Part 2

The afternoon wears away slowly with the passengers. They say but little to one another, but look about them from the security of the wheel-house as if they were oppressed with a sense of the inestimable value of strong cordage. As twilight approaches, and all hands are just engaged in taking supper, after having "mended the reefs," the ship meets a staggering sea, which seems to start every timber in her firm-set frame, and our main-top-gallant-mast breaks off like a stick of candy. Such things generally happen just at night, the sailors say, when the difficulties of clearing away the broken rigging are increased by the darkness. Straightway the captain's big, manly voice is heard above the war-whoop of the gale, ringing out as Signor Badiali's was wont to in the third act of Ernani. The wind seems to pin the men to the ratlines as they clamber up; but all the difficulties are overcome at length; the broken mast is lowered down, and snugly stowed away; and before nine o'clock all is quiet, except the howling wind, which seems to have determined to make a night of it. And such a night! It is one of those times that make one want one's mother. There is little sleeping done except among the "watch below" in the forecastle, who snore away their four hours as if they appreciated the reasoning of Mr. Dibdin when he extols the safety of the open sea as compared with the town with its falling chimneys and flying tiles, and commiserates the condition of the unhappy shore-folks in such a tempestuous time. The thumping of the sea against our wooden walls, the swash of water on deck as the ship rolls and pitches as you would think it impossible for any thing addicted to the cold water movement to roll or pitch, and over all the wild, changeless, shrieking of the gale, will not suffer sleep to visit those who are not inured to such things. Tired of bracing up with knee, and hand, and heel, to keep in their berths, they lie and wonder how many such blows as that our good ship could endure, and think that if June gets up such gales on the North Atlantic, they have no wish to try the quality of those of January.

Morning comes at last, and every heart is cheered by the captain's announcement, as he passes through the cabin, that the barometer is rising, and the weather has begun to improve. Some of the more hopeful and energetic of our company turn out and repair to the deck. The leaden clouds are broken up, and the sun trying to struggle through them; but to the inexperienced the gale appears to be as severe as it was yesterday. All the discomfort and danger of the time are forgotten, however, in the fearful magnificence of the spectacle that surrounds us. As far as the eye can reach it seems like a confused field of battle, where snowy plumes and white flowing manes show where the shock of war is felt most severely. To watch the gathering of one of those mighty seas that so often work destruction with the noblest ships,--to see it gradually piling up until it seems to be impelled by a fury almost intelligent,--to be dazzled by its emerald flash when it erects its stormy head the highest, and breaks into a field of boiling foam, as if enraged at being unable to reach us;--these are things which are worth all the anxiety and peril that they cost.

The captain's prognostications prove correct. Our appetites at dinner bear witness to them; and before sunset we find our ship (curtailed of its fair proportion, it is true, by the loss of its main-top-gallant-mast) is under full sail once more. The next day we have a few hours' calm, and when a light breeze does spring up, it comes from the old easterly quarter. It begins to seem as if we were fated to sail forever, and never get any where. But patience wears out even a head wind, and at last the long-looked-for change takes place. The wind slowly hauls to the south, and many are the looks taken at the compass to see how nearly the ship can come up to her course. Then our impatience is somewhat allayed by speaking a ship which has been out twelve days longer than our own--for, if it be true, as Rochefoucauld says, that "there is something not unpleasing to us in the misfortunes of our best friends,"--how keen must be the satisfaction of finding a stranger-companion in adversity. The wind, though steady, is not very strong, and many fears are expressed lest it should die away and give Eurus another three weeks' chance. But our forebodings are not realized, and a sunshiny day comes when we are all called up from dinner to see a long cloud-like affair, (very like a whale,) which, we are told, is the Old Head of Kinsale. Straightway all begin to talk of getting on shore the next day; but when that comes, we find that we are drawing towards Holyhead very rapidly, as our favourable wind has increased to a gale--so that when we have got round Holyhead, and have taken our pilot, (that burly visitor whose coming every one welcomes, and whose departure every one would speed,) the aforesaid pilot heaves the ship to, and, having a bed made up on the cabin floor, composes himself to sleep. The next morning finds the gale abated, and early in the forenoon we are running up to the mouth of the river. The smoke (that first premonitory symptom of an English town) hangs over Liverpool, and forms a strong contrast with the bright green fields and verdant hedges which deck the banks of the Mersey. The ship, after an immense amount of vocal power has been expended in that forcible diction which may be termed the marine vernacular, is got into dock, and in the afternoon a passage of thirty-three days is concluded by our stepping once more upon the "inviolate island of the sage and free," and following our luggage up the pier, with a swing in our gait which any stage sailor would have viewed with envy. The examination at the Custom House is conducted with a politeness and despatch worthy of imitation among the officials of our Uncle Samuel. The party of passengers disperses itself about in various hotels, without any circumstance to hinder their progress except falling in with an exhibition of Punch and Judy, which makes the company prolific in quotations from the sayings of Messrs. Codlin and Short, and at last the family which never had its harmonious unity disturbed by any thing, is broken up forever.

Liverpool wears its old thriving commercial look--perhaps it is a few shades darker with smoke. The posters are on a more magnificent scale, both as regards size and colour, than ever before, and tell not only of the night's amusements, but promise the acquisition of wealth outrunning the dreams of avarice in lands beyond the farthest Thule. Melbourne and Port Philip vie in the most gorgeous colours with San Francisco; and the United States seem to have spread wide their capacious arms to welcome the down-trodden Irishman. Liverpool seems to be the gate to all the rest of the world. I almost fear to walk about lest I should find myself starting off, in a moment of temporary insanity, for Greenland's icy mountains, or India's coral strand.

LONDON

Dull must he be of soul who could make the journey from Liverpool to the metropolis in the month of June, and not be lifted above himself by the surpassing loveliness of dear mother Nature. Even if he were chained to a ledger and cash book--if he never had a thought or wish beyond the broker's board, and his entire reading were the prices current--he must forget them all, and feel for the time what a miserable sham his life is--or he does not deserve the gift of sight. It is Thackeray, I think, who speaks somewhere of the "charming friendly English landscape that seems to shake hands with you as you pass along"--and any body who has seen it in June will say that this is hardly a figurative expression. I used to think that it was my enthusiastic love for the land of the great Alfred which made it seem so beautiful to me when I was younger; but I find that it wears too well to be a mere fancy of my own brain. People may complain of the humid climate of England, and curse the umbrella which must accompany them whenever they walk out; but when the sun does shine, it shines upon a scene of beautiful fertility unequalled elsewhere in the world, and which the moist climate produces and preserves. And then, too, it seems doubly grateful to the eyes of one just come from sea. The bright freshness of the whole landscape, the varied tints of green, the trim hedges, the luxuriant foliage which springs from the very trunks of the trees, and the high state of cultivation which makes the whole country look as if it had been swept and dusted that morning,--all these things strike an American, for he cannot help contrasting them with the parched fields of his own land in summer, surrounded by their rough fences and hastily piled-up stone walls. The solidity of the houses and cottages, which look as if they were built, not for an age, but for all time, makes him think of the country houses of America, which seem to have grown up in a night, like our friend Aladdin's, and whose frailty is so apparent that you cannot sneeze in one of them without apprehending a serious calamity. Then the embankments of the railways present not only a pleasant sight to the eye of the traveller, but a pretty little hay crop to the corporation; and at every station, and bridge, and crossing, wherever there is a switch to be tended, you see the neat cottages of the keepers, and the gardens thereof--the railway companies having learned that the expenditure of a few hundred pounds in this way saves an expenditure of many thousands in surgeons' bills and damages, and is far more satisfactory to all concerned.

What a charming sight is a cow--what a look of contentment she has--ambitious of nothing beyond the field of daily duty, and never looking happier than when she comes at night to yield a plenteousness of that fluid without which custards were an impossibility! Wordsworth says that "heaven lies about us in our infancy"--surely he must mean that portion of the heavens called by astronomers the Milky Way. It is pleasant to see a cow by the side of a railway--provided she is fenced from danger--to see her lift her head slowly as the train goes whizzing by, and gaze with those mild, tranquil eyes upon the noisy, smoke-puffing monster,--just as the saintly hermits of olden times might have looked from their serene heights of contemplation upon the dusty, bustling world. The taste of the English farmers for fine cattle is attested by a glance at any of their pastures. On every side you see the representatives of Alderney's bovine aristocracy; and scores of cattle crop the juicy grass, rivalling in their snowy whiteness any that ever reclined upon Clitumno's "mild declivity of hill," or admired their graceful horns in its clear waters. Until I saw them, I never comprehended what farmers meant when they spoke of "neat cattle."

What an eloquent preacher is an old church-tower! Moss-crowned and ivy-robed, it lifts its head, unshaken by the tempests of centuries, as it did in the days when King John granted the Great Charter or the holy Edward ruled the realm, and tells of the ages when England was one in faith, and not a poor-house existed throughout the land. Like a faithful sentinel, it stands guard over the humbler edifices around it, and warns their inhabitants alike of their dangers and their duties by the music of its bells. Erect in silent dignity, it receives the first beams of the morning, and when twilight has begun to shroud every thing in its neighbourhood, the flash of sunset lingers on its gray summit. It looks down with sublime indifference upon the changing scene below, as if it would reproach the actors there with their forgetfulness of the transitoriness of human pursuits, and remind them, by its unchangeableness, of the eternal years.

At last we draw near London. A gentleman, whose age I would not attempt to guess,--for he was very carefully made up, and boasted a deportment which would have excited the envy of Mr. Turveydrop, senior,--so far forgot his dignity as to lean forward and inform me that the place we were passing was "'Arrow on the 'Ill," which made me forget for the moment both his appearance and his uncalled-for "exasperation of the haitches." Not long after, I found myself issuing from the magnificent terminus of the North Western Railway, in Euston Square, in a cab marked V. R. 10,276. The cab and omnibus drivers of London are a distinct race of beings. Who can write their natural history? Who is competent to such a task? The researches of a Pritchard, a Pickering, a Smyth, would seem to cover the whole subject of the history of the human species from the anthropophagi and bosjesmen to the drinkers of train oil in the polar regions; but the cabmen are not included. They would require a master mind. The subject would demand the patient investigation of a Humboldt, the eloquence of a Macaulay, and the humour of a Dickens--and even then would fall short, I fear, of giving an adequate idea of them. Your London cab driver has no idea of distance; as, for instance, I ask one the simple question,--

"How far is it to the Angel in Islington?"

"Wot, sir?"

I repeat my interrogatory.

"Oh, the Hangel, sir! Four shillings."

"No, no. I mean what distance."

"Well, say three, then, sir."

"But I mean--what distance? How many miles?"

"O, come, sir, jump in--don't be 'ard on a fellow--I 'aven't 'ad a fare to-day. Call it 'arf a crown, sir."

Leigh Hunt says somewhere that if there were such a thing as metamorphosis, Dr. Johnson would desire to be transformed into an omnibus, that he might go rolling along the streets whose very pavements were the objects of his ardent affection. And he was about right. What better place is there in this world to study human nature than an omnibus? All classes meet there; in the same coach you may see them all--from the poor workwoman to the genteelly dressed lady, who looks as if she disapproved of such conveyances, but must ride nevertheless--from the young sprig, who is constantly anxious lest some profane foot should dim the polish of his boots, to the urbane old gentleman, who regrets his corpulence, and would take less room if he could. And then the top of the omnibus, which usually carries four or more passengers, what a place is that to see the tide of life which flows unceasingly through the streets of London! I know of nothing which can furnish more food for thought than a ride on an omnibus from Brompton to the Bank on a fine day. It is a pageant, in which all the wealth, pomp, power, and prosperity of this world pass before you; and for a moral to the whirling scene, you must go to the nearest churchyard.

London is ever the same. The omnibuses follow each other as rapidly as ever up and down the Strand, the white-gloved, respectable-looking policemen walk about as deliberately, and the tail of the lion over the gate of Northumberland House sticks out as straight as ever. The only great change visible here is in the newspapers. The tone of society is so different from what it was formerly, in all that concerns France, that the editors must experience considerable trouble in accustoming themselves to the new state of things. Once, France and Louis Napoleon furnished Punch with his chief materials for satire and amusement, and if any of the larger and more dignified journals wished to let off a little ill humour, or to say any thing particularly bitter, they only had to dip their pens in _Gaul_; but times are changed, and now nothing can be said too strong in favour of "our chivalric allies, the French." The memory of St. Helena seems to have given place to what they call here the _entente cordiale_, which those who are acquainted with the French language assure me means an agreement by which one party contracts to "play second fiddle" to another, through fear that if he does not he will not be permitted to play at all.

To the man who thoroughly appreciates the Essays of Elia, and Boswell's Life of Johnson, London can never grow tiresome. He can never turn a corner without finding "something new, something to please, and something to instruct." Its very pavements are classical. And there is nothing to abate, nor detract from, such a man's enthusiasm. The traveller who visits the Roman Forum, or the Palace of the Caesars, experiences a sad check when he finds his progress impeded by unpoetical obstacles. But in London, all is harmonious; he sees on every side, not only that which tells of present life and prosperity, but the perennial glories of England's former days. Would he study history, he goes to the Tower, "rich with the spoils of time"; or to Whitehall, where mad fanaticism consummated its treasonable work with the murder of a sovereign; or to the towering minster, to gaze upon the chair in which the monarchs of a thousand years have sat; or to view the monuments, and read the epitaphs, of that host of

"Bards, heroes, sages, side by side, Who darkened nations when they died."

Is he a lover of English literature? Here are scenes eloquent of that goodly company of wits and worthies, whose glowing pages have been the delight of his youth and the consolation of his riper years; here are the streets in which they walked, the taverns in which they feasted, the churches where they prayed, the tombs where they repose.

And London wears well. To revisit it when age has sobered down the enthusiasm of youth, is not like seeing a theatre by daylight; but you think almost that you have under-estimated your privileges. How well I remember the night when I first arrived in the metropolis! It was after ten o'clock, and I was much fatigued; but before I booked myself in my hotel, or looked at my room, I rushed out into the Strand, "with breathless speed, like a soul in chase." I pushed along, now turning to look at Temple Bar, now pausing to take breath as I went up Ludgate Hill. I saw St. Paul's and its dome before me, and I was satisfied. No, I was not satisfied; for when I returned up Fleet Street, I looked out dear old Bolt Court, and entered its Johnsonian precincts with an awe and veneration which a devout Mussulman, taking the early train for Mecca, would gladly imitate. And then I posted down Inner Temple Lane, and looked at the house in which Charles Lamb and his companions held their "Wednesday nights"; and, going still farther, I saw the river--I stood on the bank of the Thames, and I was satisfied. I looked, and all the associations of English history and literature which are connected with it filled my mind--but just as I was getting into a fine frenzy about it, a watchman hove in sight, and the old clock chimed out eleven. So I started on, and soon reached my hotel. I was accosted on my way thither by a young and gayly dressed lady, whom I did not remember ever to have seen before, but who expressed her satisfaction at meeting me, in the most cordial terms. I told her that I thought that it must be a mistake, and she responded with a laugh which very much shocked an elderly gentleman who was passing, who looked as if he might have been got up for the part of the uncle of the unhappy G. Barnwell. I have since learned that such mistakes and personal misapprehensions very frequently occur in London in the evening.

Speaking of Temple Bar, it gratifies me to see that this venerable gateway still stands, "unshaken, unseduced, unterrified," by any of the recent attempts to effect its removal. The old battered and splashed doors are perhaps more unsightly than before; but the statues look down with the same benignity upon the crowd of cabs and omnibuses, and the never-ending tide of humanity which flows beneath them, as they did upon the Rake's Progress, so many years ago. The sacrilegious commissioners of streets long to get at it with their crows and picks, but the shade of Dr. Johnson watches over the barrier of his earthly home. It is not an ornamental affair, to be sure, and it would be difficult for Mr. Choate, even, to defend it against the charge of being an obstruction; but its associations with the literature and history of the last two or three centuries ought to entitle its dingy arches to a certain degree of reverence, even in our progressive and irreverent age. The world would be a loser by the demolition of this ancient landmark, and London, if it should lose this, though it might still be the metropolis of the British empire, would cease to be the London of Johnson and Goldsmith, of Addison and Pope, of Swift and Hogarth.

Perhaps some may think, from what I have said in the commencement of this letter, that my enthusiasm has blinded me to those great moral and social evils which are apparent in English civilization; but it is not so. I love England rather for what she has been than for what she is; I love the England of Alfred and St. Edward; and when I contrast the present state with what it might have been under a succession of such rulers, I cannot but grieve. Truly the court of St. James under Victoria is not what it was under Charles II., nor even under Mr. Thackeray's favourite hero, "the great George IV.,"--but are not St. James and St. Giles farther apart than ever before? Is not Lazarus looked upon as a nuisance, which legislation ought, for decency's sake, to put out of the way? What does England do for the poor? Nothing; absolutely nothing, if you except a system of workhouses, compared with which prisons are delightful residences, and which seems to have been intended more for the punishment of poverty than as a work of charity. No; on the contrary, she discountenances works of charity; when a few earnest men among the clergy of her divided church make an effort in that direction, there is an outcry, and they must be put down; and their bishops, whose annual incomes are larger than the whole treasury of Alfred, admonish them to beware how they thus imitate the superstitions of the middle ages. No; your Englishman of the present day has something better to do than to look after the beggar at his doorstep; he is too respectable a man for that; he pays his "poor rates," and the police must order the thing of shreds and patches to "move on"; his progress must not be impeded, for his presence is required at a meeting of the friends of Poland, or of Italy, or of a society for the abolition of American slavery, and he has no time to waste on such common, every-day matters as the improvement of the miserable wretches who work his coal mines, or of those quarters of the town where vice parades its deformity with exulting pride, and the air is heavy with pestilence. There is proportionably more beggary in London at this hour than in any continental city. And such beggary! Not the comfortable, jolly-looking beggars you may see in Rome or Naples, who know that charity is enjoined upon the people as a religious duty, but the thin, pallid, high-cheeked supplicants, whose look is a petition which tells a more effective story than words can frame of destitution and starvation.