From this place we drove to the Streatham Street Lodging House for families, of which the following is an outside view. This building is, in the first place, fire proof; in the second, the separation in the parts belonging to different families is rendered complete and perfect by the use of hollow brick for the partitions, which entirely prevents, as I am told, the transmission of sound.

The accompanying print shows the plan of one tenement.

[Illustration: of an apartment's plan (no scale):

..::::........................::::.........................::::..

Open gallery, five feet wide

:::XX::::::: -:::::XX: :XX:::::::: -::::::::XX:::: :: + + + -+:::::: entry :: :: :: + +:: :: :: :: + + H I :: :: :: :: F + -+ +:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: XX:+ :: :: :: : L* :: E :: D C :: XX:+:::::XX :: :: :: :: :: :: :: G :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: XX: :XX: :XX: :XX :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: XX:::::::::::::::::::::::XX:::: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: A :: B :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :::XX:::::::::: ::::::::::XX::::::: ::::::XX::::

A Living room B Bed room ASCII Key: C Bed room D Lobby :: Wall E Scullery ::XX:: Wall intersection F Water closet ::—:: Window G Bed closet ::..:: Balcony H Sink —— Fixture edge I Meat safe L Dust flue (*not identified on original plan—location estimated from author's description)]



By means of the sleeping closet adjoining the living room, each dwelling affords three good sleeping apartments. The meat safe preserves provisions. The dust flue is so arranged that all the sweepings of the house, and all the refuse of the cookery, have only to be thrown down to disappear forever; while the sink is supplied to an unlimited extent with hot and cold water. These galleries, into which every tenement opens, run round the inside of the hollow court which the building encloses, and afford an admirable play-place for the little children, out of the dangers and temptations of the street, and in view of their respective mothers. The foregoing print, representing the inner half of the quadrangle, shows the arrangement of the galleries.

"Now," said Lord Shaftesbury, as he was showing me through these tenements, which were models of neatness and good keeping, "you must bear in mind that these are tenanted by the very people who once were living in the dirtiest and filthiest lodging houses; people whom the world said, it did no good to try to help; that they liked to be dirty better than clean, and would be dirty under any circumstances."

He added the following anecdote to show the effect of poor lodgings in degrading the character. A fine young man, of some considerable taste and talent, obtained his living by designing patterns for wall paper. A long and expensive illness so reduced his circumstances, that he was obliged to remove to one of these low, filthy lodging houses already alluded to. From that time he became an altered man; his wife said that he lost all energy, all taste in designing, love of reading, and fondness for his family; began to frequent drinking shops, and was visibly on the road to ruin. Hearing of these lodging houses, he succeeded in renting a tenement in one of them, for the same sum which he had paid for the miserable dwelling. Under the influence of a neat, airy, pleasant, domestic home, the man's better nature again awoke, his health improved, he ceased to crave ardent spirits, and his former ingenuity in his profession returned.

"Now, this shows," said Lord Shaftesbury, "that hundreds may have been ruined simply by living in miserable dwellings." I looked into this young man's tenement; it was not only neat, but ornamented with a great variety of engravings tastefully disposed upon the wall. On my expressing my pleasure in this circumstance, he added, "It is one of the pleasantest features of the case, to notice how soon they began to ornament their little dwellings; some have cages with singing birds, and some pots of flowering plants; some, pictures and engravings."

"And are these buildings successful in a pecuniary point of view?" I said. "Do they pay their own way?"

"Yes," he replied, "they do. I consider that these buildings, if they have done nothing more, have established two points: first, that the poor do not prefer dirt and disorder, where it is possible for them to secure neatness and order; and second, that buildings with every proper accommodation can be afforded at a price which will support an establishment."

Said I, "Are people imitating these lodging houses very rapidly?"

"To a great extent they are," he replied, "but not so much as I desire. Buildings on these principles have been erected in the principal towns of England and Scotland. The state of the miserable dwellings, courts, alleys, &c., is the consequence of the neglect of former days, when speculators and builders were allowed to do as they liked, and run up hovels, where the working man, whose house must be regulated, not by his choice, but by his work, was compelled then, as he is now, to live, however narrow, unhealthy, or repulsive the place might be. This was called 'the liberty of the subject.'" It has been one of Lord Shaftesbury's most arduous parliamentary labors to bring the lodging houses under governmental regulation. He told me that he introduced a bill to this effect in the House of Commons, while a member, as Lord Ashley, and that just as it had passed through the House of Commons, he entered the House of Lords, as Lord Shaftesbury, and so had the satisfaction of carrying the bill to its completion in that house, where it passed in the year 1851. The provisions of this bill require every keeper of a lodging house to register his name at the Metropolitan Police Office, under a penalty of a fine of five pounds for every lodger received before this is done. After having given notice to the police, they are not allowed to receive lodgers until the officers have inspected the house, to see whether it accords with the required conditions. These conditions are, that the walls and ceilings be whitewashed; that the floors, stairs, beds, and bed clothes are clean; that there be some mode of ventilating every room; that each house be provided with every accommodation for promoting decency and neatness; that the drains and cesspools are perfect; the yards properly paved, so as to run dry; and that each house has a supply of water, with conveniences for cooking and washing; and finally, that no person with an infectious disease is inhabiting the house. It is enacted, moreover, that only so many shall be placed in a room as shall be permitted by the commissioners of the police; and it is made an indispensable condition to the fitness of a house, that the proprietor should hang up in every room a card, properly signed by the police inspector, stating the precise number who are allowed to be lodged there. The law also strictly forbids persons of different sexes occupying the same room, except in case of married people with children under ten years of age: more than one married couple may not inhabit the same apartment, without the provision of a screen to secure privacy. It is also forbidden to use the kitchens, sculleries, or cellars for sleeping rooms, unless specially permitted by the police. The keeper of the house is required thoroughly to whitewash the walls and ceilings twice a year, and to cleanse the drains and cesspools whenever required by the police. In case of sickness, notice must be immediately given to the police, and such measures pursued, for preventing infection, as may be deemed judicious by the inspector.

The commissioner of police reports to the secretary of state systematically as to the results of this system.

After looking at these things, we proceeded to view one of the model washing houses, which had been erected for the convenience of poor women. We entered a large hall, which was divided by low wood partitions into small apartments, in each of which a woman was washing. The whole process of washing clothes in two or three waters, and boiling them, can be effected without moving from the spot, or changing the tub. Each successive water is let out at the bottom, while fresh is let on from the top. When the clothes are ready to be boiled, a wooden cover is placed over them, and a stream of scalding steam is directed into the tub, by turning a stop cock; this boils the water in a few moments, effectually cleansing the clothes; they are then whirled in a hollow cylinder till nearly dry, after which they are drawn through two rollers covered with flannel, which presses every remaining particle of water out of them. The clothes are then hung upon frames, which shut into large closets, and are dried by steam in a very short space of time.

Lord Shaftesbury, pointing out the partitions, said, "This is an arrangement of delicacy to save their feelings: their clothes are sometimes so old and shabby they do not want to show them, poor things." I thought this feature worthy of special notice.

In addition to all these improvements for the laboring classes, very large bathing establishments have been set up expressly for the use of the working classes. To show the popularity and effectiveness of this movement, five hundred and fifty thousand baths were given in three houses during the year 1850. These bathing establishments for the working classes are rapidly increasing in every part of the kingdom.

When we returned to our carriage after this survey, I remarked to Lord Shaftesbury that the combined influence of these causes must have wrought a considerable change in the city. He answered, with energy, "You can have no idea. Whole streets and districts have been revolutionized by it. The people who were formerly savage and ferocious, because they supposed themselves despised and abandoned, are now perfectly quiet and docile. I can assure you that Lady Shaftesbury has walked alone, with no attendant but a little child, through streets in London where, years ago, a well-dressed man could not have passed safely without an escort of the police."

I said to him that I saw nothing now, with all the improvements they were making throughout the kingdom, to prevent their working classes from becoming quite as prosperous as ours, except the want of a temperance reformation.

He assented with earnestness. He believed, he said, that the amount spent in liquors of various kinds, which do no good, but much injury, was enough to furnish every laborer's dwelling, not only with comforts, but with elegances. "But then," he said, "one thing is to be considered: a reform of the dwellings will do a great deal towards promoting a temperance reformation. A man who lives in a close, unwholesome dwelling, deprived of the natural stimulus of fresh air and pure water, comes into a morbid and unhealthy state; he craves stimulants to support the sinking of his vital powers, caused by these unhealthy influences." There is certainly a great deal of truth in this; and I think that, in America, we should add to the force of our Maine law by adopting some of the restrictions of the Lodging House act.

I have addressed this letter to you, my dear cousin, on account of the deep interest you have taken in the condition of the poor and perishing in the city of New York. While making these examinations, these questions occurred to my mind: Could our rich Christian men employ their capital in a more evangelical manner, or more adorn the city of New York, than by raiding a large and beautiful lodging house, which should give the means of health, comfort, and vigor to thousands of poor needlewomen? The same query may be repeated concerning all the other lodging houses I have mentioned. Furthermore, should not a movement for the registration and inspection of common lodging houses keep pace with efforts to suppress the sale of spirits? The poison of these dismal haunts creates a craving for stimulants, which constantly tends to break over and evade law.



LETTER XXIX.

DEAR FATHER:—

I wish in this letter to give you a brief view of the movements in this country for the religious instruction and general education of the masses. If we compare the tone of feeling now prevalent with that existing but a few years back, we notice a striking change. No longer ago than in the time of Lady Huntington we find a lady of quality ingenuously confessing that her chief source of scepticism in regard to Christianity was, that it actually seemed to imply that the educated, the refined, the noble, must needs be saved by the same Savior and the same gospel with the ignorant and debased working classes. Traces of a similar style of feeling are discernible in the letters of the polished correspondents of Hannah More. Robert Walpole gayly intimates himself somewhat shocked at the idea that the nobility and the vulgar should be equally subject to the restraints of the Sabbath and the law of God—equally exposed to the sanctions of endless retribution. And Young makes his high-born dame inquire,

"Shall pleasures of a short duration chain A lady's soul in everlasting pain?"

In broad contrast to this, all the modern popular movements in England are based upon the recognition of the equal value of every human soul. The Times, the most aristocratic paper in England, publishes letters from needlewomen and dressmakers' apprentices, and reads grave lectures to duchesses and countesses on their duties to their poor sisters. One may fancy what a stir this would have made in the courtly circles of the reign of George II. Fashionable literature now arrays itself on the side of the working classes. The current of novel writing is reversed. Instead of milliners and chambermaids being bewitched with the adventures of countesses and dukes, we now have fine lords and ladies hanging enchanted over the history of John the Carrier, with his little Dot, dropping sympathetic tears into little Charlie's wash tub, and pursuing the fortunes of a dressmaker's apprentice, in company with poor Smike, and honest John Brodie and his little Yorkshire wife. Punch laughs at every body but the work people; and if, occasionally, he laughs at them, it is rather in a kindly way than with any air of contempt. Then, Prince Albert visits model lodging houses, and commands all the ingenuity of the kingdom to expend itself in completing the ideal of a workman's cottage for the great World's Fair. Lords deliver lydeum lectures; ladies patronize ragged schools; committees of duchesses meliorate the condition of needlewomen. In short, the great ship of the world has tacked, and stands on another course.

The beginning of this great humanitarian movement in England was undoubtedly the struggle of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and their associates, for the overthrow of the slave trade. In that struggle the religious democratic element was brought to bear for years upon the mind of Parliament. The negro, most degraded of men, was taken up, and for years made to agitate British society on the simple ground that he had a human soul.

Of course the religious obligations of society to every human soul were involved in the discussion. It educated Parliament, it educated the community. Parliament became accustomed to hearing the simple principles of the gospel asserted in its halls as of binding force. The community were trained in habits of efficient benevolent action, which they have never lost. The use of tracts, of committees, of female cooperation, of voluntary association, and all the appliances of organized reform were discovered and successfully developed. The triumphant victory then achieved, moreover, became the pledge of future conquests in every department of reform. Concerning the movements for the elevation of the masses, Lord Shaftesbury has kindly furnished me with a few brief memoranda, set down as nearly as possible in chronological order.

In the first place, there has been reform of the poor laws. So corrupt had this system become, that a distinct caste had well nigh sprung into permanent existence, families having been known to subsist in idleness for five generations solely by means of skilful appropriation of public and private charities.

The law giving to paupers the preference in all cases where any public work was to be done, operated badly. Good workmen might starve for want of work: by declaring themselves paupers they obtained employment. Thus, virtually, a bounty was offered to pauperism. His lordship remarks,—

"There have been sad defects, no doubt, and some harshness, under the new system; but the general result has been excellent; and, in many instances, the system has been reduced to practice in a truly patriarchal spirit. The great difficulty and the great failure are found in the right and safe occupation of children who are trained in these workhouses, of which so much has been said."

In the second place, the treatment of the insane has received a thorough investigation. This began, in 1828, by a committee of inquiry, moved for by Mr. Gordon.

An almost incredible amount of suffering and horrible barbarity was thus brought to light. For the most part it appeared that the treatment of the insane had been conducted on the old, absurd idea which cuts them off from humanity, and reduces them below the level of the brutes. The regimen in private madhouses was such that Lord Shaftesbury remarked of them, in a speech on the subject, "I have said before, and now say again, that should it please God to visit me with such an affliction, I would greatly prefer the treatment of paupers, in an establishment like that of the Surrey Asylum, to the treatment of the rich in almost any one of these receptacles."

Instances are recorded of individuals who were exhumed from cells where they had existed without clothing or cleansing, as was ascertained, for years after they had entirely recovered the exercise of sound reason. Lord Shaftesbury procured the passage of bills securing the thorough supervision of these institutions by competent visiting committees, and the seasonable dismissal of all who were pronounced cured; and the adoption for the pauper insane of a judicious course of remedial treatment.

The third step was the passage of the ten hour factory bill. This took nearly eighteen years of labor and unceasing activity in Parliament and in the provinces. Its operation affects full half a million of actual workers, and, if the families be included, nearly two millions of persons, young and old. Two thirds as many as the southern slaves.

It is needless to enlarge on the horrible disclosures in reference to the factory operatives, made during this investigation. England never shuddered with a deeper thrill at the unveiling of American slavery than did all America at this unveiling of the white-labor slavery of England. In reading the speeches of Lord Shaftesbury, one sees, that, in presenting this subject, he had to encounter the same opposition and obloquy which now beset those in America who seek the abolition of slavery.

In the beginning of one of his speeches, his lordship says, "Nearly eleven years have now elapsed since I first made the proposition to the house which I shall renew this night. Never, at any time, have I felt greater apprehension, or even anxiety. Not through any fear of personal defeat; for disappointment is 'the badge of our tribe;' but because I know well the hostility that I have aroused, and the certain issues of indiscretion on my part affecting the welfare of those who have so long confided their hopes and interests to my charge." One may justly wonder on what conceivable grounds any could possibly oppose the advocate of a measure like this. He was opposed on the same ground that Clarkson was resisted in seeking the abolition of the slave trade. As Boswell said that "to abolish the slave trade would be to shut the gates of mercy on mankind," so the advocates of eighteen hours labor in factories said that the ten hour system would diminish produce, lower wages, and bring starvation on the workmen. His lordship was denounced as an incendiary, a meddling fanatic, interfering with the rights of masters, and desiring to exalt his own order by destroying the prosperity of the manufacturers.

In the conclusion of one of his speeches he says, "Sir, it may not be given me to pass over this Jordan; other and better men have preceded me, and I entered into their labors; other and better men will follow me, and enter into mine; but this consolation I shall ever continue to enjoy—that, amidst much injustice and somewhat of calumny, we have at last 'lighted such a candle in England as, by God's blessing, shall never be put out.'"

The next effort was to regulate the labor of children in the calico and print works. The great unhealthiness of the work, and the tender age of the children employed,—some even as young as four years—were fully disclosed. An extract from his lordship's remarks on this subject will show that human nature takes the same course in all countries: "Sir, in the various discussions on these kindred subjects, there has been a perpetual endeavor to drive us from the point under debate, and taunt us with a narrow and one-sided humanity. I was told there were far greater evils than those I had assailed—that I had left untouched much worse things. It was in vain to reply that no one could grapple with the whole at once; my opponents on the ten hour bill sent me to the collieries; when I invaded the collieries I was referred to the print works; from the print works I know not to what I shall be sent; for what can be worse? Sir, it has been said to me, more than once, 'Where will you stop?' I reply, Nowhere, so long as any portion of this mighty evil remains to be removed. I confess that my desire and ambition are to bring all the laboring children of this empire within the reach and opportunities of education, within the sphere of useful and happy citizens. I am ready, so far as my services are of any value, to devote what little I have of energy, and all the remainder of my life, to the accomplishment of this end. The labor would be great, and the anxieties very heavy; but I fear neither one nor the other. I fear nothing but defeat."

From the allusion, above, to the colliery effort, it would seem that the act for removing women and children from the coalpits preceded the reform of the printworks. Concerning the result of these various enterprises, he says, "The present state of things may be told in few words. Full fifty thousand children under thirteen years of age attend school every day. None are worked more than seven, generally only six, hours in the day. Those above thirteen and under eighteen, and all women, are limited to ten hours and a half, exclusive of the time for meals. The work begins at six in the morning and ends at six in the evening. Saturday's labor ends at four o'clock, and there is no work on Sunday. The printworks are brought under regulation, and the women and children removed from the coalpits." His lordship adds, "The report of inspectors which I send you will give you a faint picture of the physical, social, and moral good that has resulted. I may safely say of these measures, that God has blessed them far beyond my expectation, and almost equal to my heart's desire."

The next great benevolent movement is the ragged school system. From a miserable hole in Field Lane, they have grown up to a hundred and sixteen in number. Of these Lord Shaftesbury says, "They have produced—I speak seriously—some of the most beautiful fruits that ever grew upon the tree of life. I believe that from the teachers and from the children, though many are now gone to their rest, might have been, and might still be, selected some of the most pure, simple, affectionate specimens of Christianity the world ever saw." Growing out of the ragged school is an institution of most interesting character, called "a place for repentance." It had its origin in the efforts of a young man, a Mr. Nash, to reform two of his pupils. They said they wished to be honest, but had nothing to eat, and must steal to live. Though poor himself, he invited them to his humble abode, and shared with them his living. Other pupils, hearing of this, desired to join with them, and become honest too. Soon he had six. Now, the honest scholars in the ragged school, seeing what was going on, of their own accord began to share their bread with this little band, and to contribute their pennies. Gradually the number increased. Benevolent individuals noticed it, and supplies flowed in, until at last it has grown to be an establishment in which several hundreds are seeking reformation. To prevent imposition, a rigid probation is prescribed. Fourteen days the applicant feeds on bread and water, in solitary confinement, with the door unfastened, so that he can depart at any moment. If he goes through with that ordeal it is thought he really wants to be honest, and he is admitted a member. After sufficient time spent in the institution to form correct habits, assistance is given him to emigrate to some of the colonies, to commence life, as it were, anew. Lord Shaftesbury has taken a deep interest in this establishment; and among other affecting letters received from its colonists in Australia, is one to him, commencing, "Kind Lord Ashley," in which the boy says, "I wish your lordship would send out more boys, and use your influence to convert all the prisons into ragged schools. As soon as I get a farm I shall call it after your name."

A little anecdote related by Mr. Nash shows the grateful feelings of the inmates of this institution. A number of them were very desirous to have a print of Lord Shaftesbury, to hang up in their sitting room. Mr. Nash told them he knew of no way in which they could earn the money, except by giving up something from their daily allowance of food. This they cheerfully agreed to do. A benevolent gentleman offered to purchase the picture and present it to them; but they unanimously declined. They wanted it to be their own, they said, and they could not feel that it was so unless they did something for it themselves.

Connected with the ragged school, also, is a movement for establishing what are called ragged churches—a system of simple, gratuitous religious instruction, which goes out to seek those who feel too poor and degraded to be willing to enter the churches.

Another of the great movements in England is the institution of the Laborer's Friend Society, under the patronage of the most distinguished personages. Its principal object has been the promotion of allotments of land in the country, to be cultivated by the peasantry after their day's labor, thus adding to their day's wages the produce of their fields and gardens. It has been instrumental, first and last, of establishing nearly four hundred thousand of these allotments. It publishes, also, a monthly paper, called the Laborer's Friend, in which all subjects relative to the elevation of the working classes receive a full discussion.

In consequence of all these movements, the dwellings of the laboring classes throughout Great Britain are receiving much attention; so that, if matters progress for a few years as they have done, the cottages of the working people will be excelled by none in the world.

Another great movement is the repeal of the corn laws, the benefit of which is too obvious to need comment.

What has been doing for milliners and dressmakers, for the reform lodging houses, and for the supply of baths and wash houses, I have shown at length in former letters. I will add that the city of London has the services of one hundred and twenty city missionaries.

There is a great multiplication of churches, and of clergymen to labor in the more populous districts. The Pastoral Aid Society and the Scripture Reading Society are both extensive and fruitful laborers for the service of the mass of the people.

There has also been a public health act, by which towns and villages are to be drained and supplied with water. This has gone into operation in about one hundred and sixty populous places with the most beneficial results.

In fine, Lord Shaftesbury says, "The best proof that the people are cared for, and that they know it, appeared in the year 1848. All Europe was convulsed. Kings were falling like rotten pears. We were as quiet and happy in England as the President of the United States in his drawing room."

It is true, that all these efforts united could not radically relieve the distress of the working classes, were it not for the outlet furnished by emigration. But Australia has opened as M new world of hope upon England. And confirmatory of all other movements for the good of the working classes, come the benevolent efforts of Mrs. Chisholm and the colonizing society formed under her auspices.

I will say, finally, that the aspect of the religious mind of England, as I have been called to meet it, is very encouraging in this respect; that it is humble, active, and practical. With all that has been done, they do not count themselves to have attained, or to be already perfect; and they evidently think and speak more of the work that yet remains to be done than of victories already achieved. Could you, my dear father, have been with me through the different religious circles it has been my privilege to enter, from the humble cotter's fireside to the palace of the highest and noblest, your heart would share with mine a sincere joy in the thought that the Lord "has much people" in England. Called by different names, Churchman, Puseyite, Dissenter, Presbyterian, Independent, Quaker, differing widely, sincerely, earnestly, I have still found among them all evidence of that true piety which consists in a humble and childlike spirit of obedience to God, and a sincere desire to do good to man. It is comforting and encouraging to know, that while there are many sects and opinions, there is, after all, but one Christianity. I sometimes think that it has been my peculiar lot to see the exhibition of more piety and loveliness of spirit in the differing sects and ranks in England than they can see in each other. And it lays in my mind a deep foundation of hope for that noble country. My belief is, that a regenerating process is going on in England; a gradual advance in religion, of which contending parties themselves are not aware. Under various forms all are energizing together, I trust, under the guidance of a superior spirit, who is gently moderating acerbities, removing prejudices, inclining to conciliation and harmony, and preparing England to develop, from many outward forms, the one, pure, beautiful, invisible church of Christ.



LETTER XXX.

LONDON, June 3.

MY DEAR HUSBAND:—

According to request I will endeavor to keep you informed of all our goings on after you left, up to the time of our departure for Paris.

We have borne in mind your advice to hasten away to the continent. C. wrote, a day or two since, to Mrs. C. at Paris, to secure very private lodgings, and by no means let any one know that we were coming. She has replied, urging us to come to her house, and promising entire seclusion and rest. So, since you departed, we have been passing with a kind of comprehensive skip and jump over remaining engagements. And first, the evening after you left, came off the presentation of the inkstand by the ladies of Surrey Chapel.

Our kind Mr. Sherman showed great taste as well as energy in the arrangements. The lecture room of the chapel was prettily adorned with flowers. Lord Shaftesbury was in the chair, and the Duchess of Argyle and the Marquis of Stafford were there. Miss Greenfield sang some songs, and there were speeches in which each speaker said all the obliging things he could think of to the rest. Rev. Mr. Binney complimented the nobility, and Lord Shaftesbury complimented the people, and all were but too kind in what they said to me—in fact, there was general good humor in the whole scene.

The inkstand is a beautiful specimen of silverwork. It is eighteen inches long, with a group of silver figures on it, representing Religion with the Bible in her hand, giving liberty to the slave. The slave is a masterly piece of work. He stands with his hands clasped, looking up to heaven, while a white man is knocking the shackles from his feet. But the prettiest part of the scene was the presentation of a gold pen, by a band of beautiful children, one of whom made a very pretty speech. I called the little things to come and stand around me, and talked with them a few minutes, and this was all the speaking that fell to my share. Now this, really, was too kind of these ladies, and of our brotherly friend Mr. S., and I was quite touched with it; especially as I have been able myself to do so very little, socially, for any body's pleasure. Mr. Sherman still has continued to be as thoughtful and careful as a brother could be; and his daughter, Mrs. B., I fear, has robbed her own family to give us the additional pleasure of her society. We rode out with her one day into the country, and saw her home and little family. Saturday morning we breakfasted at Stafford House, I wish you could have been there. All was as cool, and quiet, and still there, as in some retreat deep in the country. We went first into the duchess's boudoir,—you remember,—where is that beautiful crayon sketch of Lady Constance. The duchess was dressed in pale blue. We talked with her some time, before any one came in, about Miss Greenfield. I showed her a simple note to her grace in which Miss G. tried to express her gratitude, and which she had sent to me to correct for her. The duchess said, "0, give it me! it is a great deal better as it is. I like it just as she wrote it."

People always like simplicity and truth better than finish. After entering the breakfast room the Duke and Duchess of Argyle, and Lord Carlisle appeared, and soon after Lord Shaftesbury. We breakfasted in that beautiful green room which has the two statues, the Eve of Thorwaldsen and the Venus of Canova. The view of the gardens and trees from the window gave one a sense of seclusion and security, and made me forget that we were in great, crowded London. A pleasant talk we had. Among other things they proposed various inquiries respecting affairs in America, particularly as to the difference between Presbyterians and Congregationalists, the influence of the Assembly's Catechism, and the peculiarities of the other religious denominations.

The Duke of Argyle, who is a Presbyterian, seemed to feel an interest in those points. He said it indicated great power in the Assembly's Catechism that it could hold such ascendency in such a free country.

In the course of the conversation it was asked if there was really danger that the antislavery spirit of England would excite ill feeling between the two countries.

I said, were it possible that America were always to tolerate and defend slavery, this might be. But this would be self-destruction. It cannot, must not, will not be. We shall struggle, and shall overcome; and when the victory has been gained we shall love England all the more for her noble stand in the conflict. As I said this I happened to turn to the duchess, and her beautiful face was lighted with such a strong, inspired, noble expression, as set its seal at once in my heart.

Lord Carlisle is going to Constantinople to-morrow, or next day, to be gone perhaps a year. The eastern question is much talked of now, and the chances of war between Russia and Turkey.

Lord Shaftesbury is now all-engaged upon the fete of the seven thousand charity children, which is to come off at St. Paul's next Thursday.

The Duchesses of Sutherland and Argyle were to have attended, but the queen has just come to town, and the first drawing room will be held on Thursday, so that they will be unable. His lordship had previously invited me, and this morning renewed the invitation. Our time to leave London is fixed for Friday; but, as I am told, there is no sight more peculiar and beautiful than this fete, and I think I can manage both to go there and be forward with my preparations.

In the afternoon of this day I went with Lord Shaftesbury over the model lodging houses, which I have described very particularly in a letter to Mr. C. L. B.

On Thursday, at five P. M., we drove to Stafford House, to go with her grace to the House of Parliament. What a magnificent building! I say so, in contempt of all criticism. I hear that all sorts of things are said against it. For my part, I consider that no place is so utterly hopeless as that of a modern architect intrusted with a great public building. It is not his fault that he is modern, but his misfortune. Things which in old buildings are sanctioned by time he may not attempt; and if he strikes out new things, that is still worse. He is fair game for every body's criticism. He builds too high for one, too low for another; is too ornate for this, too plain for that; he sacrifices utility to aesthetics, or aesthetics to utility, and somebody is displeased either way. The duchess has been a sympathizing friend of the architect through this arduous ordeal. She took pleasure and pride in his work, and showed it to me as something in which she felt an almost personal interest.

For my part, I freely confess that, viewed as a national monument, it seems to me a grand one. What a splendid historic corridor is old Westminster Hall, with its ancient oaken roof! I seemed to see all that brilliant scene when Burke spoke there amid the nobility, wealth, and fashion of all England, in the Warren Hastings trial. That speech always makes me shudder. I think there never was any thing more powerful than its conclusion. Then the corridor that is to be lined with statues of the great men of England will be a noble affair. The statue of Hampden is grand. Will they leave out Cromwell? There is less need of a monument to him, it is true, than to most of them. We went into the House of Lords. The Earl of Carlisle made a speech on the Cuban question, in the course of which he alluded very gracefully to a petition from certain ladies that England should enforce the treaties for the prevention of the slave trade there; and spoke very feelingly on the reasons why woman should manifest a particular interest for the oppressed. The Duke of Argyle and the Bishop of Oxford came over to the place where we were sitting. Her grace intimated to the bishop a desire to hear from him on the question, and in the course of a few moments after returning to his place, he arose and spoke. He has a fine voice, and speaks very elegantly.

At last I saw Lord Aberdeen. He looks like some of our Presbyterian elders; a plain, grave old man, with a bald head, and dressed in black; by the by, I believe I have heard that he is an elder in the National kirk; I am told he is a very good man. You don't know how strangely and dreamily this House of Lords, as seen to-day, mixed itself up with my historic recollections of by-gone days. It had a very sheltered, comfortable parlor-like air. The lords in their cushioned seats seemed like men that had met, in a social way, to talk over public affairs; it was not at all that roomy, vast, declamatory national hall I had imagined.

Then we went into the House of Commons. There is a kind of latticed gallery to which ladies are admitted—a charming little oriental rookery. There we found the Duchess of Argyle and others. Lord Carlisle afterwards joined us, and we went all over the house, examining the frescoes, looking into closets, tea rooms, libraries, smoking rooms, committee rooms, and all, till I was thoroughly initiated. The terrace that skirts the Thames is magnificent. I inquired if any but members might enjoy it. No; it was only for statesmen; our short promenade there was, therefore, an act of grace.

On the whole, when this Parliament House shall have gathered the dust of two hundred years,—when Victoria's reign is among the myths,—future generations will then venerate this building as one of the rare creations of old masters, and declare that no modern structure can ever equal it.

The next day, at three o'clock, I went to Miss Greenfield's first public morning concert, a bill of which I send you. She comes out under the patronage of all the great names, you observe. Lady Hatherton was there, and the Duchess of Sutherland, with all her daughters.

Miss Greenfield did very well, and was heard with indulgence, though surrounded by artists who had enjoyed what she had not—a life's training. I could not but think what a loss to art is the enslaving of a race which might produce so much musical talent. Had she had culture equal to her voice and ear, no singer of any country could have surpassed her. There could even be associations of poetry thrown around the dusky hue of her brow were it associated with the triumphs of art.

After concert, the Duchess of S. invited Lady H. and myself to Stafford House. We took tea in the green library. Lady C. Campbell was there, and her Grace of Argyle. After tea I saw the Duchess of S. a little while alone in her boudoir, and took my leave then and there of one as good and true-hearted as beautiful and noble.

The next day I lunched with Mrs. Malcolm, daughter-in-law of your favorite traveller, Sir John Malcolm, of Persian memory. You should have been there. The house is a cabinet of Persian curiosities. There was the original of the picture of the King of Persia in Ker Porter's Travels. It was given to Sir John by the monarch himself. There were also two daggers which the king presented with his own hand. I think Sir John must somehow have mesmerized him. Then Captain M. showed me sketches of his father's country house in the Himalaya Mountains: think of that! The Alps are commonplace; but a country seat in the Himalaya Mountains is something worth speaking of. There were two bricks from Babylon, and other curiosities innumerable.

Mrs. M. went with me to call on Lady Carlisle. She spoke much of the beauty and worth of her character, and said that though educated in the gayest circles of court, she had always preserved the same unworldly purity. Mrs. M. has visited Dunrobin and seen the Sutherland estates, and spoke much of the Duke's character as a landlord, and his efforts for the improvement of his tenantry.

Lady Carlisle was very affectionate, and invited me to visit Castle Howard on my return to England.

Thursday I went with Lord Shaftesbury to see the charity children. What a sight! The whole central part of the cathedral was converted into an amphitheatre, and the children with white caps, white handkerchiefs, and white aprons, looked like a wide flower bed. The rustling, when they all rose up to prayer, was like the rise of a flock of doves, and when they chanted the church service, it was the warble of a thousand little brooks. As Spenser says,—

"The angelical, soft, trembling voices made Unto the instruments respondence meet."

During the course of the services, when any little one was overcome with sleep or fatigue, he was carefully handed down, and conveyed in a man's arms to a refreshment room.

There was a sermon by the Bishop of Chester, very evangelical and practical. On the whole, a more peculiar or more lovely scene I never saw. The elegant arches of St. Paul's could have no more beautiful adornment than those immortal flowers.

After service we lunched with a large party, with Mrs. Milman, at the deanery near by. Mrs. Jameson was there, and Mrs. Gaskell, authoress of Mary Barton and Ruth. She has a very lovely, gentle face, and looks capable of all the pathos that her writings show. I promised her a visit when I go to Manchester. Thackeray was there with his fine figure, and frank, cheerful bearing. He spoke in a noble and brotherly way of America, and seemed to have highly enjoyed his visit in our country.

After this we made a farewell call at the lord mayor's. We found the lady mayoress returned from the queen's drawing room. From her accounts I should judge the ceremonial rather fatiguing. Mrs. M. asked me yesterday if I had any curiosity to see one. I confessed I had not. Merely to see public people in public places, in the way of parade and ceremony, was never interesting to me. I have seen very little of ceremony or show in England. Well, now, I have brought you down to this time. I have omitted, however, that I went with Lady Hatherton to call on Mr. and Mrs. Dickens, and was sorry to find him too unwell to be able to see us. Mrs. Dickens, who was busy in attending him, also excused herself, and we saw his sister.

To-morrow we go—go to quiet, to obscurity, to peace; to Paris—to Switzerland: there we shall find the loneliest glen, and, as the Bible says, "fall on sleep." For our adventures on the way, meanwhile, I refer you to C.'s journal.



JOURNAL

LONDON TO PARIS

June 4, 1853. Bade adieu with regret to dear Surrey parsonage, and drove to the great south-western station house.

"Paris?" said an official at our cab door. "Paris, by Folkestone and Boulogne," was our answer. And in a few moments, without any inconvenience, we were off. Reached Folkestone at nine, and enjoyed a smooth passage across the dreaded channel. The steward's bowls were paraded in vain. At Boulogne came the long-feared and abhorred ordeal of passports and police. It was nothing. We slipped through quite easily. A narrow ladder, the quay, gens-d'armes, a hall, a crowd, three whiskers, a glance at the passport, the unbuckling of a bundle, voila tout. The moment we issued forth, however, upon the quay again, there was a discharge of forty voices shouting in French. For a moment, completely stunned, I forgot where we were, which way going, and what we wanted. Up jumped a lively little gamin.

"Monsieur veut aller a Pan's, n'est ce pas?" "Going to Paris, are you not, sir?"

"Oui."

"Is monsieur's baggage registered?"

"Yes."

"Does monsieur's wish to go to the station house?"

"Can one find any thing there to eat?"

"Yes, just as at a hotel."

We yielded at discretion, and garcon took possession of us.

"English?" said garcon, as we enjoyed the pleasant walk on the sunny quay.

"No. American," we replied.

"Ah!" (his face brightening up, and speaking confidentially,) "you have a republic there."

We gave the lad a franc, dined, and were off for Paris. The ride was delightful. Cars seating eight; clean, soft-cushioned, nice. The face of the country, though not striking, was pleasing. There were many poplars, with their silvery shafts, and a mingling of trees of various kinds. The foliage has an airy grace—a certain spirituelle expression—as if the trees knew they were growing in la belle France, and must be refined. Then the air is so different from the fog and smoke of London. There is more oxygen in the atmosphere. A pall is lifted. We are led out into sunshine. Fields are red with a scarlet white-edged poppy, or blue with a flower like larkspur. Wheat fields half covered with this unthrifty beauty! But alas! the elasticity is in Nature's works only. The works of man breathe over us a dismal, sepulchral, stand-still feeling. The villages have the nightmare, and men wear wooden shoes. The day's ride, however, was memorable with novelty; and when we saw Mont Martre, and its moth-like windmills, telling us we were coming to Paris, it was almost with regret at the swiftness of the hours. We left the cars, and flowed with the tide into the Salle d'Attente, to wait till the baggage was sorted. Then came the famous ceremony of unlocking. The officer took my carpet bag first, and poked his hand down deep in one end.

"What is this?"

"That is my collar box."

"Ah, ca" And he put it back hastily, and felt of my travelling gown. "What is this?"

"Only a wrapping gown."

"Ah, ca" After fumbling a little more, he took sister H.'s bag, gave a dive here, a poke there, and a kind of promiscuous rake with his five fingers, and turned to the trunk. There he seemed somewhat dubious. Eying the fine silk and lace dresses,—first one, then the other,—"Ah, ah!" said he, and snuffed a little. Then he peeped under this corner, and cocked his eye under that corner; then, all at once, plunged his arm down at one end of the trunk, and brought up a little square box. "What's that?" said he. He unrolled and was about to open it, when suddenly he seemed to be seized with an emotion of confidence. "Non, non" said he, frankly, and rolled it up, shoved it back, stuffed the things down, smoothed all over, signed my ticket, and passed on. We locked up, gave the baggage to porters, and called a fiacre. As we left the station two ladies met us.

"Is there any one here expecting to see Mrs. C.?" said one of them.

"Yes, madam," said I; "we do."

"God bless you," said she, fervently, and seized me by the hand. It was Mrs. C. and her sister. I gave He into their possession.

Our troubles were over. We were at home. We rode through streets whose names were familiar, crossed the Carrousel, passed the Seine, and stopped before an ancient mansion in the Hue de Verneuil, belonging to M. le Marquis de Brige. This Faubourg St. Germain is the part of Paris where the ancient nobility lived, and the houses exhibit marks of former splendor. The marquis is one of those chivalrous legitimists who uphold the claims of Henri VI. He lives in the country, and rents this hotel. Mrs. C. occupies the suite of rooms on the lower floor. We entered by a ponderous old gateway, opened by the concierge, passed through a large paved quadrangle, traversed a short hall, and found ourselves in a large, cheerful parlor, looking out into a small flower garden. There was no carpet, but what is called here a parquet floor, or mosaic of oak blocks, waxed and highly polished. The sofas and chairs were covered with a light chintz, and the whole air of the apartment shady and cool as a grotto. A jardiniere filled with flowers stood in the centre of the room, and around it a group of living flowers—mother, sisters, and daughters—scarcely less beautiful. In five minutes we were at home. French life is different from any other. Elsewhere you do as the world pleases; here you do as you please yourself. My spirits always rise when I get among the French.

Sabbath, June 5. Headache all the forenoon. In the afternoon we walked to the Madeleine, and heard a sermon on charity; listened to the chanting, and gazed at the fantastic ceremonial of the altar. I had anticipated so much from Henry's description of the organs, that I was disappointed. The music was fine; but our ideal had outstripped the real. The strangest part of the performance was the censer swinging at the altar. It was done in certain parts of the chant, with rhythmic sweep, and glitter, and vapor wreath, that produced a striking effect. There was an immense audience—quiet, orderly, and to all appearance devout. This was the first Romish service I ever attended. It ought to be impressive here, if any where. Yet I cannot say I was moved by it Rome-ward. Indeed, I felt a kind of Puritan tremor of conscience at witnessing such a theatrical pageant on the Sabbath. We soon saw, however, as we walked home, across the gardens of the Tuileries, that there is no Sabbath in Paris, according to our ideas of the day.

Monday, June 6. This day was consecrated to knick-knacks. Accompanied by Mrs. C., whom years of residence have converted into a perfect Parisienne, we visited shop after shop, and store after store. The politeness of the shopkeepers is inexhaustible. I felt quite ashamed to spend a half hour looking at every thing, and then depart without buying; but the civil Frenchman bowed, and smiled, and thanked us for coming.

In the evening, we rode to L'Arc de Triomphe d'Etoile, an immense pile of massive masonry, from the top of which we enjoyed a brilliant panorama. Paris was beneath us, from the Louvre to the Bois de Boulogne, with its gardens, and moving myriads; its sports, and games, and light-hearted mirth—a vast Vanity Fair, blazing in the sunlight. A deep and strangely-blended impression of sadness and gayety sunk into our hearts as we gazed. All is vivacity, gracefulness, and sparkle, to the eye; but ah, what fires are smouldering below! Are not all these vines rooted in the lava and ashes of the volcano side?

Tuesday, June 7. A la Louvre! But first the ladies must "shop" a little. I sit by the counter and watch the pretty Parisian shopocracy. A lady presides at the desk. Trim little grisettes serve the customers so deftly, that we wonder why awkward men should ever attempt to do such things. Nay, they are so civil, so evidently disinterested and solicitous for your welfare, that to buy is the most natural thing imaginable.

But to the Louvre! Provided with catalogues, I abandoned the ladies, and strolled along to take a kind of cream-skimming look at the whole. I was highly elated with one thing. There were three Madonnas with dark hair and eyes: one by Murillo, another by Carracci, and another by Guido. It showed that painters were not so utterly hopeless as a class, and given over by common sense to blindness of mind, as I had supposed.

H. begins to recant her heresy in regard to Rubens. Here we find his largest pieces. Here we find the real originals of several real originals we saw in English galleries. It seems as though only upon a picture as large as the side of a parlor could his exuberant genius find scope fully to lay itself out.

When I met II. at last—after finishing the survey—her cheek was flushed, and her eye seemed to swim. "Well, H.," said I, "have you drank deep enough this time?"

"Yes," said she, "I have been satisfied, for the first time."

Wednesday, June 8. A day on foot in Paris. Surrendered H. to the care of our fair hostess. Attempted to hire a boat, at one of the great bathing establishments, for a pull on the Seine. Why not on the Seine, as well as on the Thames? But the old Triton demurred. The tide marched too strong—"Il marche trop fort." Onward, then, along the quays; visiting the curious old book stalls, picture stands, and flower markets. Lean over the parapet, and gaze upon this modern Euphrates, rushing between solid walls of masonry through the heart of another Babylon. The river is the only thing not old. These waters are as turbid, tumultuous, unbridled, as when forests covered all these banks—fit symbol of peoples and nations in their mad career, generation after generation. Institutions, like hewn granite, may wall them in, and vast arches span their flow, and hierarchies domineer over the tide; but the scorning waters burst into life unchangeable, and sweep impetuous through the heart of Vanity Fair, and dash out again into the future, the same grand, ungovernable Euphrates stream. I do not wonder Egypt adored her Nile, and Rome her Tiber. Surely, the life artery of Paris is this Seine beneath my feet! And there is no scene like this, as I gaze upward and downward, comprehending, in a glance, the immense panorama of art and architecture—life, motion, enterprise, pleasure, pomp, and power. Beautiful Paris! What city in the world can compare with thee?

And is it not chiefly because, either by accident or by instinctive good taste, her treasures of beauty and art are so disposed along the Seine as to be visible at a glance to the best effect? As the instinct of the true Parisienne teaches her the mystery of setting off the graces of her person by the fascinations of dress, so the instinct of the nation to set off the city by the fascinations of architecture and embellishment. Hence a chief superiority of Paris to London. The Seine is straight, and its banks are laid out in broad terraces on either side, called quais, lined with her stateliest palaces and gardens. The Thames forms an elbow, and is enveloped in dense smoke and fog. London lowers; the Seine sparkles; London shuts down upon the Thames, and there is no point of view for the whole river panorama. Paris rises amphitheatrically, on either side the Seine, and the eye from the Pont d'Austerlitz seems to fly through the immense reach like an arrow, casting its shadow on every thing of beauty or grandeur Paris possesses.

Rapidly now I sped onward, paying brief visits to the Palais de Justice, the Hotel de Ville, and spending a cool half hour in Notre Dame. I love to sit in these majestic fanes, abstracting them from the superstition which does but desecrate them, and gaze upward to their lofty, vaulted arches, to drink in the impression of architectual sublimity, which I can neither analyze nor express. Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt. There is little ornament here. That roof looks plain and bare; yet I feel that the air is dense with sublimity. Onward I sped, crossing a bridge by the Hotel Dieu, and, leaving the river, plunged into narrow streets. Explored a quadrangular market; surveyed the old church of St Genevieve, and the new—now the Pantheon; went onward to the Jardin des Plantes, and explored its tropical bowers. Many things remind me to-day of New Orleans, and its levee, its Mississippi, its cathedral, and the luxuriant vegetation of the gulf. In fact, I seem to be walking in my sleep in a kind of glorified New Orleans, all the while. Yet I return to the gardens of the Tuileries and the Place Vendome, and in the shadow of Napoleon's Column the illusion vanishes. Hundreds of battles look down upon me from their blazonry.

In the evening I rested from the day's fatigue by an hour in the garden of the Palais Royal. I sat by one of the little tables, and called for an ice. There were hundreds of ladies and gentlemen eating ices, drinking wine, reading the papers, smoking, chatting; scores of pretty children were frolicking and enjoying the balmy evening. Here six or eight midgets were jumping the rope, while papa and mamma swung it for them. Pretty little things, with their flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, how they did seem to enjoy themselves! What parent was ever far from home that did not espy in every group of children his own little ones—his Mary or his Nelly, his Henry or Charlie? So it was with me. There was a ring of twenty or thirty singing and dancing, with a smaller ring in the centre, while old folks and boys stood outside. But I heard not a single oath, nor saw a rough or rude action, during the whole time I was there. The boys standing by looked on quietly, like young gentlemen. The best finale of such a toilsome day of sightseeing was a warm bath in the Rue du Bac, for the trifling sum of fifteen sous. The cheapness and convenience of bathing here is a great recommendation of Paris life. They will bring you a hot bath at your house for twenty-five cents, and that without bustle or disorder. And nothing so effectually as an evening bath, as my experience testifies, cures fatigue and propitiates to dreamless slumber.

Thursday, June 9. At the Louvre. Studied three statues half an hour each—the Venus Victrix, Polyhymnia, and Gladiateur Combattant. The first is mutilated; but if disarmed she conquers all hearts, what would she achieve in full panoply? As to the Gladiator, I noted as follows on my catalogue: A pugilist; antique, brown with age; attitude, leaning forward; left hand raised on guard, right hand thrown out back, ready to strike a side blow; right leg bent; straight line from the head to the toe of left foot; muscles and veins most vividly revealed in intense development; a wonderful petrifaction, as if he had been smitten to stone at the instant of striking.

Here are antique mosaics, in which colored stones seem liquefied, realizing the most beautiful effects of painting—quadrigae, warriors, arms, armor, vases, streams, all lifelike. Ascending to the hall of French paintings I spent an hour in studying one picture—La Meduse, by Gericault. It is a shipwrecked crew upon a raft in mid ocean. I gazed until all surrounding objects disappeared, and I was alone upon the wide Atlantic. Those transparent emerald waves are no fiction; they leap madly, hungering for their prey. That distended sail is filled with the lurid air. That dead man's foot hangs off in the seething brine a stark reality. What a fixed gaze of despair in that father's stony eye! What a group of deathly living ones around that frail mast, while one with intense eagerness flutters a signal to some far-descried bark! Coleridge's Ancient Mariner has no colors more fearfully faithful to his theme. Heaven pities them not. Ocean is all in uproar against them. And there is no voice that can summon the distant, flying sail! So France appeared to that prophet painter's eye, in the subsiding tempests of the revolution. So men's hearts failed them for fear, and the dead lay stark and stiff among the living, amid the sea and the waves roaring; and so mute signals of distress were hung out in the lurid sky to nations afar.

For my part, I remain a heretic. Give to these French pictures the mellowing effects of age, impregnating not merely the picture, but the eye that gazes on it, with its subtle quality; let them be gazed at through the haze of two hundred years, and they will—or I cannot see why they will not—rival the productions of any past age. I do not believe that a more powerful piece ever was painted than yon raft by Gericault, nor any more beautiful than several in the Luxembourg; the "Decadence de Rome," for example, exhibiting the revels of the Romans during the decline of the empire. Let this Decadence unroll before the eyes of men the cause, that wreck by Gericault symbolize the effect, in the great career of nations, and the two are sublimely matched.

After visiting the Luxembourg, I resorted to the gardens of the Tuileries. The thermometer was at about eighty degrees in the shade. From the number of people assembled one would have thought, if it had been in the United States, that some great mass convention was coming off. Under the impenetrable screen of the trees, in the dark, cool, refreshing shade, are thousands of chairs, for which one pays two cents apiece. Whole families come, locking up their door, bringing the baby, work, dinner, or lunch, take a certain number of chairs, and spend the day. As far as eye can reach you see a multitude seated, as if in church, with other multitudes moving to and fro, while boys and girls without number are frolicking, racing, playing ball, driving hoop, &c., but contriving to do it without making a hideous racket. How French children are taught to play and enjoy themselves without disturbing every body else, is a mystery. "C'est gentil" seems to be a talismanic spell; and "Ce n'est pas gentil ca" is sufficient to check every rising irregularity. O that some savant would write a book and tell us how it is done! I gazed for half an hour on the spectacle. A more charming sight my eyes never beheld. There were grayheaded old men, and women, and invalids; and there were beautiful demoiselles working worsted, embroidery, sewing; men reading papers; and, in fact, people doing every thing they would do in their own parlors. And all were graceful, kind, and obliging; not a word nor an act of impoliteness or indecency. No wonder the French adore Paris, thought I; in no other city in the world is a scene like this possible! No wonder that their hearts die within them at thoughts of exile in the fens of Cayenne!

But under all this there lie, as under the cultivated crust of this fair world, deep abysses of soul, where volcanic masses of molten lava surge and shake the tremulous earth. In the gay and bustling Boulevards, a friend, an old resident of Paris, poised out to me, as we rode, the bullet marks that scarred the houses—significant tokens of what seems, but is not, forgotten.

At sunset a military band of about seventy performers began playing in front of the Tuileries. They formed an immense circle, the leader in the centre. He played the octave flute, which also served as a baton for marking time. The music was characterized by delicacy, precision, suppression, and subjugation of rebellious material.

I imagined a congress of horns, clarinets, trumpets, &c., conversing in low tones on some important theme; nay, rather a conspiracy of instruments, mourning between whiles their subjugation, and ever and anon breaking out in a fierce emeute, then repressed, hushed, dying away; as if they had heard of Baron Munchausen's frozen horn, and had conceived the idea of yielding their harmonies without touch of human lips, yet were sighing and sobbing at their impotence. Perhaps I detected the pulses of a nation's palpitating heart, throbbing for liberty, but trodden down, and sobbing in despair.

In the evening Mrs. C. had her salon, a fashion of receiving one's friends on a particular night, that one wishes could be transplanted to American soil.

No invitations are given. It is simply understood that on such an evening, the season through, a lady receives her friends. All come that please, without ceremony. A little table is set out with tea and a plate of cake. Behind it presides some fairy Emma or Elizabeth, dispensing tea and talk, bonbons and bon-mots, with equal grace. The guests enter, chat, walk about, spend as much time, or as little, as they choose, and retire. They come when they please, and go when they please, and there is no notice taken of entree or exit, no time wasted in formal greetings and leave takings.

Up to this hour we had conversed little in French. One is naturally diffident at first; for if one musters courage to commence a conversation with propriety, the problem is how to escape a Scylla in the second and a Charybdis in the third sentence. Said one of our fair entertainers, "When I first began I would think of some sentence till I could say it without stopping, and courageously deliver myself to some guest or acquaintance." But it was like pulling the string of a shower bath. Delighted at my correct sentence, and supposing me au fait, they poured upon me such a deluge of French that I held my breath in dismay. Considering, however, that nothing is to be gained by half-way measures, I resolved upon a desperate game. Launching in, I talked away right and left, up hill and down,—jumping over genders, cases, nouns, and adjectives, floundering through swamps and morasses, in a perfect steeple chase of words. Thanks to the proverbial politeness of my friends, I came off covered with glory; the more mistakes I made the more complacent they grew.

Nothing can surpass the ease, facility, and genial freedom of these soirees. Conceive of our excellent professor of Arabic and Sanscrit, Count M. fairly cornered by three wicked fairies, and laughing at their stories and swift witticisms till the tears roll down his cheeks. Behold yonder tall and scarred veteran, an old soldier of Napoleon, capitulating now before the witchery of genius and wit. Here the noble Russian exile forgets his sorrows in those smiles that, unlike the aurora, warm while they dazzle. And our celebrated composer is discomposed easily by alert and nimble-footed mischief. And our professor of Greek and Hebrew roots is rooted to the ground with astonishment at finding himself put through all the moods and tenses of fun in a twinkling. Ah, culpable sirens, if the pangs ye have inflicted were reckoned up unto you,—the heart aches and side aches,—how could ye repose o' nights?

Saturday, June 11. Versailles! When I have written that one word I have said all. I ought to stop. Description is out of the question. Describe nine miles of painting! Describe visions of splendor and gorgeousness that cannot be examined in months! Suffice it to say that we walked from hall to hall until there was no more soul left within us. Then, late in the afternoon we drove away, about three miles, to the villa of M. Belloc, directeur de l'Ecole Imperials de Dessein. Madame Belloc has produced, assisted by her friend, Mademoiselle Montgolfier, the best French translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin. At this little family party we enjoyed ourselves exceedingly, in the heart of genuine domestic life. Two beautiful married daughters were there, with their husbands, and the household seemed complete. Madame B. speaks English well; and thus, with our limited French, we got on delightfully together. I soon discovered that I had been sinning against all law in admiring any thing at Versailles. They were all bad paintings. There might be one or two good paintings at the Luxembourg, and one or two good modern paintings at the Louvre—the Meduse, by Gericault, for example: (How I rejoiced that I had admired it!) But all the rest of the modern paintings M. Belloc declared, with an inimitable shrug, are poor paintings. There is nothing safely admirable, I find, but the old masters. All those battles of all famous French generals, from Charles Hartel to Napoleon, and the battles in Algiers, by Horace Yernet, are wholly to be snuffed at. In painting, as in theology, age is the criterion of merit. Yet Vernet's paintings, though decried by M. le Directeur, I admired, and told him so. Said I, in French as lawless as the sentiment, "Monsieur, I do not know the rules of painting, nor whether the picture is according to them or not; I only know that I like it."

But who shall describe the social charms of our dinner? All wedged together, as we were, in the snuggest little pigeon hole of a dining room, pretty little chattering children and all, whom papa held upon his knee and fed with bonbons, all the while impressing upon them the absolute necessity of their leaving the table! There the salad was mixed by acclamation, each member of the party adding a word of advice, and each, gayly laughing at the advice of the other. There a gay, red lobster was pulled in pieces among us, with infinite gout; and Madame Belloc pathetically expressed her fears that we did not like French cooking. She might have saved herself the trouble; for we take to it as naturally as ducks take to the water. And then, when we returned to the parlor, we resolved ourselves into a committee of the whole on coffee, which was concocted in a trim little hydrostatic engine of latest modern invention, before the faces of all. And so we right merrily spent the evening. H. discussed poetry and art with our kind hosts to her heart's content, and at a late hour we drove to the railroad, and returned to Paris.



LETTER XXXI.

MY DEAR L.:—

At last I have come into dreamland; into the lotus-eater's paradise; into the land where it is always afternoon. I am released from care; I am unknown, unknowing; I live in a house whose arrangements seem to me strange, old, and dreamy. In the heart of a great city I am as still as if in a convent; in the burning heats of summer our rooms are shadowy and cool as a cave. My time is all my own. I may at will lie on a sofa, and dreamily watch the play of the leaves and flowers, in the little garden into which my room opens; or I may go into the parlor adjoining, whence I hear the quick voices of my beautiful and vivacious young friends. You ought to see these girls. Emma might look like a Madonna, were it not for her wicked wit; and as to Anna and Lizzie, as they glance by me, now and then, I seem to think them a kind of sprite, or elf, made to inhabit shady old houses, just as twinkling harebells grow in old castles; and then the gracious mamma, who speaks French, or English, like a stream of silver—is she not, after all, the fairest of any of them? And there is Caroline, piquant, racy, full of conversation—sharp as a quartz crystal: how I like to hear her talk! These people know Paris, as we say in America, "like a book." They have studied it aesthetically, historically, socially. They have studied French people and French literature,—and studied it with enthusiasm, as people ever should, who would truly understand. They are all kindness to me. Whenever I wish to see any thing, I have only to speak; or to know, I have only to ask. At breakfast every morning we compare notes, and make up our list of wants. My first, of course, was the Louvre. It is close by us. Think of it. To one who has starved all a life, in vain imaginings of what art might be, to know that you are within a stone's throw of a museum full of its miracles, Greek, Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman sculptors and modern painting, all there!

I scarcely consider myself to have seen any thing of art in England. The calls of the living world were so various and exigeant, I had so little leisure for reflection, that, although I saw many paintings, I could not study them; and many times I saw them in a state of the nervous system too jaded and depressed to receive the full force of the impression. A day or two before I left, I visited the National Gallery, and made a rapid survey of its contents. There were two of Turner's masterpieces there, which he presented on the significant condition that they should hang side by side with their two finest Claudes. I thought them all four fine pictures, but I liked the Turners best. Yet I did not think any of them fine enough to form an absolute limit to human improvement. But, till I had been in Paris a day or two, perfectly secluded, at full liberty to think and rest, I did not feel that my time for examining art had really come.

It was, then, with a thrill almost of awe that I approached the Louvre. Here, perhaps, said I to myself, I shall answer, fully, the question that has long wrought within my soul, What is art? and what can it do? Here, perhaps, these yearnings for the ideal will meet their satisfaction. The ascent to the picture gallery tends to produce a flutter of excitement and expectation. Magnificent staircases, dim perspectives of frescoes and carvings, the glorious hall of Apollo, rooms with mosaic pavements, antique vases, countless spoils of art, dazzle the eye of the neophyte, and prepare the mind for some grand enchantment. Then opens on one the grand hall of paintings arranged by schools, the works of each artist by themselves, a wilderness of gorgeous growths.

I first walked through the whole, offering my mind up aimlessly to see if there were any picture there great and glorious enough to seize and control my whole being, and answer, at once, the cravings of the poetic and artistic element. For any such I looked in vain. I saw a thousand beauties, as also a thousand enormities, but nothing of that overwhelming, subduing nature which I had conceived. Most of the men there had painted with dry eyes and cool hearts, thinking only of the mixing of their colors and the jugglery of their art, thinking little of heroism, faith, love, or immortality. Yet when I had resigned this longing; when I was sure I should not meet there what I sought, then I began to enjoy very heartily what there was.

In the first place, I now saw Claudes worthy of the reputation he bore. Three or four of these were studied with great delight; the delight one feels, who, conscientiously bound to be delighted, suddenly comes into a situation to be so. I saw, now, those atmospheric traits, those reproductions of the mysteries of air, and of light, which are called so wonderful, and for which all admire Claude, but for which so few admire Him who made Claude, and who every day creates around us, in the commonest scenes, effects far more beautiful. How much, even now, my admiration of Claude was genuine, I cannot say. How can we ever be sure on this point, when we admire what has prestige and sanction, not to admire which is an argument against ourselves? Certainly, however, I did feel great delight in some of these works.

One of my favorites was Rembrandt. I always did admire the gorgeous and solemn mysteries of his coloring. Rembrandt is like Hawthorne. He chooses simple and everyday objects, and so arranges light and shadow as to give them a sombre richness and a mysterious gloom. The House of Seven Gables is a succession of Rembrandt pictures, done in words instead of oils. Now, this pleases us, because our life really is a haunted one; the simplest thing in it is a mystery, the invisible world always lies round us like a shadow, and therefore this dreamy golden gleam of Rembrandt meets somewhat in our inner consciousness to which it corresponds. There were no pictures in the gallery which I looked upon so long, and to which I returned so often and with such growing pleasure, as these. I found in them, if not a commanding, a drawing influence, a full satisfaction for one part of my nature.

There were Raphaels there, which still disappointed me, because from Raphael I asked and expected more. I wished to feel his hand on my soul with a stronger grasp; these were too passionless in their serenity, and almost effeminate in their tenderness.

But Rubens, the great, joyous, full-souled, all-powerful Rubens!—there he was, full as ever of triumphant, abounding life; disgusting and pleasing; making me laugh and making me angry; defying me to dislike him; dragging me at his chariot wheels; in despite of my protests forcing me to confess that there was no other but he.

This Medici gallery is a succession of gorgeous allegoric paintings, done at the instance of Mary of Medici, to celebrate the praise and glory of that family. I was predetermined not to like them for two reasons: first, that I dislike allegorical subjects; and second, that I hate and despise that Medici family and all that belongs to them. So no sympathy with the subjects blinded my eyes, and drew me gradually from all else in the hall to contemplate these. It was simply the love of power and of fertility that held me astonished, which seemed to express with nonchalant ease what other painters attain by laborious efforts. It occurred to me that other painters are famous for single heads, or figures, and that were the striking heads and figures with which these pictures abound to be parcelled out singly, any one of them would make a man's reputation. Any animal of Rubens, alone, would make a man's fortune in that department. His fruits and flowers are unrivalled for richness and abundance; his old men's Leads are wonderful; and when he chooses, which he does not often, he can even create a pretty woman. Generally speaking his women are his worst productions. It would seem that he had revolted with such fury from the meagre, pale, cadaverous outlines of womankind painted by his predecessors, the Van Eyks, whose women resembled potato sprouts grown in a cellar, that he altogether overdid the matter in the opposite direction. His exuberant soul abhors leanness as Nature abhors a vacuum; and hence all his women seem bursting their bodices with fulness, like overgrown carnations breaking out of their green calyxes. He gives you Venuses with arms fit to wield the hammer of Vulcan; vigorous Graces whose dominion would be alarming were they indisposed to clemency. His weakness, in fact, his besetting sin, is too truly described by Moses:—

"But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked; Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, Thou art covered with fatness."

Scornfully he is determined upon it; he will none of your scruples; his women shall be fat as he pleases, and you shall like him nevertheless.

In this Medici gallery the fault appears less prominent than elsewhere. Many of the faces are portraits, and there are specimens among them of female beauty, so delicate as to demonstrate that it was not from any want of ability to represent the softer graces that he so often becomes hard and coarse. My friend, M. Belloc, made the remark that the genius of Rubens was somewhat restrained in these pictures, and chastened by the rigid rules of the French school, and hence in them he is more generally pleasing.

I should compare Rubens to Shakspeare, for the wonderful variety and vital force of his artistic power. I know no other mind he so nearly resembles. Like Shakspeare, he forces you to accept and to forgive a thousand excesses, and uses his own faults as musicians use discords, only to enhance the perfection of harmony. There certainly is some use even in defects. A faultless style sends you to sleep. Defects rouse and excite the sensibility to seek and appreciate excellences. Some of Shakspeare's finest passages explode all grammar and rhetoric like skyrockets—the thought blows the language to shivers.

As to Murillo, there are two splendid specimens of his style here, as exquisite as any I have seen; but I do not find reason to alter the judgment I made from my first survey.

Here is his celebrated picture of the Assumption of the Virgin, which we have seen circulated in print shops in America, but which appears of a widely different character in the painting. The Virgin is rising in a flood of amber light, surrounded by clouds and indistinct angel figures. She is looking upward with clasped hands, as in an ecstasy: the crescent moon is beneath her feet. The whole tone of the picture— the clouds, the drapery, her flowing hair—are pervaded with this amber tint, sublimated and spiritual. Do I, then, like it? No. Does it affect me? Not at all. Why so? Because this is a subject requiring earnestness; yet, after all, there is no earnestness of religious feeling expressed. It is a surface picture, exquisitely painted—the feeling goes no deeper than the canvas. But how do I know Murillo has no earnestness in the religious idea of this piece? How do I know, when reading Pope's Messiah, that he was not in earnest—that he was only most exquisitely reproducing what others had thought? Does he not assume, in the most graceful way, the language of inspiration and holy rapture? But, through it all, we feel the satisfied smirk of the artist, and the fine, sharp touch of his diamond file. What is done from a genuine, strong, inward emotion, whether in writing or painting, always mesmerizes the paper, or the canvas, and gives it a power which every body must feel, though few know why. The reason why the Bible has been omnipotent, in all ages, has been because there were the emotions of GOD in it; and of paintings nothing is more remarkable than that some preserve in them such a degree of genuine vital force that one can never look on them with indifference; while others, in which every condition of art seems to be met, inspire no strong emotion.

Yet this picture is immensely popular. Hundreds stand enchanted before it, and declare it imbodies their highest ideal of art and religion; and I suppose it does. But so it always is. The man who has exquisite gifts of expression passes for more, popularly, than the man with great and grand ideas who utters but imperfectly. There are some pictures here by Correggio—a sleeping Venus and Cupid—a marriage of the infant Jesus and St. Catharine. This Correggio is the poet of physical beauty. Light and shadow are his god. What he lives for is, to catch and reproduce fitting phases of these. The moral is nothing to him, and, in his own world, he does what he seeks. He is a great popular favorite, since few look for more in a picture than exquisite beauty understood between us that his sphere is to be earth, and not heaven; were he to attempt, profanely, to represent heavenly things, I must rebel. I should as soon want Tom Moore to write me a prayer book.

A large saloon is devoted to the masters of the French school. The works of no living artists are admitted. There are some large paintings by David. He is my utter aversion. I see in him nothing but the driest imitation of the classics. It would be too much praise to call it reproduction. David had neither heart nor soul. How could he be and artist?—he who coolly took his portfolio to the guillotine to take lessons on the dying agonies of its victims—how could he ever paint any thing to touch the heart?

In general, all French artists appear to me to have been very much injured by a wrong use of classic antiquity. Nothing could be more glorious and beautiful than the Grecian development; nothing more unlike it that the stale, wearisome, repetitious imitations of it in modern times. The Greek productions themselves have a living power to this day; but all imitations of them are cold and tiresome. These old Greeks made such beautiful things, because they did not imitate. That mysterious vitality which still imbues their remains, and which seems to enchant even the fragments of their marbles, is the mesmeric vitality of fresh, original conception. Art, built upon this, is just like what the shadow of a beautiful woman is to the woman. One gets tired in these galleries of the classic band, and the classic headdress, and the classic attitude, and the endless repetition of the classic urn, and vase, and lamp, as if nothing else were ever to be made in the world except these things.

Again: in regard to this whole French gallery, there is much of a certain quality which I find it very difficult to describe in any one word—a dramatic smartness, a searching for striking and peculiar effects, which render the pictures very likely to please on first sight, and to weary on longer acquaintance. It seems to me to be the work of a race whose senses and perceptions of the outward have been cultivated more than the deep inward emotions. Few of the pictures seem to have been the result of strong and profound feeling, of habits of earnest and concentrated thought. There is an abundance of beautiful little phases of sentiment, pointedly expressed; there is a great deal of what one should call the picturesque of the morale; but few of its foundation ideas. I must except from these remarks the very strong and earnest painting of the Meduse, by Gericault, which C. has described. That seems to me to be the work of a man who had not seen human life and suffering merely on the outside, but had felt, in the very depths of his soul, the surging and earthquake of those mysteries of passion and suffering which underlie our whole existence in this world. To me it was a picture too mighty and too painful—whose power I confessed, but which I did not like to contemplate.

On the whole, French painting is to me an exponent of the great difficulty and danger of French life; that passion for the outward and visible, which all their education, all the arrangements of their social life, every thing in their art and literature, tends continually to cultivate and increase. Hence they have become the leaders of the world in what I should call the minor artistics—all those little particulars which render life beautiful. Hence there are more pretty pictures, and popular lithographs, from France than from any other country in the world; but it produces very little of the deepest and highest style of art.

In this connection I may as well give you my Luxembourg experience, as it illustrates the same idea. I like Paul de la Roche, on the whole, although I think he has something of the fault of which I speak. He has very great dramatic power; but it is more of the kind shown by Walter Scott than of the kind shown by Shakspeare. He can reproduce historical characters with great vividness and effect, and with enough knowledge of humanity to make the verisimilitude admirably strong; but as to the deep knowledge with which Shakspeare searches the radical elements of the human soul, he has it not. His Death of Queen Elizabeth is a strong Walter Scott picture; so are his Execution of Strafford, and his Charles I., which I saw in England.

As to Horace Vernet, I do not think he is like either Scott or Shakspeare. In him this French capability for rendering the outward is wrought to the highest point; and it is outwardness as pure from any touch of inspiration or sentiment as I ever remember to have seen. He is graphic to the utmost extreme. His horses and his men stand from the canvas to the astonishment of all beholders. All is vivacity, bustle, dazzle, and show. I think him as perfect, of his kind, as possible; though it is a kind of art with which I do not sympathize.

The picture of the Decadence de Rome indicates to my mind a painter who has studied and understood the classical forms; vitalizing them, by the reproductive force of his own mind, so as to give them the living power of new creations. In this picture is a most grand and melancholy moral lesson. The classical forms are evidently not introduced because they are classic, but in subservience to the expression of the moral. In the orgies of the sensualists here represented he gives all the grace and beauty of sensuality without its sensualizing effect. Nothing could be more exquisite than the introduction of the busts of the departed heroes of the old republic, looking down from their pedestals on the scene of debauchery below. It is a noble picture, which I wish was hung up in the Capitol of our nation to teach our haughty people that as pride, and fulness of bread, and laxness of principle brought down the old republics, so also ours may fall. Although the outward in this painting, and the classical, is wrought to as fine a point as in any French picture, it is so subordinate to the severity of the thought, that while it pleases it does not distract.

But to return to the Louvre. The halls devoted to paintings, of which I have spoken, give you very little idea of the treasures of the institution. Gallery after gallery is filled with Greek, Roman, Assyrian, and Egyptian sculptures, coins, vases, and antique remains of every description. There is, also, an apartment in which I took a deep interest, containing the original sketches of ancient masters. Here one may see the pen and ink drawings of Claude, divided into squares to prepare them for the copyist. One compares here with interest the manners of the different artists in jotting down their ideas as they rose; some by chalk, some by crayon, some by pencil, some by water colors, and some by a heterogeneous mixture of all. Mozart's scrap bag of musical jottings could not have been more amusing.

On the whole, cravings of mere ideality have come nearer to meeting satisfaction by some of these old mutilated remains of Greek sculpture than any thing which I have met yet. In the paintings, even of the most celebrated masters, there are often things which are excessively annoying to me. I scarcely remember a master in whose works I have not found a hand, or foot, or face, or feature so distorted, or coloring at times so unnatural, or something so out of place and proportion in the picture as very seriously to mar the pleasure that I derived from it. In this statuary less is attempted, and all is more harmonious, and one's ideas of proportion are never violated.

My favorite among all these remains is a mutilated statue which they call the Venus de Milon. This is a statue which is so called from having been dug up some years ago, piecemeal, in the Island of Milos. There was quite a struggle for her between a French naval officer, the English, and the Turks. The French officer carried her off like another Helen, and she was given to Paris, old Louis Philippe being bridegroom by proxy. Savans refer the statue to the time of Phidias; and as this is a pleasant idea to me, I go a little further, and ascribe her to Phidias himself.

The statue is much mutilated, both arms being gone, and part of the foot. But there is a majesty and grace in the head and face, a union of loveliness with intellectual and moral strength, beyond any thing which I have ever seen. To me she might represent Milton's glorious picture of unfallen, perfect womanhood, in his Eve:—

"Yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems, And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her, Loses discountenanced, and like folly shows. Authority and reason on her wait, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally; and to consummate all, Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat Build in her, loveliest, and create an awe About her, like a guard angelic placed."

Compared with this matchless Venus, that of Medici seems as inane and trifling as mere physical beauty always must by the side of beauty baptized, and made sacramental, as the symbol of that which alone is truly fair.

With regard to the arrangements of the Louvre, they seem to me to be admirable. No nation has so perfectly the qualifications to care for, keep, and to show to best advantage a gallery of art as the French.

During the heat of the outburst that expelled Louis Philippe from the throne, the Louvre was in some danger of destruction. Destructiveness is a native element of human nature, however repressed by society; and hence every great revolutionary movement always brings to the surface some who are for indiscriminate demolition. Moreover there is a strong tendency in the popular mind, where art and beauty have for many years been monopolized as the prerogative of a haughty aristocracy, to identify art and beauty with oppression; this showed itself in England and Scotland in the general storm which wrecked the priceless beauty of the ecclesiastical buildings. It was displaying itself in the same manner in Germany during the time of the reformation, and had not Luther been gifted with a nature as strongly aesthetic as progressive, would have wrought equal ruin there. So in the first burst of popular enthusiasm that expelled the monarchy, the cry was raised by some among the people, "We shall never get rid of kings till we pull down the palaces;" just the echo of the old cry in Scotland, "Pull down the nests, and the rooks will fly away." The populace rushed in to the splendid halls and saloons of the Louvre, and a general encampment was made among the pictures. In this crisis a republican artist named Jeanron saved the Louvre; saved the people the regret that must have come over them had they perpetrated barbarisms, and Liberty the shame of having such outrages wrought in her name. Appointed by the provisional government to the oversight of the Louvre, and well known among the people as a republican, he boldly came to the rescue. "Am I not one of you?" he said. "Am I not one of the people? These splendid works of art, are they not ours? Are they not the pride and glory of our country? Shall we destroy our most glorious possession in the first hour of its passing into our hands?"