Max Schlesinger

CHAPTER I.
Down the Thames.

RIVER SCENE AT LONDON BRIDGE.—COLLIERS FROM NEWCASTLE.—THE CUSTOM HOUSE.—THE POOL.—THE DANGERS OF THE THAMES.—AN ENGLISHMAN AFLOAT.—RE-APPEARANCE OF DR. KEIF AND MR. BAXTER.—BOATING SCENES.—THE THAMES TUNNEL.—PRIVATE DOCKS.—HOW ENGLISHMEN BUILD SHIPS FOR FOREIGNERS.—GREENWICH.—OLD SOLDIERS IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY.—HOTELS AND POT-HOUSES.—GREENWICH PARK.

AGAIN we have reached the foot of London Bridge, the first of those mighty arched and pillared bulwarks, which oppose the onward progress of ocean ships into the heart of the country. The river at this point is nothing but a large settlement of steamers and boats of every description. On our first tour up the river, we saw many groups of small steamers and fishing-boats, with sails of a dusky red; but the masts of the boats were lowered, and the steamers were of a lilliputian kind—undergrown, low-funnelled, small-engined and paddle-wheeled. They were passenger-boats, plying between the bridges. The class of vessels we see here have a more important appearance. You see at once that these are no water penny omnibuses, coasting it between the City and Putney Bridge. Here are broad black hulls, double funnels and capacious ones, high masts, and boats hauled up at the sides; all tell us that these are hardy customers, that can stand a stiff breeze in the Channel and elsewhere. Some of them swing lazily on their moorings; they have just come in from a voyage, and are taking their ease at home. Others blow vast clouds of steam and black smoke; flags are being hoisted on them, hundreds of people cross and recross on the planks which communicate with the wharf or with other vessels. They are just starting—whither? I, for one, know nothing about it. A sailor could tell you all about them; he reads the character of a ship in the cut of its jib; but we continentals, who are scarcely at home in our country, are perfectly lost in this Babel of foreign vessels and seamen. Even for one short trip to Greenwich—we are starting for Greenwich, you know—we had better ask some porter or policeman to direct us to the boat we want, lest by some mistake we might chance to go to Hamburg, Boulogne, or Antwerp. Such things have happened.

Here we are! On a small steamer, next to a black Scotch coaster, crowded to suffocation, and just casting off. The boy at the hatch is waiting for the captain’s signal; and the captain, walking his paddle-box, moves his hand; the boy calls out, the engineer makes a corresponding movement, and the steam enters the large cylinders. The machinery is in motion, and the vessel has left the shore. “Dont be in a hurry, miss! You can’t leap that distance. You’ve missed the boat, as a thousand respectable girls do daily, amidst these vast comings and goings of London. There will be another Greenwich steamer in five minutes; so the misfortune, after all, is not very great!”

What an astounding spectacle the Thames presents at this very point below London Bridge! In autumn, when the great merchantmen, heavily laden, coming in from all parts of the world, cast their bales and casks on the shore, from whence a thousand channels of trade convey them to and distribute them over the whole of the earth—in autumn, I say, this part of the river presents a spectacle of a mighty, astounding activity, with which no other river can vie. The vessels are crowded together by fifties and hundreds on either side. Colossal steamers, running between the coast-towns of France, Germany, and Scotland, have here dropped their anchors, waiting until the days of their return for passengers and merchandise. Their little boats dance on the waves, their funnels are cold and smokeless, their furnaces extinct. Sailors walk to and fro on the decks, looking wistfully at the varying panorama of London life. In a semi-circle round those steamers are the black ships of the North. They are black all over; the decks, the bows, the sides, the rigging, and the crew, have all the same dusky hue. These vessels carry the dark diamond of England—they are colliers from Newcastle. The industrial and political greatness of England springs from the depth of those coal-mines. Deprive the British islands of their coal, give them gold, silver, diamonds, instead—fill their mines with all the coins that the kings of this earth ever minted since the creation of the world—no matter! not these, not all the untold treasures of Australia Felix, would supply that living spark which slumbers in the coal. Without their inexhaustible coal-mines, the English nation would still be what they were a thousand years ago, an island people—poor, weak, and neglected, like the Norwegians.

It is so easy to find fault with God and nature instead of our dear selves. Do me the favour to look at this earth of ours! Of all zones, climes, and countries, how few, how very few there are without some unacknowledged treasure, which, if properly appreciated and turned to account would make a nation’s fortune. Are the British Nature’s favourites? Is their climate more genial; their soil more fertile than those of the countries we and others live in? No! but the difference lies in the use which the English have made of gifts and opportunities common to all. Their soil produces the finest crops in Europe; a grain of British wheat might be picked out of a thousand grains of continental wheat. Out of their coal-mines they have raised the greatest industrial empire that the world ever knew. Of the stormy channel and the ocean, which beat against their rocky coasts, they have made bridges on which their spirit of enterprise careers and domineers over all the world. Water, earth, air, and fire! from these elements sprang the greatness of England. They are common to all; but those who know how to convert them into power, prosperity and comfort, are justly pre-eminent as the most practical nation.

Our boat has just passed the Custom-house. It is a splendid building; it has been burnt down six times, and six times rebuilt on the same site. Radical Free-traders dislike the building where it stands; they would gladly convert it into a hospital, a poorhouse, or a commercial academy. It will take a long time to realise these liberal intentions; for at this present day duties to the amount £12,000,000 are paid in the port of London alone. Nevertheless, the English swear by Free-trade! The vessels which come to London must all appear at the forum of this Custom-house, unless they prefer leaving their cargo in the docks or the bonded warehouses. What crowds of sailing-ships and steamers from all the harbours of the world! What goings and comings; what loadings and unloadings; what a bewildering movement this Custom-house presents! It is actually painful to the eye. And now, thank goodness, we have left all this turmoil behind us.

The further we go down the river, the more closely packed are the vessels on either side. For above two miles the broad Thames is wofully narrow; and the steamers, which run up and down must just pick their way through as best they can. Accidents will happen; and the man at the wheel must keep a sharp look out. Those who never sailed on the Thames, have no idea of the number of black funnelled monsters, yclept steamers, which continually whisk past one another. There is one just now steering right down upon us; within another second our sides must be stove in. Well done! She has turned aside, and rushes past. But scarcely is the danger over, when another monster of the deep comes paddling on; and a large schooner is wedging its way between us and the said monster of the deep; and on our right there is an awkward Dutchman, swinging round on her anchor; and on our left, there is a lubber of a collier, with her gun-wales just sticking out of the water; and there, goodness gracious! there it is—a very nut-shell of a boat, and two women in it, passing close under our bows. I really dont know why we did not upset them, and why the others did not run into us. That nut-shell of a boat had a narrow escape among the steamers, and those women were fully aware of it; and there is no end of accidents, and yet those people will row across the river.

It is a perfect blessing that the English know better than anybody else how to steer a boat under difficulties. Look at that man at the wheel! Immoveable, with his head bent forward, his eyes directed to the ship’s course, his hands ready to turn the wheel: that fellow knows what steering on the Thames is! To all appearance, it is not near so difficult as rope-dancing, but I say it’s worse than rope-dancing; it requires the most consummate address. And then there’s the responsibility! The sailors of all nations stand in great awe of the London Thames. They navigate their vessels to the East Indies; they weather the storms of the Cape, and think nothing of its blowing “big guns;” but none of them would undertake to steer a vessel from Blackwall to London-bridge. “It’s too crowded for us,” they say; “and the little nutshells of steamers are enough to make an honest sailor giddy; and the river is so narrow. If you fancy you are clear of all difficulties and can go on, there’s sure to be some impertinent boat in your way. Turn to the right! Why there’s not room for a starved herring to float!”

And the old steersman descends from his high place, and resigns his functions to the Thames pilot. If he is a conceited blockhead, let him try—that’s all. But if the vessel comes to harm, the insurance is lost; for the under-writers at Lloyd’s will not be responsible for any damage done in the pool, unless the wheel is in the hands of a regular pilot. And they are right, for with all the difficulties and dangers there are few accidents.

Let us then, trusting to the skill of that particular steersman who guides our own destinies and those of our boat, look at the scenery around. A forest of masts looms through the perennial fog; the banks of the river are lined with warehouses; some old and dilapidated, while others are new, solid, and strong. A stray flag fluttering in the evening breeze, a sailor hanging on the spars and chewing tobacco, a monkey of a boy sky-larking on the topmost cross-trees of an Indiaman—these are some of the sights of the lower Thames. Let us now look at the party on board our own vessel; for, after all, we ought to know the people who are in the same boat with us, and who, in case of an accident would share our watery grave.

The boat is full. A first-class ticket to Gravesend costs nine-pence, and the society is of a mixed description—of course. But it is one of the peculiarities of England, that a “mixed society” does not by any means present so striking an appearance as in Germany or France. It is not easy to look into people; and as for their exterior, their walk, manners, dress, and conduct, there is even among the poorer classes, a strong flavour of the “gentleman.” The French blouse, or the German “kittel,” have no existence in this country; the black silk hat is the only headdress which Englishmen tolerate. A man in a black dress coat, hat, and white cravat, hurrying through London streets early in the morning, is not, as a raw German would fancy, a professor going to his lecture-room, or an attachÉ on the track of some diplomatic mystery. No; in the pocket of that man, if you were to pick it, you would find a soap-box, strop, and razor—he is a barber. Or, as the case may be, a man-milliner, or waiter, or tailor, or shoe-maker. Many an omnibus driver sits on the box in a white cravat. In Paris, they say, with a black dress-coat and affability, you find your way into the most fashionable drawing-rooms. Men in black dress-coats descend now and then into London sewers, and that, too, without being in the least affable.

The women of England, too, do not betray their social position by their dress. Coloured silks, black velvets, silk or straw bonnets with botanical ornaments, are worn by a lady’s maid, as well as by the lady. Possibly, the maid’s dress may be less costly; the lady, too, may sweep her flounces with a distinguished air: there may be some difference or other, but who can see all and know all by just looking at people?

See, for instance, that lovely face under a grey bonnet—there! to the left of the cabin-stairs. She has just risen from her seat. What a slender, graceful figure! Pray dont look at her feet. What ease, what decency in her every movement; and how grandly, yet how confidently, does she take the arm of her companion! By Jove, he has got a black dress-coat, and a white tie! A handsome couple! He is well-shaven, has fine thin lips, with that peculiar, lurking smile of superiority, which the most good-natured Englishmen can scarcely divest themselves of; his auburn hair is splendidly got up; his dress is of superfine cloth; his linen is unexceptionable; he has a gold chain dangling on his waistcoat, and dazzling all beholders. That man, for one, is a gentleman!

“He is nothing of the kind,” says Dr. Keif; “he does not pay his tailor’s bill. He is a journeyman tailor, and the coat I wear is the work of his hands; it is a capital coat, and I will thank him for making it.” Saying which, the Doctor made his way to the young couple, and forthwith shook hands with them.

“They are as good as betrothed,” said the Doctor, on his return. “Going for a day’s pleasure to Greenwich; honest, decent people those. That’s what I like in English prudery, that it cares for trifles only. Take it all in all, and you will find that the state of affairs is more satisfactory here than it is in Germany. That girl’s father and mother—honest and decent people, I tell you—have no objection to her gadding about for whole days, and half the nights, too, under the protection of her sweetheart. They walk in the park, sit under the trees, talk of love, marriage, household affairs, Morrison’s pills, and other interesting subjects; and while they talk, they eat cold beef and hot mustard. And the result is, an honest marriage, without dishonourable antecedents. In Germany, such excursions would be suspicious in the extreme. Where’s the prudery, I should like to know.” “Well, well,” said the Doctor, shaking his head, “it’s the nature of the people.”

“And of the tie,” said Mr. Baxter. “A white tie, and a black dress coat, kill all rakishness and scampishness, even in the most talented individuals. Choke a man with a white tie, squeeze him tight in a black coat, and he must needs be prudent, calculating, and respectable. He can’t help it. It’s for that very reason I have exacted from my son, at Heidelberg, a vow that he will eschew white ties and black coats, at least, until he is married.”

Here we are at the Tower! There is nothing awful in its appearance from the river side, especially since it was repaired and whitewashed, after the great fire. The outer wall is black, and two red sentinels creep to and fro along it. On the bench, just opposite to us, sits an aged quakeress, with three infantine quakers, who have all along fancied they were going to Westminster. They see their mistake, now that the seeing of it can do them no good whatever, and they behave as quakers are wont to do under such circumstances. They evince moral horror, subdued grief, and unctuous comfort, which they apply to one another. A fat gentleman, who sports a linen shirt-front of the dimensions of a moderate sail (the English are fond of displaying large tracts of linen on their ships and bodies), does his best to cheer the stricken family in drab. In the forecastle, there is a group of workmen reading the Weekly Dispatch, which convinces them that Disraeli is the worst man alive. Some German musicians are congregated round the funnel, and a good deal of newspaper reading is going on on the after-deck, while a newsboy calls out the last number of Punch; small children, in charming dresses, are being fed by their mammas; the men sit, or stand about, gaping or chatting; and some stare, with a very respectable horror, at a group of French ladies and gentlemen, who alone make much more noise than all the other people on board. And all the ladies have their parasols up, to attract the sun, I dare say; but it won’t do. The sun, O fairer and frailer portion of humanity, will shine when we are out of London, but not till then.

Why should he? What is an excursion on the Thames without the mystic fog of Romanticism? Without the garish light of day, without the depth of perspective, the objects on shore and on the water grow—so to say—out of the colourless mist, presenting fantastic outlines suddenly, mightily, and with a magic grandeur. On our left we fancied we saw hundreds and hundreds of masts rising up behind the houses, from the very midst of dry land. We thought it was an optical delusion; but, as we advanced, the masts and the outline of the rigging came out strong, substantial, and well-defined, against the lurid sky: and just here there is an Indiaman, deeply laden, turning out of the river, and proceeding inland, floating on locks. What we saw were the basins of the various docks which, hidden behind store-houses of fabulous size and number, extend deep into the heart of the country. The river, broad as it is, cannot afford space for the hundreds and hundreds of vessels which lie snugly in those docks.

Our boat, too, turns to the left bank, and stops near an apoplectic grey tower, which reminds us strongly of the donjon-keeps of the city of Linz in Upper Austria. A similar tower rises from the opposite bank. These towers are the gates of the famous Thames Tunnel. We leave the boat to look at this triumph of British science and perseverance. The tower covers the shaft into which you must descend if you would enter the broad pathway under the water, and the sinking this shaft to the depth of eighty feet was the first step in an undertaking which, since its completion, has commanded the admiration of the architects and engineers of all nations. The broad comfortable stairs and the pathway beneath the river, devoid of ornament and lighted with gas, do not indeed present any striking features to the unscientific visitor. Our railway tunnels are a good deal longer; and what mortal, unless he be a practical engineer, has a conception of the difficulties of this particular undertaking? Still those difficulties were enormous. The breadth of the river is above two thousand feet at high water—the weight pressing on the arches is about double the low water weight—among the strata which the workmen had to pierce there was a layer of floating sand—and, in spite of all precautions, the water broke in not less than five times, and several lives were sacrificed. On one occasion, Mr. Brunel, the architect, had a narrow escape. Through a breach of several thousand cubic feet, the water entered the tunnel, which had then advanced to the middle; the masonry and the machinery were destroyed; it took many weeks before the water was pumped out, and the disastrous hole stopped up with sand-bags; the workmen refused to go down again; the contractors had to double their wages; the works had to be carried on by day and by night without cessation, and the strictest watch had to be kept on the river itself, its tides, and its movements. At length, after an enormous outlay of capital and ingenuity, when even the most sceptical part of the public understood that the construction of a tunnel under the Thames was not an impossibility; it was found that the funds advanced by the shareholders were exhausted. The Parliament, however, granted a loan; the whole of England took an interest in the execution of this great undertaking; fresh machinery was invented; fresh workmen were engaged; the second shaft was sunk on the Wapping side of the river; and the English may say—“We carry out whatever we undertake to do. With us great undertakings do not languish for want of public interest and assistance. A crane standing for many years on a half-built tower, as is the case with the tower of the Cologne Cathedral in Germany—no! thank God, such cranes have no locus standi in England. May be, we are an awkward, square-built people; but after all we are a people, and that’s what not every nation can say of itself.”

Life in the Thames Tunnel is a very strange sort of life. As we descend, stray bits and snatches of music greet our ears. Arrived at the bottom of the shaft, there is the double pathway opening before us, and looking altogether dry, comfortable, and civilised, for there are plenty of gas-lights; and the passages which communicate between the two roadways, are tenanted by a numerous race of small shop-keepers, offering views of the tunnel, and other penny wares for sale. These poor people never see the sun except on Sundays. The strangers in London are their best, and indeed I may almost say, they are their only customers.

As we proceed, the music becomes more clear and distinct, and here it is: a miniature exhibition of English industrial skill. It is an Italian organ, played by a perfect doll of a Lilliputian steam-engine. That engine grinds the organ from morning till night; it gives us various pieces without any compunction or political scruples. The Marseillaise, German waltzes, the Hungarian Rakowzy march, Rule Britannia, Yankee Doodle, etc., does this marvellous engine grind out of the organ. Those London organs are the most tolerant of musical instruments that I know of; they appeal to all nations and purses. And what is more marvellous still, they are not stopped by the police, as they would be in Vienna or Berlin, even though the cosmopolitan organ-grinder might descend tens of thousands of feet below the bed of the Spre or the Danube. In the present instance, the organ and the engine are mere decoy-birds. You stop, and are invited to look at “the panorama”—at the expense of “only one penny.” You see Queen Victoria at that interesting moment in which she vows to “love, honour, and obey” Prince Albert. You also see a Spanish convent, which no panorama can be without; and the Emperor Napoleon in the act of being beaten at Waterloo—the chief scene of every London panorama, exactly as if the great Napoleon had passed all the years of his life in being beaten at Waterloo. The next view shows you M. Kossuth on horseback, on an Hungarian battle-field, which looks for all the world like an English park; and Komorn, of which the impregnability is demonstrated by its being, Venice fashion, immersed in water, with canals for streets, and gondolas for cabs.

Of such like spectacles the tunnel has plenty, but we cannot stop for them. We hasten to the shaft, ascend the stairs, and feel quite refreshed by the free air of heaven.

“There will be a Greenwich steamer in five minutes,” says Mr. Baxter, encouragingly.

“What was the expense of that affair under the water?” asked Dr. Keif, while we stood waiting for the boat.

“One penny each.”

“I don’t ask what we paid. I mean the tunnel, what did it cost?”

“Something like £455,000. The shareholders gave £180,000, and the rest was advanced by the nation. It would take another £200,000 to make the tunnel fit for carriage traffic. Say £650,000.”

“A mere trifle! as Sir John would say,” remarked Dr. Keif, with a sarcastic smile; “£650,000 make, without agio, six millions five hundred thousand florins in Austrian money. Give Mr. Struve that sum, and he’ll liberate the whole of Germany and a large piece of France into the bargain. What, in the name of all that is liberal, can be the use of that tunnel, I should like to know? Is’nt a good honest bridge ten times cheaper and handsomer? You’re a practical people, you are; but crotchetty, my dear Sir, crotchetty, that’s the word.”

“Most amiable of all German philosophers,” said Mr. Baxter, “are you, too, among the Philistines? Hundreds of foreigners have said exactly what you say; and none of them seem to understand what practical purpose the originators of this tunnel had in view.”

“They wanted, to prove to the barbarous nations of the Continent, that Britons may walk under water without getting wet and without umbrellas.”

“And also that there are some things which are not dreamt of in the philosophy of a German Doctor. Why, that alone would be worth the money! But now, let me tell you that this tunnel cost very little more than one-half of what Waterloo-bridge cost. Besides, how can you bridge the river so low down as this? Why you would stop all the vessels, and spoil the London harbour, for you cannot raise a bridge high enough for large sailing vessels to pass under. Well, we’ve tried another plan; since the vessels cannot pass under the bridge, we make them go over it. We’ve tried it, and we’ve done it. There’s the tunnel! It is not the architect’s fault if it does not pay. Westward the course of empire takes its way in the world generally, and in London especially, and the east suffers accordingly. Hence it was not worth while to add a carriage-road to the tunnel. The more’s the pity! But here’s the steamer!”

There’s scarcely standing room on the deck. Besides the steamers, there are Greenwich omnibuses, and there is an extra railroad running its trains every quarter of an hour from London to Greenwich—and yet, look at the crowd which surrounds us on all sides! London, too, has its tides, and its high and low water-mark; its thousands and hundreds of thousands rush into the country and back again at regular periods from one twelve hours to another. The majority of London merchants live in the country, and yet they are able to pass their days in the city. Various means and modes of conveyance, and these quick, ready, and cheap, enable them to accomplish that feat.

As we go down the river, the banks recede, and the vessels lie in smaller groups. In their place, we see the very insignificant-looking yards of the London shipbuilders, which extend almost to Woolwich, the seat of the government dockyard. Woolwich is the second depot of the country; Portsmouth is the first.

The English shipbuilders are cosmopolitans, like the organ-grinders. Little do they care for their customers’ position, religion, or nation; they build ships for every man who offers his money, and for every country, too, for Denmark, Spain, Austria, Russia, and even for France.

“We have launched many a steamer, which by this time lies in some Russian port in the Black Sea,” says Mr. Baxter.

“It’s well for you if those steamers remain where they are. But what if Russia were to send your own ships against you? You shall perish by the work of your own hands!”

“Doctor, you are vastly amusing! Some years ago, I believe it was in 1840, I saw a ship launched at this very spot, a brig, and a fine vessel she was, for the Russian fleet. The Russian Ambassador was on the platform, and so was the Consul, and a great many titled and untitled persons. An old friend, my chum at Harrow, had taken me to see the fun. Honest fellow that; a commander in Her Majesty’s service, and since dead of apoplexy. We stood by, and saw the vessel glide into the water, and I made the very same remark you made just now. Of course I meant it as a joke. But you ought to have seen how my poor friend, the Captain, laughed at it. He held his sides, and his honest red face turned blue and purple. It was a mercy that he did not then and there die of apoplexy. ‘Eh!’ cried he at last; ‘do you think they can order a fleet as they would a cargo of cheese? Let the Czar send his roubles, and our fellows will build the ships, I warrant you, and good ships too, and without any dockyard jobs. No altering the poop, no taking out boilers, no cutting in halves, eh? But what’s a vessel? Nothing whatever, sir. It’s of no use without the sailors. He can’t order them. Just order me to play the dancing-master, eh? That vessel costs a good deal of money, and our fellows—Heaven bless them!—are very fond of Russian money. They like to build ships for Russia, just because we mean to hoist the Blue Peter against their Eagle. Fear! Apprehensions, eh? Why, sir, I bless that vessel from the bottom of my heart; that is to say, I wish she may go to pieces on her first trip to Cronstadt, or that I may fall in with her with the law against her and a fair chance of some friendly conversation. Dear me! if I should ever live to see that fine Russian fleet burnt off Athens! For a fine fleet it is, sir, and we’ll burn it, too, and build the Czar another (for his money, of course), and a fine one; and if that new fleet shews its nose in British waters, why, d—n me—that’s all! What fun to see these vessels launched for the Russian service! That’s what they all think, except the Ambassador and the Consul, and that’s the reason they cheer away with such hearty good will. Just look at that old tar on the other side. He thinks of boarding her one of these fine days, eh! Well turned in the waist, eh?’”

“O well turned English ethics!” said Dr. Keif with a deep sigh, as he stood with folded hands, looking up to heaven. “Do you think, Mr. Baxter, that Germany too will have the good fortune to get vessels from the English dockyards in consideration of certain moneys well and truly paid, and on the strength of similar cosmopolitan principles?”

“Why not? Though for the present we do all we can to prevent the building altogether. That’s the strong side of our diplomacy. But take my word for it, if you order the vessels, and pay for them, you shall have them, and they shall be burnt down to the water’s edge on the very first occasion. You have a good stock of sailors on your Baltic and Eastern coasts, and with respect to you we had better keep a sharp look-out.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” replied the Doctor. “I’ll report your words to the First Lord of our Admiralty, whenever that high functionary, as yet unborn, shall have come to years of discretion.”

Dr. Keif said these words with a bitter smile, and stooping down to pick up a piece of biscuit which a small boy had dropped, he overturned a still smaller girl who was standing by his side, and with the cigar which he held in his hand he burnt the hand of a lady near him, to the intense disgust of that respectable female, who vented her feelings in a piercing, scream. The Doctor, frightened and confused, made a leap backwards, and alighted with wonderful precision on Mr. Baxter’s left foot, the very foot in which it is suspected our aged friend has felt some slight twinges of gout, and, to add to the learned philosopher’s discomfiture, a gust of wind blew his hat off his head, and lodged it safely on a large newspaper which a fat old gentleman was reading. The biscuit, meanwhile, had been eaten by an Italian greyhound; the small boy screamed, and the small girl screamed; the fat old gentleman expressed his indignation—some people are so awkward! the lady rubbed her hand; and even Mr. Baxter’s temper was slightly ruffled. “You see, gentlemen,” said that amiable man, “the consequences of a mere mention of the German fleet on board an English vessel.”

That inevitable personage who haunts all steamers—the man with the little book who takes the passage-money from those who are without tickets, has at length found us out. His appearance puts a stop to all acrimonious remarks.

Here is Greenwich, and here is the faÇade and the cupola of the sailor’s hospital, with a semicircle of wooded hills in the background. We have left the fog behind us in London, and the evening sun looks out from the clouds as if he would say—“I am alive and in health, for all that the Londoners believe me to be ailing or in articulo mortis.” Our boat rushes past the “Dreadnought”—we touch the shore—the engines are stopped—we are at our journey’s end.

We stand on the beautiful terrace in front of the Hospital, the house in which Queen Elizabeth loved to dwell, and here at this very spot her courtiers used to take their walks. Their gold embroidered cloaks are gone, and in their stead you see long blue brass-buttoned coats on the mutilated or decrepid bodies of old sailors. A blue coat, a white neckcloth, shoes, white stockings, and a large three-cornered hat with gold lace—that is the uniform of the Invalids, who pass the evening of their lives in this delightful place.

Greenwich Hospital presents the most beautiful architectural group of modern England. Take the most gifted architect of the world, bandage his eyes, put him on the terrace on which we stand, and then show him this splendid building, and he will at once tell you that this is and must be a royal palace. How could he ever suspect that all this splendour of columns and cupolas is destined to shelter a couple of thousand of poor, decrepid sailors! But that it does shelter them is honorable to the founders and to the English nation.

Go to Germany, enquire in the largest and most powerful states what they have done for their disabled soldiers. There is an Hotel of Invalides at Vienna; for Austria, too, has her mutilated living monuments of the Napoleonic wars and the wars against Hungary. But compare that Austrian Invalidenhaus with this asylum for British sailors. A low, unwholesome site, courtyards alike inaccessible to sunlight and air, cloistered corridors, bare, uncomfortable chambers, vast, chilly saloons, and a population of old soldiers stinted even in the common necessaries of life. It is a great piece of good luck for such a pensioner to obtain the post of watchman in one of the Emperor’s parks, where, for a few more florins per annum, he has the privilege of waging war against dogs and ragged little boys. Go to Prussia, that military kingdom, look about in that splendid city of Berlin, and do not for mercy’s sake refuse your penny to those old men, in shabby uniforms with medals dangling from their button-holes, who hold out their caps with one hand while they grind old rickety organs with the other—if indeed they have two hands left! These are the veterans who made Prussia great and powerful. In return for their services, they have the inestimable privilege of begging pence from travelling Englishmen.

In those days of Corsican tribulations, England too sent her forces to the battle-fields of the continent. England fought, not only with subsidies, but with her armies and her fleets. Thus much is clearly shown, not only by history, not only by the monuments which have been erected in honor of the Duke of Wellington, but still more by the two great hospitals of Greenwich and Chelsea.

Those two hospitals, devoted to the disabled heroes of the navy and army, give incontestable proof of the grateful kindliness of feeling with which the English nation honors its old soldiers. England treats her cripples as a mother would her sick and ailing children. The architectural splendours of Greenwich Hospital are by no means destined to hide poverty and misery within. The gates are open. You may walk through the refectories, the kitchens, the sitting and sleeping rooms. Wait until the “old gentlemen” sit down to their dinner, eat a

THE GREENWICH PENSIONERS. p. 150.
THE GREENWICH PENSIONERS. p. 150.

slice of their meat, smoke a pipe of their tobacco, take a pinch from one of their snuff-boxes, admire the irreproachable whiteness of their cravats, take a seat at their side on the green benches which stand on the smooth lawn from whence they view the Thames, its sails, masts, and flags, the cherished scenes of their early career. Talk to them. They like to fight their battles over again in conversation, and will tell you whether they have to complain of the ingratitude of their country, and which is best (no matter how disgusted our German enthusiasts would be at the mere idea), to be paid so and so much per limb, or to starve on the general dietary of an Austrian Invalidenhaus, or rot in the streets of Berlin on an annual allowance which would hardly suffice to find a Greenwich pensioner in tobacco and snuff.

All round the hospital, and indeed in its immediate vicinity, there are strange scenes of life, such as are not unfrequently met with in England. A few yards lower down the stream stands, in aristocratic exclusiveness, the Trafalgar Hotel, which I beg to recommend to every one who wishes to pay for a dinner twice the amount which would suffice to feed an Irish family for a whole week. If you like to take your dinner with people who hail the sensation of hunger as the harbinger of enjoyment, you had better enter this hotel and remain there for a few hours. The wines of the Trafalgar, like the Lethe of old, wash away the cares of the past; for it is here that, according to an ancient custom, Her gracious Majesty’s ministers meet after the parliamentary session. They drink sherry and champagne, and thank their stars that there are no more awkward questions to answer.

As a contrast to this luxuriant hotel, we see, on the other side of the hospital, partly along the shore, partly near the park, and in the interior of sundry lanes and alleys a vast number of pot-houses, tea-gardens, and places of a worse description, where every vice finds a ready welcome. Boys and girls standing at the doors, invite the passing stranger. “Good accommodation. Very good accommodation, sir.” We know what that means, and go our way. But that young fellow in the sailor’s jacket, with the girl hanging on his arm; they are caught! They enter the house.

Forward to the green, leafy, hilly park! On the large grass-plots whole families are stretched out in picturesque groups, from the grandfather down to the grandsons and grand-daughters, and along with them there are friends, country-cousins, maid-servants, and lap-dogs with a proud and supercilious air, for they know, sagacious little animals, that their owners are continually paying dog-tax for them. This is Monday, the Englishman’s Sunday. There they are chatting, laughing, and even getting up and dancing, eating their cold dinners with a good appetite and a thorough enjoyment of sunshine, air, and river-breeze, and they are all cheerful, decent, and happy, as simple-minded men and women are wont to be on a holiday and on the forest-green. And the deer, half-tame, come out of the thicket and ask for their share of the feast, and we go our way up the hill lest we disturb the children and the deer.

From the top of the hill we look down upon one of the most charming landscapes that can be imagined in the vicinity of a large capital. That ocean of houses in the distance, shifting and partly hidden in the mist; the docks with their forests of masts, the Thames itself winding its way to the sea, green, hilly country on our side, with the white steam of a distant train curling up from the deep cuttings; and at our feet, Greenwich with its columns, cupolas, and neat villas peeping out from among shrubberies and orchards.

We share the hill on which we stand with the famous Greenwich observatory. Probably the building has a better appearance than it had at the time when Flamstead, with generous self-denial, established the first sextant on this spot. But even in our days, the exterior of the building is by no means imposing. Here, then, we stand on the first meridian of England. The country’s pride has, up to the present time, retained it here, while the French established their meridian at Paris. But the communistic spirit of science undermines the existence of either, and the Greenwich meridian will not, I am sure, resist the spirit of the age. It will sooner or later resign its pretensions in favour of the chosen of all nations.

The road from the observatory to the back-gate of the park leads through an avenue of old chesnut-trees. They are in a flourishing condition, and the chesnuts are quite as good as those of Italy and southern France. Among these trees stands the official residence of the Ranger of Greenwich-park,—a nobleman or gentleman whose duty it is, in consideration of six or eight hundred pounds per annum, to pass a few summer months in this delightful retreat, and to supply Her Majesty’s table with a haunch of venison once every twelvemonth. The post is a sinecure, one of those places which every one inveighs against, and which every one would be glad to possess.

We have crossed the park, and are on Blackheath,—a sunny place, which derives its gloomy name from the Gipsies who used to be encamped upon it in the “days of auld lang syne.” Neat villas, covered with evergreens, surround this black heath, and a hundred roads and paths invite us to stroll on and on, through garden-land and park-like domains. We resist the temptation. The sun has gone down. We return to the Thames and take a steamer to Blackwall on the opposite coast.

The breeze, the park, and the walk have made us hungry; and thus it happens that, very much against our will, we find ourselves seated at a table which three solemn-looking gentlemen in black dress-coats and white cravats are busily loading with a number of large and small dishes. Each of these dishes—thus English custom willed it—is surmounted by a cover of polished silver, or at least a metallic composition which looks like silver, and each contains some sort of fish. Lovegrove’s Hotel has these many years past been famous for its fish dinners, and the fame is well deserved. Nowhere, except perhaps at Antwerp, does a gourmand find so vast a field for the study of this particular department of his favourite science. But more charming than the most delicious eels, mackerel, salmon, soles, and whitebait, is the view from the dining-room.

It is night. We “take the cars,” as they say in America, and rattle on, over the houses, canals, and streets, to the City. It took us just fifteen minutes to go all the distance.

CHAP. II.
The Theory of Locomotion.

WHEN DOCTORS DISAGREE, ETC.—CLIMATIC VARIETIES OF LONDON.—LOCOMOTION.—ITS MODES AND DIFFICULTIES.—RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR PEDESTRIANS.—CARRIAGES.—CAB-LAW AND LAWLESSNESS.—CABMEN AND WATERMEN.—NOTES OF AN OMNIBUS PASSENGER.—DRIVERS AND CONDUCTORS.—STAGE-COACHES.—METROPOLITAN RAILWAYS.

“WHAT a dreadful fog there is to-day!”

“Nothing of the kind, Madam. Cloudy and wet, perhaps, and a little misty; but a fog—no Madam, that haze is not a fog. Fogs are yellow and black; in a fog, the carriages and foot-passengers run against one another. It hurts your eyes, and takes away your breath; it keeps one in doors. But this is not what a Londoner would call a fog.”

“Is it not indeed, Doctor. Well, then, I must prepare myself for a worse condition than I am now in, low and out of health as I feel.”

“Of course,” says the Doctor, feeling the fair stranger’s pulse. “Have I not told your husband again and again”——

“Are you again harping at the old theme?”

“I am; and I mean to persist until you follow my advice, Madam,” replied the Doctor, with great unction. “You ought not to live in this part of the town, the air kills you. You must go and live in Brompton; that’s what every London physician will tell you. This part of the town is too bleak and cold for you.”

We leave the old Doctor to descant on the vast climatic difference between Regent’s Park and Brompton, while we inform the geographers among our German readers of the whereabouts of the latter place. Brompton, then, was at one time a small village in the South-west, between Hyde Park and the Thames. It has, however, these many years lost its separate existence, and been swallowed up by the metropolis, just as many larger places around London have been swallowed up before and since; and Brompton, at the present time, is as much a part of London as Holborn and Islington. The idea of the immense area which is covered by this gigantic town may be approximatively realised from the fact, that many learned physicians discuss the climatic differences of various parts of the town exactly as if they were comparing the climates of Italy and Germany. Expressions, such as “I live in the North,” or, “I have taken a house in the West,” are common-place and appropriate. This idea of colossal extension ought to be well considered and fully realised by those who wish to understand London life in all its various phases. But, in spite of all divisions into North and South, and East and West, the London of our days is, nevertheless, one single compact town; he who inhabits it must be prepared to go many miles to see a friend or to follow up his business, whatever that business may be. A Londoner loses one-half of his life in locomotion; he would lose more, if his ordinary and extraordinary town travels were not regulated according to some tried and practical theory.

The necessity of expeditious and cheap locomotion in the streets of London has called forth a variety of methods of travelling. The cheapest, simplest, oldest, and most natural of them is walking. In the narrow and crowded streets of the City, where conveyances make but little progress, this method is certainly the safest, and, withal, the most expeditious. Strangers in London are not fond of walking, they are bewildered by the crowd, and frightened at the crossings; they complain of the brutal conduct of the English, who elbow their way along the pavement without considering that people who hurry on, on some important business or other, cannot possibly stop to discuss each kick or push they give or receive. A Londoner jostles you in the street, without ever dreaming of asking your pardon; he will run against you, and make you revolve on your own axis, without so much as looking round to see how you feel after the shock; he will put his foot upon a lady’s foot or dress, exactly as if such foot or dress were integral parts of the pavement, which ought to be trodden upon; but if he runs you down, if he breaks your ribs, or knocks out your front teeth, he will show some slight compunction, and as he hurries off, the Londoner has actually been known to turn back and beg your pardon.

Of course all this is very unpleasant to the stranger, and the more delicate among the English themselves do not like it. None but men of business care to walk through the City at business hours; but if, either from choice or necessity, you find your way into those crowded quarters, you had better walk with your eyes wide open. Don’t stop on the pavement, move on as fast you can, and do as the others do, that is to say, struggle on as best you may, and push forward without any false modesty. The passengers in London streets are hardened; they give and receive kicks and pushes with equal equanimity.

Much less excusable is the kicking and pushing of the English public at their theatres, museums, railway stations, and other places of public resort. Nothing but an introduction to every individual man and woman in the three kingdoms will save you from being, on such occasions, pushed back by them. You have not been introduced to them; you are a stranger to them, and there is no reason why they should consult your convenience. The fact is, the English are bears in all places, except in their own houses; and only those who make their acquaintance in their dens, know how amiable, kind, and mannerly they really are.

You cannot lounge about in the streets of London. Those who would walk, should go at once to the parks, or parade some square. The loungers you see in Regent Street and its purlieus, are foreigners, chiefly French, as their hirsute appearance clearly shows. An Englishman likes that sort of thing on the Boulevards of Paris, or St. Mark’s Place, at Venice; but in his own country he wants the scenery, the climate, the excitement, and the opportunities. A thousand various interests draw him back to his family circle. Though accustomed to the Continent, and its manners and customs, the moment the traveller returns to England, he takes to English customs and English prejudices, and, in the fulness of his British pride, he is very careful lest his appearance and conduct show traces of his residence in foreign countries. The Germans do exactly the contrary.

He who would economise his time and strength, had better keep his carriage—if he can afford it; there are plenty on sale, and of the best of their kind. But the expense of keeping a carriage and horses is by far greater than in any other capital; the wages of the coachman, and the hire of the stabling, etc., are so enormous. And, besides, there is the Chancellor of the Exchequer holding out his hat, for all the world like one of those greedy Irish beggars, asking you to pay duty for the carriage and the horses; for the coachman and his livery; for the servant who stands behind the carriage, and that servant’s livery; for the powder he has on his head; for the cane he holds in his hand; for the high box-seat, the hammercloth, and the armorial bearings which are embroidered on it—provided, always, it is your pleasure to indulge in these aristocratic luxuries. Those are the taxes on luxuries, of which there are plenty in this country; and so there ought to be. No duty is paid for tradesmen’s carts and vans, if the owner’s name and address is plainly written on them; and the tradesmen, who turn everything to advantage, write their names very plainly on their carts and vans, and send them out into the streets to advertise their firms. These tradesmen’s carts are the most numerous and conspicuous among the countless vehicles, which pass to and fro in London streets. There is scarcely a shop which has not its cart or van. Of course the grocers have vans, for they send their goods to any distance within ten miles; and so do the bakers, butchers, fishmongers, and greengrocers. They can’t help it, for if they were to confine their operations to their immediate neighbourhood, they would soon be crushed by competition. A London tradesman, who deals in articles of daily consumption, had better not try to walk. The very lad who sells odds and ends of meat for the convenience of Metropolitan cats and dogs, has a meat cart, and a clever pony; and on the cart there is a splendid legend, in gold letters “Dog’s and Cat’s Meat.” The retailer of such wretched stuff, would starve in a smaller town; in London he has to keep his horse and cart, and makes a capital living, as they tell me. And on Sunday, when dogs and cats have to live on the stores that were taken in on Saturday, the lad takes his “fancy gal” for a drive into the country, with the legend of “Dog’s and Cat’s Meat,” flaming brightly behind.

The next great branch of the Metropolitan conveyance system, is that of the carriages which ply for hire, with or without a number. The latter, in all their leading features, are similar to the carriages of all the Continental capitals. They are taken by the hour, by the day, week, month, or year. Chief among the former are the London cabs.

“Live and learn,” ought to be the motto of the student of London cab-ology. No mortal could ever boast of having mastered the subject. There is no want of police regulations, and of patriots to enforce them; but still the cabmen form a class of British subjects, who, for all they are labelled, booked, and registered, move within a sphere of their own, beyond the pale of the law. The Commissioners of Police have drawn up most elaborate regulations concerning cabs; they have clearly defined what a cab ought to be, but the London cabs are exactly what they ought not to be. The faults of these four-wheeled instruments of torture can never sufficiently be complained of. Not only do they shorten the honest old English mile; but they bear a strong family-likeness to the Berlin droshkies. If the horse is wanted, it is sure to be eating; if the cabby is wanted, he is equally sure to be drinking. If you would put the window down, you cannot move it; if it is down, and you would put it up, you find that the glass is broken. The straw-covered bottom of the cab has many crevices, which let in wind and dust; the seats feel as if they were stuffed with broken stones; the check-string is always broken; the door won’t shut; or if shut, it won’t open: in short (we make no mention of the horse), to discover the faults of a London cab is easy; to point out its good qualities is, what I for one, have never been able to achieve.

Whenever a stranger is bold enough to hail a cab, not one, but half a dozen come at once, obedient to his call; and the eagerness the drivers display is truly touching. They secure their whips, descend from their high places, and surround the stranger with many a wink and many a chuckle, to learn what he wants, and to “make game of him.”

Supposing the stranger speaks the English language fluently enough to make himself understood, of course he will name the place to which he wishes to go, and ask what they will take him for. He may rely on it, that of any conclave of cabmen, each one will demand, at least, double the amount of his legal fare. He demurs to the proposal, whereupon the six cabmen mount their boxes forthwith, return to their stand in the middle of the road, and indulge in jocular remarks on “foreigners,” and “Frenchmen” in general. Blessed is that foreigner, if his studies of the English language have been confined to Byron, Thackeray, and Macaulay, for in that case he remains in happy ignorance of all the “good things” that are said at his expense. The retreat, however, was merely a feint; a few skirmishers advance again, and waylay the stranger. Again, and again, do they inquire, “what he will give?” They turn up the whites of their eyes, shrug their shoulders, make offers confidently, and decline propositions scornfully, and go on haggling and demonstrating until one of them comes to terms, and drives off with the victim.

But is there no legal scale of fares? Of course there is, but with the enormous extent of London it was impossible to establish a general fare for each “course” according to the cab regulations of the German, French, and Italian towns. A certain sum, say one shilling for each drive, would have wronged either the passenger or the driver. To get rid of the dilemma the fare was fixed at eight-pence per mile. But who can tell how many miles he has gone in a cab? A stranger of course cannot be expected to possess an intimate knowledge of places and distances. An old Londoner only may venture to engage in a topographic and geometrical disputation with a cabman, for gentlemen of this class are not generally flattering in their expressions or conciliating in their arguments; and the cheapest way of terminating the dispute is to pay and have done with the man. As a matter of principle the cabman is never satisfied with his legal fare; even those who know the town, and all its ways, must at times appeal to the intervention of a policeman or give their address to the driver, not, indeed, for the purpose of fighting a duel with him, but that he may, if he choose, apply to the magistrate for protection. But it is a remarkable fact, that the cabmen of London are by no means eager to adopt the latter expedient.

The Hansom Cabs, which of late years have been exported to Paris and Vienna, are generally in a better condition than the four-wheeled vehicles; but their drivers are to the full as exacting and impertinent as their humbler brethren of the whip. To do them justice, if they are exorbitant in their demands, they at least are satisfactory in their performance. They go at a dashing pace whenever they have an open space before them, and they are most skilful in winding and edging their light vehicles through the most formidable knots of waggons and carriages. The “Hansom” man is more genteel and gifted than the vulgar race of cabmen; he is altogether smarter (in more than one sense) and more dashing, daring, and reckless.

When cabby returns to his stand, he drops the reins, chats with his comrades, recounts his adventures, and “fights his battles o’er again,” or he lights his pipe and disappears for a while in the mysterious recesses of a pothouse. His horse and carriage are meanwhile left to the care of an unaccountable being, who on such occasions pops out from some hiding-place, wall-niche, or cellar. This creature appears generally in the shape of a dirty, ricketty, toothless, grey-haired man; he is a servus servorum, the slave of the cabmen, commonly described as a “waterman.” For it was he who originally supplied the water for the washing of the vehicles. In the course of time, however, his functions have extended, and the waterman is now all in all to the cab-stand. He cleans the cabs, minds the horses, attends to the orders of passengers, opens and shuts the doors, and fetches and carries to the cabstand generally tobacco, pipes, beer, gin, billets-doux, and other articles of common consumption and luxury; in consideration for which services, he is entitled to the gratuity of one penny on account of each “fare”; and he manages to get another penny from the “fare” as a reward for the alacrity and politeness with which he opens the door. But further particulars of this mysterious old man we are unable to give. No one knows where he lives; no one, not even Mr. Mayhew, has as yet been able to ascertain where and at what hours he takes his meals. At two o’clock in the morning he may be seen busy with his pails, and at five or six o’clock you may still observe him at his post, leaning against the area railings of some familiar public-house. But the early career of the man, his deeds and misdeeds, joys and sufferings, before he settled down as waterman to a cab-stand—these matters are a secret of the Guild, and one which is most rigorously preserved. Poor, toothless, old man! The penny we give thee will surely find its way to the gin-shop, but can we be obdurate enough to refuse giving it, since a couple of those coins will procure for thee an hour’s oblivion?

We turn to the omnibuses, the principal and most popular means of locomotion in London. And here we beg to inform our German friends, that those classes of English society whose members are never on any account seen at the Italian Opera, and who consume beer in preference to wine, and brandy in preference to beer, affect a sort of pity, not unmixed with contempt, for those who go the full length of saying “Omnibus.” The English generally affect abbreviations; and the word “bus” is rapidly working its way into general acceptation, exactly as in the case of the word “cab,” which is after all but an abbreviation of “cabriolet.”

Among the middle classes of London, the omnibus stands immediately after air, tea, and flannel, in the list of the necessaries of life. A Londoner generally manages to get on without the sun; water he drinks only in case of serious illness, and even then it is qualified with “the ghost of a drop of spirits.” Certain other articles of common use and consumption on the Continent, such as passports, vintage-feasts, expulsion by means of the police, cafÉs, cheap social amusements, are entirely unknown to the citizens of London. But the Omnibus is a necessity; the Londoner cannot get on without it; and the stranger, too, unless he be very rich, has a legitimate interest in the omnibus, whose value he is soon taught to appreciate.

The outward appearance of the London omnibus, as compared to similar vehicles on the Continent, is very prepossessing. Whether it be painted red as the Saints’ days in the Almanack, or blue as a Bavarian soldier, or green as the trees in summer, it is always neat and clean. The horses are strong and elegant; the driver is an adept in his art; the conductor is active, quick as thought, and untiring as the perpetuum mobile. But all this cannot, I know, convey an idea of “life in an omnibus.” We had better hail one and enter it, and as our road lies to the West, we look out for a “Bayswater.”

We are at the Whitechapel toll-gate, a good distance to the East of the Bank. From this point, a great many omnibuses run to the West; and among the number is the particular class of Bayswater omnibuses one of which we have entered. It is almost empty, the only passengers being two women, who have secured the worst seats in the furthermost corners, probably because they are afraid of the draught from the door. The omnibus is standing idly at the door of a public-house, its usual starting-place. The driver and conductor have been bawling and jumping about, especially the latter, and they are now intent upon “refreshing” themselves. The horses look a little the worse for the many journeys they have made since the morning. Never mind! this omnibus will do as well as any other, and we prepare to secure places on the outside.

But before we ascend, let us look at the ark which is to bear us through the deluge of the London streets. It is an oblong square box, painted green, with windows at the sides, and a large window in the door at the back. The word “Bayswater” is painted in large golden letters on the green side panels, signifying that the vehicle will not go beyond “that bourn,” and also furnishing a name for the whole species. A great many omnibuses are in this manner named after their chief stations. There are Richmonds, Chelseas, Putneys, and Hammersmiths. Others again luxuriate in names of a more fantastic description, and the most conspicuous among them are the Waterloos, Nelsons, Wellingtons, Taglionis, Atlases, etc. One set of omnibuses is named after the “Times”; others, such as the “Crawford’s,” are named after their owners.

The generic name of the omnibus shines, as we have said, in large golden letters on the side panels; but this is not by any means the only inscription which illustrates the omnibus. It is covered all over with the names of the streets it touches in its course. Thus has the London omnibus the appearance of a monumental vehicle, one which exists for the sake of its inscriptions. It astonishes and puzzles the stranger in his first week of London life; he gazes at the omnibus in a helpless state of bewilderment. The initiated understand the character of an omnibus at first sight; but the stranger shrugs his shoulders with a sigh, for among this conglomeration of inscriptions, he is at a loss to find the name and place he wants.

But to the comfort of my countrymen be it said, that the study of omnibus-law is not by any means so difficult as the study of cab-law. Practice will soon make them perfect; still we would warn them not to be too confident. Many a German geographer, with all the routes from the Ohio to the Euxine engraven in his memory, has taken his place in an omnibus, and gone miles in the direction of Stratford, while he, poor man, fondly imagined he was going to Kensington. Even the greatest caution cannot prevent a ludicrous mistake now and then; and the stranger who would be safe had better consult a policeman, or inform the conductor of the exact locality to which he desires to go. In the worst case, however, nothing is lost but a couple of hours and pence.

While we have been indulging in these reflections, the number of passengers has increased. There is a woman with a little boy, and that boy will not sit decently, but insists on kneeling on the seat, that he may look out of the window. An old gentleman has taken his seat near the door; he is a prim old man, with a black coat and a white cravat. There is also a young girl, a very neat one too, with a small bundle. Possibly she intends calling on some friends on the other side of the town; she proposes to pass the night there, and has taken her measures accordingly. A short visit certainly is not worth the trouble of a long omnibus journey. Thus there are already six inside passengers, for the little boy, who is not a child in arms, is a “passenger,” and his fare must be paid as such. The box-seat, too, has been taken by two young men; one of them smokes, and the other, exactly as if he had been at home, reads the police reports in to-day’s “Times.”

Stop! another passenger! a man with an opera-hat, a blue, white-spotted cravat, with a corresponding display of very clean shirt-collar, coat of dark green cloth, trousers and waistcoat of no particular colour; his boots are well polished, his chin is cleanly shaved; his whiskers are of respectable and modest dimensions. There is a proud consciousness in the man’s face, an easy, familiar carelessness in his movements as he ascends. He takes his seat on the box, and looks to the right and left with a strange mixture of hauteur and condescension, as much as to say: “You may keep your hats on, gentlemen.” He produces a pair of stout yellow gloves; he seizes the reins and the whip—by Jove! it’s the driver of the omnibus!

Immediately after him there emerges from the depths of the public-house another individual, whose bearing is less proud. He is thin, shabbily dressed, and his hands are without gloves. It is the conductor. He counts the inside passengers, looks in every direction to find an additional “fare,” and takes his position on the back-board. “All right!” the driver moves the reins; the horses raise their heads; and the omnibus proceeds on its journey.

The street is broad. There is plenty of room for half a dozen vehicles, and there are not many foot-passengers to engage the conductor’s attention. He is at liberty to play some fantastic tricks to vary the monotony of his existence; he jumps down from his board and up again; he runs by the side of the omnibus to rest his legs, for even running is a recreation compared to standing on that board. He makes a descent upon the pavement, lays hands on the maid of all work that is just going home from the butcher’s, and invites her to take a seat in the “bus.” He spies an elderly lady waiting at the street-corner; he knows at once that she is waiting for an omnibus, but that she cannot muster resolution to hail one. He addresses and secures her. Another unprotected female is caught soon after, then a boy, and after him another woman. Our majestic coachman is meanwhile quite as active as his colleague. He is never silent, and shouts his “Bank! Bank! Charing-cross!” at every individual passenger on the pavement. Any spare moments he may snatch from this occupation are devoted to his horses. He touches them up with the end of his whip, and exhorts them to courage and perseverance by means of that peculiar sound which holds the middle between a hiss and a groan, and which none but the drivers of London omnibuses can produce.

In this manner we have come near the crowded streets of the city. The seat at our back is now occupied by two Irish labourers, smoking clay-pipes, and disputing in the richest of brogues, which is better, Romanism without whiskey, or Protestantism with the desirable addition of that favourite stimulant. There is room for two more passengers inside and for three outside.

Our progress through the city is slow. There are vehicles before us, behind us, and on either side. We are pulling up and turning aside at every step. At the Mansion-house we stop for a second or two, just to breathe the horses and take in passengers. This is the heart of the city, and, therefore, a general station for those who wish to get into or out of an omnibus. These vehicles proceed at a slow pace, and take up passengers, but they are compelled to proceed by the policeman on duty, who has strict instructions to prevent those stoppages which would invariably result from a congregation of omnibuses in this crowded locality.

Our particular omnibus gives the policeman no trouble, for it is full, inside and out, and this important fact having been notified to the driver, the reins are drawn tight, the whip is laid on the horses’ backs, and we rush into the middle of crowded Cheapside. Three tons, that is to say, 60 cwt., is the weight of a London omnibus when full, and with these 60 cwts. at their backs, the two horses will run about a dozen English miles without the use of the whip, cheered only now and then by the driver’s hiss. And with all that they are smooth and round and in good condition; they are not near so heavy as those heavy horses of Norman build which go their weary pace with the Paris omnibuses, nor are they such wretched catlike creatures as the majority of the horses which serve a similar purpose in Germany. Their harness is clean; on the continent it might pass for elegant. Although fiery when in motion, they never lay aside that gentleness of temper which is peculiar to the English horses. A child might guide them; they obey even the slightest movement of the reins; nay, more, an old omnibus-horse understands the signals and shouts of the conductor. It trots off the moment he gives that stunning blow on the roof of the omnibus, which, in the jargon of London conductors, means: “Go on if you please;” and the word “stop” will arrest it in the sharpest trot.

But for the training and the natural sagacity of those animals, it would be impossible for so many omnibuses to proceed through the crowded city streets at the pace they do, without an extensive smashing of carriages, and a great sacrifice of human life resulting therefrom. We communicated our impressions on this subject to the omnibus driver, and were much pleased to find our opinion corroborated by the authority of that dignitary.

“The city,” said he, “is a training-school for carriage-osses and for any gent as would learn to drive. As for a man who is’nt thoroughly up to it, I’d like to see him take the ribbons, that’s all! ‘specially with a long heavy ’bus behind and two osses as is going like blazes in front. I see many a country fellow in my time as funky as can be, and sweating, cause why? he feeled hisself in a fix. And an oss, too, as has never been in the city afore, gets giddy in his head, and all shaky-like, and weak on his legs. But it’s all habit, that’s what it is with men and osses.”

Well! our man and our “osses” are accustomed to the confusion and the turmoil which surrounds us. With the exception of a few short stoppages, which are unavoidable in these crowded streets, we proceed almost at a giddy pace round St. Paul’s, down the steep of Ludgate Hill, and up through Fleet Street and Temple Bar. We are in the “Strand”; and here we are less crowded, and proceed at a still more rapid pace, with twelve inside and nine outside passengers, making the respectable total of one-and-twenty men and women. More than this number it is illegal to cram into an omnibus. That vehicle is among the few places in England where you come into immediate contact with Englishmen without the formality of a previous introduction. Parliament, which has to provide not only for Great Britain, Ireland, and the town of Berwick upon-Tweed, but also for a considerable portion of Africa, America, Asia, and the whole of Australia—whose duty it is to keep a sharp eye on the Germanic Confederation, the French Empire, the Papal See, the Oriental question, and a great many similar nuisances; and which, over and above all these important avocations, has to adjourn for the Easter recess and the Epsom races—though thus overwhelmed with business still the English Parliament has found time to pass some salutary laws for the proper regulation and management of omnibuses, to prevent the over-crowding of those useful vehicles, and to ensure regularity, politeness, and honesty on the part of the drivers and conductors. The laws with respect to omnibuses are few in number; but they work well, and suffice to secure the passengers in those vehicles against insult and imposition. As, however, accidents will happen, so it may now and then come to pass that a stranger, or a genteel and ignorant female is cheated, and induced to pay the sum of threepence over and above the legal fare; but in these cases it will generally be found, that the passenger might have prevented the imposition, if he or she had condescended to enquire of some other passenger as to the exact amount of the fare. Such questions are always readily answered, and every one is eager to give the stranger the information he requires.

On the Continent, it is generally asserted that the English are haughty and shy, that they will not answer if a question is put to them; and that, especially to foreigners, they affect silence, incivility, and even rudeness. There is no truth whatever in such assertions. Any one, whose good or ill fortune it is to make frequent omnibus journeys, will find that the notion of English rudeness, like many other Continental notions, is but a vulgar error. It is true that no fuss or ceremony is made about the stowing away of legs, that an unintentional kick is not generally followed by a request for ten thousand pardons; but, in my opinion, there is a good deal of natural politeness in this neglect of hollow conventional forms, which, after all, may be adopted by the greatest brute in creation. Why should there be a begging of pardon when every one is convinced that the kick was accidental, unintentional, and that no offence was meant? Why should I express my gratitude to the hand that is held out to me in getting in? The action is kind, but natural, and does not, in my opinion, call for a verbose recognition. Those who discover rudeness in the absence of polite phrases, cannot, of course, but think that the English are brutes. But simple and ingenuous characters are soon at their ease in English society.

There were no stoppages in the Strand; but at Northumberland House, in Trafalgar Square, we stop for a minute or two, as at the Mansion House, to take in and let out passengers. Moving forward again, we go up part of Pall Mall and the whole length of Regent Street to the upper Circus. This point is more than half way in the journey from Whitechapel to Bayswater, and that distance—above five English miles—is, after all, only a three-penny fare.

Within the last quarter of an hour we have changed our complement of passengers, and the sky, too, has altered its aspect. Large drops of rain are falling. The driver produces his oilskin cape, a stout leather covering is put over his knees, and over those of the box-seat passengers, whose upper halves are protected by an umbrella. All the outside passengers, too, produce their umbrellas—for few Londoners venture to go out without that necessary protection against the variableness of the climate.

Luckily, however, the shower is over before we have come to Hyde Park Gate, at the western end of Oxford Street. The sun breaks through the clouds, as we turn down that splendid street which runs parallel with the side of the Park. Stately, elegant buildings on our right; Kensington Gardens, green meadows, and shady trees, on our left. Here we leave the omnibus, for we cannot resist the temptation of taking a stroll in these charming gardens. We have made a journey of eight miles. We have seen life on and in an omnibus, in all its varieties; at least, as far as it is possible in a single journey; and we pay for the accommodation the very moderate charge of sixpence.

The London omnibuses, though much abused, are vastly superior to similar vehicles in other Continental capitals; but still greater, as compared to the Continental “Post,” or “Schnellwagen,” is the superiority of those public vehicles which run in longer or shorter stages across the country. It is a pity these stage-coaches are being driven off the road by the superior speed of the railways. They are going out rapidly. And yet, how glorious it was to ride on the top of one of them! Their decline destroys all the poesy of travelling amidst the leafy hedge-rows on the splendid English roads, which are more similar to our park-roads than to our “Landstrassen.” What a wholesome, social, adventurous pleasure it was, to sit on the outside of a stage-coach with about twelve travelling companions, male and female, and drawn by four splendid horses, to skim, as it were, over the smiling garden-like country. No Englishman, of the olden time, was too rich or too aristocratic for this mode of travelling; and the occasional driving of such a stage, and the playing the part of coachman to the public at large, was among the “noble passions” of the sporting aristocrats of the time. Since then, the steam-engine has conquered the length and breadth of the country, and he who would enjoy stage-coach travelling, must go in quest of it to the outlying parts of England; for instance, to the Isle of Wight, where the old coach may still be seen in all its glory. Long may it be so, until, in that island, too, it is compelled to yield to the improvements of the age!

We have already, in another place, given an account of the Thames steamers. But in treating of the chief methods of locomotion in London, we ought not to forget the railroads. They are among the peculiarities and sights of London, for no other town in the world is so large that the communications between its various parts are carried on by means of rails and locomotive engines. Here, where the majority of the termini are, if not in the centre, according to Mr. Pearson’s salutary project, at least within the town, the railways which communicate with the interior of the country, and the various seaports, have several stations in the interior of the town, and passengers are conveyed from one town station to another. There are, moreover, railways especially intended for London and the suburbs: among these, are the lines to Greenwich and Blackwall, which communicate with that extraordinary railroad which, forming an enormous semicircle, facilitates the communication between the eastern and the whole of the northern parts of London.

This peripheric line is essentially a London railway; it does not, on any one point, travel beyond the boundaries of that monster town. It is laid out between garden-walls and backyards, between roofs and chimneys; it is bridged over canals and crowded streets, or laid on viaducts for many miles through the poorer quarters, almost touching the houses, and passing hard by the windows of the upper stories. In other places, according to the peculiarities of the ground, the line is carried on through tunnels under the houses, cellars, sewers, and aqueducts. It is a miraculous railway, and one which has been constructed at an enormous outlay of ingenuity and money; but it enables the Londoners to go to the northern suburbs for sixpence, in a first-class carriage too, and in less than twenty minutes. There is no cessation in the traffic of this line; the trains are moving from early morn till late at night; every quarter of an hour a train is despatched from either terminus, and these trains stop at all the intermediate stations.

The journeys being so short, and time, speed, and cheapness the chief objects in view, the railway company have paid little attention to the comfort of the passengers. And here I ought to add, that with the exception of greater speed, which, after all, is the main object, all the English railways are inferior to those of the Continent. In London, and in short journeys, the want of comfortable carriages and convenient waiting-rooms is not a very painful infliction; but woe to the wretch whom fate condemns to go from London to Edinburgh in a second-class carriage at the express speed of fifty miles per hour! It is true it takes him but twelve hours to go that enormous distance; but in those twelve hours he will have ample time and occasion to ponder on the vast difference of second-class accommodation in England and in Germany!

CHAP. III.
The Quarters of Royalty and Government.

WHITEHALL, PAST AND PRESENT.—DOWNING STREET.—PARIS AND LONDON.—ENGLISH AND FRENCH STATESMEN.—THE DIFFERENCE.—THE ADMIRERS OF FRANCE.—ENGLISH RESPECT FOR THE ARISTOCRACY.

FOUR large streets lead from Trafalgar Square to the East, West, North, and South. This square (village and garden-ground in the days of Edward the Confessor) is, in our own days, one of the central points of London life. Trafalgar Square, which drank the blood and witnessed the agonies of Hugh Peters, Scrope, Jones, Harrison, and many others, who were killed in expiation of the execution of Charles I.—where many hundreds were decapitated, stigmatised, and mutilated, to satisfy the vengeance of the Stuarts and their adherents—forms, in 1852, the peaceable, ever-moving, central point, where the roads from the West meet the roads from the East. Down there, where the equestrian statue of Charles I. stands, the street leads to Whitehall, Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, and the Thames. We will walk in that direction; it leads us to places that are among the grandest and most interesting of which London, or any other city on the face of the earth, can boast.

We are here—as Leigh Hunt says—within the atmosphere of English royalty. Each step in this part of the town awakens the strangest recollections, and reminds one of Wolsey, the gifted, the proud, the terrible—of Henry, the coarse and cruel—Elizabeth, the cunning and quarrelsome—James, the pedant and the clown—Charles, the misguided and melancholic—Cromwell, the harsh and unbending—the contemptible, dissolute second Charles—and the doubly contemptible, dissolute Stuart, who succeeded him, and whose Government robbed Whitehall of its glories. The very air is full of reminiscences of the Tudors and the Stuarts—of their splendour and feasting—of their intrigues and vulgarities—of their despotic rule and bloody punishments; and as we walk through the streets, we cannot divest ourselves of the thought, what a strange and quaint sight it would be, if those princes, and their ministers and courtiers, could, for an hour, return to the sunny light of day! What gravity and merriness, madness and thoughtlessness, guilt, misery, and ingratitude! Visible and invisible, singly and grouped, here are the monuments of the history of English royalty, from the downfall of Wolsey to the downfall of James II. That epoch is grand, important, and instructive, and a fit study for the kings and nations of our own days.

Whitehall, such as it is in 1852, bears little resemblance to the Whitehall of 1652.

Wolsey lived in York Palace. He was most vain, fond of splendour, conceit, and tyranny; but for all that, he was the most remarkable man among the prelates of England. His palace was the richest booty which his downfall procured for his master, who at once settled down in it. Here he married Anna Boleyn; here he died; here did all the great men meet, who flattered that crowned tiger until he consigned them to the hands of the executioner, and impaled their heads on London Bridge. Among them were Cavendish, Thomas Cromwell, and Wolsey. Erasmus, also, and Hans Holbein, whose low degree alone saved them from sharing the fate of the king’s friends and wives. Among these were the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet, Catharine of Arragon, Anna Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Catharine Howard, Anne of Cleves, and Catharine Parr, the least unfortunate among these unfortunate women; and the children that were to wear crowns—Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth—these were they that passed in and out of York Palace in the days of Henry VIII.

The spirits of the murdered have probably cast a gloomy shadow on those golden walls, for after Henry’s decease his successors avoided Whitehall, and Elizabeth was the first to establish her court there. A change comes over the figures of the past—Cecil and Burleigh, the two Bacons, Drake and Raleigh, Spenser and Shakespere, Sydney and Lee, Leicester and Essex, stand before us. And after them James I. and his darling “Steenie,” and Charles I., Cromwell, and—the executioner.

Charles I. was very active in the improvement of Whitehall. Inigo Jones, the great architect of those days, was employed on it, and Rubens painted the ornaments of the ceiling, for which he received £3000 and the honour of knighthood. It is mere calumny, to say that Cromwell, in puritanic brutality, destroyed the works of art which he found in Whitehall. On the contrary, he made great exertions to save them; we owe it to him that the famous cartoons by Raphael may this day be seen at Hampton Court. But, of course, the Great Protector put a stop to the dissolute and merry life which formerly ruled in the palace. There was no end of praying and preaching in Whitehall; the Barebones Parliament assembled here after the dissolution of the Long Parliament; it was here that Cromwell refused the crown; and here he died, while a dreadful thunderstorm convulsed the heavens. His friends said that nature sympathised with the great man, and his enemies would have it that it was the devil going off to hell with “Old Noll,” his brother.

Richard Cromwell, too, passed his short season of power at Whitehall. He was followed by Monk, who kept the place for Charles II. But the merry olden times were gone for ever; they returned not with the dissolute, gloomy-faced prince, although more money was wasted on the Duchess of Portsmouth—not to mention His Majesty’s other ladies—than ever had been spent on an English queen.

Evelyn, in his memoirs, thus describes one of the closing scenes of royal dissipation:—“I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and prophanenesse, gaming and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfullnesse of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day se’nnight I was witnesse of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines—Portsmouth, Cleveland, and Mazarine, etc.; a French boy singing love songs, in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the greate courtiers, and other dissolute persons, were at Basset round a large table; a bank of at least 2000 in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen, who were with me, made reflectious with astonishment. Six days after was all in the dust!”—Evelyn’s Memoirs, vol. i. p. 549.

James II. lived here for a few years, until the mass cost him a crown. His wife fled from the palace on the 6th December, 1688. The king followed eleven days later; and on the 14th February, 1689, the Prince of Orange entered the old palace. It was burnt in 1698.

Let not my readers quarrel with this review of the past. Certain localities are nothing without an occasional glance at the chronicles of olden times; but with those aids to imagination, the very stones become gifted with speech, and proclaim the joys and sorrows, the pageants and horrors which they witnessed in their days.

The remains of Whitehall, like the majority of the buildings which surround them, have been converted into Government offices. Scotland Yard is the central office of the London police, and on the other side of the road is the Admiralty. A little lower down there are two of those splendid Horse Guards, mounted on black chargers, doing duty at the offices of the Ministry of War, and guarding the spot where Elizabeth, in unchaste virginity, and at an advanced and wrinkled age, exacted the homage of her courtiers as Queen of Beauty. We turn the corner of the old Banquet-house and enter a blind alley—it is narrow and deserted. That is Downing Street the famous, where the Colonial and Foreign Offices guide the destinies of the greater part of the globe. It is a curious street, small and dingy, beyond the smallness and dinginess of similar streets at Leipzig, Frankfort, or Prague, and desolate, vacant, deserted—a fit laboratory for political alchemists. At its further end is a small mysterious door, the entrance to the Foreign Office, in the keeping of a red-coated grenadier, with, I doubt not, a couple of newspaper reporters hidden in his cartridge-box, and intent upon ascertaining the names of those that enter the office. But the notes, which the Foreign Office addresses to the Foreign Courts, do not find their way into the English newspapers—so that even the Times has to copy them from the German and French journals—and this is owing to the circumstance, that those who enter or leave the office keep the notes in their pockets; and that the reporters, though clever, cannot see through the morocco of portfolios and the wadding of coats. They manage these matters better in France: a French journalist takes up his quarters in the reticule of Somebody’s lady, or if that cannot be conveniently done, he places himself under the protection of the said lady’s maid. Such things are of rare occurrence in England, owing to the immoral prejudice of the islanders respecting the code of morals in matters of politics and matrimony.

What an amount of idolization have not the German authors of the last ten years wasted on Paris! How great their enthusiasm even now, in praise of the men and women of that capital. But if you ask, what the excellent qualities of Paris really and truly are, they will discourse, at great length, on the charms of the Boulevards, the gracefulness of the women, the deep blue of the Paris sky, and the merry, careless, exciting disposition of the Parisians generally. “Now all this is well and good,” say I to my Paris friend; “and if I understand you, you set down the Parisians as the A 1. of humanity, because their women are clever, and because those clever women have very small feet; because the Boulevards are capital places to lounge in; because Mabile is merrier than Vauxhall. But as for the blue colour of the sky, allow me, dearest friend, to remind you of Naples, Spain, Paris, and China, where, as they say, the skies are much bluer. All those circumstances make a town very agreeable; but I have yet to learn that they are a fair gauge of the moral worth of its inhabitants.” My Paris friend is silent; but after a good long pause, he comes forward with some very general phrases, saying, that there is an unutterable something which embellishes life in Paris, and that there you live in a world of ideas. There is a good deal of truth in this general admission. Life in Paris is charming, more charming than in London and other large towns; but its charms emanate, in many instances, from the darker sides of the Parisian character; and it is absurd to say that the people are entitled to our respect for no other reason, but because we lead a life of pleasure and gaiety in their city.

Why does London produce so much less agreeable an impression than Paris, not only on the passing stranger, but also on those who reside here a considerable length of time? We leave that question for another day. We are now in Downing Street; and, however gloomy the appearance of that street may be—perfidious and egotistical as the Downing Street policy may appear to the Continentals—which, by the bye, proves its popularity here—we can, at least, say in its favor, that it has, within the last twenty years, been less open to corruption by means of money and female politicians, than was the case on the other side of the Channel, in the country of “la gloire,” of blue skies and “unutterable somethings.” Of course the rÉunions are less interesting; there is not so wide a margin for intrigue; the ambition of roturiers is kept within the limits of decency; the fair sex, with all its followers and appendages, is confined to a narrow sphere of action; and these are the reasons why—- just as in other matters—English politics have a more sober, business-like, respectable, and tedious appearance than politics in France. It is really miraculous that, in a country which is governed by a Queen, and one who inherited the crown at an early age, there has never been made mention of court and other intrigues, which influenced the conduct of public affairs. Say it is merely by accident; say that such accident is partly owing to the coldness of the blood which runs in the veins of English women; or, if you please, think of the olden times, when the women of Whitehall made history in as shameless a manner as any women in the Tuilleries or Versailles. No matter! It has been reserved for the 19th century to create a Woman’s Court, which excludes all love-intrigues. Such a thing is impossible in France; and if possible, the French would not believe it, nor would they put up with it. A government without female interference, quarrels, and corruption! Monstrous, at least to the French, who, rather than live under such a government, would choose to live in an austere Catonian Republic.

The respect for public decency, which in England is sometimes carried to a ridiculous length, is, nevertheless, of great use for the morality of the Government. Corruption, indeed, is an important item in English electioneering tactics; money and drink are lavished on the voters; but this corruption, however shameless, is confined to the lower classes. Honourable members, who are very pathetic on the neglected education of the people, think very little of treating all the inhabitants of their borough to a preposterous quantity of drink, in order to ensure their re-election. But the corrupters themselves are not so corruptible as the men who for the last ten years—for it is not necessary to go back to an earlier date—held the reins of the government in France. The poor are now and then bought in England; more frequently they are intimidated; but in France—the very French confess it—all are venal, from the highest to the lowest. I am not an admirer of corruption in England; but I like it better than I do corruption in France. If rottenness there must be, it had better be partial and one-sided, than a general corruption of the body politic.

Certainly the small English boroughs, with their electioneering tactics and venality, are disgusting; but still there is some difference between the treating and bribing the peasants and small shop-keepers and that nauseous corruption of all classes of society which is so prevalent in France, more particularly since the reign of Louis Philippe. In England, the polling-days have from times immemorial been days of feasting, drinking, and fighting for the lower classes. The want of political cultivation, ignorance of the important questions at issue, the indifference, and, in many instances, the brutality of the lower classes, make it a matter of small moment to them, whether the barrel of beer from which they drink at an election is the gift of charity, or the devil’s retaining fee. No hustings without speechifying—no polling-place without swilling. The witnesses who have been examined by the Election Committees have generally confessed, that the candidate, according “to the old established custom,” behaved like a “gentleman”—that he treated the electors to ale and gin, shook hands with them, gave them money, and hired brass bands for their special gratification. A melancholy proof this of the neglected condition in politics and morals of the lower classes in England.

But far more saddening is the spectacle of corruption, which France has exhibited these many years past. It is not the rude and uncultivated mass which sins from ignorance of its own abandoned condition; corruption there extends its sway over the educated, the learned, the wealthy, the refined. It is the despotism of a cynism of venality, such as the world never saw since the days of the Roman emperors. The French aristocracy, the army, the bourgeoisie, the church, and the press, are all in the market. Eloquent morality solicits corruption with the most impudent eagerness, and drives the hardest bargains. In France corruption has become the fashion; it is the law, the essence of politics, and it has almost become a necessity for the attainment of even honest purposes. The poison pervades all the organs of the body politic; and ever since the commencement of the first revolution, the French nation has been convulsed, and caused convulsions among the neighbouring nations. But never at any one time—no, not among all her changes—was there a single period, however short, in which personal liberty obtained that respect which it commands in England. And although this fact is on record, and though it cannot be contradicted, yet there are German admirers of France (the majority of them know nothing of France except the boulevards of Paris), who believe that the French are the chosen people of liberty, the prophets of the nations, and martyrs for their political salvation. True, the history of France is instructive to those who take a warning from it. True the French are a chosen people; indeed, they are chosen to sound the trumpet of war into the ears of the nations. But there never was any fortress save one, which was conquered by the sounding of trumpets—Jericho, in the land and the age of miracles. Singleness of purpose, and honest perseverance, these alone can in our days ensure the victory of great principles. But the sons of France have always been strangers to those two qualities; and the glory which these can give, they have never coveted. They care not for substantial liberty, for it not only gives rights, but it imposes duties also. Freedom is a treasure which requires the most anxious care; he who neglects it, loses it. France obtained it three times, and thrice she lost it; and now the French say again—“Ça ne durera pas.” But, it is to be hoped, that the phrase will be flung back again, whenever they shall take it into their heads once more to sound the trumpet of alarm to the countries of Europe.

England, with all her political and social blemishes, has at least come to this, that any danger to the personal liberty of her citizens may almost be considered as an absurd impossibility, while the French are, as yet, so ignorant of the rudiments of national liberty, that they still wish for a strong government; that is to say, one which centralises all the resources, and absorbs all the powers of the State. The various parties are all agreed on this point; they differ only with respect to the person who is to preside over this “strong government.” The Legitamists vow that that person must be a Bourbon; the Bonapartists claim the right, as they have established the fact, in favour of a scion of the great Emperor; and the Republicans are eloquent in praise of an elective government; but every one of these partisans reserves to himself a large prospective share of the loaves and fishes, which, as all the world knows, are entirely at the disposal of a “strong government.” The ambition of free self-government, which characterises the English, is altogether unknown to the French. Hence they can die for liberty, but they cannot live for it.

In drawing a parallel between the darker sides of English and French politics, I ought not to forget mentioning one important point. In despite of her free press, the partial degradation of her masses, in despite of her civic self-government, England is the most aristocratic country in the world. Whatever modern reformers may strive for or assert, they cannot deny, nor can they root out, the traditional veneration of the middle and lower classes for everything and everybody connected with the nobility. An Englishman, even though he were a chartist, looks at a scion of the nobility with a very different eye, than at his neighbour, by the grace of God, citizen of London, or of Sheffield, or Manchester. A “lord’s” presence makes him respectful, even though the said “lord” had taken too much port wine, A “lady’s” toilette has a mysterious charm for English women, however bad that “lady’s” taste may be. On the continent, too, the aristocracy are looked up to and imitated and quoted, but not by any means to such an extent as in England. The continental nations want that ingenuousness of veneration, that amiable candour which frankly confesses that it “loves a lord.” Add to this that the adoration of a noble pedigree does not here, as on the continent, move in the sphere of trifles only, which after all, is, in a manner, excusable. For the wealthy aristocrat is a privileged person from his cradle; he is a landed proprietor, and he is not distracted with struggles for sustenance, favour, place, and fortune. Of course he has leisure to cultivate his taste and form his manners, and to imitate him in those respects would be a merit, even in a root and branch democrat. But the Englishman does not stop there. His desire to imitate the nobility, his craving for titles, make him what is commonly called “a snob.” He has greater respect for a cabinet of noblemen than for a cabinet of commoners; he cannot imagine a charitable institution unless it be under the presidency of the Duke of Dumman and the Earl of Tanitary; he judges the character of a Marquis very differently from that of any other man. It requires a very long residence in England and an intimate acquaintance with English society generally to understand and appreciate this weakness in all its bearings. But this weakness is the source of very remarkable monstrosities in the political and social life of England. Their most salient points and corners, indeed, have given way to the progressive tendencies of the age. That progress, though slow, is manifest, and its very slowness is a guarantee against the danger of a relapse.

CHAP. IV.
Westminster.—The Parliament.

THE ABBEY.—THE HALL.—AN M.P.’S LIFE.—THE NEW HOUSES.—THEIR STYLE, CORRIDORS, AND LIBRARIES.—THE SUFFERINGS OF THE PUBLIC.—THE SPEAKER.—SIR JOHN AND DR. KEIF IN THE GALLERY.—LADIES AND REPORTERS.—THE TABLE OF THE HOUSE.—THE SERGEANT-AT-ARMS.—PARLIAMENTARY ETIQUETTE.—THE TWO HOUSES.—DISRAELI.—PALMERSTON.—SIR JOHN PRAISETH THE LATTER.—COLONEL SIBTHORP.—LORD JOHN RUSSELL.—PUBLIC SPEAKING IN ENGLAND.

TWO streets running in parallel lines lead from Whitehall to Westminster and the Houses of Parliament. One of these streets is narrow, dark, and gloomy. In it lived Edmund Spenser and Oliver Cromwell, and through it passed Elizabeth, Charles, and the Protector, whenever their presence was required in either of the two houses. The street was large enough for the royal processions of those days, but it became inconveniently narrow when the traffic of the metropolis extended to this point, and they built Parliament-street, one of the most crowded thoroughfares of western London. After passing through Parliament-street you emerge into a wide irregular place, which may justly be called the most venerable, important, and sacred spot in England—where, on your left, on the bank of the Thames, the new Houses of Parliament tower in their splendour, while before you, amidst broad grave-stones and fresh green plots and delightful trees stands the old Abbey. To the right, you see a perfect wilderness of narrow streets with a large gap broken right through them; it leads to Pimlico, Belgravia, St. James’s Park, and Buckingham Palace.

Westminster Abbey is among the grandest and loftiest monuments of ancient architecture; it need fear no comparison, with the vast gothic fanes, finished and unfinished, that stand by the rivers of Germany.

That the structure is completed in all its parts, that while we contemplate it we know that the idea of the architect has been carried out in all its details, that we are not shocked by the ruin-like appearance of an unfinished aisle, or choir, or tower, is the more pleasing to us Germans, since in our own country we have come to believe incompleteness to be inseparable from the idea of a large gothic “Dom.” That the reverse is the case in England is creditable to the architects and the nation. Their parliaments have readily granted the sums which were required for the completion of the abbey; and the architect deserves much praise for having, in his original plan, kept within the limits of the probable and possible. With all the liberality of the British nation, who knows whether Westminster Abbey would not still be unfinished, if the architect, instead of tracing a couple of modest though respectable towers, had indulged his fancy in designing two gigantic structures, mountains of stone and fret-work, like those which hitherto exhausted the resources and foiled the perseverance of the people on the other side of the channel.

It is a characteristic trait in the English nation, that here, where so many public buildings are found, they have all been completed. Parishes, landlords, bishops, and the nation itself, limited their building projects in proportion to their resources. They calculated the expense, and consulted their pockets quite as much as the vanity of the architects, who, after all, are not to be trusted in these things; they make the plan, but they are never called on to pay for it.

Westminster Abbey, the venerable, has been much admired for many centuries past. Thousands have believed, that within its walls the worn-out frame finds sweeter rest after the fitful fever of their earthly career; and to this day there are many whose ambition can only be satisfied by a grave and a monument in Westminster Abbey. The nation has set it apart as the pantheon of their illustrious dead. Many blame them for it; others again doubt whether a fitter or more convenient place could be found or created in these latter days. It is hardly necessary to mediate between these two conflicting opinions. A nation that can offer its great minds a fitting sphere of action, will also find the proper mode and manner of burying its great men, honourable to them and the country which gave them birth. The Huns buried their heroes on the field of battle on which they fell; it is quite natural that the religious sense of the English should prompt them to honour their illustrious dead in the most beautiful church of their island-empire.

Sacred as the Abbey itself, are the domains which surround it. Parliament-street is indeed a crowded thoroughfare; the crowds meet and contend in the crossing which leads to Westminster Bridge; carriages rattle along from morning till late at night; above a million and a half of horses go that way annually into Lambeth; but the Abbey stands at a convenient distance from the public road, amidst green grass-plots, shady trees, and broad grave-stones, and near it you feel as calm and peaceful as in the shadow of a village-church. Narrow foot-paths lead to its walls; fat sheep crop the grass; and iron railings protect the sanctuary from the inroads of horses and carriages.

These railings and the wide open street leading to the south, to Vauxhall Bridge, intervene between the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. When these are completed in this direction, then will the place which holds them, and the Abbey, and other public and private buildings, assume a different and more satisfactory aspect. At present, the workmen are still occupied with the colossal Victoria tower, whose portal is among the grandest monuments of Gothic architecture. At present the northern tower is still incomplete, raw, and ugly, and the whole space in that direction is boarded up, and covered with loose earth, bricks, and mortar. But when all is completed, then will dust, smoke, and fog lend their assistance, and the new buildings will soon be in keeping with the venerable colouring of the old Abbey.

In front of the new, there is an old stone building, with quaint narrow windows, low doors, and curious turrets. It contains some Government Offices, and Courts of Justice, and the famous Westminster Hall, which is said to be the largest of all covered spaces in the world unsupported by pillars.

Here we find the last remains of the walls of old Westminster Palace, such as it was in the days of King Rufus of traditional and fabulous Norman hospitality. The kings of England resided here for 480 years. The conflagration of 1834 destroyed the last traces of the splendour of olden times, and Westminster Hall alone remained to give us an idea of the grand style of Gothic palaces. But it is only an approximating idea, for with the exception of the northern portal and the window above it, all we now see is a creation of later days. More especially since the Hall has been brought into connexion with the new houses, its character has been changed. On the southern side there are at present broad steps, leading to a sort of balustrade, communicating with the corridors and outer halls of the houses. The quaint old window over the chief portal, with its Gothic ornaments and gigantic dimensions, forms a strong contrast with the new window opposite. And in the evening, when the old house is lighted up with gas, the illumination produces a striking mixture of ancient and modern colouring, which, however, far from impairing the effect of the whole, shows parts of the massive ceiling to the greatest advantage.

While we have been looking at the hall, it has been invaded by about two hundred persons, who form in lines through the whole length of it. It is half-past four, the time at which the Members of Parliament make their appearance, and there are always crowds of idle and curious persons, who, whenever they cannot obtain admission to the gallery, will come and wait in the hall, that they may gaze upon the faces of some of the parliamentary grandees.

We are just in time, for the open place in front of Westminster Hall assumes an animated appearance. Half a dozen policemen come, I know not exactly from which quarter, and take up a position near the gate. Old and young representatives of the people arrive from all parts of the town; some dressed in yellow breeches, and black long-tailed dress coats, come in cabs. They carry ponderous club-like umbrellas. Others arrive in heavy coaches, with a retinue of powdered giants; some come on foot, and others on horseback. Some are dressed down to the laid idÉal of quakerish plainness; and others are dressed out with a foppish sort of elegance. The majority drive themselves in two-wheeled vehicles to the temple of their eventual immortality. The latter—and, indeed, those who are on horseback—have their grooms to take care of the horses; and though the masters have the appearance of decent civilians, still the number of servants who assemble in front of the building, impart to the scene a tinge of aristocratic colouring. The difference between the English parliament and our defunct German chambers, is at once apparent, even before we enter the house. In Germany, there were but few servants and carriages. But the English parliament is chiefly composed of wealthy men; for not only do the “necessary expenses” of an election represent a large capital, but the members must also prove a property qualification of £300 per annum in land. This law alone would suffice to exclude men of humble resources, but such are still more effectually excluded by the expenses of that position in society which every member of parliament is compelled to assume. Whatever his profession may be, he must sacrifice it for the time being to his parliamentary duties, and that, too, without any pecuniary indemnification, since the English representatives are not paid, as was the case with their ephemeral colleagues in France and Germany. Life in London is expensive to every one, but the expense becomes serious in the case of temporary residents. Add to this, that every member is, in a manner, in duty bound to be attentive and hospitable to the influential among his constituents. Say, Mr. Jedediah Brown goes up to London for eight days or a fortnight; Mr. Jedediah Brown knows what is proper, and would not, on any account go back to St. Alban’s, or Canterbury, Blackburn, Birmingham, or Clitheroe, without calling on the honorable Mr. M. P., the member for the borough, for whom Mr. Jedediah Brown voted at the last election. Mr. Jedediah Brown is an influential person in his own borough; the name of his uncles, aunts, and cousins, is legion; and so is the name of his wife’s uncles, aunts, and cousins. The Brown interest is of the utmost importance at election times, and he who would stand well with the borough should, by all means, conciliate the Browns. There is no help for it. Mr. M. P. cannot do less than ask Mr. Jedediah Brown to dinner, drive him out in his carriage, and offer him a box at the opera. Well and good. Mr. Jedediah Brown cannot always remain in London, but he is followed by Mr. Ebenezer Smith, a wealthy man, and one whom the honourable and learned gentleman cannot afford to offend, for the Smith interest, too, is powerful, and the family very large. And after Mr. Ebenezer Smith, comes George Damson, the popular lecturer, and the Rev. Mr. Jones, Mrs. Jones, and the Misses Jones; and Mr. M. P., is compelled to have them all to dinner, and take them down to the house, and get them seats in the speaker’s gallery, and platform places at Exeter Hall. All this is very expensive. And, if Mr. M. P. is a married man, of course his wife insists on sharing with him the “gaieties” of the London season; she must go to routs, rÉunions, balls, and drawing-rooms, and these amusements, though innocent, are vastly expensive. Nor is Mr. M. P. allowed to imitate his Continental colleagues, and take his dinner in a chop-house, or at some cheap table d’hÔte; the aristocratic laws of decency preclude him from adopting that course. He must dine at a club, or at a first-rate hotel. He is compelled to have a large house, or, at least, to inhabit one of those “splendid drawing-room floors,” which are advertised, as “suitable for members of Parliament and gentlemen of fortune.” In short, he must is in duty bound to be a gentleman of fortune. The income of £300, as required by law, is, after all, a mere formality; and Lord John Russell could, without any tendency to radical reform, move for the abolition of the property qualification, since no one, but a man in a perfectly independent position, would ever think of aspiring to the expensive honour of a seat in the House of Commons.

The interior of the Houses of Parliament is grander and more imposing than the exterior. This does not apply to the rooms where the sittings are held, but rather to the entrance hall and corridors. As you enter you come at once into a hall, long enough and high enough to suit any second sized Gothic dome. High Gothic windows, Mosaic floors, palm-tree ceilings, heavy brass candelabras in the old church style, and marble statues on ponderous blocks of stone—such are the chief characteristics of the corridor which leads to the interior of the sanctuary. Doors of solid oak, with massive plate-glass windows, heavy brass handles, and neat ornaments, open from this corridor into a round airy hall, with a number of other corridors opening into all the other parts of the building. This hall is, so to say, the centre of the whole; and the two Houses if we may say so, are on either side of it—the Commons to the north, and the Lords to the south. The other corridors communicate with sundry other parts of the building, with the refreshment-rooms, the library, etc. The Gothic style is adhered to, even in the minutest details, and contrasts strangely with the busy life of the nineteenth century.

The refreshment-rooms, of course, abound in all imaginable creature-comforts. But it is a strange fact, that the Restaurant is even more exorbitant in his charges than the common herd of London hotel-keepers. The legislators of England are shockingly imposed upon in their own house; they are far more effectually fleeced than is the case in the hotels on the Rhine, or in the Apennines. Every drop of sherry and every ounce of mutton is charged as if it were worth its weight in gold. There have been grievous complaints in the House, but the unpatriotic landlord sticks to his prices; he taxes the legislators with as little compunction as those gentlemen show in taxing him and the whole fraternity of licensed victuallers.

The libraries of the House—one for the Lords and one for the Commons—are splendid in all their appointments, and useful, comfortable, and elegant in their arrangements; large fires burning brightly in massive grates, and surmounted by gigantic marble chimneys. Sardanapalian arm-chairs that invite you to read, ponder, and doze; costly carpets; servants in livery waiting upon the Members; large tables covered with portfolios, paper, envelopes, and all imaginable writing materials; splendidly bound books in massive book-cases; and gas-lights most advantageously placed—all combine to make this the most desirable retreat. Two librarians preside over the rooms. Existence is more delightful in these reading-rooms than in the House itself. The debates are sometimes very long, and malicious persons say that now and then they are not very interesting. It is, therefore, but natural that many of the chosen of the people prefer the arm-chairs in their library to their seats on the stuffed benches of the House. Here they may sit and doze or write, even more comfortably than in their clubs; and if a member wishes to indite a letter to his constituents or creditors, he has the accommodation of a special parliamentary post-office within the walls of the building. All this shows that the honourable and learned gentlemen have very correct ideas, and an acute perception of what is truly comfortable.

But even perfection itself is imperfect in this world of ours. A small matter has been neglected in the building of this palace, which has already cost the nation above two millions of pounds. It is the old story. The Houses proper, the saloons in which the sittings are held, are altogether bad in the plan, in their arrangements and appointments, with respect to acoustics, optics, rheumatics, catarrh, and gout.

In the Lords these faults are less obtrusive. The architect’s task was easier, and there are in the Lords scarcely ever so many visitors, that the artist, as in the case of the Commons, had to provide for the accommodation of six hundred members, with galleries for ladies, reporters, and the ordinary and extraordinary public, while the room was required to be of moderate dimensions, and comfortable as the old-established domestic English parlour. In the House of Lords the red morocco seats are marvellously comfortable, even for those who cannot boast of a coronet. The high, small, and painted windows admit but of little light; but the men who meet in this room do not care much whether or not they see one another very distinctly. They meet after the sitting in the brilliant saloons of the Earl of Woburn, or the Marquis of Steyne, where they can contemplate one another to their hearts’ content. In some parts of the room you cannot very well hear what is said; but even that does not matter: in the first instance, because generally what is said is not worth hearing; in the second, because many noble lords cannot, or will not, speak distinctly; and, in the third, because the reporters help one another whenever they lose the thread of the debate, so that the speeches make quite a figure in the newspapers. Certain very modest lords rely greatly on the talents of the reporters; they mutter, and stutter, and leave out half sentences, and next morning at breakfast it is quite a pleasure to see what a lucid, reasonable, and consistent speech (thanks to the reporters!) they have managed to make in last night’s debate.

Twice in the course of the year, a great many persons are anxious to obtain admission to the Lords, and to see and hear everything that is done or said. This is on the occasion of the Queen’s opening and proroguing parliament. But on such days, the London sun, loyal throughout, volunteers some extra service, and the Queen speaks more deliberately and distinctly than the majority of the old gentlemen who, on ordinary days, are “but imperfectly heard.” And lastly, the Queen’s speech is usually printed before it is delivered. The optical and acoustical shortcomings of the room are, for these reasons, by no means striking. The saloon itself, with all its gilt carvings, looks splendid, if not tasteful.

Originally, it was the architect’s intention to execute the saloon in which the Commons sit in a very elaborate style; indeed, the ceiling was already covered with paintings and gilt ornaments, when the Commons proved contumacious, and opposed the plan. Speeches were made on that occasion, which would have done honour to an assemblage of Spartans. Indignant remonstrances, which savoured of Puritanism and democratic prudery, were hurled at the head of the unfortunate architect. All this was very natural. Ever since the burning of the old Houses of Parliament, the Commons had sat in some provisional locality. It was a wretched place, with narrow doors, and little windows; the floor was covered with an old carpet; the walls presented a mixture of yellow, grey and black; the stairs were narrow and ricketty; the galleries, corridors, and committee-rooms, impressed the beholder with the idea that they formed part of some very poor provincial theatre. In short, everything was exquisitely rough shabby, and dirty. We are all creatures of habit; and in the course of time we become attached, even to nuisances. The members of the old house felt comfortable in their ricketty provisional booth; they liked the stairs, the dark corridors, and the narrow cloak-room; they liked the benches—everything suggested reminiscences, and they clave unto the old house. But they had no choice left. It was impossible to promote their provisional abode to the rank of a permanent dwelling. But then, they insisted that the new house should not be much more splendid than the old.

The architect, in his turn, could not conveniently either create dirt, or erect a wooden booth in the centre of the Gothic palace. He adopted a middle course. He removed the more glaring among the ornaments and gildings; the saloon was grained in oak colour; the ceiling was laid in oak-panels; he shut out the light by narrowing and painting the windows; and he made a saloon which is neither old nor new; neither grand nor comfortable; neither modern nor antique; neither simple nor highly ornamental; and neither clean-looking nor dirty; a saloon, in fact, which looks as if it were made of gingerbread.

But the artist, foiled in his attempt at decoration, took his revenge secretly, but terribly. He ventilated the place. Towers were built, which would have served as church steeples, but which, in the present instance, were intended to conduct the atmospheric air upwards, to press it downwards, and finally, to smuggle it into the lungs of honorable members. A steam-engine was erected for the purpose of creating artificial currents of air. He built and pulled down, in order to build and pull down again. All this was very bad. The steam-engine was soon stopped, for the saloon, surrounded as it is by long corridors, has the advantage of such powerful currents of air, that they would serve to create colds, ague, and rheumatism, for all the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The ceiling had to be brought down, because it interfered with the laws of acoustics. The artificial system of lighting the place had to be reduced to a more simple apparatus, for it endangered the safety of the members, and of the public in the galleries. The currents of air, through the artificial air-holes in the floor, were at once shut out, because they blew up the dust. In this manner, was the much vaunted system of ventilation demolished by bits, until nothing was left except the palpable uncheerfulness of the room itself. But let us enter, and pass the evening within its sacred precincts.

The grand corridor, which leads from Westminster-hall to the Central Hall shelters a great many persons, who sit, walk, or stand about. Many of them look weary and impatient. Who are they? They are the British public. They have orders to the gallery of the House, and wait until their turn comes. Each member is entitled to give an order. There are about six hundred members, and six hundred orders may be issued for every night. But the gallery cannot accommodate more than seventy or eighty persons. Those who come first are first admitted; and when the gallery is full, there is no help for it, the rest must wait. Their turn is, however, sure to come; sometimes much sooner than they had a right to expect. The debates are in many instances so dry and uninteresting that the galleries get emptied almost as soon as they are filled. But on an important night, when the leaders of the house are expected to speak, it may now and then happen that an unfortunate “stranger” waits from three P.M. until past midnight without gaining admission. It is, however, perfectly absurd that, in the construction of the new Houses, no adequate accommodation was made for the public.

As for ourselves, we are in no danger of waiting for admittance, because we had the good fortune to obtain orders for the Speaker’s gallery, a place in front of, and a little below, the stranger’s gallery. The right of admission to this place is confined to the Speaker; and since that dignitary is not too lavish in his favours, the lucky possessors of orders can be quite certain of ample and convenient accommodation.

It is five o’clock, and we take our seats. At the further end of the room, just opposite to us, we see the Speaker reclining in a comfortable leather-covered arm-chair with a case of solid wood, open in front, and bearing a strong resemblance to an academical pulpit. The Speaker is in his official costume, that is to say, he has a powdered wig and a black silk cloak. But in spite of these venerable attributes, he is by no means staid and majestic, and reclines with the greatest carelessness in his easychair, shutting his eyes as if he were going to sleep and again opening them and looking at papers, or talking to some of the members who have sauntered up to the chair. The whole house follows the Speaker’s example; the members stand in groups of twos and threes, talking, or they sit on the broad, stuffed benches, with their legs stretched out and their hats on their heads. They seem intent upon nothing but killing time. The sitting has commenced, but the fact is, that one of the clerks is reading a paper, the contents of which are pretty well known to every one, but which, according to the rules of the House, must be read.

Our friend, Dr. Keif, who, by some malicious contrivance of his own, has managed to get a full mastery over the English language, and who speaks that language with a correctness which is altogether scandalous in a ‘foreigner’—our friend Dr. Keif, I say, sits leaning over the gallery, with his hands behind his ears and his mouth wide open, anxious to know what the clerk is reading. But even he gives it up in despair.

“Impossible!” says he. “The men down below talk and laugh and chat as schoolboys do when the schoolmaster is away. What’s the good of that wigged fellow reading when no one listens to him? I’d like to throw my gloves down in order to awaken in those members some respect for the galleries. They are not by any means polite. I can’t say I like their manners. Am I indeed in an assembly of English gentlemen, most revered and respectable Sir John?”

Sir John is quite an habituÉ in the house, and as such, he informs the Doctor, that these are mere preliminaries, and that everybody will be quiet enough when the debate has once commenced. Very well. We must have patience. And while waiting, we shall have plenty of time to examine all the parts of the house.

We are, as has been mentioned, in the Speaker’s gallery. Behind us is a small and crowded place devoted to the English public, and at its side is the members’ gallery. The reporters’ gallery is opposite to us, and above it, something like a gilt cage, in the shape of a shut-up verandah, in which a couple of ladies have found a temporary asylum. We cannot see them, but Sir John will have it that one of them is Lady John Russell. A true John Bull is lynx-eyed in matters aristocratic. But what pleasure the ladies can take in being in that gallery, is a mystery to me. They cannot see, they cannot hear, and, what is much worse, they have no chance of being seen.

Dr. Keif cares not for the ladies. All his attention is devoted to the reporters. He is astonished to find them much graver and older-looking, and withal much more ennuyÉs than the reporters of our extinct German parliaments. There are among them men who have grown old and grey in the profession, and who are likely to belong to it as long as they can hold a pencil.

A few yards from the Speaker’s arm-chair there is a table. Who has not heard of that famous article of furniture? It is the table of the House, on which all parliamentary documents are laid. That table has no affinity to the Presidents’ bureaux, such as we have seen them in the chambers of Germany and France; it stands on the floor, like any common table, and is covered with green cloth. Seated at this table, their backs turned to the Speaker, are the clerks of the House. They are wigged and powdered, and have heaps of papers and petitions before them, together with some bulky volumes in leather bindings. In short, the table has the appearance of the common domestic writing-table of the study or office. But there is something on the table which at once distinguishes it from all similar articles of furniture, viz., a heavy golden mace or sceptre. So long as this sceptre remains in its place, it is considered that the sitting continues; its removal signifies that the House is adjourned or that it has resolved itself into a committee.

Look there! just by the door is an arm-chair, and seated in it a gentleman in a dark uniform-coat with embroidered collar, knee breeches, black silk stockings, and a small sword. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms, the only armed person in the House; in a manner, the warden and chief door-keeper of the House, whose duty it is to execute the Speaker’s warrants against members of Parliament and others who are guilty of a breach of privilege. Such persons are taken into custody by the Sergeant-at-Arms, who confines them in some very snug retreat within the precincts of the Parliamentary palace. While under his protection they are well taken care of, and provided with all the necessaries and luxuries of life, at prices which are by many considered exorbitant.

This man with the sword—whose income, by-the-bye, is about double the “gage” of a German general—has just risen from his comfortable seat. He is moving towards the table. On his arrival in the middle of the room, he stops and bows to the Speaker. He proceeds a few yards, and makes another bow—a few yards more, and bows again; and having thus arrived at the table, he makes a very low bow indeed.

Dr. Keif is quite flushed with excitement and curiosity. “What is that man after?” says he. “He dances and jumps about, as if he were asking the Speaker to join him in a minuet!”

The Sergeant, however, standing in front of the table, mutters a few words, which none but the initiated can understand. He takes the sceptre, removes it from the table, and puts it on something like a stool under it. Next, his face still turned towards the Speaker, he walks backwards, bowing at intervals, gains the door, and introduces two men with wigs on their heads, who, with many low bows, advance into the centre of the room. They are officers of the House of Lords, with some document or message, for which no one cares, because the majority of the members know all about it. Of course we take no interest in the message which has just been delivered to the Commons. The two Houses observe in their intercourse a great many ceremonial laws, the exact details of which are familiar to the older members, while no one else cares for them, but which, nevertheless, are observed by either House with a scrupulous punctilio. The two messengers from the Lords had to be duly announced; they were obliged to bow to the Speaker; they were not allowed to enter while the House was sitting, and for that reason the sitting was adjourned by the removal of the sceptre; they had to walk backwards to the door, looking at and bowing to the Speaker; and after the door had closed upon them, and not before, the Sergeant-at-Arms placed the sceptre again on the table, and the debate was resumed.

All these ceremonies strike a stranger as exquisitely comical; and they are enough to puzzle even an Englishman, who witnesses them for the first time, accustomed though he be to the quaint formalities and observances which are still prevalent in the Law Courts. Certain it is, that most of the continental states would long since have abolished all these traditional ceremonies. The Continentals would have been ashamed of the wigs and silk cloaks; they would have declared, that those old-fashioned attributes of official dignity were an insult to the spirit of the age, and they would have consigned them to the lumber-room; they would never for one moment have stopped to think that dangerous conflicts might possibly result from the condemnation of those insignificant and harmless formalities. Such things have happened in France, and in Germany, too. In the revolutions of either nation, much energy and valuable time has been wasted in an onslaught on mere outward forms and petty abuses, on diplomas of nobility, orders of knighthood, upper chambers, church privileges, and prerogatives of the crown. But there never was a compact majority, which, looking only at the chief points, sought to reconcile the lesser among the conflicting opinions, for the purpose of obtaining those results which every revolution should aim at—personal liberty, and the promotion of the national prosperity. These gained, the rest must follow. When every individual citizen and the nation altogether are interested in the maintenance of the liberties and improvements they have acquired, there can be no idea of a reaction. No person, no class is injured; and peaceful progress, and slow and sure reformatory action, are not only possible, but also necessary and unavoidable.

Even the radicals among the English have an instinctive appreciation of the above truths. The House of Commons has never made war upon the Lords, because the wives of the Lords wear coronets, or because the Queen performs the ceremony of opening and proroguing parliament in the House of Lords. Instead of attacking their harmless privileges, the Commons have driven the iron into the very heart of the Upper House—they have sapped its marrow, and reduced it to a mere shadow of its former self. Nor have the Commons ever attacked certain prerogatives which are essential to the crown, and which insure it its political position, its governmental functions, and its imperial splendour. Just the reverse. Not all the mailed knights and barons of olden times, nor gartered Dukes nor belted Earls, would have defended the dignity of the crown with so much zeal and devotion as the Commons have done for many years past. They are most anxiously scrupulous in their professions and marks of respect for the head of the state. They gave the king his due, freely and fully. But did they ever consent to a curtailment of their own rights? Have they resigned the smallest and least significant of their own prerogatives? Is not their vote the full and firm expression of popular opinion? And did they ever make concessions to the crown at the expense of the people’s rights? Never! Those who know the history of modern England, know also how marvellously the Commons have grown in strength, political ability, and power. Indeed, so great is their power, that, magnified by distance, it imposes upon the Continentals, who are led to believe that the head of the British empire is a mere Marionette figure. This opinion is altogether erroneous; for a large amount of power remains still in the hands of the crown. The monarchy of England stands on a firmer basis in 1853 than it did in 1753, when the cry for innovations had not yet been raised on the other side of the channel; it will always remain firm so long as it respects the balance of power among the various estates of the realm. The crown is aware of this, and keeps within its limits even in the face of temptation. And the people in their meetings, and in the press—two engines which are generally terrible to crowned heads—stand by the side of the throne as trusty monitors, but they are not opposed to it. The government avoids anything like a conflict with public opinion; the people do not make opposition for opposition’s sake, and the political engine works well from session to session and from year to year.

And, after all, what harm is there in the Speaker’s wig, or the Queen’s speech addressed to the Lords, and in all the quaint ceremonies and observances? What does it all matter? And why waste even a thought on the reform of such trifles, so long as reform is needed in matters of greater importance?

These arguments, which are strongly redolent of the German constitutionalists of Gotha, are in fact the property of Sir John, who threw them at Dr. Keif’s head, when that learned man ridiculed the sergeant-at-arms. They descended to Sir John as an heir-loom from his great grandfather. May they descend from him to his children and the children of his children!

The house has meanwhile got full. A man of elegant appearance has taken his seat to the right of the speaker on the front bench, next the table. He is neither tall nor is he short; he is rather thin than stout; his forehead is high, round, and smooth; he has black eyebrows; brown clear eyes; high cheek-bones; lips firmly set; a pointed chin and black curly hair, with one of the curls drooping right over his forehead. What Englishman but knows that curl which Doyle has so often caricatured in Punch? The possessor of that curl is Disraeli, Benjamin Disraeli, at the time we saw him the Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli, her Majesty’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the Commons.

Few portraits of this gifted man have hitherto been published; and Punch may claim the merit of having first introduced his face to the public at large. But Punch’s caricature, though clever, is apt to mislead one, and those are very much mistaken who imagine the real Disraeli as a hollow-eyed, round-backed, philosophically shabby-looking, Jewish youth. The real Disraeli has a refined and aristocratic appearance. His neckcloth may now and then be tied in a startling knot—the curl on his forehead, is somewhat romantic—but in all other respects Disraeli answers to the beau ideal of a well-dressed English gentleman. And there he sits, throwing his right leg over his left and now his left over his right, talking to his next neighbour, the Right Honourable Sir John Pakington, her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, or turning to some member of the party behind him. There he sits, taking papers from his pockets or from the table, but generally busily engaged in trimming the nails of his white hands. Such as he sits, with his hat pulled over his face and to all appearance lost in deep thought; or, starting up, taking off his hat and answering a question in a smiling, cutting, sarcastic manner; or leaning over listening to a speech and taking notes:—such as he sits on the ministerial bench, this Right Honourable Benjamin Disraeli, of plebeian Jewish descent, but at present Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, must be an object of interest to every one, no matter whether he be a gifted sage or a gifted humbug.

His talents shine with transcendent brightness in opposition; and it is not too much to say, that he is the only capable man of whom his party can boast. He has compelled them to acknowledge him as their leader; he has left them no choice: they must either take him or perish. He is the great Protector of the Conservatives; and the Liberal party are free to confess, that they have suffered much from his antagonism. When Disraeli, rising from his seat, doffs his hat, and prepares to speak, the House is all silence and attention. The very reporters, who have just sat out their turn, hasten back to the gallery to hear him, for they all, even those attached to the liberal journals, feel a special interest in Disraeli, the author—the member of their guild. He is not an agreeable speaker. His voice is harsh and jarring; his manner is rather repulsive than winning; but his sneers, his sarcasms, his malicious attacks, are sure to tell, for he never aims at generalities, but hurls his scorn directly at certain men and sets of men in the House. At such moments, he looks in every direction but the one in which he has launched his arrow. Disraeli’s sarcasms have raised him a host of enemies, and justly too, as every one must confess, who reads his Parliamentary speeches since his first Arabian razzia upon Sir Robert Peel.

To be witty is not, after all, so very difficult for those who care not to what extent they wound the feelings of their adversaries. But look at the man on the Speaker’s left hand—there! on the further end of the first bench—he that holds a handkerchief in his hand. That man does these things with greater finesse. He is quite as witty as Disraeli, and he, too, has a telling answer to every question; but, withal, he does not get personal and offensive. That man is a general favourite, and every one is silent when he rises. That is Lord Palmerston, the notorious Lord Firebrand; he who, according to the opinion of the continental politicians, thinks of nothing but the most convenient means of overthrowing all the thrones in Christendom.

“This, then,” whispers Dr. Keif, imitating his great enemy Kappelbaumer, the spy of the imperial and royal police at Vienna—“this is that my Lord von Palmerston, the evil genius of all reasonable European Cabinets! That’s the man, with his white, innocent-looking little whiskers, his delicate features, the striped neckcloth, and the brown trousers, which, I dare say, were presented to him by Mazzini. But do tell me the truth, is it really that tall old gentleman, lying on the bench rather than sitting, and talking to his neighbours, exactly as if he were in the ale-house? Well, by Metternich! this Herr von Palmerston has such a pleasing appearance, that I could never have believed in his atrocious wickedness, if I had not been a reader of the German newspapers these many years past. What astonishes me most is, that those people down there have not the decency to avoid talking to him, for, after all, he is a convicted rebellion-monger, whom no well-disposed citizen of Vienna or Berlin would like to be seen with in the street. But no, as I said before, there’s nothing in the appearance of the man to frighten one. Really, there’s nothing exciting, or rebellious, or conspiratory, that I can see! And only think, what a mass of very uncivil notes he has written!”

“That’s because he is a great diplomatist!” rejoins Sir John, with marvellous unction. “For the very reason that you hate him we like him. He is exactly what a Foreign Secretary ought to be, popular at home and unpopular abroad. Eh, sir! catch that man standing up to advocate the cause of a continental despot, or conduct himself in a manner which would justify his enemies in calling him the minister of such and such a king or emperor at the court of St. James’s. Why, sir, what’s a chief of the Foreign Office good for, if he does’nt do the bull-dog’s duty—barking and showing his teeth, to frighten the housebreakers and such like wretches! And was’nt Lord Palmerston a capital bull-dog? Did’nt he bark with a loud voice, to the terror of the whole neighbourhood? And was there any one bitten by him? Certainly not, he merely offered to bite—showed his teeth—and the Continentals knew what it meant. But, of course, they don’t like him any the better for it.”

“I do wish he’d make us a speech,” said Dr. Keif. “How does he speak?”

“Just as I like it!” responded Sir John. “His is a frank and open address—no pathos, no excitement—reasonably, intelligibly, mannerly, as an English gentleman should speak. It’s his nature; he could’nt be rude, even if he were to try, excepting, always, when he sits down to correspond with the foreign powers. In the House, he never on any account is guilty of a personal attack; but he is so clever, that he can with the greatest ease provoke a laugh at the expense of those who ask idle and impertinent questions.”

Sir John, thus singing the praises of Lord Palmerston, is interrupted by shouts of laughter proceeding from the body of the House. What is the matter? Colonel Sibthorp has come in, and, after bestowing a look of sublime contempt on Mr. Roebuck, who entered at the same moment, the gallant colonel, though scarcely above a minute in the House, has taken part in the debate, and uttered one of those profound and gentle remarks, the fame of which will be for ever connected with his name. Colonel Sibthorp’s portrait in “Punch” is true to the life; in his short speeches, there is a good deal of common sense and natural shrewdness; but there is a comicality in his diction which makes them rather amusing than impressive. His remarks on this particular occasion are for the benefit of Lord John Russell, who is just speaking of the Militia. Colonel Sibthorp intimates to the noble Lord, that certain persons know nothing whatever of certain matters; but the ex-premier is not to be put out of countenance by such like soft impeachments, accustomed as he is to hear them from the lips of the gallant colonel. The House, too, after laughing at the sally, gives its undivided attention to the great orator. For Lord John is generally allowed to be a good speaker; his friends assert it, and his enemies do not deny it. In Paris he would make fiasco; in England he commands admiration. His mode of speaking is simple, pointed, and reasonable. He talks as a man of business to men of business; his exposition is practical; he enters largely into details, and provokes contradiction. He is a little broad-shouldered man, with clever eyes, wrinkled cheeks and forehead; he has a short neck and high shirt-collars, thin lips, and a sallow complexion; little boots, tight checked trousers, and holds his preposterously large hat in his hand. So he stands before us, with one of his hands stuck into his trousers’ pockets.

His speech will be found in the parliamentary intelligence of the morning papers. It is one o’clock, A.M., and no one seems yet to think of adjourning the debate. Sir John would have no objection to see the debate close; but Dr. Keif reminds him of the family who are waiting at home. “We shall have no chance of a cup of hot tea,” says he, “unless we go at once.” Thus exhorted, we return home, take our tea by the parlour fire, and talk at great length of English speeches and orators, and of the parliamentary system generally.

There is a good deal of peculiarity about public speaking in this country. A certain monotony, and an utter absence of passionate emotion, are among the chief qualities of a good parliamentary orator. Such a speaker appears cold and dry in the eyes of a foreigner; but whenever he does not succeed in remaining unimpassioned, whenever he gets violent, the impression he produces is decidedly disagreeable. The same may be said of the action of the hands. Every Englishman who takes the platform at a meeting, every member who rises from his seat in Parliament to address the House, shows at once that he is firmly resolved to make no movements with his hands and arms. He secures his hands to keep them out of harm’s way; and the positions he takes for that purpose are not by any means Æsthetic or pathetic. One man puts his hands in his trousers’ pockets; another hooks his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat; some put their hands behind their backs; and others cross their arms over their chests À la NapolÉon. In this manner do they begin their speeches; but since the speeches are long, it stands to reason that the speaker cannot always remain in the same position. Besides, as he proceeds with his subject, he warms to it, and then commences the most astonishing action of the arms and the body generally. One man moves his hand up and down as if he were the leader of a band presiding over the performance of a gallopade; another stands with his hands clenched, and makes a rowing motion; and the third moves his right hand in circles, each circle ending with a sort of push at the audience. Others—for instance, Lord Dudley Stuart—beat time on the table; and others—for instance, Lord Palmerston—swing their bodies to and fro in imitation of a pendulum.

All these attitudes are not by any means elegant; but it is customary in England for public speakers to conduct themselves with all possible nonchalance, and to address their hearers as merchants do in a conversation on mercantile affairs. Besides, there is no tribune in the House of Commons, and it is, therefore, quite natural that the members are at a loss what to do with their hands. Public speaking, in fact, is by no means an easy matter; and to be an efficient Member of Parliament requires the whole of a man’s time and energies. Committees in the morning, debates from four o’clock in the afternoon until after midnight, the speaking and the listening to speeches, surely these fatigues are enough to shake a man’s health. Who would find fault with the most conscientious Member of Parliament for his desire to escape from town in August, and recruit his strength in the Highlands? And then think of the Ministers, who, besides attending the sittings, have to superintend their offices and departments. Dr. Keif is right when he says, “I’d rather be impelled into Germany than be a minister in England. Sir John! Vivat Germania! Germany for ever!”

THE ENGLISH PRESS GENERALLY.—THE “TIMES” AND THE OTHER JOURNALS.—THE EVENING PAPERS.—THE PUBLICATION OF THE MORNING PAPERS.—ANTICIPATION OF NEWS.—SPECIAL TRAINS.—PUBLICATION OF WEEKLY PAPERS.—THE READING PUBLIC.—ADVANTAGES OF WEEKLY PAPERS.—THE PROVINCIAL PRESS.—WHY IT CANNOT FLOURISH.—TRANSMISSION OF NEWSPAPERS.—THE NEWSVENDERS.—A SCENE IN THE “GLOBE” OFFICE.—YOUNG HOPEFUL, THE NEWSBOY.—MR. SMIRKINS, THE PARTY-MAN.—THE NEWSVENDER’S EXCHANGE.

THE Germans have, at all times, professed great respect for the English press; and justly, too, considering the excellence of its political articles, its miraculous versatility, the conscientiousness of its reports, the general usefulness of its contents, the enormous geographical sphere into which it finds its way, the grave and manly tone of its language, and especially its thoroughly independent position, and with it, its stupendous moral power. The English press is more concentrated in its means than the German; it is more sober, versatile, and honorable than the French; and it can be more relied upon, and is more decent in its tone, than the American press. It surpasses all three by the grand solidity of its deportment. It may well be said, that no nation on earth, old or new, could ever boast of such a political press as that of which the English nation can boast.

In one point only, the English political press is over-estimated. Its issues and its profits are generally considered to be much larger than they really are. It is not difficult to discover the grounds of this erroneous view. People think mostly of the Times, because it is best known and most frequently quoted. The condition of the English journalistic press is estimated after this, its most important representative. The premises are false, and so is the conclusion. We do not here propose to open the ledgers of the English newspaper offices, and to take down the number of copies sold. A great deal of falsehood, and a great deal of truth, has been published in Germany on this subject. We will here only say, that the Times prints daily from 40,000 to 50,000 copies, and that the other journals together have an issue of the same amount. This is enough to show, that no conclusions can be drawn from the statistics of the Times to the statistics of the other great morning papers. These numbers prove also, that English journalism has fewer readers than journals in Germany or France, though certainly its geographical diffusion is by far greater. But it were equally wrong to draw conclusions from the number of copies sold to the number of readers. The position of the periodical press to the public is so peculiar in this country, that a detailed account is necessary for its proper understanding. We propose to give that account in the following pages, and begin by stating the well-known fact, that the English political papers are divided into morning, evening, and weekly papers, into monthlies and quarterlies, and into metropolitan and provincial journals. The essential difference between the morning and evening papers, is to be found in the time of publication. The first edition of the latter is published at four, or half-past four, in the afternoon; a second edition is published at six o’clock; and, on important occasions, a third edition, containing the parliamentary intelligence of the evening, badly reported, and in execrable style, is published at seven o’clock. Some of the evening papers, too, are cheaper than the morning papers, and they are all half a sheet in size; but they have the advantage of giving the contents of the day-mails, and the accounts of the money-market. The evening papers generally contain much less matter than the morning papers. Their sale too is small, and with the exception of the Globe and the Sun, they are none of them independent, but form part of the property of certain morning papers. The Standard, for instance, is but a later edition of the Morning Herald; the same is the case with the Express, which belongs to the Daily News; with the Evening Mail, which belongs to the Times; and the Evening Journal, which is a satellite of the Morning Chronicle. The sale of these papers is limited, and their expense is not generally thought to be very large.

The morning papers are published in time for the early railway trains. The first few thousands of the copies printed, are at once despatched into the provinces, and the copies which are destined for metropolitan circulation, reach the readers generally about nine o’clock, when a great many Londoners are at breakfast. The Morning Post alone is in the habit, as it appears, of receiving very important intelligence, such as “Elopements in High Life,” or “the last odds against Black Doctor,” between the hours of six and eight in the morning, for this fashionable journal appears frequently at the break of day, with the exciting heading, “Second Edition!” The first edition, it seems, was sold in the course of the night; perhaps between one and three, A.M. The less important papers publish their second edition at twelve o’clock, and in it their foreign correspondence, which has arrived with the morning mails. In the case of any extraordinary event, they publish a third edition at three o’clock.

It is impossible to speak too highly of the despatch and correctness of the printing in the English newspaper offices. Where so much praise is due, there has, as a matter of course, been some exaggeration likewise; and the newspaper offices are the subjects of many a popular myth, which it is worth while to reduce to simple truth. Both Englishmen, and the foreigners that are within their gates, will now and then, at eight o’clock in the morning, read “our own correspondent’s” letter in the Times, and be struck with some remarkable piece of intelligence it contains. An hour or so afterwards, perhaps, the postman brings them a letter from some continental friend, and lo! that letter contains the very news which they have read, printed in large type, in the morning paper. Now, however expeditious compositors, printers, and newsmen may be, the setting up of matter, the striking it off, and distributing it through the various channels of trade, to the farthest ends of the town, require a certain amount of time. How, then, is it possible, since my private letter and the Times correspondence came by the same mail—how, in the name of all that is strange, does it happen, that the paper prints the news so much sooner than I receive it through the Post Office? Why it looks “nae cannie,” as a Scotchman would say!

Still the result is brought about by the most natural and simple means. The morning papers have their continental correspondence sent by mail, but the letters are not directed to London, but to an agent in Dover. That agent, who is generally connected with the railroad or the Post Office, receives his parcels immediately after the arrival of the steamers from Calais and Ostend. He directs them to his principals in London, and sends them off with the express train. Of course the mail letter-bags reach London by the same train; but the mail-bags have to go to the Post Office, where the letters are taken out and sorted, and distributed among the various district offices, which, in their turn, distribute them among the letter-carriers. The letters cannot, therefore, reach their various destinations before eight o’clock, though it frequently happens that they come at a much later hour. But the parcels sent direct from Dover are emancipated from the necessary delays of the Post Office. A messenger receives them as the train dashes into London Bridge Station; they are at once hurried away to the printing offices, set up, printed, and despatched to all the news-shops of London. And while this is going on in the printing office, the Post Office clerks are opening the mail-bags, and sorting and stamping the letters for the regular delivery. A certain portion of time, say a few hours, are necessarily lost at the Post Office; and this loss of time to the public, and the advantage to which the newspapers turn it, has puzzled many persons, particularly strangers. All the popular tales of special trains and steamers are mere fables. The Times, with all its power of capital, cannot have faster vessels than the mail steamers that run between Calais and Dover; and if at Dover it were to engage a special train, that train could not go faster than the express. But even if greater speed were attainable, the experiment would be too costly for daily use.

On important occasions, indeed, in the case of unexpected arrivals of interesting continental news, or when large and important meetings are being held in the provinces, and the intelligence to be conveyed to town is too heavy for the telegraph, the great London journals do not shrink from the expense of special trains, which convey to them the reports of the proceedings, as taken down by their correspondents. But in the transmission of mere news—of those “facts,” to which Mr. Cobden would confine the newspapers—the telegraph is at once cheaper and more expeditious.

A few years ago, when there were no railroads, and when the steamers were neither frequent in their passages nor punctual in their arrivals, the Times had organised its own system of couriers, and for a long time it competed with the Morning Herald as to the greatest expedition in the conveyance of the Overland Mail from Marseilles to London. At one time the Times had the best of it; on another occasion the couriers of the Times were beaten by the couriers of the Herald; the agents of the papers sowed their money broad-cast on the route between Marseilles and Calais; they outwitted one another in retaining all the post-horses, until these expensive manoeuvres were finally rendered unnecessary by the railway service and the submarine telegraph. In this respect, too, the most fabulous stories have long been current in Germany, where, it is generally believed, that the Times has its score or so of special trains steaming away on all the railroads of England from year’s-end to year’s-end. The English newspaper service is by this time established on a firm, expeditious, and economical basis; and extraordinary means are resorted to only on extraordinary occasions.

The weekly political papers are published on Saturday, and some of them on Sunday morning, while a few publish a second edition on Monday morning. They live on the news of the daily papers; the better class among them have a single correspondence, a weekly Paris letter, but they have not the telegraphic despatches, nor do they maintain a staff of correspondents and reporters. They simply condense the news as given by the morning journals, while some of them spice the abstract with an original remark or two for the convenience of a peculiar class of readers. Besides these they have a few leading articles, and “Letters to the Editor.” These letters are, in many instances, more interesting than any other part of the paper, and under an able editor their moral effect is greater even than that of the leading articles. This department has been utterly neglected by German journalism, though there can be no doubt of its being eminently suited to the capabilities and necessities of the German public.

We have no intention of discussing the literary and political merits of the various “Weeklies.” Their importance and popularity, too, is not a theme for us. These things are, moreover, well known in Germany. But in our opinion, it is worth while to inquire into the circumstances to which the weekly press in England owes its circulation and popularity, while it never prospered either in France or in Germany. A combination of causes produces this result. The morning papers are too expensive and too voluminous for the middle classes, especially in the country. Their price is a high one, not only according to the German, but also to the English mode of reckoning. But in the present state of the law, it is impossible to produce a daily paper which can compete with the other journals at a lower price. It has been proved to the satisfaction of Parliamentary Committees, that what with the paper, stamp, and advertisement duty, a great journal can only pay if it has an immense circulation. Still more strikingly has this been shown in the struggles and sufferings of the Daily News. That paper was set up in opposition to the Times. The Manchester men advanced a large capital, À fonds perdu, and the competition commenced with an attempt at underselling. The “Daily News” was sold at threepence per number; and the consequence was, that the funds of the party were really and truly “perdu.” The price was raised to fourpence; still the concern was a losing speculation. Finally the Daily News condescended to take fivepence, as the other journals do, and it is now more prosperous.

But fivepence is a high price for a paper, even according to English ideas. It is very silly to say, that in England a sovereign is to the Englishman what a florin or a thaler is considered to be to the German. The remark may hold good in the case of the favoured few—the dukes, cotton-lords, and nabobs; but among the middle classes, the relative value of a sovereign and a thaler assumes a very different aspect. The middle class forms the bulk of newspaper readers; it is not so easy for that class to pay six pounds per annum for the “Times” or “Daily News,” as the payment of six thalers (the average price of a Zeitung) is to the middle classes in Germany.

Besides being too dear, the morning journals are too large for the majority of the public. Many persons cannot spare the time to read all the parliamentary intelligence, and the police and law reports, and the railway and mining articles; others are too lazy, while the majority of provincial readers combine the two objections with a third. They are too busy, lazy, and generally too indifferent. They would take a comfortable view of the events. They are not over curious, and will not be compelled to swallow a daily dose of news. They are not so hot-blooded as a French portier, who cannot think of going to sleep without a look at least at the evening papers; and in politics they enjoy a greater degree of phlegm than all the continental nations together. They say, and are justified in so saying, “We live in a quiet country, where everything and everybody has his place. Nothing whatever can happen that we are any the worse off for knowing a few days later. A dissolution perhaps? Why let them dissolve the parliament, there will be a general election—that’s all. Resignation of ministers? There are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it. A foreign war? Very well, we’ll pay for it, but they wont invade us, thanks to the sea and the wooden walls of England. All of which proves that a man need not be in a confounded hurry to know the last news!”

And as for the working classes they want money, time, and, indeed, they want the mind, for the daily press. Weeklies are cheaper and more palatable. Their news is more condensed; it is more popular; they contain a deal of demonstration and furnish useful reading all the week through.

It is therefore not at all astonishing that the weekly press should have experienced an enormous increase within the last few years, while the few daily papers that were started in that period, proved utter failures; while the majority of even the old established papers were far from being prosperous. Hence, too, the enormous sale of the weeklies, whose prices range from three-pence to nine-pence. First and foremost in prosperity is the Illustrated London News, whose sale is said to amount to 100,000 copies. The Weekly Dispatch, selling from 60,000 to 80,000 copies, comes next. It is a radical paper, though I doubt whether any German reader would ever discover its radicalism. The Weekly Dispatch is the favourite of the lower classes. The Examiner and the Spectator, though superior in point of style and political ability, are less read than the Germans generally believe; but Punch (for Punch too is essentially a political paper), is prosperous, easy, comfortable, and influential, as indeed it fully deserves to be.

The non-political papers, the monthlies and quarterlies, the clerical journals whose name is legion, the critical papers, the penny weekly papers which fatten on stolen property, the military and naval gazettes, the papers devoted to banking, architecture, gas-lighting, agriculture, mining, railways, colonial affairs, and all imaginable professions and branches of industry, these we mention only to say that we must leave them to scientific and professional travellers. But we add a few words on the provincial press of England.

It is insignificant. Any interest it may possess springs from local causes, as is the case with the Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool papers. This applies also to the Irish journals, whose tone, generally speaking, bears traces of more genius and less conscience than the tone of the English press.

The English provincial press in particular can advance no claims to Irish genius. It wants originality, unless it be original deliberately and with speculation aforethought to say the thing which is not true; to bring news of ministerial changes, which is news indeed to the officials of Downing-street, and to perpetuate the fiction of a highly distinguished omnipresent and omniscient “London Correspondent,” who is a member of all the clubs; who passes every one of his evenings in all the theatres and at all the fashionable parties, and who is on terms of the most bewildering intimacy with all the great men of the day. A great many of these papers drag out a weary and unprofitable existence, while others make much money. The expenditure of most of them is confined to the cost of the paper and printing; the taxes due to the state and the outlay of a modest capital on scissors and paste.

There is no possibility of improvement in this respect, since in England a political paper cannot thrive unless it be established in London. The owners of the provincial newspapers cannot help it; they have no control over the political and geographical circumstances which determine the fortune of the English press.

Not only does it stand to reason that a metropolitan journal is in a more favourable position than a provincial journal, since the national life and action radiates and is concentrated in the mighty heart of the country; but London, with its population of two millions and a half, is not merely the capital of a vast empire, it is also an imperium in imperio, a kingdom in itself. Many kingdoms have a less population than London has, and many countries furnish not half the amount of matter for journalism which London supplies. And though they had the matter it would be divided over a vast area, and its instant collection and publication would be impossible. Concentration has incalculable advantages for the daily press, as is plainly shown by the great journals of Paris and London.

In another respect, too, the London papers are favoured by circumstances. The geographical extent of England is so small compared to its political power, the country is so completely covered with a network of railroads and telegraphs, that space is lessened in a marvellous degree. Thus is the London press enabled to collect intelligence in all parts of the country in less than no time, as the English say, to gather it by centripetal attraction and send it forth by centrifugal radiation. Sitting on the banks of the Thames, a short railway journey from the narrowest portion of the channel and thus, of all the large towns, most near to the Continent, London is the most efficient mediatrix and exchanger of news between the Continent and England and the Continent and America. As capital of England, of a country which has always carried the mails of all the nations and parts of the world to all the nations and parts of the world, London is the great political, mercantile, and scientific storehouse of the world. No other periodical press can boast of such favourable circumstances; and the London press is safe from the competition of the periodical journals of the seaport-towns, because distance in England is of very little moment in the communication of intelligence, and, because favoured as it is, it can afford to pay, and occasionally to pay largely too for extra means of speed and priority of information.

Let us now turn to the mechanical means and contrivances by which the London papers are distributed among the public.

The transmission of newspapers in Germany is a government monopoly: it belongs to the post. The post-offices in Germany accept subscriptions to the various newspapers and forward them to the subscribers. The English post-office has nothing whatever to do with newspaper subscriptions. It forwards newspapers exactly as it forwards other parcels, whenever they are posted, but it does not undertake to obtain them from the publishing-office. The newspaper-offices, too, know nothing of the continental system of abonnement; they sell their papers over the counter, and for cash, exactly as all other wholesale dealers do. Under these circumstances, the public want retail shops, and such retailers are to be found in the newsvenders.

Generally speaking, the newsvenders occupy small shops in or near some of the principal streets, where they frequently carry on the business of stationers as well. They supply their London customers with papers; they send papers to their customers in the provinces, and they lend papers by the hour or day. For success in the various branches of his business, the newsvender wants a good connexion and a small capital. His connexion once established, he can make a guess at the numbers of each paper he is likely to want, and for these he sends to the various publishing-offices. The news-boys are the chief “helps” and props of his trade.

In the dawn of morning, even before the publication of the great journals has commenced, the newsvender, represented by his boy, is at his post in the outer room of the publishing-office. These plenipotentiaries of the various newsvending firms sit and gape and rub their eyes, or warm their hands by the fire, until the first batch of papers is hurried into the room. A thin, sleepy man, who has hitherto been hid in a kind of cage, gets up from his office chair and takes charge of the bulky parcel. The boys at once make a rush towards the cage, and the taller ones elbow their way up to it, while the small boys must be content to wait until their turn comes. “Fifty copies!” “One hundred copies!” “Two hundred copies!” Each bawls out the number he wants, puts down his money, and runs off through the moist, cold, morning air to another newspaper-office, or back to the shop, where the various numbers are put into wrappers as fast as it is possible for human hands to perform that operation, and despatched by rail to the various country customers. All this is done at express speed; and the newsvender’s boy, though gifted with a leaning to politics, can hardly find the time to stop by a street lamp and read the last “Submarine from Paris.”

He is hard at work all the morning. When the parcels have been despatched into the provinces, he is at once compelled to devote himself to the other important section of his daily duties, and provide for his master’s town customers, of whom there are two classes, purchasers and hirers of newspapers. The former receive their papers about nine o’clock through the medium of the news-boy. The latter receive their papers at various times according to the terms of the contract. Some keep a paper two hours, some keep it three or four, and the terms are, for the short period, 6d., and for the longer, 1s. per week. It is the newsboy’s business to know all the various customers of this kind, and to call with the paper, and for it, at the exact time desired by each individual reader.

He is less occupied between the hours of eleven and three. If not compelled to “mind the shop,” the newsboy, if gifted with a correct estimation of his political position, will devote these leisure hours to the perusal of the various journals within his reach. If not of an intellectual turn, he indulges in a comfortable fight with some sympathetic printer’s devils, in some quiet square or court. Duty calls him again at three o’clock. He has to call for the newspapers which are “out,” and he has to secure the supply of evening papers at the moment of their publication—all for that evening’s country mail. The publishing-offices of almost all the London papers are to be found in the line of road and the parts that thereunto adjacent lie, from the Strand to St. Paul’s, where journals of diametrically opposite tendencies reside in dangerous proximity to one another. In this quarter of the town they are near to the Exchange, the post-office, and the chief railway-stations; and the chief newsvenders, too, live generally in the narrow lanes and alleys which run out of the principal streets.

Those who wish to study the natural history of the news-boy, should take their stand in the publishing office of an evening paper, at half-past three or four o’clock in the afternoon. A small apartment, divided into two smaller apartments by means of a wooden partition, and the outer half dusty and dirty to the last degree, and crowded with boys, who there wait for the paper, which is just going to press. It happens, now and then, that the publication is delayed for half an hour, or so; on such occasions, the youths in attendance display a remarkable amount of ingenuity in their praiseworthy efforts to kill the time. The innate street-boyism of these small creatures is tinged with a literary colouring. The little “devils” are evidently inspired with the devilries of the newspapers which they sell. Some are free-traders, others are protectionists; not from conviction, but from the urgent desire of their nature to have a good and sufficient reason for wrangling and fighting. We watched their proceedings on one occasion, at the time when Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli were “in,” as a very ragged boy said, in so sententious a manner, that it would have done honour to a very old member of the House of Commons.

“Eh, Jim!” cried a diminutive boy, with black eyes, red cheeks, and fuzzy brown hair. “Eh, Jim! sold no end of

THE NEWSPAPER BOYS. p. 215
THE NEWSPAPER BOYS. p. 215.

Heralds, I dare say. You’re in, you know; clodhoppers that you are!” “Herald’s a ministerial paper; beats the Times hollow, don’t it? Kick’s it into the middle of next week, eh? Well, I hope it’ll do your master some good, but it don’t do you no good, Jim, my boy; you’re as lean as a bone, you are!”

To which, Jim, a light-haired, spare-made, freckled youth, replies:

“You’re the parties as gets fat, so you are. Them as is ’onest people, never gets fat! How’s the Globe? eh! Don’t you think one publication a week is more than enough? You’ve got no news, noways, now that we are in.”

Saying which, he takes off his cap—the beak of it went a long time ago, on the battle-field of Holywell-street—and flings the dirty missile into Tom’s face; and Tom, who would parry it, puts his fist into Dan’s face; whereupon, Dan, starting back, kick’s Jack’s shins; and Jack gives it to Dan, and Dan to Tom, and Tom to Jim, and there is a general melÉe. The quarrel is finally settled by the armed intervention of four tall boys, who for some length of time watched the chances of the fight from a bench in the furthest corner of the room. A few blows and kicks, the combatants are separated, and the publishing office is tranquil. At this juncture, the inner door is opened, and a man with spectacles, and a large parcel of wet Globes makes his appearance. The four tall youths rush up to the wooden partition, to the exclusion, the manifest disgust of the smaller fry of boys. All their movements betray the consciousness of their Flegeljahr dignity. Mr. Smirkins, the publishing clerk, who has just entered, treats them with marked distinction. He greets them with a smile; tells them it is “rather wet to-day;” and goes the length of inquiring after the state of their health. One of them, a genteel youth, with very stiff shirt collar, and a very new hat, is quite a favorite with Mr. Smirkins. That gentleman has, for the last years, devoted his time and talents to the Globe office, and has come to consider himself, not only as an integral part of that Whig paper, but also as an important link in the heavy chain of the Whig party. He mentions the Whigs, as “our party;” and in speaking of the Globe, he says, “we.” The advent of the Derbyites to power, has been a severe trial to Mr. Smirkins’ feelings; he is less fat and jovial now, than he was under Lord John Russell. He looks care-worn. A faithful servant of his party, he grieves to see the Globe neglected by those high in office.

“How many copies?” says he to the youth with the shirt-collars. “Ten? Here they are. I dare say you take a good many Standards since we——”

No! the truth is too harsh for Mr. Smirkins. He cannot conclude the sentence, so tries another mode of expression.

“The Standard’s looking up, I dare say?”

But the youthful newsvender has all the discretion of a London man of business. He replies to Mr. Smirkins’ question with a few “Hem’s and Hah’s”; and Mr. Smirkins, foiled in his attempts to obtain intelligence of the prosperity of the other party, goes on distributing his papers among the boys; and the boys, rushing out to distribute them all over the town, make great haste, that they may be in time at the newsvenders Exchange.

These boys, strange though it may appear, have their own exchange where they meet at five o’clock. Not indeed in colonnade and marble halls, not even in a tavern parlour, but in the open air, at the corner of Catherine-street, Strand. There they meet, shouting, squabbling and fighting in hot haste, for they have not much time to lose. All the papers must be posted by six o’clock. Here spare copies of the Herald are exchanged for spare copies of the Daily News, the Times is bartered against the Post, according to the superfluities and necessities of the various traders. The exchanges, of course, are made on the spot, the papers are posted, and the newsvender’s business is over for the day. On Saturdays, however, many of their shops are kept open till long after midnight, for the accommodation of the working classes and the sale of the Sunday papers. Tom and Jim and Dan and Jack have received their week’s wages, and take a stroll in Clare Market or join their friends, the baker’s and fishmonger’s boys, in some bold expedition to distant Whitechapel.

CHAP. VI.
The Bank.

WE have already, on a former occasion, looked at two of the city temples—the Mansion-house and the Exchange. We now return to the Capitoline mart of the city, to inspect the third of its temples—the Bank of England.

Its outward appearance is mysterious. Half wall and half house, it is neither the one nor the other; and yet either at one and the same time. For a wall there are too many niches, blind windows, columns, and finery; for a building it wants presence; it is too low, and has not even window openings. But it appears from the architect’s plan that this strange faÇade is meant for a wall, and, having the artist’s word for it, we believe, though see we do not, and sit down satisfied.

Standing free on all sides as the Exchange, the Bank is divided from the latter by a thoroughfare called Threadneedle-street. Its western limit is Princes-street; in the north intervenes Lothbury, and in the south Bartholomew-lane, between the Bank and the neighbouring houses. It forms a square; and yet people say it demonstrates the squaring of the circle, the grand problem of modern philosophy.

We enter. The gate does not strike one as solemn and imposing as might be expected in a gate leading to the laboratory of a great wizard. No Druid’s foot on the threshold; no spectral bats such as abound in nursery tales of treasure-seeking. No! not even a couple of grenadiers, who, in our dear fatherland are a necessary appendage to every public building; really everything looks worldly, business-like, and civil. A red-coated porter answers our questions, and tells us which way to go. He is an elderly man, and certainly not strong enough to arrest a mere lad of a communist, if such a one would attempt to divide the property of the British nation. A shocking idea, that!

We cross a small court-yard, and mount a few steps (why should’nt we?) and, all of a sudden, we are in a large saloon. This saloon is an office—it matters very little what particular office it is—but it makes not a disagreeable impression as our German offices do where everything is official and officious, oppressive, and calculated to put people down. On the contrary, there’s a vast deal of good society in this office: at least a hundred officials and members of the public. The officials have no official appearance whatever; they are simple mortals, and do their business and serve their customers as if they were mere shopboys in a grocery shop. There is in them not a trace of dignity! not an atom of bureaucratic pride! It is exactly as if to serve the public were the sole business of their lives. And the public too! Was such a thing ever heard of in a public office? Men, women, and boys, with their hats on! walking arm in arm as if they were in the park. They change money, or bring it or fetch it, as if they had looked into a neighbour’s shop for the purpose. Some of them have no business at all to transact. They actually talk to one another—stand by the fire in the centre of the room, and warm their backs! The impertinent fellows! Why, they have no respect whatever! They forget that they are in a public office. How dare you stand there you dolt? How dare you scratch your head, and hold your pipe in your hand? I should’nt wonder if it was lighted—it would be like your impertinence! Get out as fast as you can; if you dont the police will make you! Really not a trace of respect! It’s no wonder they say we are near doomsday.[F]

Ranged in long rows along the walls, the Bank clerks sit writing, casting-up accounts, weighing gold, and paying it away over the counter. In front of each is a bar of dark mahogany, a little table, a pair of scales, and a small fraction of the public; each waiting for his fare. The business is well-conducted, and none of them are kept waiting for any length of time.

The saloon just by is more crowded. We are in the middle of the year, and the interest on the three per cents. is being paid. What crowding and sweeping to and fro. At least fifty clerks are sitting in a circle in a high vaulted saloon, well provided with a cupola and lanterns. They do nothing whatever but pay and weigh, and weigh and pay. On all sides, the rattling of gold, as they push it with little brass shovels across the tables. People elbowing and pushing in order to get a locus standi near the clerks; the doors are continually opening and shutting. What crowds of people there must be in this country who have their money in the three per cent. Consols!

Strange figures may be seen in this place. An old man with a wooden-leg sits in a corner waiting, and Heaven knows how long he has been waiting already. Of course, a wooden leg is rather an encumbrance than otherwise in a crowd. The old man seems to be fully aware of the fact. He looks at his large silver watch—it is just twelve—puts his hand to the pocket of his coat, and pulls out a large parcel, something wrapped up in a stale copy of the Herald. What can the parcel contain? Sandwiches! He spreads them out, and begins to eat. He likes them too. He takes his ease, and makes himself perfectly at home. I dare say it is not the first time he has waited for his dividends.

That young lady on our left is getting impatient. She has made several attempts to fight her way to one of the clerks; she tried to push in first on the right, and then on the left, but all in vain. John Bull is by no means gallant in business, or at the theatre, or in the streets: he pushes, and kicks, and elbows in all directions. Poor pretty young lady, you’ll have a long time to wait! It’s no use standing on your toes, and looking over people’s shoulders. You’d better come again to-morrow.

The little boy down there gets much better on. A pretty fair-haired fellow that, with a little basket in his hand. Perhaps he is the son of a widow, who cannot come herself to get her small allowance. The boy looks as if about to cry, for he is on all sides surrounded by tall men. But one of them seizes him, lifts him up, and presents him to one of the clerks. “Pray pay this little creditor of the public; he’ll be pressed to death in the crowd!” And they all laugh, and everybody makes room for the boy; for it ought to be said to John Bull’s credit, he is kind and gentle with children at all times. “Well done, my little fellow! Now be careful that they dont rob you of your money on the way. How can they ever think of sending such a baby for their dividends!”

In this wing of the house, office follows after office; they are all on the ground-floor, and receive their light through the ceiling; they are all constructed in a grand style, and many of them are fit for a king’s banqueting-room. In them money is exchanged for notes, and notes for money; the interest on the public debt is paid; the names of the creditors are booked and transferred. It is here that the banking business is carried on in its relations with the bulk of the public.

These offices are, consequently open to every one; they are the central hall of the English money market, the great exchange office of London. Every Englishman is here sentinel and constable, for every Englishman has, or at least he wishes to have, some share in the Bank. But those who would enter the more secret recesses of the sanctuary, must have an order from one of the Bank Directors. We are fortunate enough to have such an order, which we show to one of the servants. He takes us, shows us into a little room, and asks us to wait a few moments.

The room in which we are is a waiting-room. There are many such in the house. A round table, a couple of chairs, and—and nothing else! that’s all the furniture. Really nothing else! And yet the room is so snug and comfortable. It is altogether mysterious, how the English manage to give their rooms an air of comfort, which with us is too frequently wanting, even in the houses of wealthy persons, who furnish, as the phrase goes, “regardless of expense.” Every German who comes to England must be struck with the fact. Whether the apartments he hires be splendid or humble—no matter, he is at once alive to the influence of this charmed something, and he will sadly miss it when he returns to Germany. Yes! it must be—the charm must be in the carpets and the fire-place. Surely witchery does not enter into the household arrangements of sober and orthodox Englishmen!

It’s a pity they did not make us wait a little longer, the room was so comfortable. Another servant has brought our order back, and told us that he is to be our guide. Passing through open yards and covered passages, we come to a clean and well-paved hall, in which the steam-engine of the house lives. Large cylinders, powerful wheels, rods shining as silver, the balls of the whirling governor heavy as four-and-twenty pounders, and the space under the boiler a hell en miniature. Everything powerful and gigantic, and yet clean, harmonious, and tasteful.

Yes! tasteful is the word. The English are frequently, and in many instances justly, taunted with their want of taste. They have an awkward manner of wearing their clothes; they are bad hands at designing and manufacturing those charming nippes, for which the French are so famous; their grand dinners and festivals, their fancy patterns and articles of luxury, their fashions and social habits, are frequently at war with the laws of refined taste. But there are also matters in which, in point of taste, they are superior to all other nations. Such, for instance, in the cultivation of the soil, the manufacture of iron and leather, etc., etc.

Give a French, German, Spanish, or Belgian artisan a piece of iron, and ask him to make a screw for a steam-engine. Give just such a piece of iron to an Englishman, with the same request. The odds are a thousand to one that the Englishman’s screw will be more neat, useful and handsome, than the screw produced by the artisans of the other nations. The Englishman gives his iron and steel goods a sort of characteristic expression, a sort of solid beauty, which cannot fail at once to strike every beholder. The Germans saw thus much in the Great Exhibition; and they may see it in every English house, if they will but take the trouble of examining the commonest kitchen utensils, or the tongs, shovel, and poker in the most ordinary English parlour. They are all massive, solid, weighty, and tasteful.

It’s a splendid sight, this steam-engine at the Bank! It is complete, and in keeping in all its details. It is the mind which moves all the wheels and machines in the house. Its power is exerted in the furthest parts of the establishment; it moves a thousand wheels, and rollers, and rods; it stands all lonely in its case, working on and on, without control or assistance from man. With us, too, the steam-engines have emancipated themselves, and do not want the support of their masters; but the furnace is still a mere infant, and wants stokers to put its food into its mouth. But here the furnace, too, is independent: it procures its victuals, and feeds itself according to its wants. The large round grate is moveable; it turns in a circle on its horizontal plane, and pushes each point of its circumference at regular intervals, under an opening from which the coals fall down upon it. The keeper of the engine has nothing whatever to do but to fill the coal-box and light the fire in the morning. Steam is generated, it enters the cylinders, moves the pistons and the wheels, and the grate commences its rotary movement. From that moment forward, the engine works on without assistance.

As we proceed we shall be able to judge of the multiplied usefulness of this remarkable engine. We have followed our guide up a narrow flight of stone steps, and are now in rooms which form a striking contrast to the saloons which we examined in the first instance. They are dark and dusky workshops, in which the materials for the use of the Bank are being prepared. Here, for instance, is a man in a small room preparing the steel-plates on which the notes are to be engraved. His is a difficult task, even though the engine moves the sharp hard wedge which scrapes and polishes the plates. It produces a shrill screaming noise, one which it is by no means agreeable to listen to for any length of time; and besides the labour is most wearisome and monotonous. But it is one of the dark sides of this age of machinery, perhaps it is the darkest, that the sameness of his mechanical labour tends to stupify the workman; that he ceases being an artizan or artist, and comes to be a mere help to his machine, which requires no talents or abilities in its servant, but merely exactitude and promptness. All he has to do is to put the plate or the spindle on the exact spot, where the machine can seize, handle it, and finish it.

Another room is devoted to the preparation of printer’s ink, for the printing of the notes. A quantity of black matter is being ground. A simple operation this; even dogs might be trained to perform it, and give satisfaction. But here, too, the machine does the work, and does it, too, with astonishing accuracy. All the workman has to do, is to put the black mixture between the rollers; they take it, crush it, grind it, and drop it ready for use. If a single grain of sand be found in the mixture, the machine has neglected its duty—that’s all. But you wont find a grain of sand even if you were to search for it in many tons of the ink.

The workman explains the process.

“The ink,” says he, “must pass between these two large rollers to be ground. The rollers are of strong steel; they are very hard and heavy. But small particles of sand or stone would soon take away their polish. That’s what this side-cutting is for. Look here. I hold the point of my knife exactly at the point where the rollers touch one another. Did you see how at the slightest touch they separated? This happens whenever any hard body, however small, finds its way between them. They dont take it, but drop it, and in this manner they keep their polish.”

It is marvellous! This machine is most simple, and yet we could stand for hours to see it work. What is a sensitive plant to these heavy steel rollers, which are so sensitive that they recede at the touch even of a grain of sand! And it is all done by means of the cutting and the weight. It is no use attempting to describe these things without a diagram. And even that is unsatisfactory to those who never saw the machine in motion. But we revoke the pert remark we made just now. A dog cannot be trained to do this work; even the labour of man could not supply the labour of this machine. Enough for man that he made it.

Through the various work-rooms, each of them devoted to some part of the manufactory of notes, we come to the large work-shops of the printers and binders. In either of them steam is at work, and so are human beings. The Bank of England, which in the first year of its existence wanted only one ledger, requires now at least three hundred ledgers to register its accounts; they are all lined, paged, and bound in the house. It is one of the most interesting features of the Bank, that all its requirements, with the sole exception of the paper, are manufactured on the premises.

Exactly as in the stone-paved hall of the lower story, where we watched the great central steam-engine feeding itself, so we find in other rooms large machine monsters moving up and down, and to and fro, rattling, hissing, and thumping, and frequently not doing anything that we can see, although our guide tells us, that the results of their labours will become apparent to us in other parts of the building. And they stand, moreover, alone, completely left to themselves; in the rooms in which they work, in the corridors leading to those rooms, not a human creature is to be seen, not a human step to be heard, nor is there a trace of human influence that we are aware of. And then this measured rotation of the large wheels; the busy movement of the straps; the never tiring restlessness of the pistons, which seem to move faster the longer we look at them. There is something grand in these rooms, void of the presence of man, where the mind of man invisibly hovers over the world of machines, as the Spirit of God over the face of the waters in the hour of creation. It is grand, but it is also awful.

We feel quite relieved when we get down into the paved court-yard, where a living two-legged labourer walks by; and yet neither the place nor the man is very agreeable to look at. The yard has a neglected appearance, and the iron shutters which cover the place where the windows are supposed to be make it still more gloomy.

“That is the library of the Bank,” remarks our guide.

We are not likely to be astonished by anything. We just saw workshops without men; why should there not be a library without books? Let us have patience and wait. Perhaps some very clever machine will open the iron shutter from the inside, thrust forth its arm, and hand us a catalogue. No? Well, for a wonder, our guide, who is very polite, though by no means over-communicative, opens a small door, and motions us to enter.

A low, narrow, vaulted passage, which reminds us of the casemates or bomb-proof galleries of fortresses; a few rays of light straggling in through some grating somewhere; at the end of the passage a heavy iron door which opens into a small windowless room lighted up by the most consumptive-looking gas-jet imaginable. Our eyes are quite unused to the light; but, gradually as we get accustomed to it, we can see the objects around us. We stand in front of a railing, and behind it stands a little man in a black dress coat, and with a white cravat.

“This gentleman is the librarian of the Bank;” says our guide. Still no trace of books.

The man in the black dress-coat opens a door in the railing, bids us enter, and shows us an enormous number of parcels and bundles of notes, ranged along the walls up to the very ceiling. They call this the library of the Bank; but, in truth, it is its lumber room. It is an asylum for the notes which have been paid in at the Bank. They are valueless; for the Bank never issues the same note twice. They are kept and locked up in the library, I forget how many years, in order to be produced in the case of a theft or forgery, or any other matter of the kind. Afterwards they are burnt.

Every now and then clerks come in with fresh bundles. A few minutes ago these small papers were worth—Heaven knows how much money. “They are now mere waste paper. They have had their day. Many a note leads a long and honourable life; goes to the Continent, to India, or Port Adelaide; and returns to the Bank much the worse for wear after all its journeys. Other notes have scarcely a day’s roving license in the world; to-day they are issued, and to-morrow they are paid in. It’s accident, or fate, or Providence.” Saying which the librarian makes his bow, turns round, and returns to his desk.

We leave the library. The way is frequently very short from the old bookshop where good books and bad books are alike given up to dust and moths, to the printing-office, from whence they are launched forth into the world. Thus it is in the Bank. We have scarcely left the library, and we are already in the department where they print the notes.

The printing from the plates is simple enough. The wonders of the machinery consist chiefly in the spontaneous advance of the numbers (each note has its own number, and a double set too), and in the control which the machine exercises over the workmen. There is no inspector to watch the printer. The machine, which he compels to print, compels him to be honest. The machine registers the exact numbers that are being printed, and registers them too in a distant part of the establishment. That the machine can do this with astonishing accuracy; that it masters the intricacies of our system of numbers; and that it produces the numbers at the same moment in different places; is a triumph of human invention which almost startles us. It is also the result of the various systems of wheels which we saw working all alone in other parts of the building.

A great deal more might be said of the astonishing results of this most perfect system of machinery. But, since description is out of the question, we should only reproduce our own impression. Still we must tell the fairer portion of our readers that at the Bank even the washing is done by machinery, and that the establishment manages to get on without female labour.

The dirty linen of the Bank—that is to say the cloths which are used in the printing process—are sent to the washhouse, where they are compelled to perform a pilgrimage through a number of large pails full of hot and cold water. They are then washed by wheels; then dragged into hot water and next into cold water, wrung out and hung up in a drying room. And all by steam—all by machinery! No busy housewife—no able-tongued laundresses—no disturbance of the house—and no washing-days! There is no saying how shocking a want of respect of the whole female sex is implied by this process! But then the poor mechanics are quite as badly treated. You must put up with it, Madame. The Bank can and will do without you.

Our guide leads the way to other regions. We enter the reception and meeting-rooms of the Governor and the Directors.

Charming open places, with lawns and shrubberies, and here and there a shady tree—clean, well-sanded paths—it is quite evident that we have left the manufacturing districts, and are in the midst of the parks and homesteads of Old England. And these buildings, rising up from the lawns, are palaces, with columns, large stone steps, and carved ornaments. Their interior excels in splendour the wildest anticipations we might have formed. Saloons, high and lofty as cathedrals, splendid cupolas everywhere, and an overwhelming profusion of panelling, architectural ornaments, rich carpets and furniture, fit for a king’s palace. We would gladly remain here and see nothing else; but our guide is determined on our admiring all the sights of the house.

We follow him to the guard-room, where a detachment of soldiers from the Tower enter every evening and pass the night, to protect the Bank “in case of an emergency.” We follow him to the Bullion Office, a subterranean vault, where they keep the gold and silver bars from Australia, California, Russia, Peru, and Mexico; where they weigh them, sell them, and from whence they send them to the Mint. These vaults are very interesting to the admirers of precious metals.

But is this all? No! nothing of the kind. Our guide—a real guide—has reserved the most interesting part of the exhibition to the last. He has taken us through several yards and passages. He knocks at a large door, which is opened from the inside. Two gentlemen, in black dress coats and white cravats, stand in a large room, which receives its light through a lantern in the top. In the centre of the room is a heavy bureau. The walls are covered with iron lock-ups and safes. This is the Treasury of the Bank, where they keep the new notes and coins.

One of the gentlemen looks at our order, and, with that unpretending dignity which characterises the English, he turns round and opens some of the iron safes. They are filled with bags, containing 500 or 1000 sovereigns each. He takes some of them and puts them into our hands, to convince us, as though we ever doubted of the fact, of the bags being filled with good sterling money.

The other gentleman—they are both dressed as if they were going to a levÉe—takes a bunch of keys, and opens a large closet filled with notes. The most valuable and smallest bundle is again put into our hands. “You have there,” says he, “two thousand notes of one thousand pounds each.” Two million pounds sterling! Surely an enormous sum to hold in one’s hand. An army in paper, containing the power of much evil and much good, especially since the paper is not mere paper and since, at a few yards’ distance, you may change it into “red, red gold,” as the poets say. But as we are not in a position to perform that alchymistic process, we return the notes to their keeper. “Good bye, Sir.” “Good morning, gentlemen.” We have left the Treasury, without being either wiser or richer men. Of course, because we were not allowed to carry off its contents.

We enter another large room, with the neatest, prettiest steam-engine in it, and with a variety of other small machines, whose complicated wheels are kept in motion by the said engine. The bulkiest object in the room is a large table, literally covered with mountains of sovereigns. A few officials, with shovels in their hands, are stirring the immense glittering mass.

“It is here that they weigh the sovereigns,” whispers our guide. We stand and watch the process. Ignorant as we are of the exact principles of the machines, we are altogether startled by their fabulous activity.

Besides the mysterious system of wheels within wheels, each of these marvels displays an open square box, and in this box, slanting in an angle of 30°, two segments of cylinders, with the open part turned upwards. A roll of sovereigns, placed into one of these tubes, passes slowly down, and one gold piece after the other drops into a large box on the floor.

All the clerks have to do is to fill the tubes. The sovereigns slide down, but just at the lower end of the tube the miracle is accomplished. Whenever a sovereign of less than full weight touches that ticklish point, a small brass plate jumps up from some hidden corner, and pushes the defaulter into the left-hand compartment of the box, while all the good pieces go to the right. This little brass plate, hiding where it does, and popping out at intervals to note a bad sovereign, is an impertinent, ironical, malicious thing. There is an air of republicanism about it. As to the sharpness of its criticism, we actually do not believe that any republican would attempt to compete with it. For who would estimate the virtues of his fellow-men by grains, especially in the law of crowned heads!

We cannot see enough of these active machines. The small plates of brass show themselves pretty often as old and worn out sovereigns glide down. Not one of them is allowed to pass; and withal these small plates act with so much quiet promptitude and calm energy, and altogether without noise or pretension.

One of the clerks is kind enough to explain the purpose of this process.

“The Bank selects the full weighted sovereigns from the light ones, because all the money we pay out must have its full weight.”

“And what do you do with the light ones?”

“We send them to the Mint after we have taken the liberty of marking them. Shall I show you how we do it?”

He takes a handful of the condemned ones, and puts them into a box, which has the appearance of a small barrel-organ. He turns a screw, or touches a spring—it is clearly impossible to note each movement of the man’s hand—and there is a sounding and rushing noise in the interior of the box, and all the sovereigns fall out from a slit at the bottom. But mercy on us! how dreadfully disfigured they are! Cut through in the middle. The Victorias, and Williams, and Georges, all cut through their necks; in fact, beheaded! And that’s what the English call “marking a bad sovereign.” It makes us shudder. We are positively afraid. We cant stay one minute longer. “Good morning, sir.” “Good morning, gentlemen.”

What with our confusion and distress, we quite forgot to thank our kind guide. We are again in the street: to our left is the Exchange, to our right the Mansion-house, and before us the Iron Duke on horseback, and all around the furious, rattling, ceaseless crowd of vehicles; the moving and pushing of the foot-passengers; women hunted over the crossings; walking advertisements; street-sellers; red Post-office carts; the dusky streets, and the heavy leaden sky—the City in its working dress!

At home, while we are sitting at tea, Dr. Keif wastes much valuable eloquence in trying to convince Sir John, that the English can never get a proper understanding of German affairs: 1st, because it is hardly possible even for a German properly to understand them; 2nd, because the English newspapers have none but English correspondents in Germany, who know just as little of that mysterious country as he (Dr. Keif) knows of banking; 3rd, because the English consider all other countries with exclusive reference to their own country; and, 4th, because they fancy that reform can be brought about by peaceable public meetings, even in countries where those who attend such meetings are at once arrested, and locked up in fortresses or houses of correction; 5th, because social life in England is vastly different from social life in Germany; 6th, because Britons are too ignorant of the geography of Germany; and, 7th, because there are many who might understand German affairs, and who have very good reasons for not wishing to understand them. As we cannot follow the learned Doctor through the whole length of his argument we leave him to fight his own battle with Sir John, and merely remark, that an armistice was concluded at two o’clock in the morning, after which the belligerent parties went into night-quarters. And with this satisfactory intelligence we close the chapter.

CHAP. VII.
Four-and-twenty Hours at the Times’ Office.

CROSSING THE ROAD.—THE OWNERS OF THE “TIMES.”—ITS SOUL; ITS EDITORS.—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE “TIMES’” EDITORS AND THE “REDACTEURS” OF GERMAN NEWSPAPERS.—THE POLITICS OF THE “TIMES.”—HOW THEY WRITE THE “LEADERS.”—SECRETS.—LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.—THE MANAGER’S DEPARTMENT.—WHAT THE EDITORS DO.—THE PARLIAMENTARY CORPS.—THE REPORTER’S GALLERY AND REFECTORY.—DIVISION, DISCIPLINE, AND OCCUPATION OF THE REPORTERS.—MR. DOD.—THE SUMMARY-MAN.—THE STAFF.—THE PENNY-A-LINERS.—SOCIAL POSITION OF ENGLISH JOURNALISM.

ELEVEN A.M. One of the wheelers of a four-horse omnibus slipped on the pavement and fell down at the foot of the Holborn-side obelisk, between Fleet-street and Ludgate-hill. There’s a stoppage. The horse makes vain endeavours to get up; there is no help for it, they must undo reins, buckles and straps to free him. But a stoppage of five minutes in Fleet-street creates a stoppage in every direction to the distance of perhaps half a mile or a mile. Leaning as we do against the railings of the obelisk, we look forwards towards St. Paul’s, and back to Chancery-lane, up to Holborn on our left, and down on our right to Blackfriar’s-bridge; and this vast space presents the curious spectacle of scores of omnibuses, cabs, gigs, horses, carts, brewer’s drays, coal waggons, all standing still, and jammed into an inextricable fix. Some madcap of a boy attempts the perilous passage from one side of the street to the other; he jumps over carts, creeps under the bellies of horses, and, in spite of the manifold dangers which beset him, he gains the opposite pavement. But those who can spare the time or who set some store by their lives, had better wait. Besides it is pleasant to look at all this turmoil and confusion. And how, in the name of all that is charitable, are the London pickpockets to live if people will never stand still on any account?

The difficulty is soon got over. Two policemen, a posse of idle cabmen and sporting amateurs, and a couple of ragged urchins, to whom the being allowed to touch a horse is happiness indeed, have come to the rescue, loosening chains and traces, getting the horse up and putting him to again. It’s all right. The fall of a horse gives exciting occupation to a score of persons, and even those who cannot assist with their hands, have at least a piece of excellent advice to give to those who can, exactly as if this sort of thing happened only once in every century in the crowded streets of London.

We may now go on. Halfway up Ludgate-hill, where the shops are largest and their silks and Indian shawls most precious and tempting to female eyes, is a small gateway, through which we pass on our road to the Times office. It leads us into a labyrinth of the narrowest, the most wretched, ill-paved, and unsavoury streets of London. We stumble over a couple of surly curs, that would gladly bask in the sun if sun there were to bask in, and over a troop of dirty boys that are trundling their hoops, and twice we stumble over orange-peel, lying on the pavement conspicuously as if this were Naples. At length we turn to the left, into a narrow street, and reach a small square of the exact dimensions and appearance of a German back-yard. There are two trees quite lonely behind an iron railing, and a door with the words “The Times” on it.

A porter takes our cards; a messenger leads the way into the interior of the building. Glad as we are to see the kind old gentleman who does the honours of the house, and acts as cicerone on such occasions, we can do without him. We propose trying the trick of the diable boiteux, and for the term of a day and a night to watch the proceedings of the editorial department of the Times for the benefit of foreign journalists generally, whose introductions procure them admission to the printing-office only.

It is ten minutes past eleven o’clock. Mr. M. M.—the manager, the factotum, the soul, and, at the same time, the sovereign of the Times—has been in his office these ten minutes. We were detained by that wretched wheeler.

The soul, then, of the Times has taken his place in the editorial body. Who is this “manager,” and what are his functions?

Mr. Walter founded the Times; he reared it, fostered and organised it, and gave it the stamina by means of which it has reached its height of power. It was he who first attempted the use of machinery; he invented a new system of composing the type; he was a writer on the paper, and, in extreme cases, he has been known to act as compositor. His was a universal genius, and one of no mean order. He died in 1847, and bequeathed the Times to his family.

The present Mr. Walter, the chief proprietor of the Times, is a member of Parliament, and, as such, his time and energies are devoted to public business. The care and the responsibility of conducting the business of the Times has devolved on a manager, Mr. M. M. This gentleman is neither what we in Germany call a redacteur, nor is he what we would call an expeditor or accountant. He is just all in all, being the sovereign lord and master within the precincts of Printing-house Square.

A heap of papers lies on his desk. At his side sits the editor du jour. What his functions are will be seen in the following lines:—

The editorial functions of the Times are in the hands of several individuals, exactly as in the case of the great German journals. But, in Germany, each editor has his own separate department, for instance, home politics and foreign politics, or the literary and critical departments. They come to an understanding on the most important points, and then act altogether independently of one another. Besides, they meet frequently, and have plenty of opportunities to exchange their views and defend their opinions. Hence they very often quarrel, and their quarrels lead to frequent editorial crises. Far different is the case with the Times, where, besides the manager, there are two editors—Mr. John D—— and Mr. George D——, with a third gentleman as sub-editor. The two editors take the service by turns, but they do not confine themselves to separate departments. Each of them has, at the time he conducts the paper, to see that it has that tone which has been decided upon in council. However, we will not anticipate. Having here hinted at the many merits of the editorial department, we continue to act as invisible spectators in the Times office.

We mentioned before, that a large heap of papers was lying on the desk of Mr. M. M., and that the editor du jour was sitting by his side. What are these two gentlemen doing? They read the most important journals of the day, take notes of their leading features, they talk over the topics of the leading articles for the next day’s paper; but this is not enough. The material for the leaders having been selected, they are discussed in detail; notes are taken of some of the more leading features of the subject, and, if need be, the tendency is marked out. In many cases there is no need of this, but on some occasions the last measure is indispensable. The extraordinary and quick transitions of the Times are sufficiently known in Germany. The politics of the Times are an inscrutable mystery to most men, even to the majority of Englishmen; but the simple solution of the mystery is, that the Times either follows the lead of public opinion, or that it contradicts public opinion only when—more far-sighted than its contemporaries—it foresees a change; that under all circumstances, and at all times, it aims at a special critical interest; and with an iron consistency, and in an astonishing sobriety, it advocates this critical interest unsparingly, to the sacrifice of every other interest. That is the whole enigma of its seemingly changeable politics. It seizes with an unerring grasp that which is profitable for England, no matter how pernicious it may be for the outside barbarians. It is humane, constitutional, liberal, and even sentimental in its views of foreign countries, if England finds her advantage thereby; but it is also capable of imagining an eternal spring in the icy plains of Siberia, if an alliance with Russia should happen to advance English interests. It would even defend the slave trade, if it could be convinced that the cessation of that traffic would ruin the Lancashire cotton manufacturers.

The Times has often been reproached with its sudden and unaccountable changes of policy, and these reproaches have been made in England and out of England; but surely there is a rigid political consistency, one which sometimes becomes demoniacal, in this Times’ policy. It may here be said, that the Times has now and then advocated views which certainly were not very advantageous to the interests of Great Britain. Such cases there may have been; but then we have never said that the Times is infallible. With all its prescience and circumspection, the Times has sometimes been wrong in its views; but we ought to remember that the very best editors are not omniscient, and that the strongest of us are occasionally influenced by human sympathies and antipathies, which stand in the way of an impartial decision. What we have said is of general application, namely, that the leading idea of the Times policy, which is carried out with an iron consistency, is the promotion of British interests; that for the sake of this consistency, it is not afraid of committing the most flagrant apparent inconsistencies, and that this is the simple explanation of its mysterious character. At no one time has the Times been the organ of the Government or of the opposition: it was always independent. On certain questions it supported the ministers of the day, on others it opposed them; but it never made opposition for the sake of opposition, and was unbending only in those questions which really affected the existence of the nation, for instance, in the contest between Free Trade and Protection. It may well be said of the Times, that it adheres to no one principle, merely on account of the excellence of its theory. Tried practical usefulness is the faith to which it adheres under all circumstances.

In England, the Times is the champion of gradual and reasonable progress; while, in its foreign policy, it clings to old allies and time-honoured systems of government; and the very Times which the English justly consider as a moderately liberal paper, is abused among the liberals of the Continent as a moderately reactionary organ. While Protectionist papers have, for years past, accused the Times of having given itself up to the evil genius of democracy and the demons of Manchester: the Radicals of all countries, are fully persuaded that the same Times is in the pay of Austria, Russia, and of all the devils generally. But the fact is, that the Times is as little democratic as it is Russian; it is as little paid by Willich as by Rothschild; and, under all circumstances, and for very good reasons, it will always be found to be rather Russian than Austrian; and rather Austrian than French; and always, above all things, it will be found to the English, egotistical; that is to say, political. To ask the Times, or any other reasonable political paper, to take a general purely humanistic standing point, and to ground its verdicts on the politics of the day, on the eternal laws of the history of civilization, and of moral philosophy; to ask it, in short, to write morals instead of politics, is absurd; and he who can make such a demand, knows nothing whatever of the position or the duties of a political journal. As well might he desire that diplomatists should always scrupulously adhere to the truth, or that a political paper, renouncing the interests of its own country, should devote itself to moral philosophy; in which case, we would advise it to establish its office in the most lonely island of all the lonely islands in the Pacific. But to what regions have our thoughts taken flight! We ask the reader’s pardon for this monstrous digression; the temptation was too great, and we naturally thought of the tendencies of the Times while the manager and editor consulted about to-morrow morning’s leaders.

The consultation is over. A few short notes have been taken of its results, and a sort of programme been made for every leader. Documents, letters from correspondents, and other papers are added to each programme, which is put into an envelope, and sent by messenger to a certain leading article writer, who, a few hours afterwards, sends in his article ready written. These leading article writers of the Times are altogether in an exceptional position. At the German newspapers, the leader-writing is generally done by the editor; now at the Times, the principle is generally acted upon, that the editor should rather edit the paper, than write it. The arrangement is thoroughly reasonable in theory, as well as in practice. Every one is naturally partial to his own productions. Who would quarrel with an editor if he prefers his own article to other essays, when he has the selection among various papers on the same subject. To save the editors from this temptation, and to give them full leisure to edit attentively and impartially, they have been mostly relieved from writing. There are, however, exceptions to this salutary rule; and we understand that the witty and humouristic leaders on local affairs, which, vie with the best of the French feuilletons, are from the pen of Mr. M. M.

The leading article writers have the programme of their articles sent to their respective domiciles. None but the editors know who these gentlemen are, and what their position in life is. They never, except on extraordinary occasions, come to the Times office. They have pledged their words to lay no claim to the authorship of their own articles, or to reveal their connection with the Times. They have renounced all hopes of literary fame; whatever credit is due to their productions belongs to the Times, which monopolises all the honor, and bears all the responsibility. Such an author has nothing but his pay; he has sold his work to the journal; and with it, he has sold the right to change it, to alter expressions, to remodel parts of it, or to condemn the article altogether. The article is a piece of merchandize with which the purchaser may do what he likes. If the writer ceases to agree with the tendencies of the Times, he is always at liberty to break off the connection; but so long as that connection continues, he is compelled to submit the form of his articles to the critical verdict of the editors.

The editorial department of the Times really edits the paper, while our German editors only write and select. The former method is evidently for the benefit of the journal, while the latter is more agreeable and profitable to the writers. The system of the Times requires what it would be impossible to find in Germany—the power of enormous capital, a gigantic city such as London is, and English characters, that is to say, men, authors of first-rate talent, who will sacrifice praise and notoriety, and take money in their stead. Is this self-denial created by the mere desire of making money? Do the leading-article writers of the Times rather care for the effect which is produced by their anonymity? Do they rather care for the cause which they advocate than for their own celebrity? Are they perhaps more disinterested, and our German literary men more selfish? Is the greater moral excellence to be found here or on the other side of the channel? These are delicate questions, which we will not here discuss. It will be seen, from what we have said, that the rule of the Times’ office is more despotic the than journalistic government in Germany. We shall return to the subject on another occasion; but for the present we turn again to the desk at which the manager is sitting.

Besides the newspapers, he has a large heap of manuscript before him, letters to the Editor, a selection of which always appears in the Times. Their number is legion. The editors have received these letters and opened them. They have condemned those which are clearly unfit for the use of the paper, but the more important letters, some of which may affect the policy of the journal, have been reserved, and are now submitted to the manager’s consideration. Old Mr. Walter was not indeed the man who first introduced these letters into the English press, but he certainly did much to favour this participation of the public in the labours of journalism. In Germany, too, the idea has been adopted, but, as is usually the case with excellent English customs, it has been spoiled in the adoption. In England these letters form the most important polemical part of the journal; in Germany they are on the level with the advertisements. Their insertion is paid for in Germany; in England a journal acknowledges its obligations to its correspondents. The public take a peculiar interest in the press to which they contribute, and a man whose letter is inserted in the Times considers himself in a certain degree as connected with the establishment; he becomes its champion, and reads it with great assiduity and interest. The authors of rejected letters, on the other hand, are offended; they get angry with the Times, they abuse it, and from sheer hatred and spite, they read it all the more eagerly. A journal can exist only by means of half a world of friends and a whole world of enemies, if indeed such an unalgebraic expression is admissible. It can survive anything but indifference.

But, besides the material interest which public letters have for the English newspapers, there is also a higher and more general interest. Public affairs are more effectually discussed in this manner; public opinion, uttered by private persons or corporations, finds a ready expression; abuses are exposed; matters of minor importance to the community, but of paramount importance to every individual citizen, are brought forward examined and canvassed; and events which happen in outlying parts of the country, in small towns on the coast and villages on the mountains, where no paid correspondent ever lived, and whither the foot of a regular reporter has never strayed, are expeditiously forwarded to the great organs of public opinion. So long as the insertion of such communications must be paid for, it is impossible that they can be of any mentionable advantage either to the journal or to the public. Of course, the introduction of this English system requires the gigantic size of the English papers, but even in smaller papers the editors may always make a suitable selection.

We believe that a favourable result would soon become apparent; for local affairs, the events of the province, or city, in which the paper is published, will always be most interesting to the public, because they affect it most. Call it John Bullish, if you please; abuse it as a grovelling matter-of-fact feeling, but you cannot deny that the greater number of readers care much more for a letter on hackney coaches, than for the most excellent article on the international relations between Russia and Persia. But, for charity’s sake, we trust our readers will not misunderstand us! Heaven preserve us from the misfortune that our German journals should become unmindful of Russia, while they discuss their local affairs! But surely a way might be found of doing the one without neglecting the other. Even its worst enemies cannot accuse the Times of a want of attention to European interests, and of “haute politique”; but the Times is, nevertheless, the most conscientious and indefatigable local journal of London. Nor is it ashamed to follow up an article on the French empire, with another article, and one which displays as much genius, on the overgrown bulk of the Aldermen, or the sewers of Houndsditch.

This letter, then, and this, and this, and those two, will go in to-morrow; the rest find a temporary asylum on the floor. A few are reserved for further consideration. The manager casts a glance at the foreign letters, which have come by the morning mails. This done, the editor leaves him, and devotes himself to the details of his particular department. The consultation, and the perusal of so many papers, have taken a couple of hours. The editor may, by this time, leave the office, but the manager has a great many things to do before his day’s work is over. To him belongs the correspondence with the foreign agents and correspondents of the journal, and with the leader-writers, whose accounts he settles. He has to see the sub-editor, who superintends the technical department of the management, and he has to listen to that gentleman’s report. He sees the printer, who gives a general account of the sale of the Times on that particular day. The cashier makes his appearance, with the totals of yesterday’s accounts, and the sums realised from the sale of the paper, the insertion of advertisements, and the exact amount of the duty on stamps and advertisements, which has been paid to the state. The manager has to take notes of the net results of all these accounts. By this time, it is five o’clock, and another editor makes his appearance. There is always some topic to be discussed; some event on which it is necessary to come to an understanding; some motion before the House, and some debate coming off in the course of the evening, on which it is necessary to say a few words. The manager’s labours are ended with this consultation; he leaves the office. From five to nine o’clock, the current business is discharged by one of the editors. He reads the leaders and reports which have been sent in; he transmits them to the printing-office, and receives all letters, parcels, and messages that arrive. There is always plenty of work to be got through—quite enough, and sometimes too much for one man. The editor who transacted the current business of the morning arrives at nine o’clock to share the labours of his colleague, and remains a longer or shorter period, according to the heaviness of the night. But one of the two gentlemen never leaves the office until the journal is ready for press, when he gives it the Imprimatur. Besides, he issues instructions as to the number of copies to be struck off. There is no fixed number, and the impression varies according to the greater or less interest of the contents of such day’s Times.

But what business—so will German readers ask—can detain an editor until late at night? The German redacteurs work scarcely ever up to midnight; the French redacteurs get through their labours by eight or nine o’clock in the evening. Why should English editors be at their post until three or four o’clock in the morning?

Besides the arrival of telegraphic despatches at almost any hour in the course of the night, the English editors are detained by parliamentary business. The reports from the House of Commons come in in batches sometimes as late as two or three o’clock in the morning. The parcels from the provinces and from Ireland arrive with the last trains by ten or eleven o’clock. The provincial reports are usually shortened; this duty devolves upon some decrepit reporter, the results of whose labours are submitted to the approval of the editors. They have moreover to receive persons who call on urgent business, members of Parliament, who wish to correct the proofs of their speeches, or who desire still further to expound their views to the editor to prevent the possibility of misunderstanding; schemers who rush in with some patent invention which will remove all the evils that flesh is heir to, and a host of strange customers of every country and of every degree. In short, an editor of the Times is not tempted to imitate Lord Byron, and to publish “Hours of Idleness.” It is very often four o’clock before the last of them hails a cab and hurries off to his house in the far west.

We cannot allow our readers to follow his example. We detain them in the Times’ office, and propose taking them to Westminster, on a tour of enquiry into the manners and customs of the English reporters.

And here it may be as well to remark, that an English reporter has an important position in literary circles, as well as in the estimation of his own journal; that the name of reporter applies strictly to the gentlemen who report the Parliamentary debates; and that, for the proper discharge of these functions, it requires journalistic abilities of no common order, great versatility, and an intimate knowledge of public affairs and public men.

Let us make an excursion to Westminster; a Hansom cab will take us in a quarter of an hour. We get out at a provisional boarded gate, which leads to the reporters’ gallery, walk through a court-yard, which is full of bricks and mortar, enter a gothic door to the left, mount a couple of flights of stairs, open a glass door, and enter a small room, in which there is a very large fire. This room, and the stairs and corridors, are lighted with gas, even at mid-day; for it is one among the practical beauties of Westminster Palace, that the working-rooms of the reporters have scarcely any daylight. The architect, however, has done all in his power to indemnify them for the faults of his design. Their rooms are as comfortable as can be; and nowhere, either in Germany or France, is so much careful attention bestowed on the convenience of the press. There is a good reason why there is so large a fire in the little room we have entered. It is the ante-chamber, and also the refectory of the reporters. It contains a table, on which are sundry dishes of meat and pastry—not at all a Lucullian supper, but quite enough for a frugal journalist, who has no ambition to dine at the table of the Parliamentary Restaurant. Some pots and kettles are on the hob by the fire, in which the water simmers and seethes most comfortably, inviting all hearers to a cup of tea or coffee. On a wooden bench by the door sit two very sleepy boys, half roasted by the fire, and waiting for manuscript. Two gentlemen, with their hats on, are seated at the table; they converse in a low voice, and drink tea from very large cups; they are reporters, just off their turn. Other reporters come in and go out; the little glass door is continually opening and shutting; and the servant, too, who presides over these localities, and makes politics and coffee, is never idle, for he has many masters. In spite of all this going and coming, the little room is comfortable, and it is very pleasant to sit and chat in it. These English reporters are altogether stately and serious men; in many instances, their whiskers are grey with age and their heads bald. No green-horns are they; no young fellows, who practise writing in the gallery. Such an Englishman, with his long legs and his smooth-shaved face, has always a solid appearance, no matter whether he be a journalist or a drayman. I believe that kind of thing is the result of race of blood, and of education.

A narrow corridor leads from the ante-chamber to a set of two rooms, which communicate with the gallery of the House by means of another corridor. All these rooms and corridors are covered with thick carpets; green morocco-covered sofas are drawn up against the oak-panelled walls; writing-tables are placed in the window niches; large fires burn in marble chimneys; an air of substantial comfort pervades the whole. In the panelled walls there are, moreover, closets, for the reporters to put their great coats and papers in; and a small apartment at the side of the large rooms is devoted to a washing apparatus—large marble basins, with a plentiful supply of hot and cold water. The English love to have numbers of these in their public and private buildings; on the Continent they are painfully struck with the absence of these helps to cleanliness; and they mention the carelessness or indifference of our countrymen in this respect in terms of the most unqualified reprobation.

There is not much to be said of the reporters’ gallery. It fills the narrow side of the house, and is just below the ladies’ gallery and above the Speaker’s chair. It has two rows of seats, scarcely more than four-and-twenty, and attached to each seat is a comfortable desk.

None but the reporters of the great London papers are admitted to this gallery. Not only the public generally but also the reporters of provincial journals are excluded, solely from the want of space to accommodate them. The admission of Foreign journalists is therefore quite out of the question. Demands to this effect when made have been met with a determined, though polite, refusal. If it be considered that there are four-and-twenty seats in this gallery, that each of the great London journals has, on an average, about twelve reporters, and that the aggregate number of reporters amounts to above eighty, it will be admitted that the complaints about want of space are well founded. The functions of the staff of reporters, the division of their labours, and the manner in which they discharge their duties, may best be learned from an inquiry into the organisation of the Times staff of reporters; for the Parliamentary corps of the other papers are fashioned after its model.

The Times keeps a staff of from twelve to sixteen reporters to record the proceedings of the two houses. Some of them are engaged for the Parliamentary session only. The majority of them are young barristers, whom the connexion with the great journal enables to follow up their legal career, and who have, moreover, the advantage of that thorough training which young lawyers obtain in the gallery. Others have annual engagements, they are the “Old Guard” of the Times, on whose efficiency it can rely as on the working of its printing machines. After the session the corps is scattered to all the four corners of the globe; the barristers repair to their chambers in the Inns of Court and live upon the gains of their summer’s labours. A few of the old guard remain in London at the disposal of the journal, which requires their services to attend large meetings, or the progress of the Queen through Scotland. The rest take their ease in the provinces, the public libraries, in their families, or on the continents of Europe, Africa, Asia, or America. A true John Bull, say all the English, has always some reasonable object in view, however mad his proceedings may appear to the outside barbarians.

An elderly, grey-haired gentleman—the summary man—forms an important addition to the Parliamentary staff. It is his duty to prepare those condensed reports of the sitting, which may be found in every English journal. He ought to attend in his place from first to last, that the summary may come into the printer’s hands immediately after the house is up. His relative position to the other reporters is that of a corporal to the privates. And since we have alluded to military grades and dignities, we propose at once to introduce our readers to the captain of the corps, Mr. Charles Dod, editor of the famous Parliamentary Companion, who commands the Parliamentary corps of the Times, and whose authority is acknowledged by all the reporters of the London journals generally.

Mr. Dod must excuse the curiosity of foreigners, and permit us to inspect him and the corps under his command. Mr. Dod then is an amiable gentleman, who has the whole of the Parliamentary history of Great Britain at his fingers’ ends, and whom many honourable members, young and old, might consult with the greatest advantage.

To the Times, Mr. Dod is in the house what the manager is in the office; he manages every thing connected with Parliamentary matters; he publishes to his corps the day and hour of the next sitting. At one time he may be seen in the gallery, helping and instructing the less experienced among his corps; on other occasions, he finds his way into the House to procure some document or statistical return from the members or the clerks. Anon he hurries to the Times’ office to read, shorten, and edit the copy sent in by the reporters, in short, on a heavy Parliamentary night, Mr. Charles Dod is everywhere and nowhere, that is to say, he is always rushing from Westminster to the Times’ office and back again.

He generally divides his corps into two detachments. The young reporters take the upper house, the old guard do duty in the House of Commons, whose sittings are longer, while its motions and speeches are of greater importance, and its debates more intricate. In either house it is a rule that reporters relieve one another by turns, from half-hour to half-hour. Mr. H., for instance, takes his seat at the commencement of the sitting with Mr. C. who comes next by his side. The first thirty minutes over, Mr. H. retires; Mr. C. takes his seat, and Mr. R. takes the place which has just been vacated by Mr. C. The summary-man takes a position in the rear. To-morrow evening the turn commences where it left off this night, so that each reporter has an equal share of the work.

But how does Mr. H. employ his time after his half-hour’s turn in the gallery? He has about two hours until his next turn, but a few minutes only of these two hours can he devote to relaxation. A cab stands ready for the use of the reporters. He proceeds to the city and his desk in the reporter’s room of the Times’ office, where he converts his “notes” into “copy.” This process takes about an hour or an hour and a quarter for every turn of half-an-hour. If his report be a verbatim report—and such must be made should an important man speak on an important question—the writing it out takes more time. Every thing depends on the character of the sitting, but if the labour threatens to become overwhelming Mr. Dod interferes, and sends for reinforcements from the gallery of the House of Lords.

The “copy” having been prepared by the reporter, and put in type in the printing-rooms, proofs, struck off on long, narrow slips of paper, are sent into the editorial sanctum, where the matter, already condensed by the reporters, is frequently subjected to further condensation; and Mr. Dod, who makes his appearance from time to time, assists in this process. The proofs thus edited are corrected, struck off again and submitted to the writer of Parliamentary leaders, who, on all important occasions, attends in the House itself, and who in the dawn of morning commences his article on the debate which has just been closed. A few hours later that article is in the hands of the London public, while express trains hurry it to the most distant parts of the empire.

If the house sits until two o’clock in the morning, the labours of the last reporter, of the Parliamentary leader-writer, and of one of the editors, are protracted until three and sometimes four o’clock. This is hard work, harder than continental journalists ever dream of. But it is the same in all professions! An Englishman, no matter whether he be a tradesman, or a merchant, or a journalist, never thinks of doing things by halves, because in this country things cannot and must not be done by halves. No country in the world offers so wide a sphere for a man’s talents and activity as England does, provided he has energy, perseverance, and resignation. An English reporter in his holidays, stretching his long legs on the banks of the lake of ZÜrich, is an enviable personage in the eyes of a German journalist. Of course, no one can tell how hard he has been at work these nine months.

It is four o’clock, A.M. We have passed fourteen hours at the Times’ office. The labour is now left to the printers; and the two large machines which finish 10,000 copies per hour. But weary though our readers may be, we cannot allow them to depart, for there are many matters which require mentioning.

Hitherto we have spoken of the Parliamentary corps only. But there are other reporters in the service of the Times and of other great journals, to whom we must devote a couple of pages.

Among these are the standing reporters in London, who are occasionally employed as “outsiders,” but who generally work in the office. They make extracts from English and Foreign journals, and write reports on colonial affairs. There are also reporters on music and the drama, while the reviewing of books claims the services of a third critic. There are few special reporters for the proceedings of the law courts. These reports are generally sent in by barristers who practise in these courts.

The police-reports, too, are not furnished by special reporters; but the Times and the other London journals take them from a man who keeps his own police-court corps, and who, in his relations with the papers which employ him, is personally responsible for the correctness of the reports.

The records of local events and accidents are furnished by the so-called penny-a-liners, those vagrant journalists, who are up by day and by night, and who are present at all the police-stations, who always come in time to witness the perpetration of some “Horrible Murder,” and who hasten along with the fire-engines to the scene of every “Extensive Conflagration,” taking notes, which they make as long and as interesting as they possibly can, and selling them to the various journals. They are strange persons, active, acute, and seasoned. They flourish during the recess; for at that time the London journals are not too choice in their selection of matter; and at that time they make large sums of money from the sale of their “Atrocious Murders,” “Extensive Conflagrations,” and “Extraordinary Friendships” between “dogs, rabbits, and water-rats,” or from their chance reports of the proceedings and public addresses of some successful French philanthropist. If the editors did not most ruthlessly cut down their lengthy contributions, the business of the penny-a-liners would certainly be most lucrative. As it is, many of them manage to live, and to live well.

The last-named three classes of English journalists serve several or all the papers at the same time. Their honesty is guaranteed by their own interest; for they would soon lose their customers if they dared to send in incorrect reports. In this conviction lies their organisation. It is based, as every other profession or trade is in England, on the two-fold system of material advantage and unlimited competition.

As to the organisation of the staff of reporters and collaborators, especially at the Times, a great deal might be said that would appear altogether fabulous to our German journalists. We allude to the strict subordination in matters of the daily duties of the paper. We cannot, however, enter into details which might possibly lead us away from the subject-matter. Suffice it to say, that every Times reporter should at all times be fully prepared to undertake a mission to any part of England or of the continent, and that he should not leave his home for any length of time without leaving directions where he may be found, in case his presence were unexpectedly required at the office.

We mention these matters only to show how strict is the business-character which pervades even journalism in England. Besides the business connection, there is but little of social intercourse between the various employÉs on a journal. The very reporters of the Times hardly see one another except in the office or in the House. Their intercourse with the editors is strictly limited to the service of the journal. They have to send in their “copy.” What the editors may please to do with that “copy” concerns them as little as the shoemaker who sends in a pair of boots and is duly paid for them. He, too, has no control over the use which his customer may make of them. The reporters on an English journal sacrifice their individuality to the “Office” in order to remain in that position to an advanced age, or, if they are men of real talent, to create for themselves a free and independent position in literature. They all, from the leader-writer to the foreign correspondent, and from the foreign correspondent down to the penny-a-liner, submit unconditionally to the authority of the editorial body. They write in their various departments what they have undertaken to write, and they send it in. Whether or not it be printed, whether it be shortened, altered, or put aside as waste paper, is no affair of theirs. What German journalist, even the greenest among the green, would submit to such a “desecration of his talents,” as our poor dear Germans would call it.

And now farewell, O Times’ office, with all thy leader-writers, editors, parliamentary reporters, collaborators, compositors, and printers! Thy colossal machines move with a stunning noise until six o’clock, when the press is stopped for a few moments for the insertion of some late continental despatch. The steam is then put on again; the hundreds and hundreds of curiously-shaped wheels turn faster and faster, with bewildering regularity, and large broad sheets of printed paper are heaped upon the board. The printing and publishing is scarcely over when the editors make their appearance. With the sole exception of Saturday nights, the door of the Times’ Office is never closed.

CHAP. VIII.
A Frenchman’s Notions.

“DR. KEIF has got nothing to eat,” said Sir John. “I say, Dr. Keif has nothing whatever to eat. Bella, how inattentive you are to your neighbour.”

“But, Sir John,” said his wife, “Dr. Keif is no infant. He will speak if he wants anything.”

“Nonsense, he forgets it. Dr. Keif, your plate, if you please.”

But the learned Doctor is deaf to Sir John’s warning voice. He is engaged in an interesting conversation with his neighbour, M. Gueronnay, from Paris.

M. Gueronnay is an elderly gentleman, with a youthful head of hair, red cheeks, and preposterously black whiskers. He is grave of aspect; but there is in his small black eyes an inexhaustible fund of good nature and conceit. For the last twenty years he has every season paid a visit of a week or two to Sir John, and each time he finds London gloomier and more unbearable. In fact, nothing but his affection for his old friends could induce him to leave the paradise of Paris for a week’s punishment in the fog and smoke of the Thames. But, however great his disgust may be, he is amiable enough to conquer it; he eats and drinks as an Englishman, laughs and jokes with the ladies all day long, and sheds a few tears at leave-taking. To complete the picture, we ought to add, that M. Gueronnay makes a vow every year to return as a married man, and to bring his wife with him.

Heaven knows what can have happened between him and Dr. Keif, while the rest of the family were eating their roast beef; but everybody is struck with the fact that they talk violently, and both at the same time, too.

“Dr. Keif, your plate!” says Sir John.

“He does not hear you,” responded Bella. “I dare say he is again talking politics.”

“Order!” cries Sir John, now for the third time. “Dr. Keif, M. Gueronnay, another piece of pudding.”

But the two arch-foreigners murmur an excuse, and turn again to one another.

“Yes, surely,” says Dr. Keif, “the sun rises in the West.”

“You allude to the sun of the mind?”

“Certainly! and the West is Paris.”

“A la bonne heure. Thus do we understand one another.”

“Just so, M. Gueronnay; an opinion after your own heart, isn’t it? What I cant understand is, that the world does not settle down to sleep quietly, since Paris thinks and acts for it. What more can be required for the general regeneration of humanity than the Journal des DÉbats, that is to say, the diffusion of useful knowledge—Madame Rachel, that is to say, the art-education of mankind—and a few Chasseurs d’Afrique, that is to say, liberty?”

“Not bad; you have French esprit. Well, you flatter us.”

“Indeed,” says Dr. Keif, very gravely. “Even the Paris Cancan, immoral though it may appear, has, after all, decency and grace enough to civilise half the world. Am I not right? And if la France has been put into the stocks, it is merely because she has been dancing all night for the benefit of distressed humanity; her present misfortune is, after all, nothing but a fresh proof of creative genius, which conceals the profoundest of all modern ideas of emancipation; for, if you please, whatever la France will do that she can do. She takes the resolution, in the face of all Europe, and in plain daylight, to lie in the dirtiest gutter that can be found, and lo! she performs the feat. Alas, for the blindness of the other nations, who do not also lie down in the same gutter, and who will not understand that there must be salvation in the pool in which it pleases la France to wallow!”

“Stop! stop!” replies M. Gueronnay. “What does all this mean?”

“It means simply that the French are the most conceited, insane people on the face of the earth.”

“Mais, Monsieur, I am a Frenchman!”

“Of course you are,” continues the Doctor, with a low impressive voice. “You cannot deny that the French go on sinning on the strength of their constitution! Pray let me go on. That they are a nation of spirited fools, genial ragamuffins, overgrown gamins, and revolutionary lacqueys, who can neither govern themselves, nor will they allow any despot ‘by the grace of God’ to govern them for any length of time.”

“Now pray let me have my say.”

“And that, after their fourth revolution, and their third republic, they will surely fall down at the feet of some Orleanist or Legitimist prince; and after that, by means of universal suffrage, they will sell themselves to some romantic hairdresser, dancing-master, or cook. I, for one, vote for Soyer. He at least has learned something at the Reform Club.”

The most outrageous blasphemy, uttered in the presence of the grandmother of an Anglican bishop, cannot have that dreadful effect which Dr. Keif’s words produced on the nerves of his neighbour. He is first paralysed, then astonished, and in the next instance, angry. He would speak, but he cannot utter a word, for Dr. Keif has seized the wretched man by the topmost button of his coat, and in this position he pours broadside after broadside into his ears, saying continually—“Pray let me go on!” “Now do hear me,” “I know exactly what you wish to say.” Poor M. Gueronnay! All his endeavours to escape are vain, for the Doctor knows no pity for a Frenchman. His hand holds the button with an iron grasp, until, at length, he concludes with the following coup de grace:—“Pray understand me. All I wish to say is, that the French—surely I have not the least intention of offending you—the French are on their last legs, because the last particle of marrow has oozed out of their bones by dint of lying; but that does not prevent their being even in a state of profound degradation, exactly like the Spaniards, Italians, and Irish—spiritual, amusing, and rather an interesting nation.”

“In-fi-ni-ment obligÉ,” cries M. Gueronnay, jumping up and making low bows. “How did you say a-mu-sing? Infiniment obligÉ, Doctor, your German modesty is extremely complimentary.”

“No compliment whatever, M. Gueronnay,” replies Dr. Keif, rather embarrassed; “nothing whatever but my candid opinion.”

The Frenchman casts an epigrammatical glance at the Doctor, buttons his coat, as if preparing for some grand resolution, and says with a loud voice—“Sir, you are”—a long pause. Everybody rises from the table. “Monsieur,” continues the Frenchman, “you have never been in Paris.”

“Certainly not,” says Dr. Keif.

“That is enough. That is all I desire to know. Enfin!” and M. Gueronnay, shrugging his shoulders in a crushing manner, turns his back upon the Doctor.

This scene created a general confusion at the dining-table. Everybody was silent. The lady of the house, whose profound knowledge of the “Dictionnaire de l’Academie” commands M. Gueronnay’s special respect, has taken him to the window, and tries to soothe his feelings, by assuring him that Dr. Keif is certainly wrong-headed in the true Germanic style; but that he is, after all, a good-natured eccentric person, and nobody’s enemy but his own. Dr. Keif, meanwhile, with a forced smile on his lips, and green and yellow with rage, promenades the room. He is evidently not satisfied with himself. Sir John alone has kept this seat at the table; and, enforcing his views by several thumps of his dessert-knife, makes a very instructive speech on that Parliamentary order which is observed at all public dinners in England. Who could even think, while dinner is on the table, of conversing on any other subject but the domestic virtues of the turtle, the sole, and the salmon, the tenderness of roast lamb and venison, the bees-wing of port wine, and all the other good things which are especially fit to establish a delightful harmony between Whigs and Tories, High Churchmen and Dissenters, Cotton Lords and old aristocrats? There’s the rub. That’s what the foreigners will never learn; they cannot do a thing at the right time, and poison their very meat with politics!

I dare say Sir John is right; but his speech is interrupted by the coffee, which has greater effect upon the company than his practical philosophy. Dr. Keif and Sir John take their coffee by the fire.

“Are you aware,” says the latter, “that your remarks have been very offensive to our French friend? We Englishmen can never approve of a wholesale condemnation of any nation. If you had said those words in the House of Commons, you would have been called to order; and I really think there is an Act of Parliament—”

“Well never mind your Act of Parliament! the less you say about it the better. There are examples of examples. You are always preaching manners to people, and—. Never mind, just provoke me, if you please. I’m exactly in a temper.”

“But my dear Doctor, I really can’t understand what is the matter with you.”

“Well, I’ll tell you. People believe that a German’s skin ought to be as thick as that of a rhinoceros. I was not in the least angry, but merely gave that fellow change for his five-franc piece. Just as we sat down to dinner he said a few words which I don’t care to repeat. In short, he said that we Germans were not very likely to set the Thames on fire.”

“Very wrong indeed,” replies Sir John, turning to M. Gueronnay. “I’ll tell him so; he must make an apology.”

“For God’s sake be quiet! An apology, ridiculous! I’m ashamed of my childishness, that his vapid phrase could ruffle my temper; but that is what a man comes to. In Germany I used to laugh at our patriots; and here I’m covered with patriotism as with a cutaneous eruption, and irritated by the slightest touch.”

“Nonsense, sir! Consider it is only the word of a Frenchman!” said Sir John, almost instinctively attacking the weakest side of the sapient and wrathful Doctor. “And I say a Frenchman is no one. But now be reasonable, and shake hands with Mons. Gueronnay. I say—Mons. Gueronnay! You, Sir! Confound the Frenchman!” muttered Sir John, with earnest devotion, “Confound him, he won’t hear!”

The attempts at mediation between the two foreign powers are here interrupted by George, the tiger, bringing in a letter.

“Dr. Keif, if you please, a letter from Mr. Bonypart.”

A flagrant absurdity flung into the midst of a quarrel is, after all, the readiest means to restore good will and smooth the ruffled tempers. George’s blunder makes everybody laugh. Dr. Keif is at once assailed with many questions as to the “Emperor’s” intentions. “Is it an invitation to Paris? Is it a challenge? or the offer of a pension?”

“Yes, it’s in his own hand,” said the Doctor, and pocketed the mysterious document.

“Is it, indeed!” cried the Frenchman, in a state of delightful amazement. “Is it a letter from Louis Napoleon—pardon! I would say, from his Majesty the Emperor himself?”

“Suppose it is, I can see nothing in it to justify your opening your eyes to that extent!” said Mrs. Bella, with the prettiest imaginable little sneer. “I’m sure Dr. Keif is by far more respectable than one half of his majesty’s old friends and companions. But perhaps you will say Dr. Keif holds very strange opinions on the subject of the French nation. Just so, Mons. Gueronnay. Your emperor, I’m sure, thinks even worse of your countrymen than Dr. Keif does, and that’s why he is your Emperor!”

“Order!” shouts Sir John, “I’ll fine you a shilling if you say another word about politics.”

“Hear! hear!” said the Doctor. “But I will explain the matter to Mons. Gueronnay before I go. My friend Baxter has come to town and promises me no end of adventures, if I—”

“Mr. Baxter!” quoth the lady of the house, looking up from the supplement of the Times, which for the last few minutes had engaged her attention. “Mr. Baxter! Really George is getting duller every day; he mispronounces even English names. The fact is, Mons. Gueronnay, that boy George cannot on any account repeat or remember a foreign name. Whenever any German comes to the house and sends up his name, George will make the most shocking mistakes. He will not learn, and gives to every foreigner the very first name he happens to think of.”

“He takes them from the newspapers,” said Mrs. Bella. “The Doctor is continually teaching him politics. It’s true, Doctor, you spoil all our servants. That boy George is too fond of reading, and reading is almost a vice in a young—”

“Aristocrat,” adds Dr. Keif. “But I beg your pardon: lackey is the proper word.”

“In short,” continues the lady of the house, “there is no getting on with him. He turns Schulze into Shelly, and converts Fritze into Sir Fitzroy. The honest name of MÜller becomes in his mouth Macaulay, and a Prussian gentleman of the name of Lehman is always announced as Lord Palmerston. He is so fond of great names.”

“Delicious!” cried Mons. Gueronnay. “What a subject for Scribe!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot wait for the tea-hour; for at nine o’clock, I am expected at the cigar-divan in the Strand;” saying which, Dr. Keif prepared to leave the room.

“Stop!” said Sir John, consulting his watch. “You’ve plenty of time; exactly sixty-one minutes.”

“How exact you English people are—punctilious!” We need scarcely inform our readers that the speaker is Mons. Gueronnay. “Sixty minutes and one! What Frenchman would say sixty minutes and one! Tell us, Mons. le Docteur, are your adventures so very important that they depend on the minute?”

“By no means! Nothing but an appointment of many weeks standing with Mr. Baxter. We propose making an expedition into the theatrical quarters, and I dare say we shall drop in here and there at half-price.”

But the Frenchman cannot understand how any one can go to the theatre at this unseasonable time of the year. He has always understood that in London there are but two entertainments worthy of the notice of un homme comme il faut: the Italian opera and the French theatre at St. James’s. But they are closed now that the season is over. It is true that the Queen does now and then pay a visit to some of the obscure English theatres; but surely she does that for no other reason but to humour the national prejudices of the English.

The ladies cry out against these shocking opinions; but all their protests cannot shake the smiling and gallant and withal obstinate Frenchman.

“Enfin mes dames!” cried he, “you have not an idea of all you must forego in London. You are very fortunate that you have never been at Paris. Par Dieu! Paris! It is there, mesdames, where the common life is a delicious farce; every salon is a stage; every apartment has its coulisses, and every one, from the duke down to the portier, knows his part. Your honest Englishmen can neither act, nor can they judge the action of the stage. An English actor is an unnatural creature, exactly like a Paris Quaker. Where can you find more passion for art than with us! Paris has not half so many inhabitants as London; but it has more theatres, and they are always more crowded than your churches. The poorest ouvrier cannot live without basking in the splendour of the stage; he drinks milk and eats bread for toute la semaine, that he may have some sous to go to the VariÉtÉs or the Funambules on Sunday night. Show me the Englishman who would sacrifice a beefsteak for the sake of a theatrical representation. Allez! allez! You weave, and you spin, you steam and you hammer, you eat and you drink, at the rate of so many horse-power, but to enjoy your life, that is what you do not understand. Am I right, madam?” The girls look at one another, and do not exactly know what to say.

Sir John, in his easy chair, shakes his head and mutters, “There are good reasons for the difference.”

“Ah Ça,” continues the Frenchman triumphantly, “there are reasons; but, let me tell you, the reasons are atrocious! First, a theatrical piece would desecrate the Sunday evening, and the Sabbath must end in the same wearisome manner in which it commenced. If you mention this to an Englishman, he will make a long face, and say something about the morals of the lower classes. Ah, surely the lower classes in England are extremely moral! You can see that on Monday morning, when the drunkards of the night before are accused before the fat Lord Mayor. One has bitten off the constable’s nose; another has knocked down his wife, and kicked her when she was on the ground; and a third has been knocked down by his wife through the instrumentality of a poker. It is nothing but morals and gin; but, Dieu merci, they have not been at the theatre. Do not tell me, because you have more churches and chapels than there are days in the year, that your lower classes go to church. For the poor there are no benches in your churches; your religion is only for respectable people, and while they pray they rattle the money in their pockets. And then there are thousands of Quakers, and Methodists, and Latter-day Saints, who even on week days shun the theatre as a place of abomination. How is it possible for a theatre to prosper? And lastly, you are so fond of your fire-places and parlours, that it is almost impossible to induce you to go out; and you have such a strange passion for green grass, that you live far away in the suburbs, and want a carriage to come back from the theatre in the dawn of the morning. These dreadful distances are ruinous to the purse, and prevent all civilisation. Let me tell you, Monsieur le Docteur, that your admirable Englishmen do not monopolise all the wisdom of the world; but let them go. I do not pity them; but I am sorry for the poor daughters of Albion. Parole d’honneur, Mesdames, you would not regret it if the beautiful dream of Napoleon were accomplished. Ha, what a merry life! Fancy our great army landing on your shores one fine morning. Before the sun is risen our gallant soldiers are in the city; they say, ‘Bon jour,’ they conquer, and are conquered by the charms of the fair-haired Anglo-Saxon ladies. Our soldiers demand nothing but a due recognition of their transcendant merits. You may keep your Bank, your religion, and your Lord Mayor. France covets nothing but the glory of killing the dragon of English ennui. Hand in hand with the fair sex, our invincible army will perform the work of restoration. On the first night there is a grand ball of fraternisation at Vauxhall. On the following morning the liberators publish a manifesto, which decrees that there shall be at least one French vaudeville theatre in every parish.”

The girls on the sofa listen with awe-struck curiosity, and the Frenchman continues his harangue.

“And after a few years, when these new institutions shall have taken root in the hearts of Englishmen, the heroic army returns to sunny France, saying, ‘Now we understand one another, and now there will be eternal peace between us.’ The regeneration of merry England, by means of Norman blood, will outlive many centuries. But if you relapse again into your puritanical spleen, then we shall come again. And the daughters of Albion stand on the chalky cliffs wailing, and stretch their white arms after their liberators. How do you like the sketch? Is it not chivalrous? Is it not full of the most touching disinterestedness? How do you like it, Sir John? Do not be frightened, it is merely une idÉe.”

But Sir John is far too angry to reply, and M. Gueronnay turns again to the Doctor.

“Parole d’honneur,” says he, “it is a perfect disgrace, the education of the women in England! N’est ce pas, even your German philosophers must admit, that the Grand Opera is the cynosure, the academy, the flower of high life—of elegance, enfin, of civilisation. Eh bien! go to the opera, take a good glass, and you will despair. Beautiful women, you will find in plenty in the boxes, in the stalls, and in the gallery. But please to take your glass, and you will see they are all mere raw material. A splendid breed, certainly—a little heavy in the bones—large feet, but that makes no difference—but a complexion—hair—flesh—tell me, am I impartial, or am I not? Mais, mon cher, they are all rough diamonds. It makes one’s heart bleed, to think how this race of women might be brought out, and what a treasure these brutal Englishmen are neglecting! I will say nothing whatever of the toilet. Take a Paris grisette, give her three-quarters of a yard of tulle and two yards and a half of ribbon, and she conquers the world; but an English woman—say Lady A.—with her California of shawls and diamonds on her person, has the appearance of a clothes’ stand. But, as I said before, I will not go the length of asking for a genius for toilet. I will suppose that the light-haired marchioness, with those superb curls, has the good sense to get her fashions from Paris, and that, as a constitutional lady, she is governed by the advice of her responsible French maid. She does not insist on having a scarlet shawl and a light green dress with orange flounces, and a cavalry hat with ostrich feathers. No; she is bonne enfante—she listens to reason.”

“Bon.”

“But my dear Doctor, all this is of very little use. Listen to me, and let us confine our remarks to the light-haired marchioness. She leaves her box. Her carriage stops the way. She enters it. Now tell me, what is her behaviour? Throws she backwards one of those dilating, radiating, dangerous glances, which one might justly expect of her—without which, public life, even in the largest town, lacks all public interest; which the fair sex actually owe to those around them; for after all, what were women created for but to beautify the earth? But our light-haired marchioness walks straight on, as if she had blinkers to her eyes; she walks in a business-like manner—in the way of a student who enters his college, or a clergyman on his way to church; and though she makes but a few steps, I should know her as an English woman among the thousands of the women of all nations. Not a trace of hovering, of gliding, of jumping, or a little coquetry; nothing of the kind. If you meet her, she looks you straight in the face, exactly as if you were a statue or her husband. Be on your guard, she kicks! In sober seriousness, she raises her foot in such a manner as makes me wish that I could box her dancing-master’s ears. Yes, yes, my friend, Lady A. commands my fullest respect, so long as she sits in her box and conducts herself as a statue. Her bust—classic! Her white hand, with long taper fingers—noble—very noble—though a little too thin; her face, full of hauteur! À la bonne heure! in her large blue eyes there is even the shadow of a shade of romance; and round her lips plays something like a smile, which has caught a cold and is afraid of coming out in the open air. But her forehead is a little too severe for me; behind it there is a good deal of scripture reading and history, and details of the money-market, perhaps even Latin and Greek. Her long taper fingers write a firm hand; I am quite sure they can, without the least musical scruples, hammer on the substantial keys of a Broadwood. Of course they can; but do you know what these carefully-trimmed fingers cannot do? They cannot move a fan! Do you know what this beauty, with all the slenderness of her waist, and all the fulness of her shoulders, can never attain? Deportment! She has two left arms and two left hands. A French waist can languish, love, hate, smile, and weep; but this beautiful English woman, during the performance, looks at the libretto as if it were a book of common prayer. Now and then she raises her fan like a screen; and perhaps in one of the entre-actes she condescends to a little coquetry. Such things happen now and then. You see how impartial I am. Mon Dieu! how awkward she is! Enfin, she wants the je ne sais quoi. And, au bout du compte, one fine morning you read in the Post, that such and such an accomplished and very chaste lady, who happens to be the youngest daughter of a half-ruined house, has eloped, that is to say, she has run away, with some red-cheeked chaplain or groom. Don’t tell me what the English are!” says M. Gueronnay, drawing a deep breath, and wiping the perspiration off his forehead with a triumphant look, as if he had captured the British fleet and brought it to Cherbourg. “There is your Italian Opera!”

“But you cannot pay such singers in Paris,” interrupted Sir John, mustering up all his courage. “And as for decency and good manners, I do not think they can be found in your Tuilleries. None but gentlemen are admitted in Her Majesty’s Theatre.”

“Gentlemen—that is to say, black dress coat and black pantaloons; ’tis a pity that wigs and hair-powder are not also de rigueur. If we are to believe what the Morning Post says, the ladies in the first row of boxes fainted away, because a foreigner with a blue neck-tie had by some means or other gained admittance to the pit. Mind he had paid for his place, as well as everybody else. My dear Sir John, good manners are not innate in you; and because you cannot rely on your instincts, you draw up an orthodox code of decency, and observe it strictly to the letter, as if it were the law of the land. A black dress coat is de rigueur, black pantaloons ditto; but the dress coat and the pantaloons may be old, dirty, and shabby. Only think, you pay your money and submit to be schooled by a theatrical lackey. I would not submit to it, that’s all; none but the English, who adore the aristocracy, would ever put up with such impertinence. But the foreigners are justly treated. Why should they go to your Italian Opera House? Can they not go to Paris; and do not Grisi, Mario, and Lablache also sing in Paris? We do not, indeed, crowd all the talents of Italy into a single opera, because our ears are not made of cast-iron.”

Dr. Keif thinks it high time to mediate between the vainglorious Frenchman and the incensed Sir John. “You go a little too far,” says he. “All English ladies are not like your light-haired marchioness, and there are exquisite connoisseurs in music in London; but I am quite free to confess, the powers of digestion of the public amaze me. John Bull listens to two sympathies by Beethoven, an overture by Weber, two fugues by Bach, ten songs by Mendelssohn, and half a dozen arias and variations at one sitting, and then he goes home and falls asleep in peace. At the theatre, a tragedy by Shakespeare, a three-act melodrama from the French, a ballet, and a broad London farce, do him no harm, so great is the strength of his stomach.”

“A capital remark! I am sure we shall understand one another,” whispers M. Gueronnay. “The cry here is always for large quantities. The Englishman throws down his sovereign and wants a hundred-weight of music in return. Mon cher Docteur, you should come to Paris. Do not smile, and do not allow our friend here to make you too partial to the English. Sir John is the best fellow in the world, but entre nous, he is very queer. But you, my dear doctor, you have esprit, you are not without a certain talent for observation. Why should you rest in this town? I am sure your eyes will be opened after your first quarter of a year in Paris. Par Dieu, Paris! Does not the whole of the civilised world wear the cast-off clothes of Paris? It is quite ridiculous your shaking your head at our having got rid of our constitution; but in return Europe trembles at our nod, and enfin Ça ne durera pas. We may change and change again. Constitutions of original Paris-make we have in plenty. We have had more of them than England, Germany, and Italy—in fact, what is there that Paris has not? Do you want religion? there is Lacordaire and Lamennais; and there is the Univers—religions of all shades. Are you fond of philosophy and religion? Go to Prudhon. To tell you the truth, I myself do not care for philosophy and religion; they are either of them mauvais genre. I am for civilisation and property; and I should not mind seeing M. Prudhon hanged, but that does not prevent me, as a Frenchman, being very fond of him. In one word, the world is but a bad imitation of Paris. In Paris you find heaven and hell, order and liberty, the romance of orgies, and the solitude of the cloister, in the most charming harmony and in the grandest and most elegant form. But above all,” said M. Gueronnay, very impressively, “do not believe that you will ever learn to speak the French language unless you go to Paris. Impossible; you will never catch the accent. And England is the worst climate for French pronunciation that can be found. Look at me! I, a Parisian, still feel the pestilential influence of this English jargon, which they are presumptuous enough to call a language, and whenever I go back from London I am ashamed of myself, and dare not speak to the family of my porter.”

“Monsieur Enfin,” said Sir John, as he accompanied the Doctor to the door, “has been bothering you, but, dear me; what can you expect of a Frenchman? a harmless fellow, but queer, very queer! You might make a good deal of money if you shewed him in Piccadilly. At one time I took some trouble with him, and tried to give him an idea of what England is, but it was of no use. You cannot argue a dog’s hind-leg straight. You will never catch me quarrelling with him, that’s all.”

“It is the story of the pot and the kettle,” said Dr. Keif, when he was in the street. “Each one says of the other that he is a queer fellow.” Saying which, the Doctor smiles, without the least suspicion that he is quite as queer as the rest.

It is past midnight when the Doctor returns from his nocturnal expedition, the adventures of which shall be duly recorded in another chapter. George opens the door to him. “The family have gone to bed,” says he, “but the two gentlemen have not yet adjourned.” Indeed their voices are plainly audible in the hall, and Dr. Keif looking up, beholds Sir John and Mons. Enfin on the landing, each holding a flat candle-stick with the candle burnt down to an awful degree of lowness, in his hand. The case is as clear as daylight. False to his principles, Sir John is engaged in a desperate attempt to “reason the dog’s hind-leg straight.”

Dr. Keif came just in time to enjoy the climax of the controversy.

“Enfin—the less you say about literature the better. What English author ever made a revolution?”

“I assure you, sir, Shakespeare—”

“And I assure you, sir, that, in my opinion, Shakespeare is entirely deficient in power. No power whatever, parole d’honneur! Coarse! Ah yes! he is indeed coarse. But power? Ah, my dear sir, where will you find it?”

“And I tell you, sir, that your grisettes and lorettes and actresses want grace, that’s what they do. And why do they want it? To be graceful, a woman should be decent, sir, and respectable, sir; and your grisettes are not a whit better than they ought to be!”

“Good night, gentlemen,” whispers Dr. Keif, as he passes them on the landing. “Don’t settle the question now; I should like to say a few words about it to-morrow morning.”

They stare at him in a bewildered manner, and the very next moment they dispute as fierce as ever.

“Mons. Gueronnay thinks Shakespeare lacks power; and Sir John is disgusted with the French women, because they want grace! Why it’s as good as a play!” mutters Dr. Keif as he gains his own room.

THE THEATRES.—THE POOR MAN’S SUNDAY.—GROUPS FOR HOGARTH.—DR. KEIF AND MR. BAXTER AT THE OLYMPIC.—TRAGEDY AND COMEDY IN ENGLAND.—MR. AND MRS. KEELEY.—MR. WIGAN.—MR. KEAN AND THE BRIMLEYS.—METHODISM.—A PENNY THEATRE.—THE PANTOMIMES.—THE BALLET.—THE STAGE IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY.—MATERIALISM.—DRURY-LANE AT 11·45 P.M.—MERRY OLD ENGLAND.—DRURY-LANE AT 1 A.M.

THE space between Oxford-street and the Strand, the chief thoroughfares of Eastern and Western London, is occupied by a quarter of the town which, in many of its parts, we would not recommend for the residence of strangers who desire respect and consideration from their London acquaintances. On the other hand, nothing can be more interesting to a curious traveller than a careful examination of this quarter. We say a careful examination; for the mere walking through it on the occasion of a visit to the theatres is not enough to exhaust this mine of strange and curious sights. Of course, every stranger walks through this quarter, for in it are the most ancient and renowned among the theatres of London, namely, Covent-garden and Drury-lane.

Old and venerable houses are they, with blackened columns and sooty walls, and surrounded with the questionable traffic of an equivocal neighbourhood. A theatre in prudish London has not much good fame to lose; these two have never at any time stood amidst the fragrance of gardens or parks, or the splendours of a court. The flight to the west has not been caused by them. But, strange to say, the modern smaller theatres, too, are to be found in the outskirts of this half-genteel region. The Lyceum, the Strand theatre, and the Adelphi, are in the Strand. Most dingy and dirty-looking are the streets which surround the Olympic. The Princess’ theatre, elated with the occasional visits of royalty, has sought an asylum in Oxford-street; and the half-classic Sadler’s Wells has gone far out to the north, into staid methodistical, and humble Islington. But Her Majesty’s Theatre, the favourite of the greatest in the land, raises its colonnade in the immediate vicinity of Leicester-square, the modern Alsatia of young France! Are we not, in the vicinity of the Haymarket, before and after midnight, exposed to the blandishments of those fair, frail creatures, that have nothing in common with the Muses, Graces, and Fays, but their state of celibacy? In short, is not the Venus vulgaris notorious for its predilection for a half-fashionable neighbourhood! When, therefore, you date your letters from Long-acre, and when, on receiving such a letter, the face of John Thingumbob, Esq., experiences a perceptible elongation, and his manner of speaking to you afterwards suggests to you the idea that he has been iced, then believe, O stranger, that our respectable friend, John Thingumbob, Esq., doubts not the safety of your own virtue, but the stability of your finances.

In Drury-lane itself, the painted cheek is less frequently met with than in the Haymarket; the deadly sins which revel in this classic neighbourhood do not use paint, and scorn to employ the blandishments of seduction. Their names are Poverty, Drink, and Dirt.

In the Strand, just opposite to majestic Somerset-House, and half-hidden by the railings of the church-yard, which encroaches upon the natural dimensions of the street, there is a narrow passage, which turns up into Drury-lane. That lane, though of unequal breadth, is always narrow, and numberless are the blind alleys, courts, and passages on either side. The first and second floors of the high and narrow houses, shelter evidently a class of small tradesmen and mechanics, who in other countries would pass as “respectable,” while here they work for the merest necessaries of life, and, like their customers, live from hand to mouth. A few of them are usurers, preying

THE GIN PALACE. p. 267.
THE GIN PALACE. p. 267.

upon poverty, coining gold from its vices and morbid longings. As for the garrets of those houses, we would not for the world answer for the comfort of their inhabitants. All the lower floors are let out as shops, in which are displayed dingy dresses and articles of female ornament, coarse eatables, cheap and nasty literature, shockingly illustrated; thick-soled shoes, old clothes, awful cigars—all at very low prices. But the gin-palaces are the lions of Drury-lane; they stand in conspicuous positions, at the corners and crossings of the various intersecting streets. They may be seen from afar, and are lighthouses which guide the thirsty “sweater” on the road to ruin. For they are resplendent with plate glass and gilt cornices, and a variety of many-coloured inscriptions. One of the windows displays the portrait of the “Norfolk Giant,” who acts as barman to this particular house; the walls of another establishment inform you, in green letters, that here they sell “THE ONLY REAL BRANDY IN LONDON,” and a set of scarlet letters announces to the world, that in this house they sell “THE FAMOUS CORDIAL MEDICATED GIN, WHICH IS SO STRONGLY RECOMMENDED BY THE FACULTY.” Cream Gin, Honey Gin, Sparkling Ale, Genuine Porter, and other words calculated utterly to confound a tee-totaller, are painted up in conspicuous characters, even so that they cover the door-posts. It is a remarkable fact, that the houses which are most splendid from without, appear most dismal and comfortless from within. The landlord is locked up behind his “bar,” a snug place enough, with painted casks and a fire and an arm-chair; but the guests stand in front of the bar in a narrow dirty place, exposed to the draught of the door, which is continually opening and shutting. Now and then an old barrel, flung in a corner, serves as a seat. But nevertheless the “palace” is always crowded with guests, who, standing, staggering, crouching, or lying down, groaning, and cursing, drink and forget.

On sober working-days, and in tolerable weather, there is nothing to strike the uninitiated in Drury-lane. Many a capital of a small German country is worse paved and lighted. Nor is misery so conspicuous and staring in this quarter as in Spitalfields, St. Giles’, Saffron-hill, and other “back-slums” of London. But at certain bestial periods, misery oozes out of all its pores like Mississipi mud. Saturday and Monday nights, and Sunday after Church-time, those are the times in which Drury-lane appears in full characteristic glory. A Sunday-afternoon in Drury-lane is enough to make the cheerfullest splenetic. For to the poor labourer the Lord’s day is a day of penance or dissipation. The cotton-frock and fustian-jacket are scared away from the churches and the parks by their respectful awe of rich toilettes and splendid liveries. For the poor man of England is ashamed of his rags; he has no idea of arranging them into a graceful draperie in the manner of the Spanish or Italian Lazarone, who devoutly believes that begging is an honest trade. Even the lowest among the low in England are proud enough to avoid the society of a higher caste, though that superiority consist but in half a degree. They consort with persons of their own stamp, among whom they may walk with their heads erect. Church and park have moreover no charm for the blunted senses of the overworked and under-fed artizan. He is too weak and fatigued to think of an excursion into the country. Steamers, omnibuses, or the rail, are too expensive. His church, his park, his club, his theatre, his place of refuge from the smell of the sewers that infect his dwelling—his sole place of relaxation—is the gin-palace.

To provide against the Sunday, he takes a supply of fire-water on Saturday evening when he has received his week’s wages, for with the stroke of twelve the sabbath shuts the door of all public-houses, and on Sunday-morning the beer or brandy paradise must not open before one o’clock in the afternoon, to be closed again from three to five. Hence that unsacred stillness which weighs down upon Drury-lane on Sunday-mornings. The majority of the inhabitants sleep away their intoxication or ennui. Old time-worn maudlinness reigns supreme in the few faces which peer from the half-opened street-doors; maudlinness pervades the half-sleepy groups which surround the public-house at noon to be ready for its opening; chronic maudlinness pervades the atmosphere. And if a stray ray of light break through the clouds, it falls upon the frowsy loungers and the dim window-panes in a strange manner, as though it had no business there.

It is Saturday-night, and the orgies of Drury-lane have commenced. “That’s the way thou shouldst look,” says Dr. Keif, hurrying forward to the divan in the Strand; “that’s the way thou shouldst look, thou Citta Dolente, to awe us with thy charms. Oh for a Dutch painter of the old school to turn this scene into a HÖllenbreughel.”

A dense fog, with a deep red colouring, from the reflection of numberless gas-jets, and the pavement flooded with mud; a fitful illumination according to the strength of the gas, which flares forth in long jets from the butchers’ shops, while the less illumined parts are lost in gloomy twilight. If your nerves are delicate, you had better not pass too close by the gin-shops, for as the door opens—and those doors are always opening—you are overwhelmed with the pestilential fumes of gin. The pavements are crowded. Slatternly servants with baskets hurry to the butchers and grocers, and the haunters of the coffee-houses of Drury-lane elbow their way through the very midst of the population—the sweepings of humanity. A wicked word this, but the only one fit for these forms of woe and livid faces, in which hunger contends with thirst, and vice with disease.

What subjects for Hogarth on the narrow space of a couple of flag-stones! How ravenous the craving which flashes from the eyes of that grey-haired woman, as she drags a slight, yellow-haired girl—perhaps her own child—to the gin-shop! The little girl follows in a dumb wooden way; but her small slight hand is shut with an anxious grasp, as though she feared to lose her weekly earnings—the wages, perhaps, of hard work, or still harder beggary. She stumbles at the threshold, and almost falls over a couple of children that are crouching on the ground, shivering with cold, and waiting for their father within. The father comes, staggering and kicking the air, with manifest danger to his equilibrium, and cursing awfully. The kick was meant for his wife, a thin woman, with hollow yellow cheeks, whose long serpent-like curls are covered with an old silk bonnet, while her stockingless feet are contained in large slippers. She counts five copper pence in her bony hand, looks at her drunken husband, and at the fatal door, and at the costermonger’s cart in the middle of the street; and she counts her pence, and recounts them, and cannot come to the end of them, though they are but five. The large oysters in the dirty cart, too, excite her appetite. Which is it to be? the public-house or a lot of oysters? “Penny a lot, oysters!” shouts the man, as he moves his cart forward. A dozen greedy eyes watch his movements.

Similar groups are met with at every step. At the door of almost every gin-shop you see drunken women, many of them with children in their arms; and wherever you go, amidst the confused noise and murmur of many voices, you hear distinctly the most awful oaths. It is not at all necessary to quote those oaths. Let it suffice, that one of them, beginning with a B, startled Dr. Keif’s ears a hundred times at least in his walk through Drury-lane.

“Adventure number one!” said Mr. Baxter, to whom our friend communicated the result of his observations.

The fact is, Dr. Keif and Mr. Baxter are seated in the pit of the Olympic Theatre, which is small enough to enable even a short-sighted person to make the public in the boxes and the galleries the subject of a physiognomical study. The “Caucasian population” of Mr. Disraeli’s novels may be seen in large numbers enjoying their sabbath. The pit and the upper gallery are filled with sentimental cooks and housemaids, intermixed with a sprinkling of females, to whom we do but justice if we describe them as lorettes in a small way. They enjoy the patronage of a select assembly of beardless shopmen and attorneys’ clerks, who treat them to ginger-beer, soda-water, lemonade, and oranges. The curtain has just fallen.

“How do you like it?” asks Mr. Baxter.

“Why I think we have seen enough.”

“Wait one moment, I want to look at some one I know. Am I to understand that you didn’t like the piece?” said Mr. Baxter.

“On the contrary; I like it very much. There’s nothing like a piece of tragical clap-trap in your English theatres.”

“Ay!—well!—just so! But then the piece was ‘done’ from the French.”

“The natural source of the modern British drama. But never mind the piece; it’s the acting which amuses me. Mrs. Lackaday telling young Ronsay of her boding dream, and Ronsay pitching into her with a declaration of love—you must confess that the scene would have done credit to the most wooden marionettes.”

“Yes, indeed! That scene was capital!”

“Was’nt it! The fellow stood there, like a big gun, until his turn came, and then he went off! He turned his eyes upwards, that you might have seen the whites at the distance of a mile; and he sparred with his hands, as if preparing for a set-to with the moon; and all of a sudden he stood stock still again, exactly like a gun, and the audience was fairly enraptured! And did it not strike you, that the two people had the same modulation and declamation, as a married couple of forty years’ standing, whose features have acquired the same expression, and whose limbs have fallen into the same mode of movement? At times I am inclined to believe, that the tragic actors, male and female, have been ground their trade to the tune of one and the same patent barrel-organ. Their pathos is set to music. They all delight in the same pause between the article, the adjective, and the substantive; they all make endless stops, and utter the word which follows with a kind of explosion. I presume these poor fellows try to imitate Macready.”

“That is to say,” remarked Mr. Baxter, “they caricature him.”

“But do you know whom Macready caricatures or imitates? I have read a good deal about Garrick, Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons, and I ought to swear by them, as you all do; but still I cannot help suspecting that, even in the golden period of English tragedy, ‘all was not gold that glittered.’ There is no originality. There is too much respect for antiquated traditions among the craft.”

“Certainly there is a good deal of tradition about it. But our actors are not at liberty to depart from those ancient ways; and the slightest deviation would raise a storm against the unfortunate innovator. The taste of the public demands—”

“Indeed! and how does it happen that the period of the Garricks, Kembles, and Siddons did not create and lead you to a better taste? Has England gone back in education and refinement? Why it is just the reverse. The art of tragic acting must formerly have been subject to the same vices as in our days. What you say about the taste of the public is a very lame excuse. I am of opinion that your English public might be trained to a better taste; they are not fond of criticising; their feelings are not used up, and they are eminently grateful. Their taste is unrefined, but they are inclined to respect grace and dignity. Look at Madame Celeste. She carries everything before her by the grace of her untraditional movements.”

“But then she is a pretty French woman,” said Mr. Baxter, laughing, “and pretty women, you know, will carry every thing before them. But now come before the curtain is up, for Mr. Ronsay will certainly deafen us this time.”

“Good evening, Mr. Brimley,” whispered Mr. Baxter, as we went out, touching the shoulders of a young man who sat in the darkest corner of the pit with his hat slouched over his face, his great-coat buttoned up to his chin, and a large shawl tied round his neck, as though he were occupying the box-seat of an omnibus instead of a pit-seat in a hot and crowded theatre. The young man jumped up, blushed over and over, seized Mr. Baxter’s hands, and talked to him very earnestly, and, as it appeared, imploringly.

“Adventure No. 2,” said Mr. Baxter, when the two friends had gained the street. “That tall young fellow with the red whiskers is a Mr. Brimley; he is twenty-five years of age; he manages his father’s business in the city; he is likely to have £200,000 or £300,000 of his own, and he trembles like a school-boy lest his papa should hear of his secret escapades.”

“What escapades are those? if it is a fair question.”

“Perfectly fair. His great crime is, that this evening, for the first time in his life, he has gone to the theatre.”

“Impossible!”

“But fact. I know Peter Brimley, Esq., and Mrs. Brimley, and the whole family. A set of more honest, respectable people does not exist between the Thames and the Clyde; but if they were to understand that Mr. Ebenezer Brimley, their son, had crossed the threshold of frivolity, and placed himself on a seat of ungodly vanity, there would be more lamenting and howling among the uncles and aunts of Brimley House than there would be over a bankruptcy of the firm of Brimley and Co. These people are Methodists, and yet Ebenezer the Bold has taken the first step. Since stolen water is more sweet and intoxicating than brandy honestly purchased, I am afraid Ebenezer will drink the poisonous cup to the dregs. Some of these fine days we shall hear of his having gone off with Mrs. Lackaday. Poor fellow! he has not the least idea that she is on the wrong side of forty, and he is evidently much taken with her painted beauties. Never mind, I will be silent as to the past, because I have promised him. He wont sleep this night, I tell you, that little boy of twenty-five, for fear lest some incautious word of mine might betray the secret.”

“Then it would appear that M. Enfin is not, after all, so very wrong,” said Dr. Keif.

“Nor is he; but your Frenchman cannot see farther than the tip of his nose. The Puritans and low church people form a powerful faction in England; but the round-heads, though great nuisances, are wanted so long as there are cavaliers. And now let us enter this temple of art.”

We pass through a low door, and enter a kind of ante-chamber, where we pay a penny each. A buffet with soda-water, lemonade, apples, and cakes, is surrounded by a crowd of thinly-clad factory girls, and a youthful cavalier with a paper cap is shooting at a target with a cross-bow, and after each shot he throws a farthing on the buffet. Passing through the ante-chamber and a narrow corridor, we enter the pit of the penny-theatre, a place capable of holding fifty persons. There are also galleries—a dozen of wooden benches rise in amphitheatrical fashion up to the ceiling; and, strange to say, the gentlemen sit on one side and the ladies on the other. This separation of the sexes is owing to a great refinement of feeling. The gentlemen, chiefly labourers and apprentices, luxuriate during the representation in the aroma of their “pickwicks,” a weed of which we can assure the reader that it is not to be found in the Havanna; but they are gallant enough to keep the only window in the house wide open.

Just as we enter we see the director, a small curly-headed man, with a red punch face, ascending the stage by means of a ladder. He makes two low bows, one for the ladies and one for the gentlemen, and delivers himself of a grand oration, to excuse some small deficiences in his institution. At every third word he is interrupted by the cheers and remarks of the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says he. “I am sorry I cannot produce a prima donna to-night. Jenny Lind has sent me a message by my own submarine telegraph, asking for an extension of her leave. You would not surely shorten the honeymoon of the nightingale. Why, to do that would be as bad as cruelty to animals. Madame Sontag tells me, quite in confidence, that she is falling off, and that, although her voice is good enough for Yankee ears, she wants the courage to make her appearance before the refined public of No. 17, Broad-street, London. Mdlle. Wagner was at my service, cheap as any stale mackerel; but could I insult you by producing her? Would not every note have reminded you of the fact, that she values nothing in England but its copper pence. Besides, the terms of friendship which subsist between myself and Mr. Lumley—there are considerations—I hope you’ll understand me, ladies and gentlemen!”

“Question! question!”

“Maybe you are astonished that these boards are uncarpeted, and that no painted curtain displays its glories to your eyes!”

A voice from the gallery:—“At your uncle’s, eh?”

Another voice:—“Nonsense! His wife has turned the stuff into a petticoat.”

“How little you understand me, ladies and gentlemen. In the first place, it is but decent that our stage should lament the death of the Iron Duke”—

Interruption:—“No first place! Don’t you try to be funny, old feller!”—Blasphemy—groans.

“Ladies and gentlemen, pray listen to me. Let all be serene between us. I have nothing to conceal. Ladies and gentlemen, the overture is about to commence!”

The speaker vanishes through a trap-door, through which two fellows presently ascend. One is dressed up to represent an Irishman; the other wears the characteristic habiliments of a Scotch Highlander. They play some national airs, and while thus engaged strip themselves of every particle of their outer clothing, and appear as American planters. Some one from below, hands up a couple of straw hats, which they clap on their heads, and the metamorphosis is complete. They then go to the back of the stage and return with an unfortunate “African.” The part is acted by no less distinguished a person than the director himself. His face is blackened, he has a woolly wig on his head, and heavy chains on his wrists and ancles; and to prevent all misunderstandings, there is pinned to his waistcoat an enormous placard, with the magic words of “Uncle Tom.”

The planters produce meanwhile a couple of stout whips, which instruments of torture they use in a very unceremonious manner, in belabouring the back of the sable protegÉ of the Duchess of Sutherland and the women of England generally, when all of a sudden, that illustrious negro, exclaiming, “Li-ber-r-r-ty! Liber-r-r-ty!” breaks his fetters, and turning round with great deliberation, descends into the pit. Exeunt the two planters, each with a somerset.

Transformation:—Three forms issue from the back door; a colossal female, with a trident and a diadem of gilt paper, bearing the legend of “Britannia”; after her, a pot-bellied old gentleman, with a red nose and a spoon in his right hand, while his left holds an enormous soup-plate, with a turtle painted on the back of it.

Britannia, heaving a deep sigh, sits down on a stool, adjusts a telescope, which is very long and very dirty, and looks out upon the ocean. The gentleman with the red nose, who, of course, represents the Lord Mayor of the good City of London, kneels down at her feet, and indulges in a fit of very significant howlings and gnashings of teeth. The third person is a sailor-boy complete, with a south-wester, blue jacket, and wide trousers, who dances a hornpipe while Britannia sighs and the Lord Mayor howls.

Now comes the great scene of the evening! Somebody or something, diving up from the very midst of the pit, makes a rush against the stage. It is the Uncle Tom of the last scene; but surely even Her Grace of Sutherland would not know him again. His face is as black and his hair as woolly as ever; but a cocked hat, a pair of red trousers and top boots, and an enormous sword, brings it home even to the dullest understanding, that this is a very dangerous person! Besides, on his back there is a placard, with the inscription: “Solouque—Napoleon—Emperor”!!

The monster bawls out “Invasion!” while, to the great delight of the ladies and gentlemen, he bumps his head several times against the chalky cliffs of Britain, which, on the present emergency, are represented by the wooden planks of the stage. The very sailor-boy, still dancing his hornpipe, shows his contempt for so much ferocity and dulness. He greets the invader with a scornful—“Parli-vow Frenchi?”

At this juncture, the conqueror becomes aware of the presence of the short ladder, and mounts it forthwith. The boy vents his feelings of horror and disgust in an expressive pantomime, the Lord Mayor howls louder than ever, and the gnashing of his teeth is awful to behold; but just as the invader has gained the edge of the stage, he is attacked by the sailor, who, applying his foot to a part of the Frenchman’s body which shall be nameless, kicks that warrior back into the pit. The public cheer, Britannia and the Lord Mayor dance a polka, and the sailor sings “God save the Queen!”

“If the French ambassador could but know of this!” said Mr. Baxter, as the two friends were pushing their way out through a crowd of new comers. “That one kick would give rise to half a dozen diplomatic notes. Alas, for the liberties of Old England! Now I am sure the Lord Chamberlain’s deputy would never have permitted this scene in a Drury-lane pantomime.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Dr. Keif, testily, “since it seems to hurt you, who are a moderate Tory. But why did we go away?”

“It was so hot. But what do you say to this sort of thing? Here you have the low and the uneducated in raptures with a histrionic representation. Are you still of opinion, that the people of England are without dramatic affinities and theatrical instincts?”

“I never expressed such an opinion. Just now we were talking of tragic acting; but as for your comic actors, they are exquisite. No one can equal Matthews at the Lyceum or Mrs. Keeley. There you have natural freshness, energy, lightness, and refinement. Our German comic plays and actors are nothing to it. You see I can be impartial, and I will plainly tell you what my impressions are. When I saw ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Sadler’s-wells, I had to bite my lips to keep myself from laughing. Juliet, instead of proceeding from an Italian nunnery, appeared fresh from a finishing school at Brompton; the orthopedical stays and the back-board were not to be mistaken. And as for Romeo, so great was my confidence in him, that I would, without the least hesitation, have handed an express-train over to his care; he was so cool, sharp, and collected. It was just the same with Mercutio, Tybalt, and Friar Lawrence. Not that they were deficient in mimic and vocal power—no such thing! but because they conducted themselves in a frantic manner, and because they got up and down the scale of human sounds from a whisper to a roar. For the very reason that they did all this, I came to the conclusion that there is no tragic passion in these gentlemen. I saw them afterwards in comedies, and they delighted me. The broader the comedy, the nearer it approaches to the farce, the more natural does the acting appear to me. Dont laugh at me; but I never enjoyed anything so much as I did the last year’s Christmas pantomime at Drury-lane. There you have plastic jokes, madness with method, edifying nonsense—a kaleidoscope for aged children.”

“How you go on!” said Mr. Baxter. “Don’t you know that those pantomimes, for the most part, are nothing but a tissue of stale jokes taken at random from the last volume of Punch?”

“No matter! The jokes, however stale, strike one as new by dint of a clever arrangement and a judicious intermixture of all the follies of the season. It is not an easy matter, let me tell you, to translate a printed witticism into an intelligible and striking tableau. Quick and dreamlike as the scenic changes are, not a single allusion can escape the audience: they are all executed in a lapidary style. Life in London garrets and streets, shops and cellars, shown up in a sort of carnival procession—surely there is a good deal of art in that! Hogarth might have sketched this sort of thing with a drop or so more of gall; but I doubt whether he could have surpassed it in striking truthfulness. Besides I prefer seeing such scenes acted to seeing them engraved. These are the plays to bring out the mechanical excellence of your countrymen. Your young gentleman appears stiff and awkward enough in the drawing-room. But your clown on the stage is the beau ideal of mercurial agility. The fellow has patent steel springs in every one of his joints. Our own misnamed ‘English riders’ are mere lay-figures if compared to the clowns which overleap one another in your Christmas pantomimes. There is but one dark spot in their representations, namely, the ballet. To see twenty or thirty female Englishmen of full regulation-size dancing a ballet, is an overpowering luxury. To this day I protest that nothing was farther from the thoughts of those worthy virgins than the performance of a dance, but that their elongated legs were so many geometrical instruments moving about with a view to the practical demonstration of the various problems in Euclid. English ladies, as all the world knows, are madly fond of the higher branches of abstract science.”

“You are a rabid critic, and a rabid critic you will remain to the end of your days,” said Mr. Baxter. “You Germans cannot get on without classifications and generalisations. For instance, you think proper to imagine a profound philosophy in the Christmas pantomimes, which, after all, are acted for the special delight of the infant population. And you dare to doubt the genius of Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Siddons, merely because you know that a few bad actors are now and then in the habit of murdering Shakespeare. However, it is impossible to exhaust the subject of the difference between English and German taste. Our tragedy is as strongly pronounced as our comedy, and what you blame in the former, you like in the latter. I am free to confess that our actors overdo their parts; but they do not overdo them to such an extent as you fancy, accustomed as you are to the contemplative, monological pathos of the German tragedians. Possibly our heroes would be all the better for a gentler roar, but certainly it cannot be said of them, that their acting is soporific. But let us leave this wordy theme! There is no denying it, that the best days of the stage are over, here and in Germany: with you from the want of substance, air, and elbow-room; with us, from an excess of overwhelming practical activity. Besides there are many other causes which it is impossible to enumerate. There is but one point to which I would call your attention; and I would have you mind it whenever you make comparisons. With us, dramatic art has never been idolised as in Germany; we have never considered it as an institution for national education and an academy of ethics. Within the last few years only this view has been adopted and enforced by some writers. I can understand what your stage has been to you since the days of Lessing, and the losses and wants for which in Germany it was an indemnification. But you began at the wrong end. The drama is the flower of national life; you sought to convert it into its seed and root. On some occasions you have even gone the length of considering it the fruit and the object of national life. You cared more for the ideal reflection than for the real action which was to be reflected. It has often made me smile to hear your Æsthetical patriots clamour for a German fleet or a German emperor, for no other reason but because these two ‘properties’ would do an immense deal of good to the drama; and I have also smiled when listening to their lamentations that Germany can never be great and powerful, since her national stage is sustained by the leavings of the French theatres. Our managers import loads of French farces and vaudevilles, and the papers show them up for it now and then; but no one believes our nationality in danger. As well might we fear the most serious consequences to the power of England, from the importation of French milliners, stays, and Culs de Paris.”

Mr. Baxter made a short pause, and, since Dr. Keif would not speak, he continued his oration pro domo.

“Let me tell you, that there are thousands of Englishmen in town and country, who quote Shakespere as they do the Bible, but they know nothing whatever of the stage; and there are patrons of the stage, to whom you may demonstrate the decline of that institution, without eliciting one word of reproval against the Foreign Office. In Germany, the stage is petted and subsidised by a score or so of royal and princely personages. English theatres are speculations, as all other commercial undertakings; they have nothing to rely on but the support of the public. The Queen takes a box at the Princess’s, or at Covent Garden; no one will ever expect her to do more for the ‘national drama,’ or the Italian opera. The very boards which yesterday witnessed the death struggles of Desdemona and the jealousy of the Moor, are this evening given up to Franconi or a band of Indian jugglers. If any one here were to lament this ‘desecration of the Temple of the Muses,’ he would simply make himself ridiculous. The dog of Aubrey, which excited GÖthe’s and Schiller’s indignation, will be a welcome guest on any London stage, so it pays. But for all that, the public know how to distinguish between poesy and clap-trap. Our actors take their position in society as gentlemen, though they have not, as your actors, the ‘position of public functionaries.’ Our dramatic authors do not indulge in oraculous preface, because they do not think it absolutely necessary that they should be prophets, while they do think it absolutely necessary to be entertaining. A poetical entertainment ennobles; poesy which is not entertaining falls short of its mark, and remains without effect. I am free to confess, that Sheridan and Otway remain unsurpassed in their respective lines. Shelley’s Beatrice, though unfit for the stage, has indication of dramatic genius of a high order; but one swallow does not make a summer. Our critics regret this; but they do not lament it as a national misfortune—they do not demonstrate from this fact the spiritual and moral decline of the nation. They are aware that dramatic productiveness is not to be had to order, that guano and artificial tendencies cannot raise a crop; they have been content with the works of Cumberland, Knowles, Bulwer, D. Jerrold, and Tom Taylor, without measuring their productions by the standard of the most renowned precedents, or abusing each individual author because he is not a Shakespeare. And for all that, Old England flourishes in power and glory. But stop, we have lost our way, and got into Seven Dials, which is, after all, but a worse edition of Drury-lane. Let us go back. The ‘Witches’ Sabbath’ must by this time be at its height, and we may as well look at what is going on.”

They picked their way through a very narrow and dark lane.

Dr. Keif heaved a deep sigh and said—“I see you have stored up a lecture for my benefit. Your sallies and innuendoes go right against the rotten side of our German hot-house life; but—but surely you must admit, that the stage is an indication of the spirit and taste of society; and certainly you are the last man whom I could have expected to deliver this matter-of-fact sermon, to which I have just had—politeness compels me to call it—the pleasure of listening. My Germanic opposition has driven you into the ranks of the Manchester men. But surely you cannot possibly have the face to tell me, that the one-sided, utilitarian tendencies of England are beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” replied Mr. Baxter, with a sigh. “Did I call them beautiful? Surely not; but necessity, my dear Doctor, is a mighty goddess. We, too, who are dilettanti, would be better off for ourselves and others, if we had learnt something of agriculture, political economy, or some substantial profession or trade. This remark applies to nations also. What’s the use of going in pursuit of ‘the Beautiful’ and ‘the Great,’ when you are at a loss how to clothe Beauty and shelter Greatness. Pray be candid for this once. Was it not the case of the German Titans, when a mere chance, an earthquake, flung the keys of the house within their reach? Were they not, most of them, wilful dreamers, dabblers in politics and poetry—men who judged the progress of events after its picturesque or dramatic effect; and who, though brimful with schemes for the improvement of the ‘people,’ and overflowing with sympathy for the sufferings of the same ‘people,’ had not the least idea how to set about gaining an army, improving the finances, establishing the good cause on a basis of material interests, saving time, and making the most of the favour of the moment? These matter-of-fact virtues and abilities were everywhere wanting. And now what has been the result for the Beautiful and the Great?”

“But Sir,” said Dr. Keif, “I protest your words make me giddy. Are you my old friend Baxter? You speak in the spirit of the Quaker Bright, and Cobden of plausible reputation. Do you really believe that the German revolution made fiasco, because the Germans read Schiller and GÖthe; and that England is great and powerful, only because a sense for art and good taste is confined to the favoured few, while the life of your middle classes is spread over the dead level of the flattest materialism imaginable?”

“You are mistaken. One-sidedness is a sad thing under any circumstances; but if the choice be left me, I would prefer British one-sidedness to the German. And as for our materialism, it has been wofully exaggerated on the continent. England has a large family, many mouths to feed, sir, and appearances to be kept up, too, namely, the traditional pomp and splendour of an old aristocracy and of the crown. The nation has doubled its numbers within the last two hundred years, but our island has not increased in size, though certainly a large extent of waste land has been reclaimed. Britannia must rule the waves if she would keep her own. Rob us of our wealth, and we are utterly lost. But no one can rob us of our wealth, because that wealth is founded on what you call our prosaical materialistic character, and what we describe as the indomitable energy and calm deliberation of the people. The Englishman understands the necessity of an untiring, practical industry and devotion to that industry has in him become a second nature. Labour, my dear Sir, civilizes the masses and ennobles the few. Consider your own words, and just think how childish it is to hold forth against the ‘flat materialism’ of a nation which is in a fair way of fully conquering the elements and withdrawing the veil from the secrets of nature! That at the present day utilitarian tendencies are predominant, even in literature, who can deny? But the brains that labour in the service of ‘the useful,’ labour also, and knowingly, too, for the benefit of humanity. Our middle classes, though not such great theatrical critics as the Germans, are attracted, and surely they are improved by a great many other sights. Just join the crowd of holyday makers that have come to see the launch of a gigantic steamer in Southampton, Liverpool, Glasgow, or Blackwall, and from a thousand sparkling eyes proud thoughts will flash at you—not mere nabob-thoughts and gold-freight speculations, as you Germans fancy; but anticipations of a better and nobler future, hopes of peaceful intercourse among and the progress of all nations; dreams of civilization in Dahomey and other barbarous countries—in short, thoughts of which no art-philosopher need be ashamed. Go to the Polytechnic——.”

The fog has vanished in Drury-lane; for about midnight the London sky is usually clear; the moon looks out from behind the steeple of St. Mary’s church in the Strand, and at each street-corner stands a policeman, he being on the look-out. The progress of the two friends is stopped by a dense crowd, surrounding a couple of Irish women, who are settling a little “difficulty” of their own. Ragged little boys stand in dangerous proximity, urging them on, and making very laudable exertions to procure for the street the gratification of a “real fight,” for hitherto the two Amazons have used their tongues rather than their fists, and indulged in an interchange of epithets beginning with b and ending with y, and repeated with extreme volubility an incredible number of times.

“You’ve got no pluck! you daughter of a dog’s daughter, that’s what you hasn’t!” shouts a little imp of a fellow, jumping right between them, and splashing all the bystanders. With bursts of laughter and many curses, the crowd disperses down the street and follows a stretcher, carried by two policemen, who have just issued from a dark gate-way. On the stretcher, her head and legs hanging down, is a tall, consumptive-looking girl, with her hair loosened and sweeping down like a black veil.

“They’re taking her to the station-house,” says a woman with a pipe and a strong Irish accent—“taking her to the station-house, for the blessed dthrop is such a stranger in her throat—poor Poll! believe me, gintlemin, it’s only hunger has made her drunk—only hunger!”

Through all the various sounds of yells, groans, and curses, we hear at a distance the unharmonious concert of two barrel-organs, one of which is grinding out a woful caricature of the Marseillaise, while the other, addressing itself to the human family generally, informs them, with an awful screech, that “There’s a good time coming, boys,” which cheering intelligence is, in the end, qualified by the growl of “Wait a little longer.” A few yards on, a beggar-boy with naked feet, and with an almost naked back, has taken up his post where the mud is deepest in the road, and sings, with a thin, small voice, “Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doon.” Nobody cares for him, for the public are attracted by two artists who are performing in the next street. They are brothers, by their looks, and work together. The younger, a tiny boy with an aged face, taxes the ingenuity of the public by conundrums, whose chief characteristic is, that they are almost always political and smutty. “Why is her most gracious Majesty like a notorious pick-pocket?” shouts he, in a tone which would do honour to a trained school-master. While the public are trying to find the answer, the elder brother imitates the songs of birds and the voices of beasts. They all give it up. “Because she is often confined,” says the little boy, with a most indecent wink at some females. And the songs of birds and voices of beasts are again imitated, and conundrums of a still grosser description propounded and explained; and the hat goes round and comes back with a few pence and half-pence in it.

“And this is classic soil,” said Mr. Baxter. “The whole of this ought to be sacred to the antiquarian, to the adorer of the so-called merry old England. When I shut my eyes—and mind, if I can manage to shut my ears and nose too—I see Nell Gwynn, the merry friend of Charles II., with very thin dress, and not much of it, and with her pet lamb under her arm, walking out of the great portal; she vanishes through the green gate in Lord Craven’s garden. The rays of the setting sun gild the curiously-carved gables of the villas in the Strand, but the cavaliers are already on their way back from the play; and Kynaston, dressed in the costume which he wore on the stage for the part of Juliet, takes a drive with some discreet ladies of fashion, rank, and pleasure.”

“A merry life, indeed!” said Dr. Keif. “Keep your eyes, ears, and nose shut, and go on.”

“Not now, dear Doctor. If you are curious on the subject, I will send you some of the old books and chronicles of the time. You will find that theatrical doings in those days, however interesting, are rather instructive than taking. I dare say, you fancy the age was without prudery, and there you are right; but the natural healthy cheerfulness which we find in Shakspeare had long since evaporated. The period of the restoration was insolent but not merry. That the cavaliers were rude and brutal means nothing; the upper classes generally were rude and brutal in all countries at that time; but ours added to a barbarous brutality, a more than French dissoluteness of morals. Strange enough were the doings of the last Stuarts. Fancy yourself in Great Russell Street, following the troops of cavaliers and ladies, with long curly locks À la ValliÈre, on their road to the theatre. As they leave their chairs or carriages, or dismount from their horses, they draw their masks over faces heated and bloated with drink. Almost everybody is masked. The custom comes from the times of the Puritans, when people went secretly to the theatre. The dissolute second Charles, with his gloomy gypsy face, comes just in time to stop a brawl between the Duke of Buckingham and Killigrew the actor. Killigrew has disarmed the duke, and laid his scabbard about his grace’s ears. Buckingham will send a couple of bravos by and bye, and half kill the actor—a fate which even poor Dryden could not escape. The play begins amidst the interruptions and howling of drunken noblemen who occupy the foreground of the stage, trip up the heroine, and kick the hero into the orchestra. His Majesty, meanwhile, in the presence of his lieges, ogles one of his numerous mistresses, or makes smutty speeches to an orange-girl, with a voice so loud that it is plainly heard on the stage. That is a scene from merry Old England!”

All of a sudden the lights are put out in the gin-palaces, the barrel-organs are silent, the howling and cursing shrinks into a hoarse murmur; and the multitude disperse gradually, like muddy water which runs through the gutters and is lost under ground. The street is all silent and lonely; only one tall figure comes with rapid and noiseless steps out of one of the alleys. It looks round in every direction; but there is no policeman in sight. It steps up to our two friends, and looks at them in silence with staring glassy eyes. It is not the spirit of midnight, nor is it a ghost; but neither is it a form of flesh and blood, for it is all skin and bones. And the clear light of the harvest-moon displays a half-starved woman with an infant on her arm, to whom her bony hand is a hard death-bed. For some minutes she stares at the strangers. They put some silver into her hand, and she, without any remark or thanks, turns round and walks slowly away.

“The holy sabbath has commenced,” said Dr. Keif, “the puritanical sabbath, on which misery feels three times more miserable.”

“My dear friend,” said Mr. Baxter, “twenty-five years ago you might have found the whole of Oxford Street crowded with figures similar to the one which has just left us. If you would see them in our days, you must seek for them in some dark corner of Drury Lane. And Puritanism in 1853 is mild and gentle compared to the Puritanism of the Round-heads; it is nothing but a natural reaction against the dissolute Cavalier spirit which has come down even to the commencement of this century. In the English character one extreme must be balanced by the other. Either merry and mad, or sober and prude; we are either drunkards or teetotallers, brawlers or peace-twaddlers. Of course, if harmonic and measured dignity, if the instinct for beauty of form, were innate in us, then, indeed, this nation would not be the persevering, hard-working, powerful John Bull which it is; or if it were, we should shame your German proverb, that the trees nowhere grow into the heavens. Good night, Doctor; and ‘au revoir.’”

APPENDIX.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Letter I.

Sir John to Dr. Keif.

Hyde Cottage, November 15.

My dear Doctor,

Herewith I return the proof-sheets of Part II. of the “Saunterings in and about London;” and I beg to thank you for them; although I know you sent them less for my amusement than because you wished to procure for me a sort of private view of myself and my prejudices as you call them. Never mind! an English gentleman can afford to hear the truth spoken anywhere and anyhow; and, if you promise to resign some of your Teutonic crotchets, I gladly pledge my word in return, that I will never again try to reason a Frenchman’s hind-leg straight; for, after all, that unfortunate dispute was the worst our friend could lay to my charge.

Now, as for our friend’s book, which you tell me is to be published at Berlin—the most intelligent and erudite of all the German capitals—really, Doctor, I do not half like the idea! How are these two little volumes ever to give the Germans a proper idea of what London really is? A good many capital descriptions there are—but, dear me! how much there is that is wanting. I tell you the very things are wanting which would most improve the German mind, if your friend had but condescended to notice them. Not a word does he say of our picture galleries, incomparable though they undoubtedly are. The Bridgewater, Vernon, and Hampton Court collections are not mentioned; nor is the British Museum—nor St. Paul’s—nor the Colosseum—nor Madame Tussaud’s—nor are Barclay and Perkins! He does not even mention our most magnificent streets and quarters. Regent-street, Bond-street, Belgravia, and Westbourne-terrace are most wickedly neglected by our flighty friend. He has not a word for the monster concerts of Exeter-hall, and he absolutely forgets that there are such places as Covent-garden, Billingsgate, and Hungerford markets. The Zoological-gardens, the Botanical-gardens, Kew, Richmond, Windsor, arts, literature, charities—all are passed over in contemptuous silence.

My dear Doctor, I put it to you; if those places and matters are not mentioned at all, how are the foreigners ever to understand what London is? The people of Berlin are actually led to believe that we have no picture-galleries and hospitals! Your friend might write ten volumes without exhausting the subject. Don’t you agree with me? We must have a word or two on the subject when you come to see us.

The country is charming just now. Where, out of England, can you find such beautiful green meadows, and so mild an air, in November? I walk about without a great coat, thinking of the mountains of snow in Germany, and of the wolves that make their way over the mountains and into the very sanctuary of the Cologne Cathedral. It’s a little damp now and then—especially after sunset—but it doesn’t matter; for in the evening I have my fire and my newspaper. The fact is, there’s no comfort except in England, and in the country! Come and look at our cottage. The children expect you; so do I.

Yours, etc.

P.S.—At this season of the year you had better take a glass of Cognac in the morning. You’ll find some bottles in the cellar. Before going to bed take one of my pills. You’ll find a box on my table. Don’t be obstinate. You can have no idea of the dangers of an English November.

Letter II.

Dr. Keif to Sir John.

Guildford Street, November 16.

My dear Sir,

I think of coming on Sunday. In the meanwhile I must give you some sort of explanation respecting the incompleteness of our friend’s “Saunterings.”

He might indeed, in his book, have mentioned all the remarkable places and sights of your metropolis; but he could only have mentioned them. He preferred taking up a few strong features and phases, and expatiating on them. Of course a great deal was passed over in silence; you, as an Englishman, have the greatest right to complain of such neglect. But, most respectable Sir John, pray do not forget that in this manner mention has not been made of many things which are by no means agreeable to British ears when commented upon by foreigners. A good many capital descriptions there are; but, dear me, how much is wanting! I tell you the very things are wanting which we Germans, I trust, shall never think of imitating.

Not a word of your dog and rat fights. Not a word of the manifest incompetency of the majority of your sculptors and painters. Not a syllable of your unequalled musical barbarism. Not a word of the stupendous prostitution—of the dirt—the dissoluteness—the bestiality—in the lower Thames quarters and the Borough. No detailed descriptions of your gin palaces and sailors’ saloons—your learned professions—the intricacies of the law—medicine swamped in charlatanism—your High Church—your Low Church, and sectarian fanaticism—your bigotted Universities, Oxford and Cambridge—the narrow-mindedness of your aristocracy, and the snobbism of your middle classes: all these matters are altogether left out.

My dear Sir John, you are quite right. It would take ten volumes to exhaust the subject. Between ourselves, perhaps you would not half like it if our friend were to continue his “Saunterings.”

London is awful just now. Where in all the world can such fogs and such a pestilential atmosphere be found, except in London? The wolves in the Cologne Cathedral are mere creations of your free-born British fancy; and, as for the present absence of your great coat—do I not know that Englishmen brave even the rigours of a German winter in check trousers and dress coats? But they are cunning enough to don those respectable habiliments over sundry layers of flannel. Have you left off your vests, etc.? Of course you are comfortable in your country cottage, and I shall come to admire you in all your glory.

Yours, etc.

P.S.—Your medical advice is valuable; I mean, in part, to conform to it. I found the Cognac, and shall take it as directed. But your pills I shall not take. I’m reading the French papers, and they do quite as well.

THE END.
J. WERTHEIMER AND CO., PRINTERS, FINSBURY CIRCUS.