striking, epigrammatic things. One
morning Chester Harding, our well-remembered por-
32 A FRAGMENT
trait painter, called on me in London and said : " I am
taking a portrait of Rogers, and he is to give me a
sitting to-day. I want you, and he wants you, to come
and keep him company while I am painting him." An
inexorable engagement compelled me to decline the
invitation. The portrait was finished, and not long
afterward one of Rogers's friends said to him, " So
you have been sitting to an American artist. Is it
like? " " Infernally like ! " was the only reply. Yet
the picture was a good one, and quite just to the origi-
nal. It was for Mr. Everett, and long adorned his
library. But it is hardly surprising that with so much
youth of heart, a poet should be impatient under a
faithful representation of all the infirmities and wrinkles
of eighty-four.
I met Roofers often at other houses besides his own.
I was at luncheon with him one day at Miss Burdett-
Coutts's, when the servant came in and whispered
something in her ear, upon which she instantly ex-
claimed, " Why, Mr. Wordsworth is at the door ! "
"Wordsworth!" said Rogers, "^'he is not in London."
But in another moment the great poet of the Lakes
was with us at the table, and I was of course presented
to him. As it happened, I had brought a letter to him
from Mr. Ticknor, which I was to use on my way along
the Cumberland Lakes, and on learning this he greeted
me most pleasantly. While we were at table. Miss
Coutts chanced to inquire after a favorite servant
named James, whom she had seen at Rydal Mount.
" He is with me," said Wordsworth. " With you !
where?" asked Rogers. "At the door," said Words-
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 33
worth. ''James at the door! " exclaimed Miss Coutts,
"why, I must go and see him." "So must I," said
Rogers. And thereupon the whole party hastened out
to the street door in Stratton Street to greet the faith-
ful attendant of the poet, who had won upon all their
hearts by the care which he took of his aged master.
Wordsworth was then in his seventy-eighth year,
and looked quite infirm, with a spiritual look like
our Washington Allston's. He was in the first anxiety,
too, for a beloved daughter, who died in a few weeks
from that time, just as I was passing along Windermere
with a view of calling to see her father agreeably to
his request and my promise. I was unwilling to in-
trude upon so fresh a grief, and wrote him a note of
sympathy and apology. The luncheon at Miss Burdett-
Coutts's was thus my only interview with Wordsworth.
He died in 1850. Ten years after his death, I was
again among the Lakes, and as I was passing his house
I saw a red flag at the gate, betokening an auction
sale. I stopped, and found that Wordsworth's library
was being sold in the barn, to which it had been
removed. I went in and found quite a company of
book-fanciers. I saw one parcel knocked off, but could
not resist the temptation of the second parcel. I made
a bid, and was successful ; but on being called on for
my name, I asked leave to take the books and pay for
them at once, and to my consternation was refused.
So I had to make a little speech in Wordsworth's barn,
saying " that I was an American, accidentally passing
by, and that my family were awaiting me in the rain at
34 A FRAGMENT
the door ; that I had enjoyed the privilege of knowing
Mr. Wordsworth personally, and desired only to obtain
a souvenir of one T had so much admired." The
auctioneer at last gave a surly assent, taking my
money and giving me the books, but stoutly declaring
that it was the only such interruption he would
tolerate. So I paid my money and carried off my
prize rejoicing.
The books were quite miscellaneous, and of no great
intrinsic value ; but almost all of them had Words-
worth's autograph, and had evidently been read by
him. Indeed, one of them proved to be a book of
which he had a high opinion. Crabb Eobinson, in his
Reminiscences, says of George Dyer : " He wrote one
good book, the ' Life of Robert Robinson,' which I have
heard Wordsworth mention as one of the best books of
biography in the language," adding that " Dr. Samuel
Parr pronounced the same opinion." This was one of
the books which I purchased so accidentally in Words-
worth's barn at Rydal Mount, and it has an additional
interest from its quaint calico binding. Happening to
show it to Lord Houghton, when he was one day
lunching with me in Boston, he told me that it was
probably bound by Mrs. Southey, whose habit it was to
bind her husband's books with fragments of her chintz
or calico dresses, and who may have treated one of her
neighbor's books to a similar covering. The volume is
thus doubly redolent of the Lake poets.
Of BucKLAND and Whewell and Lyell and Hal-
lam, all of whom I met often, and to more than one of
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35
whom I was indebted for repeated attentions, I have
Httle except their kindness to recall. Yet I cannot
omit a delightful breakfast at Hallam's at which many
of them were present, and with them the late amiable
Earl of Carlisle, to whom I have previously alluded as
Lord Morpeth. English reserve has rarely been more
strikingly illustrated than when, during this breakfast,
Milman inquired across the table as follows : —
" Lyell, I am quite curious to know who it was I sat
next to at breakfast yesterday at Buckland's. He was
a most intelligent and agreeable person. Did you
know his name ? "
" No," said Lyell, " I really did not know who he
was, though I was as much struck with him as you
were ! "
English people at that day never introduced persons
to one another, and you might breakfast or dine out
in the best society every day for a whole season with-
out knowing to whom you had sat next or with whom
you had been conversing. It was at this same break-
fast, I think, that Lord Carlisle said to me, —
" Mr. Winthrop, did you hear Chalmers last Sun-
day?"
" Chalmers," I replied ; " I did not dream that he
was within a hundred miles of London. Where can I
see or hear him ? "
Alas ! he had already left town, and hardly a day
had elapsed before the public journals announced that
he had died suddenly on his return home. I had thus
lost the opportunity of hearing the last sermon in Lon-
don, if not the last sermon anywhere, of that eloquent
36 A FRAGMENT
and excellent man. Among all the lost opportunities
of my first visit to Europe there was hardly one which
I reg-retted so much.
I did not fail, however, during this and other visits
to England to hear and to know some of her most dis-
tinguished preachers. Webster had once told me that
of all the speakers he heard in the British Parliament
none impressed him so much for simplicity, clearness,
directness, and force as Sir James Graham in the House
of Commons, and Blomfield, Bishop of London, in the
House of Lords. He gave me a letter to Blomfield,
and I dined with him, and was at his house more than
once. I heard him make a short speech in the House
of Lords and preach a good sermon at St. George's,
Hanover Square. He reminded me of my own former
Rector, Dr. John Sylvester John Gardiner, of Trinity
Church, Boston, who was born in England and was a
pupil of Dr. Parr. A fine voice, distinct articulation,
and dignified manner gave a tone of authority to all he
said, heightening the effect of strong sense and a clas-
sical style. He was eminently direct, as Webster said ;
not a word or illustration aside from the purpose.
WiLBERFORCE, then Bishop of Oxford, afterward of
Winchester, had far more of rhetorical grace and art.
He was long the foremost orator of the bench of
bishops, and it was often difficult to get a seat where
it was known he was to preach. I breakfasted with
him soon after my arrival in London in 1847. As he
had written the history of "The American Church,"
and was familiar with the earhest New England annals,
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 37
he more than once made it a subject of comment
and of congratulation that the lineal descendants of
Governor Winthrop, the Puritan, had long since got
back into the Episcopal fold. When I was in England
the second time, I made special application to him for
a seat at the church where he was to preach, and the
following characteristic note to one of the vestry or
clergy of St. Peter's will tell with what result : —
26 Pall Mall, Saturday, June 9.
My dear Mr. Fuller, — Will you kindly send one line
with order of admission for two ladies and one gentleman
to-morrow, for some tip-top American friends of mine, to the
Hon. Rob. Winthrop, the Albermarle Hotel ?
I am most sincerely yom*s, S. OxoN.
Of course I had an excellent seat and was greatly
gratified. The sermon was a most impressive and
admirable appeal for some charitable object, and
afforded, me a striking proof of the bishop's pulpit
eloquence. But I afterward heard a still more effec-
tive utterance of his in the House of Lords of an
entirely different character. It was a speech in reply
to the Duke of Argyll on the disestablishment of the
Irish Church. Longfellow and I were together on the
steps of the throne, and were deeply impressed by
the force and dignity of the Duke's speech. Wilber-
force was powerful and eloquent, also ; but his speech
had nothing of the bishop except the lawn sleeves,
and was as personal and pungent a piece of stump-
speaking as we could have heard in our own land.
Longfellow well said that the Duke was more like a
38 A FRAGMENT
bishop in that debate. But Wilberforce had great
quaUties both as a prelate and a statesman, and was a
dehghtful companion, endeared to all who knew him.
He was a yomiger son of the renowned and revered
philanthropist William Wilberforce, whose celebrity
was wide enough and enduring enough to distinguish
a whole family for a dozen generations. But he early
extricated himself from the often oppressive shadow of
a great paternal or ancestral name, and asserted his
individual title to an exalted place both in the eccle-
siastical and the civil history of his country. Indeed,
few prelates of the English Church, in our own day or in
any other day, took a more conspicuous stand or enjoyed
a wider and more deserved distinction. His successor
in the See of Winchester, Dr. Harold Browne, I also
knew and greatly liked.
One of the most notable prelates whom I knew in
1847 was Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin.
I met him first at a breakfast at Nassau W. Senior's,
to whom Webster had given me a letter. When I
entered the room, where the other guests had arrived
before me, I saw a tall gaunt figure, in a straight-
bodied coat, with tightly gaitered legs and an apron
appended to his waistcoat, standing with his back to
the fire and holding up a small puppy by the nape of
its neck, upon which he was discoursing most humor-
ously. I was hardly prepared for meeting one of the
great thinkers and writers of the English Church in
such an attitude. But Whately had a vein of drollery
which could not be controlled, and which he did not
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 39
«
care to control. He was full of anecdote and witty
repartee during the breakfast, and made me quite at
home with him by his personal cordiality and kindness.
He insisted on taking me to my hotel, after breakfast
was over, in his chariot, and made me promise to come
and see him in Dublin, if I should cross over to
Ireland in the summer.
I met him next at a big dinner at the Marquis of
Lansdowne's (then President of the Council), where
several Cabinet ministers were present. It was pleasant
and sumptuous, but had a little of the coldness and for-
mality which might be imagined in a banquet hall
almost lined Avith antique marble statues. Whately,
however, did not fail to " set the table in a roar " now
and then, until he retired with Lady Lansdowne and
the other ladies, while the gentlemen remained for half
an hour to try the qualities of the Lansdowne cellar.
When we went up to the drawing-room I found the
Archbishop, with cards and scissors in hand, lecturing
on the principle of the hoomerang, cutting out little semi-
circular strips and blowing or snapping them so as to
make them return upon his own nose or head. He
was in great glee, and the ladies quite wild with
merriment.
When I was in Dublin, a few months afterward,
Whately accompanied me through Trinity College
and took me also to visit the !N^ational Schools of
Ireland, where Bible lessons, arranged by him and the
Roman Catholic Archbishop, were daily read. He
was specially proud of having been the means of
bringing about such a reconciliation of the Protestant
40 A FRAGMENT
and Catholic children, so that the Bible should be
read to them both. But, alas ! this reconciliation was
short-lived, and dissensions and jealousies soon put an
end to the arrangement. The volume containing these
Bible lessons is still in my possession, given me by
Whately himself, and I cannot but hope that some-
thing of the same sort may be found permanently
practicable on this side of the Atlantic, if not on that.
Whately gave me several other books. It happened
that while I was studying law with Webster, Whately's
Rhetoric had been recently printed, and Webster
came into the office one morning and said : " Winthrop,
have you read the essay on rhetoric by Archbishop
Whately ? If not, get it and read it at once. It is
worth all the classics on that subject." I found an
opportunity to tell this to Whately ; and the next day
he sent me the latest editions both of his Rhetoric and
Logic, with a kind note. He sent me at the same
time several copies of two separate pamphlets, in
which were comprised all the alterations and addi-
tions which he had made in his new edition, begging
me to give them to any persons in the United States
who were interested in his works. He told me
these pamphlets of "alterations and additions" were
printed, at his own cost, for gratuitous distribution,
as he preferred to be read correctly rather than to
make money out of new editions. He complained that
our publishers not only printed all his works, but did
not take the pains to make the changes, — sometimes
putting second or third edition on the titlepage, with-
out any reference to the corrections or new matter
which these editions contained.
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 41
Whately was proud of having so large a number of
American readers, and said there was only one of his
books which had not been reprinted in the United
States, and of which he had not himself obtained an
American edition. This was the " Essay on the Diffi-
culties of the Writings of Saint Paul." It has been
printed at Andover since his death. " If I could
have," said he, " a penny a volume on all the copies
of ray books printed in America, I should be far richer
than I ever have been from the See of Dublin." He
asked me to take some of his books to Alonzo Potter,
Bishop of Pennsylvania, of whom he expressed the very
highest opinion, and for whom he had formed a warm
friendship ; and he continued to send me his pamphlets
for many years after my return to America, and
almost to the time of his own death.
If it be true, as has been said, that Whately became
in his old age a convert to modern Spiritualism, it is
only a proof how the strongest intellect and clearest
perception and solidest common-sense may be betrayed
by that passion for novelties which is the besetting sin
of ambitious souls. He loved notoriety, and was will-
ing to be remarked upon for eccentricity rather than
not to be remarked upon at all. Yet, take him for all
in all, few English prelates have contributed more to
the cause of religious, moral, and intellectual advance-
ment. I never heard him preach, but his little volumes
of sermons, as a curate, on a " Future State " and on
" Good and Evil Angels," show how instructive a
preacher he must have been.
42 A FRAGMENT
' t
Whately was succeeded in the See of Dublin by
Trench, whom I knew while he was Dean of West-
minster, and whom I heard preach in the Abbey.
Meeting Rufus Choate, so long the leader of our Bos-
ton Bar, one day in State Street, he said : " What are
you reading? Stop at Little & Brown's and get a
copy of the Hulsean Lectures by Richard Chenevix
Trench. There is nothing of late days equal to them
for richness of style and grandeur of thought." From
that time I read everything of Trench's, — prose and
poetry, sacred and secular, — the " Parables " and
"Miracles," the Essays on Words and on Proverbs, the
Life of Calderon, the poems, and first of all, of course,
the Hulsean Lectures. I thus knew him almost as well
before breakfasting at his table, and being with him an
hour in the "Jerusalem Chamber," as after enjoying
such opportunities of conversing with him personally.
His sermon at Westminster Abbey was excellent, but
not so impressive in delivery as I had anticipated. In
conversation and in books he was greater than in preach-
ing. He was a marvellous master of words and style,
and his thoughts were often powerful and his illustra-
tions brilliant ; but his magnetism seemed to evaporate
before he ascended the pulpit. I remember meeting
him again at Oxford (when he took the degree of
Doctor of Laws in company with my friend George
Peabody, the philanthropist, and when I sat next to
him at the Vice-Chancellor's dinner), and again in
London, in 1874, when his health was failing.
I recall that on the other side of me at the Vice-
Chancellor's table was Mansel, the author of the
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 43
" Limitations of Religious Thought," a profound meta-
physical work, and who was afterward Dean of St.
Paul's. Ardent, joyous, full of anecdote and clever
repartee, Mansel seemed to have before him a long
career of intellectual activity; but he had hardly
succeeded Milman at St. Paul's, in less than three
years after I had known him, when he was struck
with apoplexy and died.
Milman I knew in the cloisters of Westminster
Abbey in 1847, when he was a canon, and met him
often at his own house and at other houses at each
succeeding visit to London. Webster had given me a
note to his charming wife, whom everybody admired
and loved, and they were both full of kindness to me.
His great historical works on Christianity and the Jews
are as well known in our country as in his own. His
"Martyrs of Antioch" have furnished a sweet and
touching hymn for many a funeral service. His " Fazio "
has supplied a character (Bianca) for Fanny Kemble's
most powerful impersonation; nothing in Shakspeare
gave more scope to her genius. But those who have
not known him in the cloisters of Westminster or in
the Deanery of St. Paul's have not known him at all.
Full of information and eager to impart it, with nothing
of bigotry or intolerance, quiet in manner, genial in
temper, given to hospitality, he attracted the best
and most accomplished men of all professions, and
seemed always happy in making others happy. The
last time I saw him he took me to afternoon service at
the cathedral ; and though his form was so bent and
44 A FRAGMENT
bowed by infirmity that T might have feared lest each
step should be his last, his eye was as bright, and his
brow as earnest, and his voice as cheery, and his kind-
ness as assiduous as if he were still in his prime. He
was spared to complete " The Annals of St. Paul's,"
and to direct the execution of his cherished plans for
the restoration of the grand cathedral ; and in view of
all he did in this regard, we might almost as well say
of him as of its architect, " Si monumentum quaeris,
circumspice."
Two of the most interesting and valuable additions
to historical and antiquarian literature in our time are
''The Annals of St. Paul's," by Milman, and "The
Annals of Westminster Abbey," by Dean Stanley.
The name of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley was early
known in this country as well as in England by his
admirable life of his great master. Dr. Thomas Arnold
of Rugby, — a name never to be pronounced without
respect and almost veneration, but a name hardly ever
heard of out of England until Stanley introduced it
to us and won for himself the honor of an able and
faithful biographer of a really great and good man.
Stanley subsequently added many new claims to the
consideration and respect of the literary and religious
world. His "Sinai and Palestine," his " Memorials of
Canterbury," and his lectures on the Jewish Church,
as well as his " Annals of AVestminster Abbey," have
been read and highly valued on both sides of the
Atlantic ; while his liberal views, and the independence
with which he advocated them, deservedly made him a
OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 45
leader of advanced thought in the Church. He seemed
to me peculiarly an apostle of Christian fraternity, —
of that brotherly love which has so happily supplanted
the odium theologicum of former times.
Meeting him first at a breakfast at Trench's in 1860?
I had frequent opportunities from that time until his
death, ahke at his house, in my own, and elsewhere,
to appreciate the exceeding charm of his personal
intercourse. I had the good fortune once to be pres-
ent at Westminster Abbey when he delivered a
memorable sermon, prompted by three events of no
little interest at least to Englishmen, — the thirtieth
anniversary of the Queen's coronation ; the escape of
the Duke of Edinburgh from an attempted assassina-
' tion ; and the safe return of Lord Napier of Magdala
and his army from their brief but decisive campaign
in Abyssinia. The Abbey was crowded. The Prince
and Princess of Wales and many others of the royal
family were present. The choral service was brilliant,
and the grand organ thundered forth the National
Anthem most impressively. The slight figure, quiet
manner, and simple style of the preacher were in
striking contrast with the surroundings, and furnished
welcome proof that he was incapable of being betrayed
into any mere sensational rhetoric, or of being diverted
from a plain, practical enforcement of the moral and
religious lessons of the hour. He felt, and made
others feel, that he was speaking in the presence and
as the servant of One above all earthly heroes or
princes.
The recent admirable life of him by Dean Bradley
46 A FRAGMENT
and Mr. Prothero cannot fail to enhance the affection-
ate veneration with which his memory wiU henceforth
be regarded by all who are capable of properly appre-
ciating his exalted character. A somewhat elaborate
tribute which I paid him at the time of his death is to
be found in the fourth volume of my Addresses and
Speeches, and I resist the temptation to reprint pas-
sages from it here. I always remember with especial
pleasure my constant intercourse with him in Paris,
in 1875, when his devoted wife. Lady Augusta, was
so ill at Madame Mohl's, as well as the week he sub-
sequently passed in my house at Brookline.
Among my English friends and correspondents there
have been none for whom I have felt a warmer per-
sonal regard than for Lord Arthur Hervey, Bishop