My Unknown Chum Part 6

LONDON

No man can really appreciate the grandeur of London until he has approached it from the sea. The sail up the river from Gravesend to London Bridge is a succession of wonders, each one more overwhelming than that which preceded it. There is no display of fortifications; but here and there you see some storm-tossed old hulk, which, having finished its active career, has been safely anch.o.r.ed in that repose which powder magazines always enjoy. As the river grows narrower, the number of s.h.i.+ps, steamers, coal barges, wherries, and boats of every description, seems to increase; and as you sail on, the grand panorama of the world-wide commerce of this great metropolis unfolds before you, and you are lost, not so much in admiration as in astonishment.

Woolwich, Greenwich, Rotherhithe, Bermondsey, Blackwall, Millwall, Wapping, &c., follow rapidly in the vision, like the phantom kings before the eyes of the unfortunate Scotch usurper, until one is temped to inquire with him, whether the "line will stretch out to the crack of doom." The buildings grow thicker and more unsightly as you advance; the black sides of the enormous warehouses seem to be bulging out over the edge of the wharves on which they stand; far off, beyond the reach of the tides, you see the forests of masts that indicate the site of the docks. The bright green water of the Channel has been exchanged for the filthy, drain-like current of the Thames. Hundreds of monstrous chimneys belch forth the smoke that const.i.tutes the legitimate atmosphere of London. Every thing seems to be dressed in the deepest mourning for the cruel fate of nature, and you look at the distant hills and bright lawns, over in the direction of Sydenham, with very much of the feeling that Dives must have had, when he gazed on the happiness of Lazarus from his place of torment. Every thing presents a most striking contrast to the clean, fair cities of the continent. Paris, with its cream-coloured palaces adorning the banks of the Seine, seems more beautiful than ever as you recall it while surrounded by such sights, and sounds, and smells, as offend your senses here. The winding Arno, and the towers, and domes, and bridges, of Florence and Pisa, seem to belong to a celestial vision rather than to an earthly reality, as you contrast them with the monuments of Englands commercial greatness. At last, you come in sight of London Bridge, with its never-ceasing current of vehicles and human beings crossing it; and your amazement is crowned by realizing that, notwithstanding the wonders you have seen, you have just reached the edge of the city, and that you can ride for miles and miles through a closely-built labyrinth of bricks and mortar, hidden under the veil of smoke before you.

And what a change it isfrom Paris to London! To a Frenchman it must be productive of a suicidal feeling. The scene has s.h.i.+fted from the sunny Boulevards to the blackened bricks and mortar, which neither great Neptunes ocean, nor Lord Palmerstons anti-smoke enactment can wash clean. In the place of the smiling, good-humoured Frenchman, you have the serious, stately Englishman. One misses the wining courtesy of which a Frenchmans hat is the instrument, and the ready _pardon_ or _merci_ is heard no more. The beggary, the drunkenness, and the depravity, so apparent on every side, appall one. Paris _may_ be the most immoral city in the world; but there, vice must be sought for in its own haunts. Here in London, it prowls up and down in the streets, seeking for its victims. Put all the other European capitals together, and I do not believe that you could meet with so much to pain and disgust you as you would in one hour in the streets of London. And yet, with all this staring people in the face here, how do they go to work to remedy it?

They pa.s.s laws enforcing the suspension of business on Sundays, and when they succeed in keeping all the shutters closed, by fear of the law, they fold their arms, and say, "See what a G.o.dly nation is this!" If this is not "making clean the outside of the cup and platter," what is it? For my part, I much prefer that perfect religious liberty which allows each man to keep Sunday as he pleases; and the recent improvement in the observance of the day in France is all the more gratifying, because it does not spring from any compulsory motive. Let the Jews keep the _Sabbath_ as they are commanded to in the Old Testament; but _Sunday_ is the Christians day, and Sunday is a day of festivity and rejoicing, and not of fasting and penitential sadness.

Despite the smoke, and the lack of continental courtesy which is felt on arriving from France, despite the din and hurry, I cannot help loving London. The very names of the streets have been mad cla.s.sical by writers whose works are a part of our own intellectual being. The ill.u.s.trious and venerable names of Barclay and Perkins, of Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton, that meet our eyes at every corner, are the synonymes of English hospitality and cheer. It is a pleasure, too, to hear ones native language spoken on all sides, after so many months of French tw.a.n.g. The hissing and sputtering English seems under such circ.u.mstances to be more musical than the most elegant phrases of the Tuscan in the mouth of a dignified Roman. Even the omnibus conductors talk about the "Habbey,"

the "Benk," Igh Olborn, &c., does not offend the ear, so delightful does it seem to be able to say beefsteak instead of _biftek_. The odour of brown stout that prevails every where is as fragrant as the first sniff of the land breeze after a long voyage. Temple Bar is eloquent of the genius of Hogarth, whose deathless drawings first made its ugly form familiar to your youthful eyes in other lands. The very stones of Fleet Street prate of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith. You walk into Bolt Court, and if you feel as I do the a.s.sociations of the place, you eat a chop in the tavern that stands where stood the house of Dr. Johnson. Then you cross over the way to Inner Temple Lane, and mourn over the march of improvement when you see that its sacrilegious hand is sweeping away a row of four brick houses, which, dilapidated and unsightly as they may appear, are dear to every lover of English literature. In No. 1, formerly dwelt Dr. Johnson; in No. 4, Charles Lamb. You walk into the Temple Church, and muse over the effigies of the knights who repose there in marble or bronze, or go into the quiet Temple Gardens, and meditate on the wars of the red and white roses that were plucked there centuries ago, before the iron fences were built. It would be as difficult to pluck any roses there now as the most zealous member of the Peace Society could wish. You climb up Ludgate Hill, getting finely spattered by the cabs and omnibuses, and find yourself at St. Pauls.

You smile when you think that that black pile of architecture, with its twopenny fee of admission, was intended to rival St. Peters, and your smile becomes audible when you enter it, and see that while the images of the Saviour and the Saints may not be "had and retained," the statues of admirals and generals are considered perfectly in place there. You walk out with the conviction that consistency is a jewel, and tread a pavement that is cla.s.sical to every lover of books. Paternoster Row receives you, and you slowly saunter through it. n.o.body walks rapidly through Paternoster Row. Situated midway between the bustle and turmoil of Ludgate Hill and Cheapside, it is a kind of resting-place for pedestrians. They breathe the more quiet air of bookland there, and the windows are a temptation which few loiterers can withstand.

The old church of St. Mary le Bow reminds you that you are at the very centre of c.o.c.kneydom, as you walk on towards the Bank and the Exchange.

Crossing the street at the risk of your life through a maze of snorting horses and rattling wheels, you get into Cornhill. Here the faces that you see are a proof that the anxious, money-getting look is not confined to the wors.h.i.+ppers of the almighty dollar. You push on until you reach Eastcheap. How great is your disappointment! The very name has called up all your recollections of the wild young prince and his fat friendbut nothing that you see there serves to heighten your Shakespearean enthusiasm. Coal-heavers and draymen make the air vocal with their oaths and slang, which once resounded with the laughter of Jack Falstaff and his jolly companions. No Mistress Quickly stands in the doorway of any of the numerous taverns. The whole scene is a great falling-off from what you had imagined of Eastcheap. The sanded floors, the snowy window curtains, the bright pewter pots, have given way to dirt and general frowsiness. You read on a card in a window that within you can obtain "a go of brandy for sixpence, and a go of gin for fourpence," and that settles all your Falstaffian a.s.sociations. You stop to look at an old brick house which is being pulled down, for you think that perhaps its heavy timbered ceilings, and low windows, and Guy Fawkesy entries date back to Shakespeares times; but you are too much incommoded by the dust from its crumbling walls to stop long, and you leave the place carrying with you the only reminder of Falstaff you have seen thereyou leave with _lime in your sack_!

I know of nothing better calculated to take down a mans self-esteem than a walk through the streets of London. To a man who has always lived in a small town, where every second person he meets is an acquaintance, a walk from Hyde Park corner to London Bridge must be a crusher. If that does not convince him that he is really of very little importance in the world, he is past cure. The whirl of vehicles, the throngs upon the sidewalks, seem to overwhelm and blot out our own individuality. Xerxes cried when he gazed upon his a.s.sembled forces, and reflected that out of all that vast mult.i.tude not one person would be alive in a hundred years. Xerxes ought to have ridden through Oxford Street or the Strand on the top of an omnibus. Spitalfields and Bandanna (two places concerning the geography of which I am rather in the dark) could not have furnished him with handkerchiefs to dry his eyes.

I was never so struck with the lack of architectural beauty in London as I have been during this visit. There are, it is true, a few fine buildingsWestminster Abbey, St. Pauls, Somerset House, &c.; but they are all as black as my hat, with this soot in which all London is clothed; so there is really very little beauty about them. The new Houses of Parliament are a fine pile of buildings, certainly, and the lately finished towers are a pleasing feature in the view from the bridges; but they are altogether too gingerbready to wear well. They lack boldness of light and shade; and this lack is making itself more apparent every day as the smoke of the city is enveloping them in its everlasting shade. Buckingham Palace looks like a second rate American hotel, and as to St. James, the barracks at West Point are far more palatial than that. It is not architecture, however, that we look for in London. It has a charm in spite of all its deformities,in spite of its climate, which is such an encouragement to the umbrella makersin spite of its smoky atmosphere, through which the sun looks like a great copper ballin spite of the mud, which the water-carts insure when the dark skies fail in the discharge of their daily dues to the metropolis.

London, with all thy fogs, I love thee still! It is this great agglomeration of towns which we call Londonthis great human family of more than two millions and a half of beings that awakens our sympathy.

It is the fact that through England we Americans trace our relations.h.i.+p to the ages that are past. It is the fact that we are here surrounded by the honoured tombs of heroes and wise men, whose very names have become, as it were, a part of our own being. These are the things that bind us to London, and which make the aureola of light that hangs over it at night time seem a crown of glory.

But we must not forget that there is a dark side to the picture. There is a serious drawback to all our enthusiasm. Poverty and vice beset us at every step. Beggary more abject than all the world besides can show appeals to us at every crossing. The pale hollow cheek and sunken eye tell such a story of want as no language can express. The mother, standing in a doorway with her two hungry-looking children, and imploring the pa.s.sers-by to purchase some of the netting work her hands have executed, is a sight that touches your heart. But walk into some of those lanes and alleys which abound almost under the shadow of the Houses of Parliament and the royal residence,slums "whose atmosphere is typhus, and whose ventilation is cholera,"and the sentiment of pity is lost in one of fear. There you see on every side that despair and recklessness which spring from want and neglect. Walk through Regent Street, and the Haymarket, and the Strand in the evening, and you shall be astonished at the gay dresses and painted cheeks that surround you.

The rummy atmosphere rechoes with profanity from female lips. From time to time you are obliged to shake off the vice and crinoline that seek to be companions of your walk.

There is a distinguished prize-fighter hereone Benjamin Caunt. He keeps a gin shop in St. Martins Lane, and rejoices in a profitable business and the t.i.tle of the "Champion of England." He transacted a little business in the prize-fighting line over on the Surrey side of the river a few days ago, and is to sustain the honour of England against another antagonist to-morrow. During the entire week his gin shop has been surrounded by admiring crowds, anxious to catch a glimpse of the hero.

And such crowds! It would be wronging the lowest of the race of quadrupeds to call those people beastly and brutal wretches. Most Americans think that the Bowery and Five Points can rival almost any thing in the world for displays of all that is disgusting in society; but London leaves us far behind. I stopped several times to note the character of Mr. Caunts const.i.tuents. There were men there with flashy cravats around necks that reminded me of Mr. Buckminsters Devon cattletheir hair cropped close for obvious reasonsmoving about among the crowd, filling the air with d.a.m.ns and brandy fumes. There were others in a more advanced stage of "fancy" existencemen with all the humanity blotted out of them, not a spark of intellect left in their beery countenances. There were women drabbled with dirt, soggy with liquor, with eyes artificially black. There were children pale and stunted from the use of gin, or bloated with beer, a.s.suming the swagger of the blackguards around them, and looking as old and depraved as any of them. It seemed as if h.e.l.l were empty and all the devils were there.

The policethose guardians of the public weal, who are so efficient when a poor woman is trying to earn her bread by selling a few applesso prompt to make the well-intentioned "move on"did not appear to interfere. They evidently considered the street to be blockaded for a just cause, and looked as if, in aiding people to get a look at the Champion of England, they were sustaining the honour of England herself.

And this is the same England that a.s.sumes to teach other nations the science of benevolence. This is the same England that laments over the tyranny of continental governments, and boasts of how many millions of Bibles it has sent to people who could not read them if they would, and would not if they could. This is the same England that turns up the whites of its eyes at American slavery, and wishes to teach the King of Naples how to govern. Why, you can spend months in going about the worst quarters of the continental cities, and not see so much of vice and poverty as you can in the great thoroughfares of London in a single day.

There is vice enough in every large city, as we all know; but in most of them it has to be sought for by its votariesin London it goes about seeking whom it may devour. The press of England may try to advance the interests of a prime minister anxious to get possession of Sicily by slandering Ferdinand of Naples; but every body knows, who has visited that fair kingdom, that there are few monarchs more public spirited and popular with all cla.s.ses of their subjects than he. Every body knows that there is no cla.s.s in that community corresponding to the prize-fighting cla.s.s in Londonthat the horrors of the mining districts are unknown there, and that an English workhouse would make even an Englishman blush when compared with those magnificent inst.i.tutions that relieve the poor of Italy. I had rather be sold at auction in Alabama any day than to take my chance as a denizen of the slums of London, or as a worker in the coal mines. I have no patience with this telescopic philanthropy of the English, while there are abuses all around them so much greater than those that disgrace any other civilized country. What can be more disgusting than this pharisaical cantthis thanking G.o.d that they are not as others areextortioners and slaveholderswhen you look at the real condition of things? Englishmen always boast that their country has escaped the revolutionary storm which has so many times swept over Europe during this century, and would try to persuade people that there is little or no discontent here. The fact is, the lower cla.s.ses in this country have been so ground down by the money power and the force of the government, and are so ignorant and vicious, that they cannot be organized into a revolutionary force. Walk through Whitechapel, and observe the people therecontrast them with the _blouses_ in the Faubourg St. Antoineand you will acknowledge the truth of this. The people in the manufacturing districts in France are, indeed, far from being models of morality or of intellectual culture; but they have retained enough of the powers of humanity to make them very dangerous, when collected under the leaders.h.i.+p of demagogues of the school of Ledru Rollin. But the farming districts of France have remained comparatively free from the infection of socialism and infidelity. The late Henry Colman, in his agricultural tour, found villages where almost the entire population went to ma.s.s every morning, before commencing the labour of the day. But the degradation of the labouring cla.s.ses of England is not confined to the manufacturing towns; the peasantry is in a most demoralized condition: the Chartist leaders found nearly as great a proportion of adherents among the farm labourers as among the distressed operatives of Birmingham and Sheffield; and Mormonism counts its victims among both of those neglected cla.s.ses by thousands. It is, perhaps, all very well for ambitious orators to make the House of Commons or Exeter Hall resound with their denunciations of French usurpations, Austrian tyranny, Neapolitan dungeons, Russian serfdom, and American slavery; but thinking men, when they note these enthusiastic demonstrations of philanthropy, cannot help thinking of Englands workhouses, the brutalized workers in her coal mines and factories, and her oppressive and cruel rule in Ireland and in India; and it strikes them as strange that a country, whose eyesight is obstructed by a beam of such extraordinary magnitude, should be so exceedingly solicitous about the motes that dance in the vision of its neighbours.

ESSAYS.

STREET LIFE

Thomas Carlyle introduces his philosophical friend, Herr Teufelsdrckh, to his readers, seated in his watch-tower, which overlooks the city in which he dwells; and from which he can look down into that bee-hive of human kind, and see every thing "from the palace esplanade where music plays, while His Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane where in her doorsill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun." He draws an animated picture of that busy panorama which is ever unrolling before Teufelsdrckhs eyes, and moralizes upon the scene in the spirit of a true poet who has struck upon a theme worthy of his lyre. And, most a.s.suredly, Thomas is right. The daisies and b.u.t.tercups are all very well in their way; but, as raw material for poetry, what are they to the deep-furrowed pavement and the blackened chimney-pots of a city! In spite of all our pantheistic rhapsodies, man is the n.o.blest of natural productions, and the worthiest subject for the highest and holiest of poetic raptures. My old friend, the late Mr. Wordsworth, delighted to anathematize the railway companies, and raved finely about Nature never betraying the heart that loves her; he said that

"the sounding cataract Haunted him like a pa.s.sion: the tall rock, The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to him An appet.i.te;"

and confessed that to him

"the meanest flower that blows could give Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."

Yet notwithstanding all this, he was constrained to acknowledge when he stood upon Westminster Bridge, and saw the vast, dingy metropolis of Britain wearing like a garment the beauty of the morning, that

"Earth has not anything to show more fair, Dull would he be of soul who could pa.s.s by A sight so touching in its majesty."

When I was a young man, it was my delight to brush with early steps the dew away, and meet the sun upon the upland lawn. There was a romantic feeling about it that I liked, and I did not object to wet feet. But I have long since put away that depraved taste, although the recent application of India rubber to shoeing purposes has obviated the inconvenience of its gratification. Now, I am contented if I can find a level pavement and a clean crossing, and will gladly give up the woods and verdant fields to less prosaic and more youthful people. Your gout is a sad interferer with early poetical prejudicesbut in my own case it has shown me that all such things, like most of our youthful notions, are mere fallacies. It has convinced me that the poetical abounds rather in the smoky, narrow streets of cities, than in the green lanes, the breezy hills, and the broad fields of the country. Like the toad, ugly and venomous, that fell disease is not without its jewel. It has reconciled me to life in town, and has shown me all its advantages and beauties.

If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," then are the crowded streets of the city more improving and elevating to us (if rightly meditated upon) than the academic groves. If you desire society,in a city you may find it to your taste, however fastidious you may be. If you are a lover of solitude, where can you be more solitary than in the very whirl of a mult.i.tude of people intent upon their own pursuits, and all unknown to you! That honey-tongued doctor, St.

Bernard, said that he was never less alone than when alonea sentiment which, in its reversed form, might be uttered by any denizen of a metropolis. I always loved solitude: the old monastic inscription was always a favourite motto of mine:

"O beata solitudo!

O sola beat.i.tudo!"

But I have never found any solitude like the streets of a large city. I have walked in the cool, quiet cloister of _Santa Maria degli Angeli_, built amid the ruins of the baths of Diocletian, andthough my footfall was the only sound save the rustling of the foliage, and the song of the birds, and the bubbling of a fountain which seemed tired with its centuries of service, and which seemed to make the stillness and repose of that s.p.a.cious quadrangle more profoundI could not feel so perfectly alone there as I have often felt in the thronged Boulevards or the busy Strand. Place a mere worldling in those holy precincts, and he would summon mentally around him the companions of his past pleasures, and his worldliness would be increased by his thus being driven to his only resources for overcoming the ungrateful quiet of the place. Introduce a religious man to those consecrated shades, and his devotion would be quickened; he would soon forget the world which he had not loved and which had not loved him, and his face would soon be as unwrinkled, his eye as serene, as those of the monks who dwell there. But place either of them in the most crowded thoroughfare of the city, and the worldling would be made for a time as meditative as the other. When I was a child, I delighted to watch the busy inhabitants of an ant-hill, pursuing their various enterprises with an intentness almost human; and I should be tempted to continue my observations of them, were it not that the streets of my native city offer me a similar, but a more interesting study. Xerxes, we are told, shed tears when he saw his army drawn up before him, and reflected that not one of all that mighty host would be alive a century after. Who could ride from Paddington to London Bridge, through the current of human life that flows ceaselessly through the streets of that great city, without sharing somewhat in the feelings of that tender-hearted monarch?

What are all the sermons that ever were preached from a pulpit, compared to those which may be found in the stones of a city? When we visit Pompeii and Herculaneum, we are thrilled to notice the ruts made by the wheels of chariots centuries ago. The original pavement of the Appian Way, now for some distance visible, carries us back more than almost any of the other antiquities of Rome, to the time when it was trodden by captive kings, and re-echoed with the triumphal march of returning conquerors. I pity him in whom these things awaken no new train of thought. The works of man have outlived their builders by centuries, and still remain a solemn testimony to the power and the nothingness which originated them. Nineveh, Thebes, Troy, Carthage, Tyre, Athens, Rome, London, Paris, have won the crown in their turn, and have pa.s.sed or will pa.s.s away. The dilapidated sculptures of the former have been taken to adorn the museums of the latter, and crowds have gazed and are gazing on them with curious eyes, unmindful of their great lesson of the transitoriness of the glory of the world. These are, indeed, "sermons in stones"; but, like most other sermons, we look rather at their style of finish, than at the deep meaning with which they are so pregnant.

But I did not take up my pen to write about dead cities; I have somewhat to say about the life that now renders the streets of our own towns so pleasant, and makes us so forgetful of their inevitable fate. I am not going to claim for the street life of our new world the charms which abound in the ancient cities of Europe. We are too much troubled about many things, and too utilitarian to give thought to those lesser graces which delight us abroad, and which we hardly remember until we come home and miss them. Our street architecture, improved though it may have been within a few years, is yet far behind the grace and ma.s.sive symmetry of European towns. Our builders and real estate owners need to be reminded that it costs no more to build in good taste than in bad; that brick work can be made as architectural as stone; and that architecture is a great public instructor, whose works are constantly open to the public eye, and from which we are learning lessons, good or bad, whether we will or not. I think it is Goethe who calls architecture frozen music. I am glad to see these tall piles rearing their ornamented fronts on every side of us, even though they are intended for purposes of trade; for every one of them is a reproach to the untasteful structures around it, and an example which future builders must copy, if they do not surpa.s.s.

The quaint beauty which charms us in Rouen, and in the old towns of Belgium,the high pitched gables leaning over, as if yearning to get across the narrow street,these all belong to another age, and we may not possess them; but the architecture which, in its simplicity or its magnificence, speaks its adaptedness to our climate and our social wants, is within our reach, and is capable of making our cities equal to any in the world.

I have a great liking for streets. In the freshness of morning, the glare of noonday, and the coolness of evening, they have an equal charm for me. I like that market-carty period of the day, before Labour has taken up his shovel and his hoe, before the sun has tipped the chimneys with gold, and reinspired the dolorous symphony of human toil, just as his earliest beams were wont to draw supernal melodies from old Memnons statue. There is a holy quiet in that hour, which, could we preserve it in our minds, would keep us clear from many a wrong and meanness, into which the bustle and the heat of pa.s.sion betray us, and would sanctify our day. In that time, the city seems wrapped in a silent ecstasy of adoration. The incense of its wors.h.i.+p curls up from innumerous chimneys, and hangs over it like the fragrant cloud which hovers over the altars where saints have prayed, and religions most august rites have been celebrated for centuries. In the continental cities, large numbers of people may be seen at that early hour repairing to the churches. They are drawn together by no spasmodic, spiritual stimulation; they do not a.s.semble to hear their fellow-sinners tell with nasal tw.a.n.g how bad they were once, and how good they are now, nor to implore the curse of Heaven upon those who differ from them in their belief or disbelief. They kneel beneath those consecrated arches, joining in a wors.h.i.+p in which scarce an audible word is uttered, and drawing from it new strength to tread the thorns of life. In our own cities, too, peoplegenerally of the poorer cla.s.sesmay be seen wending their way in the early morning to churches and chapels, humbler than the marble and mosaic sanctuaries of Europe, but one with them in that faith and wors.h.i.+p which radiates from the majestic Lateran basilica, (_omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput_,) and encircles the world with its anthems and supplications.

A little later in the morning, and the silence is broken by the clattering carts of the dispensers of that fluid without which custards would be impossible. The was.h.i.+ng of doorsteps and sidewalks, too, begins to interfere with your perambulations, and to dim the l.u.s.tre which No.

97, High Holborn, has imparted to your shoes. Bridget leans upon her wet broom, and talks with Anne, who leaves her water-pail for a little conference, in which the affairs of the two neighbouring families of Smith and Jenkins receive, you may be sure, due attention. Men smoking short and odorous pipes, and carrying small, mysterious-looking tin pails, begin to awaken the echoes with their brogans, and to prove him a slanderer who should say they have no music in their soles. Newspaper carriers, bearing the damp chronicles of the worlds latest history bestrapped to their sides, hurry along, dispensing their favours into areas and doorways, seasoning my friend Thompsons breakfast with the reports of the councils of kings, or with the readable inventions of "our own correspondent," and delighting the gentle Mrs. Thompson with a full list of deaths and marriages, or another fatal railway accident.

Then the omnibuses begin to rattle and jolt along the streets, carrying such masculine loads that they deserve for the time to be called mail coaches. Later, an odour as of broiled mackerel salutes the sense; school children, with their s.h.i.+ning morning faces, begin to obstruct your way, and the penny postman, with his burden of joy and sorrow, hastens along and rings peremptorily at door after door. Then the streets a.s.sume by degrees a new character. Toil is engaged in its workshops and in by-places, and staid respectability, in its broadcloth and its glossy beaver, wends its deliberate way to its office or its counting-house, unhindered by aught that can disturb its equanimity, unless, perchance, it meets with a gang of street-sweepers in the full exercise of their dusty avocation.

Who can adequately describe that most inalienable of womans rightsthat favourite employment of the s.e.xwhich is generally termed _shopping_?

Who can describe the curiosity which overhauls a wilderness of dress patterns, and the uncomplaining patience of the shopman who endeavours to suit the lady so hard to be suited,his well-disguised disappointment when she does not purchase, and her husbands exasperation when she does? Not I, most certainly, for I detest shops, have little respect for fas.h.i.+ons, lament the necessity of buying clothes, and wish most heartily that we could return to the primeval fig-leaves.

I love the by-streets of a citythe streets whose echoes are never disturbed by the heavy-laden wagons which bespeak the greatness of our manufacturing interests. Formerly the houses in such streets wore an air of sobriety and respectability, and the good housewifery which reigned within was symbolized by the bright polish of the bra.s.s door-plate, or bell-pull, or knocker. Now they are grown more pretentious, and the bra.s.s has given place to an outward and visible sign of silver. But the streets retain their old characteristics, and are strangers to any sound more inharmonious than the shouts of sportive children, or the tones of a hand-organ. I do not profess to be a musical critic, but I have been gifted by nature with a tolerable idea of time and tune; yet I am not ashamed to say that I do not despise hand-organs. They have given me "Sweet Home" in the cities of Italy, Yankee Doodle in the Faubourg St.

Germain; and the best melodies of Europes composers are daily ground out under my windows. I have no patience with these canting people who talk about productive labour, and who see in the organ-grinder who limps around, looking up expectantly for the remunerating copper, only a vagabond whom it is expedient for the police to counsel to "move on."

These peripatetic dispensers of harmony are full as useful members of society as the majority of our legislators, and have a far more practical talent for organization. Douglas Jerrold once said that he never saw an Italian image merchant, with his Graces, and Venuses, and Apollos at sixpence a head, that he did not spiritually touch his hat to him: "It is he who has carried refinement into the poor mans house; it is he who has accustomed the eyes of the mult.i.tude to the harmonious forms of beauty." Let me apply these kindly expressions of the dead dramatist and wit to the organ-grinders. They have carried music into lanes and slums, which, without them, would never have known any thing more melodious than a watchmans rattle, and have made the poorest of our people familiar with harmonies that might "create a soul under the ribs of death." Occasionally their music may be instrumental in producing a feeling of impatience, so that I wish that their "Mary Ann"

were married off, and that Norma would "hear," and make an end of it; but my better feelings triumph in the end, and I would not interfere with the poor mans and the childrens concert to hear a strain from St.

Cecilias viol. Let the grinders be encouraged! May the evil days foretold in ancient prophecy never come among us, when the grinders shall cease because they are few!

It is at evening that the poetic element is found most abundant in the streets of cities. There is to me something of the sublime in the long lines of glittering shop-windows that skirt Regent Street and the Boulevards. Dr. Johnson exhorted the people who attended the sale of his friend Thrales brewery, to remember that it was not the mere collection of boilers, and tubs, and vats which they saw around them, for which they were about to bargain, but "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice"; and, in a similar spirit, I see in the shop windows not merely the silks and laces, and the other countless luxuries and wonders which delight the eye of taste and form the source of wealth to mult.i.tudes, but a vast exposition of the results of that industry, which, next to religion and obedience to law, is the surest foundation of national greatness, and which shows us, behind the frowning Providence that laid on man the curse of labour, the smiling face of divine beneficence. There, in one great collection, may be seen the fruits of the toil of millions. To produce that gorgeous display, artists have cudgelled their weary brains; operatives have suffered; s.h.i.+p-masters have strained their eyes over their charts and daily observations, and borne patiently with the provoking vagaries of the "lee main brace"; sailors have climbed the icy rigging and furled the tattered topsails with hands cracked and bleeding; for that, long trains of camels freighted with the rich products of the golden East, "from silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon," have toiled with their white-turbaned drivers across the parching desert; thousands of busy hands have plied the swift shuttle in the looms of Brussels, and Tournai, and Lyons; and thousands in deep and almost unfathomable mines have suffered a living death. Manchester and Birmingham have been content to wear their suit of mourning that those windows may be radiant and gay. The tears, and sweat, and blood of myriads have been poured out behind those s.h.i.+ning panes trans.m.u.ted into shapes that fill the beholder with wonder and delight. "In our admiration of the plumage we forget the dying bird." Nevertheless, above the roar and bustle of those whirling thoroughfares, above the endless groan and "infinite fierce chorus" of manhood ground down, and starving in bondage more cruel because it does not bear the name of slavery, I hear the carol of virtuous and well-rewarded labour, and the cheerful song of the white-capped lace-makers of Belgium and the vine-dressers of Italy reminds me that powerful wrong does not have every thing its own way even in this world.

I did intend to have gone farther in my evening walk; but time and s.p.a.ce alike forbid it. I wished to leave the loud roaring avenues for those more quiet streets, where every sight and sound speak of domestic comfort, or humble fidelity, or patient effort; where the brilliancy of splendid mansions is but imperfectly veiled by rich and heavy draperies; where high up gleams the lamp of the patient student, happy in his present obscurity because he dreams of coming fame; and where the tan on the pavement and the mitigated light from the windows are eloquent of suffering and the sleepless affection that ministers to its unspoken wants. But I must stop. If, however, I have shown one of my readers, who regrets that he is obliged to dwell in a city, that there is much that is beautiful in paved streets and smoke-stained walls, and that, if we only open our eyes to see them, even though the fresh fields and waving woods may be miles away, the beauties of nature daily fold us in their bosom,I shall feel that I have not tasked my tired brain and gouty right hand entirely in vain.

HARD UP IN PARIS

Money, whatever those who affect misanthropy or a sublime superiority to all temporal things may say to the contrary, is a very desirable thing.

We all enjoy the visit of the great Alexander to the contented inhabitant of the imperishable tub, who was alike independent of the good will and displeasure of that mighty monarch; we sympathize with all the bitter things that Timon says when he is reduced from wealth to beggary; and we are never tired of lamenting, with Virgil, that the human heart should be such an abject prey to this accursed hunger for gold. I am not sure that Horace would not be dearer to us, if he had lived in a "three-pair-back" in some obscure street, and his deathless odes had been inspired by fear of a shrewish landlady or an inexorable sheriff, instead of being an honoured guest at the imperial court, and a recipient of the splendid patronage of a Mcenas and an Augustus.

Poetical justice seems to require a setting of the most cheerless poverty for the full development of the l.u.s.tre of genius. At least, we think so, at times;though, under it all, admire as we may the successful struggles of the want-stricken bard,we do not envy him his penury. We should shrink from his gifts and his fame, if they were offered to us with his sufferings. For underneath our abstract magnanimity lurks the conviction that money is by no means a bad thing, after all. Our enthusiasm is awakened by contemplating the self-forgetful career of Francis of a.s.sisi, who chose Poverty for his bride, and whose name is in benediction among men, even six centuries after he entered into possession of that kingdom which was promised to the poor in spirit; and, if we should chance to see a more modern bearer of that Christian name, who wors.h.i.+pped the wealth which the ancient saint despised; who trampled down honest poverty in his unswerving march towards opulence; who looked unmoved upon the tears of the widow and the orphan; who exercised his sordid apostolate even to the last gasp of his miserable life; and whose name (unblessed by the poor, and unhonoured by canonization) became, in the brief period that it outlived him, a byword and a synonyme of avarice,we should not fail to visit his memory with a cordial malediction. But, in spite of all our veneration for Francis, the apostle of holy poverty, and of loathing for his namesake, the apostle of unholy wealth, we cannot help wis.h.i.+ng that we had a little more of that which the Saint cast away, and the miser took in exchange for his soul.

A little morethat is the phraseand there is no human being, rich or poor, who does not think that "a little more" is all that is needed to fill up the measure of his earthly happiness. It is for this that the gambler risks his winnings, and the merchant perils the gains of many toilsome years. For this, some men labour until they lose the faculty of enjoying the fruit of their exertions; and this is the _ignis fatuus_ that goes dancing on before others, leading them at last into that bog of bankruptcy from which they never wholly extricate themselves. Enough is a word unknown in the lexicon of those who have once tasted the joy of having money at interest, and there are very few men who practically appreciate the wisdom of the ancient dramatist who tells us that