“Whether it be a pole painted, or wroughtFar otherwise than from the wood ’twas brought,Whose head the idol-maker’s hand doth crop,Where a profane bird, towering on the top,Looks like the calf in Horeb, at whose rootThe unyoked youth doth exercise his foot:* * * *How canst thou chuse, but, seeing it, complainThat Baal’s worshipp’d in his groves again?”
“Whether it be a pole painted, or wroughtFar otherwise than from the wood ’twas brought,Whose head the idol-maker’s hand doth crop,Where a profane bird, towering on the top,Looks like the calf in Horeb, at whose rootThe unyoked youth doth exercise his foot:* * * *How canst thou chuse, but, seeing it, complainThat Baal’s worshipp’d in his groves again?”
“Whether it be a pole painted, or wroughtFar otherwise than from the wood ’twas brought,Whose head the idol-maker’s hand doth crop,Where a profane bird, towering on the top,Looks like the calf in Horeb, at whose rootThe unyoked youth doth exercise his foot:* * * *How canst thou chuse, but, seeing it, complainThat Baal’s worshipp’d in his groves again?”
The last line might have been uttered by some crop-eared holder-forth, who fought as well as preached under Cromwell. The church of St. Mary-le-Strand stands on the spot where the May-pole was formerly erected. It was built by Gibbs (1717), whose portico of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields remains unrivalled for its beauty. The old church stood nearer the river, and was pulled down by the Duke of Somerset, 1549, who used the materials for building Somerset-place, but was beheaded before he had completed it. We forget in what old work we found a long account attempting to prove that he lost his head through destroying the church of St. Mary and the Innocents, as the old church was called.
SOMERSET HOUSE.SOMERSET HOUSE.
Passing the present Somerset House (which is now used as Government offices, and of which we merely give an engraving) and Waterloo Bridge, both of which are deserving of a separate article, we will turn down to the left and glance at the old church of St. Mary-le-Savoy, which is all that now remains of the once famous Savoy Palace, first built above six hundred years ago, but destroyed by Wat Tyler and his rebels; after which it lay in ruins for above a century and a half. The present chapel, as it is called, was built in 1505. Our engravings represent the exterior and a portion of the interior. It contains several old monuments and crosses.
CHURCH OF ST. MARY-LE-SAVOY.CHURCH OF ST. MARY-LE-SAVOY.
We now reach the Adelphi, a mass of large dwelling-houses and warehouses, built by the brothers Adam about 1770, on such a labyrinth of arches as startle a stranger who enters them for the first time.
Those noble streets which open into the Strand, now known as the Adelphi, are built above the ground formerly occupied by Durham House and its princely gardens, from whence Lady Jane Grey, the “nine days’ queen” (as our old chroniclers call her), was led, with loud acclaim, to the Tower, and then—in tears, to the scaffold. The ground itself on which she walked, and meditated, and saw her garden-flowers blow, is at noonday overhung with midnight darkness, excepting where, here and there, a gaslight throws its dim rays, andfeebly illumines the cavernous gloom: where her youth and beauty once threw their sunshine a melancholy blackness now reigns. To us this dark land is filled with sad associations; and, though the grave hath long since closed over those who placed the crown upon her head, and then left her to bleed upon the block, we never walk through these sounding arches without thinking of their treachery.
INTERIOR OF THE SAVOY CHURCH.INTERIOR OF THE SAVOY CHURCH.
Thousands who pass along the Strand never dream of the shadowy region which lies between them and the river—the black-browed arches that span right and left, before and behind, covering many a rood of ground on which the rain never beats nor the sunbeam rests, and at the entrance of which the wind only seems to howl and whine, as if afraid of venturing farther into the darkness. Many of our readerswill no doubt conclude that such a dreary place as this must be deserted and tenantless: such is not the case. Here many of those strong horses which the countryman who visits London looks upon with wonder and envy, are stabled—huge, broad-chested steeds, such as may be seen dragging the heavily-laden coal-wagons up those steep passages which lead into the Strand, and which seem “to the manner born.”
Cows are also kept here, which, rumour says, never saw any other light beyond that of the gas which gleams through their prison-bars, or, by way of change, the cheering rays from a lantern, when they are milked or fed: that here many of them were calved, and have lived on, giving milk to a good old age—buried like the main-pipe that supplies us with water, and finding its way into our houses, without our once inquiring how. We have often pitied the London cows, which we have seen driven up one street and down another, and have fancied that what little milk they had must have been churned into indifferent butter, as they ran on, to escape the stones thrown after them by boys, while mongrels were ever sallying out, and either biting or barking at their heels; but we had not then seen those which are doomed to dwell in the unbroken darkness of the Adelphi arches, without ever breathing any other than the sepulchral air which stagnates in this murky purgatory. Assuredly, they ought to be taken out for a little fresh air now and then, and be led by the horns to
“Fresh fields and pastures new;”
“Fresh fields and pastures new;”
“Fresh fields and pastures new;”
for we can readily conceive how pleased and patiently they would go “blinking” along compared to those horned blackguards who come with a butt and a “a boo” at us as they return from Smithfield, and, before we have time to say “Now, stupid!” pitch us over the battlements of one of the bridges, and leave us to sink or swim.
The Adelphi arches form a little subterranean city; there is nothing like it in London: in some places you catch a glimpse of the river; a small loop-hole then lets in the light like the end of a railway-tunnel, yet seeming to diminish more than these tunnels, on account of the steep descent, until one of the steamers, in passing, appears to fill up the opening like a half-closed door. Beside these arches, there are narrow passages which go dipping down to the water-side, where on either hand houses stand looking at one another in the openings between the darkness. There is a dismal and solitary look about these tall imprisoned houses; you cannot conceive how they are entered, for there appears to be no way to them, and you conclude that they are empty. Or, if they are inhabited, you wonder if the people ever look out of these dim, dirt-ditched windows at the dead-looking wallsopposite. We have turned back, and hunted up and down looking from below, but nowhere could we obtain a view of the entrance to those murderous-looking houses. We once saw a butterfly which had lost its way, and got into the little light which had stolen out to look at the entrance of these arches: it went up and down, and hither and thither, seeming to become feebler every moment, as if it had given up all hope of ever swinging with folded wings, like a peabloom, on the flowers again, and we doubted not but that it found a grave amid the green decay of some rotten water-butt.
There was a time when the great thoroughfare between Westminster and Temple Bar was all but impassable, when a petition was presented for the repairing of the highway, in which the petitioners complained that the foot-road was so overgrown with thickets and bushes that the wayfarer had difficulty to get along. Besides the brambly and thorny footpath, there were three old bridges to cross between Temple Bar and the village of Charing, which spanned the sweet streams that came tinkling all the way from Highgate-hill, passing along and edging the velvet green of many a pleasant meadow, like braids of silver, before they sent their sailing foam-bells into the bosom of the Thames. Ivy Bridge-lane and Strand Bridge-lane still mark the sites of two of these old bridges. The third was only discovered a few years ago; and, as it was but eleven feet long, every ancient stone might have been preserved and built up again over the Lee or some narrow water-course, so that we might have had another relic of bygone days to have looked upon, a bridge over which conqueror and captive had passed—tears and triumphs—from the Tower to Westminster, and from thence to the Tower again. Bolingbroke weeping—the hero of Agincourt—what a chapter could we have written on that old bridge, which was discovered while making a sewer near the church of St. Clement the Dane! It had been buried so long that not an antiquary mentions it—nowhere is it recorded by our old historians. When it was discovered, it was broken up, removed, and no one seems to know what became of the fragments. Perhaps Alfred himself might have crossed that ancient bridge when he pursued the daring Sea-King Haestings; perhaps—— But it is gone; and we should like to know the name of the surveyor who allowed it to be destroyed; in these pages he should have a “local habitation and a name” such as he deserves.
There are still standing in Holywell and Wych-street a few houses which bring before the eye the old London our forefathers inhabited—when Bluff Hal beheaded a wife before he breakfasted; and Queen Elizabeth measured not her words to her ministers if they offended her, and thought nothing of striking a nobleman, as she did the Earlof Essex, when not in a loving mood. In her endearing moments, we often picture her like a grim lioness at play with the king of the forest. We often wonder where Shakspeare was during the Sunday Essex broke out, and locked up the queen’s officers. We dare wager a silver groat, that he looked on that stormy scene in the Strand, and that, were he here to answer, we could point our pen to passages in his works which were suggested by what he either saw or heard on that memorable day.
How the warlike old barons would stare in wonderment, if it were possible that they could again “revisit the glimpses of the moon,” and see the rent-roll produced from the ground on which their towered and loop-holed palaces stood; could peep at the productions exhibited at the Society of Arts, in the Adelphi, and look back again upon the days when a flexible gauntlet, that could guard the hand yet give freedom to the grasp, or a visor through which they could see yet with the bars so tempered as to resist the point of a lance, were considered as the greatest wonders of art! How they would rub their dim old eyes at the sight of an express-train; stare at a steamer, and think what a smash and crash a couple would have made, to have run into each other at their water-quintains! Then, to send a message from Tilbury Fort to Kenilworth by the electric telegraph, where the amorous old queen was coquetting with Leicester, and she ignorant of such an invention, to tell her that the Spanish Armada was coming, would have consigned the messenger who came from the station to something like the Spanish inquisition, if not a stake at Smithfield. Oh, that we had a photographic portrait of the dear old lady, with all those nicely marked shadows, to which she had so great an objection, down to the “cunning wrinkles round her eyes!”
But we will cross over the way, and visit Covent-Garden Market, the ever-open flower-show of London. Here, when “the wind and rain beat dark December,” the costly chrysanthemum may be purchased, with which beauty decks her waving ringlets, as she shoots the arrows of love from her eyes, regardless on whom they may alight. In spring, summer, autumn, or winter, the choicest treasures of the floral world are here collected; from the conservatory and the humble cottage-garden, flowers of all hues are gathered to grace the Covent-Garden colonnades. Few places surprise a stranger more than when he emerges suddenly from that great, crowded, and noisy thoroughfare, the Strand, and finds himself all at once in this little world of flowers. In this spot are to be found the first offerings of spring; the snow-drop that comes “like an unbidden guest,” violets and primroses which have been gathered in many a far-off dell and sunny dingle, come to tell us the progress that Nature is making inthe green and out-of-door world. Many a sad and many a pleasing thought must have been awakened in the bosoms of thousands who have long been in-dwellers in this mighty city, by walking through the ranks of flowers which are here placed. They must have recalled the image of some old home far away, and probably never again to be visited by them—the porch, over which the woodbine or jasmine trailed, and the garden-fence, along which the clustering moss-roses hung. Many a flower is thus borne away and treasured for the old memories it awakens, for the tender recollections it recals—feelings to which the heart had long been a stranger. For Byron has shewn how small a key can open the human heart—how slight a chord may be struck, and some slumbering affection be in a moment aroused:
“It may but be a sound—A tone of music—summer’s eve—or spring—A flower—striking the electric chain.”
“It may but be a sound—A tone of music—summer’s eve—or spring—A flower—striking the electric chain.”
“It may but be a sound—A tone of music—summer’s eve—or spring—A flower—striking the electric chain.”
Here are purchased the cut flowers that decorate the banquet and ball-room—the posy which the blushing bride bears with downcast look in her hand—the bouquet which is rained down at the feet of our favourite actresses; and here also affection comes for its last tribute to place beside the pale face of the beloved dead, or plant around the grave in the cemetery. The house of mirth and the house of mourning are both supplied from the same common store. Pride, love, interest, fame, and death come here to select their garlands.
Here the young lover purchases for his fair one the blue forget-me-not; the graceful acacia, emblem of elegance; the myrtle, the old Grecian symbol of love; pansies—“that’s for thoughts;” the red-streaked woodbine, which denotes devoted affection; the lily, that ancient representative of purity of heart; the rose, the queen of beauty, and for the earliest of which five or ten shillings is no unusual sum to pay; with every flower that makes up the great alphabet of love.
The epicure may here feast his eyes with delight; and, if he is wealthy enough, purchase the natural produce of April or May while the snows of February are whitening the ground; for so has science triumphed over nature, by the aid of heat and manures, that there is scarcely any thing too difficult for your forcing-gardeners to accomplish. New potatoes, peas, and fruit of almost every description, are here to be found, fresh gathered, before spring has hung out a single leaf upon the oak. Green April is made to produce green gooseberries; and marrow-fats come in with the blossoms of May. Here conservatories are also formed over the colonnades; andthe choicest and most delicate flowers that ever bloomed in kingly gardens may be found as healthy and beautiful amid London smoke as if flourishing a hundred miles away in the country.
Those itinerant dealers who make the streets of London ring with the pleasant spring-cry of “All a-blowing, all a-growing!” as they move along with barrow, basket, and cart, are generally supplied from this market; and few would credit the many hundreds of pounds expended in the metropolis for the purchase of flower-roots, to be re-planted in the little back-yards called gardens, which are a peculiar feature in most of the London streets beyond the city boundaries. Places which, to pass in front, a stranger would think no green thing had ever grown for years near such a neighbourhood; yet in the rear they contain choice wall-flowers, sweet-williams, carnations, Canterbury-bells, hollyhocks, sun-flowers, and fancy dahlias, which have been grown within a mile or so of the bridges, and have been sent forth to “dispute the prize” at a flower-show. Many a poor man has often expended his shilling when he could ill spare it, to purchase a choice tulip or dahlia, which he treasured as the pride of his garden; and this is one amongst other pleasing sights to witness in this market. The artisan here finds enjoyment as well as the wealthy citizen, or the aristocratic lady, who treads with “mincing gait” through the arcade, attended by John the page, and all his “eruption of buttons.” Fine specimens of English beauty are often met with here—faces that look not unlike our own island roses; the fine blue-eyed Saxon cast of countenance, and the long fair hair, such as centuries ago drooped about the brow of Rowena, and were the cause of King Vortigern losing his kingdom and his life.
In contrast to these are our Covent-Garden portresses—sturdy daughters of Erin, clad in almost manly attire, and, with scarcely an exception, every soul a smoker and drinker of neat gin. Wonderful are the loads which these “juvenile antiques” carry; they would make the neck of a strong man, unused to bearing such burdens, ache again, were he only to carry one a moderate distance. Their faithfulness and honesty are deserving of the highest praise: no matter how valuable the load may be that you purchase, or how great the distance it has to be borne into the suburbs, you have but to pay the trifle agreed upon, furnish the right address, and when you return home, there you will find every bud and blossom uninjured, for Biddy may be trusted with uncounted gold. They are all a sturdy, short-necked race; moving caryatides, strong enough to support a temple, although such forms never mingled with the dreams of our ancient sculptors. Beside a good-natured, it requires a strong-armed man to help to replace the load upon their heads whenthey have rested; and few gentlemen, we hope, resist the appeal of “Will your honour plase to lend a lift to the basket?”
At a very early hour in the morning, and while the rest of London—excepting in the markets—seem wrapt in sleep, the whole of the streets which open into Covent Garden are thronged with vehicles, and buyers and sellers; for either the greengrocer or his man must be here early, if our dinner-table is to be supplied with first-rate vegetables; and from the most remote street of the suburbs the greengrocers are compelled to come either to the Borough, to Farringdon, or Covent-Garden markets, for their stock; for these, with the exception of Spitalfields, which is celebrated for potatoes, are the only garden-markets. From one or other of these places have all those tempting shows of flowers, fruit, and vegetables, which give such a country-look to the greengrocers’ shops, been brought at an early hour.
Here an imaginative lover of good living may feed his fancy, and feast his eyes with the first rhubarb-pie of the season—conjure up the roast shoulder of lamb that is to accompany the asparagus—match the new potatoes with the brown veal cutlet—see a couple of ducks lying prostrate beside a dish of green peas—run streaks of fanciful pastry between the rich lines of raspberries—thrust bundles of sage and onions inside some stubble-fed goose, or call up the plump leg of mutton that is to be boiled along with those lily-white turnips; while cauliflowers, spinach, brocoli, and greens of every description may be found to match with the finest joints that either Leadenhall or Newgate markets can produce; for here they are to be seen “thick as leaves that strew the Vale of Vallambrosa.”
The poet may also ramble here, and call up visions of the Garden of Eden, where our first mother stood “half-spied, so thick the blushing roses round about her blowed;” or the golden fields of Enna and Proserpina, and her nymphs; and the wheels of that gloomy chariot, which ploughed up the waving flowers,—of Cupid and Psyche; and the beautiful vale of Arcady, and Venus mourning over her beloved Adonis, from whose blood there sprang a rich array of peerless blossoms.
But, independent of these associations, Covent Garden has an interest of its own. Above six hundred years ago it bore the name of Convent Garden, and originally belonged to Westminster Abbey. A pleasant walk must it have been, a few centuries ago, from that grave and venerable pile to the garden, before even the village of Charing existed, and when probably the whole line of road from the Abbey consisted of avenues of trees and open fields, where the daisies blowed and the skylark built and sang. We can picture those early fathersof the Church, with the rich missals in their hands, wiling away the hours in pleasant meditation, as they sauntered leisurely along between the Abbey and the Covent Garden, “in cope and stole arrayed.” Within the last three hundred years it was walled round, and covered with trees, whose blossoms waved white and beautiful in the breezes of spring, and in summer displayed a rich array of trembling green; while half a dozen thatched cottages and a convent were the only habitations that then heaved up in this small neighbourhood. A few noblemen’s mansions were all that at this time stood beside the river from Temple Bar to the Abbey; and these, with their beautiful gardens, sloped down by the edge of the water. Only a few years ago Covent Garden consisted of a mass of unsightly wooden sheds and open standing-places, inferior to the market of many a common country town; and it was not until about 1828 that this mass of rubbish began to be swept away, and the present market to be built. The foundations of the old convent, from which no doubt this place takes its name, are not yet wholly swept away, a considerable portion being at present enclosed within the house occupied by Mr. Bohn, the bookseller, in York-street. Here two or three bulky piles of masonry, no doubt containing the remains of the early fathers, who wandered about this ancient neighbourhood, while, with the exception of the convent, it was all one garden-ground, may still be seen. This convent, if we remember rightly, has escaped the notice of several of the London historians, who, because it was built on land belonging to the Abbey, seem to have lost sight of it as a separate structure.
It was not until the time of Charles I. that any material improvement commenced in this neighbourhood. The name of Inigo Jones is connected with the first advances architecture made in this direction, through the spirited exertions of the fourth Earl of Bedford. A few of the princely mansions which rise up in the neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn are fine specimens of the buildings which were erected about this period.
What an uncomfortable place must the old City have been, with its little poking market in Honey-lane, now covered by the City of London School and the Stocks Market, long since removed, and with only one bridge leading into this large London, which was then rapidly bursting its ancient barriers and shooting out far beyond its weather-beaten walls, while all propositions for improvement were considered as death-blows aimed at its old and barbarous privileges. Our forefathers never knew, nor needed, such places as the present Covent Garden Market.
We read, in old plays, of the apple-woman at the corner of thestreet, and the vendor of herbs who passed through those ancient thoroughfares; but of the greengrocers, like those of our own day, we find no mention, for they had no predecessors; and, excepting the cabbage and the parsnip, peas and beans, and the radish mentioned by Izaak Walton, there seems but to have been a scanty supply of vegetables. The potato is of comparatively modern introduction, while fruit-trees appear to have been grown in England from time immemorial; even as far back as the days of the Saxons, we find the vine cultivated in the gardens of the monasteries, and that the monks made their own wine. Their vegetable diet was very limited; and we need no further proof than the quantity of cattle slaughtered for the winter consumption, and salted for the sole purpose of saving the food they would require. Indeed, with the exception of beans, peas, wheat, barley, and a kind of cabbage called kale, we scarcely find any other mention of the vegetables used by our Saxon ancestors. Even in the time of Elizabeth, according to old Tusser, a supper of bacon broth was not to be despised, and a breakfast off the same substance cold, with the addition of a piece of cabbage in its cold state, and a lump of barley-bread, formed the chief diet of the English farmer, washed down, no doubt, by a draught of beer.
Still the Londoners seem always to have been a flower-loving people, and although the stern Puritans banished their May-poles and Whitsuntide games, they were revived again at the Restoration, and continued, but with little alteration, until the middle of the last century. Even chatty old Pepys allowed his wife to go down into the neighbourhood of Greenwich, so that she might rise early and wash her face in May-dew; and bluff Hal, attended by his queen and nobles, went out to “do observance to the May” at Shooter’s Hill. We cannot help marvelling, while such a love for the beauties of nature prevailed, that no such thing as a regular flower-market should exist. It is true the dramatists mention the smell that pervaded Bucklersbury; and no doubt a few centuries back this was the chief spot where the country-people assembled and sold the flowers and fruits they brought from the country. That thitherward they came, streaming from the wild woods of Hampstead and Highgate, or from the wilder wastes on which Norwood now stands, each bearing their burden into “Bucklersbury at simple-time,” when only one bridge spanned across the Thames.
Yet it must have been a merry London when, to quote the words of an old chronicler, “the king himself rose early in the morning to fetch May or green boughs—he fresh and richly appareled; and all his knights, squires, and gentlemen clothed in white satin; his guards and yeomen of the crown in white sarsenet. And so went every manwith his bow and arrows, shooting to the wood; and so repaired again to the court, every man with a green bough in his cap.” This was the time when, although London was without its Covent Garden Market, in May, according to Herrick’s description:
“Each field became a street—each street a park,Made green, and trimm’d with trees.Devotion gave each house a bough, a branch;Each porch and doorWith white-thorn neatly was inwove,As if they were the cooler shades of love.”
“Each field became a street—each street a park,Made green, and trimm’d with trees.Devotion gave each house a bough, a branch;Each porch and doorWith white-thorn neatly was inwove,As if they were the cooler shades of love.”
“Each field became a street—each street a park,Made green, and trimm’d with trees.Devotion gave each house a bough, a branch;Each porch and doorWith white-thorn neatly was inwove,As if they were the cooler shades of love.”
In the first volume of theIllustrated London Newswe find the following description of the church of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.
“When Francis Duke of Bedford, in the reign of the first Charles, proposed to erect a place of worship for his tenantry in the then thinly populated locality of the Covent Garden, he called to his councils the celebrated Inigo Jones, suggesting, as we find it recorded, that ‘any thing—a barn would do;’ an expression sounding more of the prudence than of the piety of the said Francis. The architect took the hint; and thence arose, in 1640, the Palladian structure of which we now behold a duplicate; the original building having been destroyed in 1795, through the carelessness of some workmen engaged in its repair. The contemplation of this edifice has given rise to a shrewd suspicion in our mind, that the above venerable anecdote relating to its origin may have been the after-thought of some architectural critic, whose admiration for the designer of Whitehall was stronger than his respect for the memory of the duke. Be that as it may, the structure, for several years, was merely known as the Chapel of Ease to St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, until 1645, when it was erected into a separate living, and, in the year of the Restoration (1660), the patronage was vested in the Duke of Bedford; the whilom chapelry becoming known as the church and parish of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.
“St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, has some peculiarities in its structure. The Tuscan portico, with itsprazzi, being placed in therearinstead of thefrontof the edifice, which latter stands in the quiet by-way of Belford-street. Hence thebackof the altar is (to use a palpable Hibernicism) thefront, the lantern and principal entrance being at the western extremity of the church. Popularly speaking it is right; for this is the elevation which has looked down on the many glorious rows, cracked crowns, and mêlées consequent upon each recurrence of a Westminster election, the hustings-hammering high bailiff of that ancient borough and city having made this spot memorable as ‘the field of a thousand fights,’ by here fixing the polling-place for thereturn of members to represent it in Parliament. Here, then, were the tag-rag and bob-tail of this ancient and radical borough wont to disport themselves in fighting, roaring, drinking, and swearing, during the fourteen days saturnalia of each contested election. But these scenes are no more; the Reform bill, by dividing the constituencies and the erection of district polling-booths, has destroyed the glorious anarchy, the rude liberty of the Westminster canaille; and we may look with equal success for the May-pole in the Strand or the Standard on Cornhill, as for an election-mob, such as in the days of Fox, Burdett, Hobhouse, Maxwell, or Sheridan, crowded the front of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. But if the history of the hustings of Covent Garden would be the history of political party for the last hundred years, not less would the history of the hotels and coffee-houses, which occupy two sides of the quadrangle, comprise the anecdotal annals of the last century, and the earlier portion of the present. The early companions of George IV. here revelled; and a host of buried talent, senatorial, literary, forensic, and dramatic, has the ‘venue’ of its brightest witticisms and most brilliant sallies laid in the hotels of ‘the Garden’—in the Bedford, the Russell, the Piazza, Offley’s, Mother Butler’s, and the rest.
“All around the subject of our article has experienced its full share of change. There is a painting by Hogarth, from which an etching has been published, representing Covent Garden in 1745. There stands the predecessor of the present church, alike in every respect (except the illuminated clock in the pediment); but here the resemblance ceases. The area now occupied by the handsome market, with its granite columns, plate-glass windows, covered arcades and conservatories, is in Hogarth’s picture an uneven space divided by posts and chains, with a pump in its centre. Here and there a market-woman, with looped-up petticoats and exposed neck, presides over heaps of vegetables scattered on the ground, while among mounds of turnips, carrots, and cabbages, strut several formal figures in the uncouth head-dresses, pinched stomachers, and stiff diamond-quilted skirts of a century ago, accompanied by puppy-dogs, and beaux as precise and quaint in attire as themselves. But to return. The design both of church and piazza of the present building is said to have been borrowed from a place built by Cosmo de Medicis at Leghorn. The bold projecting cornice outside, and the eight Corinthian columns of the altar-piece within, have found many admirers among the cognoscenti. In conclusion, we must add, that the inimitable author ofHudibrasis also buried here, and no less a humorist than Dr. Walcot, the well-known ‘Peter Pindar:’ their monuments ought to be preserved.”
WHAT a crowd of solemn associations gather around the mind of the intellectual visitor on first entering these ancient walls! the very silence which reigns around the vast edifice is startling, and the sound of a falling footstep seems to awaken a thousand sleeping echoes that were mute and voiceless as the surrounding tombs. We feel that we are in the presence of the mighty dead; and, as we gaze around, the deeds which throw a grandeur and a gloom over the pages of English history pass in vivid succession before the eye of the mind. The very pavement seems strewn with the ruins of crowns, sceptres, helmets, and swords, mitres and croziers, bent, crushed, dented, and broken; while, amid the dim gold and the rusted steel, the green laurels of the poet alone remain unchanged. What moving scenes have broken the lengthened shadows which those high-piled pillars throw over aisle and choir! the christenings, coronations, marriages, and funerals of departed monarchs, who have returned to the dust from whence they came. Light and darkness, summer and winter, have brightened and deepened thousands of times over the shadowy crypts in which their ashes repose—every thing grand and imposing is swept away excepting the mighty monuments, which scarcely seem the work of human hands; they rise like images of eternity, ever bending and keeping watch above their silent graves.
Here, in the Pix-office, we are surrounded by Saxon architecture. How massive, plain, solid, and majestic, is this portion of the venerablepile! As it stands now, so it stood before the shores of England were startled by the sound of Norman trumpets—a monument worthy of the descendant of Alfred the Great! The beautiful Mosaic pavement that lies before the altar in the choir, was brought from Rome by the good old Abbot Ware, about the close of the reign of the third Henry—a king to whose liberality we are indebted for a great portion of the erection of the Abbey: for the completion of the whole was the work of many eventful years; and before its towers rose, as they do now, pointing to the sky, many a crowned head sunk in succession into the dark quietude of the tomb. Suns rose and set, and the mighty work grew up; and amid the trump and thunder of a thousand battles, it has stood unshaken: it is too strong for the destroying hand of man; and Time, as if in reverence, has trod lightly as he stepped over it.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY.WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
Amid such an assemblage of architectural grandeur as the Abbey presents, the mind is filled with a rich confusion of imagery, as if incapable of grappling with the whole. It seems like the sunlight that flames in through the deep-dyed windows; we stand amid a dazzle of blaze and brightness that appears to have neither beginningnor end; here flashing like gold, there stealing into the dim purple twilight, and gilding as it passes a shrine or a stony shroud; then settling down amid the vaulted shadows of the tombs, or just lighting faintly in its passage the uplifted hands of the recumbent image, that have been clasped for centuries in the attitude of silent prayer. We know not whether to start from the shrine of Edward the Confessor, or the coronation-chair, to count our footsteps through the long chapters of history; for the forms of the actors themselves come crowding around us; gazing upon the one, then seating themselves in the other—a rapid succession of phantoms, each dazzling the eye for a moment by its splendour, then sinking down again into the cold stony image that is doomed to hold its hands in the mute, meek penance of unceasing prayer, as it has done through the grey old years of departed centuries. How beautiful is the figure which graces the tomb of Queen Eleanor! Gaze on the calm loveliness of that matchless countenance, and you will fancy that a sweet sleep has stolen over it—that it has but laid down to rest awhile, and while dreaming, its beauty burst forth and dispelled every shade of sorrow, as if Time himself had kept watch over it, and sheltered it from dust and ruin with his wings, and guarded it with his scythe, allowing no mortal finger to touch the hallowed shrine over which he has long kept jealous watch. Death seems never to have entered that cold grey marble palace of beauty. Here lie the remains of Richard II. and his Queen; and while we gaze upon his monument, and recal his “sad, eventful history,” we think of the undying poetry in which Shakspeare has enshrined him, and feel as if we could sit for hours upon the pavement and tell “sad stories about the death of kings.” Bolingbroke ought to have been buried by his side; and for the sake of Shakspeare there would be no feeling outraged, nor no disrespect shewn to the dead, if his remains were exhumed and placed side by side of the monarch he dethroned. How rich and magnificent is Henry the Fifth’s monument, every way worthy of the hero of Agincourt! Strange that even amid the solemnity of death, the eye of an Englishman kindles while he recals the splendid achievements of this brave king, that neither the horrors of war, nor the blood shed at that victorious banquet, throw a sickening sensation over the heart while we gaze upon the tomb of the conqueror. The far past seems to deaden these sympathies; and we look upon the actors as we do upon the words on a time-worn monument, which tell how those who sleep below once lived and were famous in their day, that they died, and were buried: and we read and pass on with a feeling of pride, respect, or sorrow; and the next moment finds us gazing with similar thoughts and sympathies uponthe grave of another. Above hangs the helmet which the warrior king wore in battle, shewing by the deep dents which are imprinted upon it, that it was borne into the very thickest of the strife, and had its share of blows dealt heavily, when men lived but to “conquer or to die.”
There is a strange want of harmony between the ancient and modern monuments. Our ancestors understood the “keeping” of their subjects within the pale of style, beauty, and order better than we do or have done. They made their ornaments and furniture to correspond with the venerable and costly edifice which their taste and piety had reared; and in the fulfilment of their solemn ceremonies, allowed no meddling undertaker to disfigure the hallowed mansion with his grave mockery. A glance at the tombs of our old kings is the proof—they have become a portion of Westminster Abbey, while the additions made during the last two centuries are, with a few exceptions, sadly misplaced. We look around, and feel as if, while in the midst of some impressive ceremony, a group of strange maskers had suddenly broken in, snapped the train of our thoughts, and by their antics diverted both mind and eye from the imposing subjects with which they were before so earnestly engrossed. Statues or monuments, that would look well in open squares or spacious halls, startle us by their very nakedness, when they step out between the shadowy and solemn crypts, where death itself is roofed over and vaulted in at the foot of the mighty mound whose very majesty is overwhelming. It is as if the eye, while contemplating the grandeur of Parnassus, was disturbed by the white butterflies that are ever crossing each other at its base. Mere inscriptions on some Gothic tablet would be better than these abortions: a list of names would not offend, like many of these pale, inexpressive countenances, that “fright” the aisle “from its propriety” in marble. The name alone in such a place would strike the right chord, while the ... but we are standing amongst the mighty dead.
The beautiful screen erected by Blore is a splendid exception to the mass of modern innovations. Turn to the monument of Sir Francis Vere, in the eastern aisle of the transept, and there you see what true genius can produce.
We will now glance at the Poets’ Corner, a spot haunted by sad and sweet associations. Here stands the massy and solemn-looking tomb of Chaucer, that “morning star” of poetry which first dawned through the long night of Egyptian darkness. He, the earliest child of English song, was the first bard interred within this great national mausoleum; and it now appears that the monument was erected soon after his death: there is an antique look about it which wouldleave a stranger to conclude that the tomb was almost as old as the Abbey itself. Gentle Spenser, author of the immortal “Faëry Queen,” was the next heir to undying fame interred in this beautiful sanctuary; and Shakspeare and Jonson were no doubt mourners at that great funeral. Beaumont and Drayton were the next successors who sank into this silent city of the dead. “Rare Ben Jonson” soon followed; but he was buried in the northern aisle of the nave—it is supposed, very near to Killigrew’s monument. Cowley, Dryden, Gay, Prior, and Addison, although the latter was buried in another part of the Abbey, may be numbered among the illustrious dead who sleep their long sleep within those ancient walls. Many other monuments stand here erected to the memory of our celebrated poets, whose remains lie far and wide apart—some in the beautiful churches of London, others in the quiet seclusion of the country. The author of the “Pleasures of Hope,” whose mortal part we followed to the shallow grave which was opened near the front of Chaucer’s tomb, was the last true poet consigned to his “narrow cell” in this great graveyard of genius. Grand and solemn were the tones which the mighty organ poured out amid that listening silence—sounds which seemed more allied to heaven than earth; echoes that rolled on, then died away amid the shadowy crypts and pillared recesses, sounding as if the voices of the shrouded dead had found utterance, and were welcoming home another immortal spirit. Never was the funeral service more beautifully or feelingly read than on that occasion, by a brother poet. And that old Jerusalem Chamber in which we assembled, with its ancient tapestry, is itself a history. Here the great have, after death, lain in state; and the “props and pillars” of the nation have here assembled to make war or peace; and here also, stretched upon a pallet before the fire, Henry IV. died: the portrait of the ill-starred Richard II. hangs in this very chamber where Bolingbroke expired.
If one portion of the splendid Abbey more than another calls up the scriptural image of “a temple not made with hands,” it is Henry the Seventh’s Chapel. The opening of those beautiful gates which lead therein seems to reveal such a glimpse of heaven as we sometimes see in our sweetest dreams. The very roof appears buoyed up by the air, as if a thing so light and beautiful needed no more support than its own graceful interlacings, censers held up by invisible hands; a fretwork of innumerable wings, netted and open like those which the gaudy dragon-fly displays, seem as if they were frozen while fluttering over an endless succession of flowers. On each side hang the banners of the Knights of the Bath, drooping without motion over the monuments of the dead, above the head of the oncehaughty Queen Elizabeth, who sleeps beside her sister Mary in the northern aisle. The brass screen which encloses the tomb of Henry VII. is of exquisite workmanship, and speaks much for the advance of art in this department. In this chapel, the stern Protector, Cromwell, was interred; but his body was afterwards dragged out of its grave by the consent of Charles II., drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn, hanged upon the gallows until sunset, then taken down and beheaded, and afterwards thrown into a pit at the foot of Tyburn-tree, where, “after life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well,” awaiting the same blast of the last trumpet that will arouse his headless victim and heartless persecutor.
HORSE-GUARDS.HORSE-GUARDS.
Those who wish to witness the out-of-door pomp and pride of mighty London must enter by the Horse-Guards and visit the parks; for there all the array of rank and fashion and aristocratic beauty congregate, under the open eye of heaven: mounted on splendid horses, or seated in richly ornamented chariots, and arrayed in the most approved costumes, they confer a mutual pleasure upon all, by issuing forth to see and to be seen. Here, from the humble pedestrian—the nursery-maid, with her children, walking within the Enclosure—the man-about-town, fashionably dressed, and who may either be takenfor a member of the swell mob or a marquis,—the ranks ascend to celebrated statesmen, soldiers of renown, and lords and ladies, whose titles have figured for centuries in the pages of history, and who all appear to have no other object than that of inhaling the fresh air, and enjoying the beauty of the scenery. For in these places the leaves wave, and the flowers blow, and the waters run, as green, and sweetly, and freshly, as if the huge city, with its millions of murmuring voices, had been removed miles away. Yet, all is London; only a wider space in that great unbroken chain of streets and houses, whose squares are but the openings in the links that are locked together, in and out, and under and over, to the very ending.
St. James’s Park, in the reign of Henry VIII., appears to have been nothing more than a wide space of open fields, formerly occupied by an hospital; on the site of which bluff Hal erected a palace, and formed a park, which he enclosed with brick walls. To this park he added a chase, which he threw out like a wide open noose, from his palace at Westminster, and where the line fell it formed the circle which ran from St. Giles’s-in-the-Fields, up by Islington, round Highgate and Hornsey, Hampstead Heath, and back again to St. Giles and Westminster; and all subjects of every degree were forbidden either to hawk or hunt within these boundaries. Only three centuries have passed away since this proclamation was issued. Old Death himself, with dart in hand, hunted down Henry soon after he had taken possession of his new chase; and, after the leading hart of the herd had fallen, the whole chase was soon disafforested. Edward VI. possessed not his father’s organs of destructiveness; but, instead of forming parks, founded hospitals; one of which will cause the name of the Boy-King to be reverenced throughout all time. But few features of that old park now remain, although there are spots about it in which the spectator may stand in such a situation as to shut out every other object, excepting the grey old Abbey of Westminster, against which the trees seem to rest, half burying it, as they no doubt did three hundred years ago.
There are many “pretty bits” about St. James’s Park, as you look up towards where the pale marble arch formerly stood, on which the royal banner of England, that threw out its golden lions upon the breeze, used to float; when, seen through the opening green of the foliage, it seemed to carry back the imagination into the land of old romance and chivalry. Nor is the Palace itself less pleasing; for although in many points deficient of architectural beauty, it throws the old black-bricked, gloomy pile of St. James’s altogether into the shade. But the most beautiful walks lie beside the canal, or sheet of ornamental water, which is fairly alive with water-fowl, brought from almost everycorner of the globe. Around this part there are many fine trees, which throw their green shadows into the water, broken at times by a hundred tiny ripples, which have been raised by the paddles of some strange-looking duck, or thrown up by the silver-breasted swans. We have seen little morsels mirrored in these “cool translucent waves” of the richest colour and beauty—the drooping gold of the laburnum, and the pearly white of the hawthorn, dangled amid moving shadows of green; while deep down, the blue sky lay sleeping, like another heaven, motionless, and without a cloud. This is the favourite haunt of children and nursery-maids; and few fowls are better fed in summer-time than those which skim about the water in the Park, for the handfuls of bread and biscuit which are thrown in by the “little dears” for the little ducks, and often gobbled up by the larger ones, would almost feed a workhouse. It has been a celebrated spot for love-making ever since the days of Charles II., and is frequently mentioned in the works of the dramatists who wrote at that period. In this it has not degenerated up to the present day, for many a “Corydon and Phillis” may yet be seen breathing out gentle vows in the most secluded retreats, some of the maidens with countenances as beautiful as ever figured in that gallery of graceless Graces which formed the seraglio of the Merry Monarch. In this park King Charles often amused himself by playing with his dogs, or feeding the ducks; or sometimes he stole away to have a gossip with Nell Gwynn, the Duchess of Cleveland, or Lady Castlemain, all of whom resided in the neighbourhood. Here he also played at “pall-mall,” for so is that game called by garrulous old Pepys. Horace Walpole makes mention of the Mall, and also tells us that pretty ladies were sometimes mobbed in the Park.
The Green Park possesses but little to interest us, beyond a walk beside the gardens which run up in a line with James-street, although far behind it. But those who know the locality will not pass without pausing to gaze at one house, conspicuous by its large bow-windows, the upper one of which is encircled by a gilt palisade. This is the residence of Samuel Rogers the poet. Within that house every distinguished literary man of the last half-century has been a guest. Here Scott, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, and Campbell have many a time discoursed with the venerable poet. What a rich volume would that be, were it possible to write it, that contained all the good sayings which have been uttered beneath that roof! Here we first sat a guest, roaring with laughter at the wit of the late Sydney Smith; and here also we have listened with “bated breath” to the music murmured by the lips of Moore. Within those walls we first saw that true poetess and injured lady, Mrs. Norton; and from the host himself,in our early career as an author, received that encouragement and kindness, without which we might have “fallen on the way.” A description of this celebrated house, all it contains, and the guests it has received, would require the hand of another Walpole to illustrate. The name of Samuel Rogers would alone save the Green Park from oblivion, and give it a popularity which it would never, but for him, have possessed.
No stranger would ever think of entering Hyde Park without first casting a look at Apsley House, the abode of “the” Duke; if he did, the statue of Achilles, which seems stationed as if to point it out, would remind him where he was. This is the very maze and centre of fashion; here the pride and beauty of England may be seen upon their own stage; and on a fine day, in what is called the “season” in town, no other spot in the world can out-rival in rich display and chaste grandeur that which is here presented. It far excels St. James’s in pure rural scenery—there is less of art and more of nature in its appearance, and this is increased by the beauty of the Serpentine river. Then, be it remembered, we are in the vicinity of “Tyburn Tree,” the history of which has yet to be written. We have often pictured, while wandering here in the deepening twilight, the mouldering bodies of the stern Protector, Ireton, and Bradshaw, dangling upon that “triple-tree” in the sunset of a winter’s evening, after they had been dragged out of their graves in Westminster Abbey. This was indeed carrying revenge beyond the grave, and is one of the blackest blots that stain the memory of the Merry Monarch. Evelyn has a savage and unfeeling note in his “Diary” on the revolting exhibition. “On the 30th of January,” he says, “the carcases of those rebels—Cromwell, Bradshaw, the judge who condemned his Majesty, and Ireton (son-in-law to the Usurper)—were dragged out of their superb tombs in Westminster, among the kings, to Tyburn, and hanged on the gallows there from nine in the morning till six at night, and then buried under that fatal and ignominious monument in a deep pit, thousands who had seen them in all their pride being spectators.”
Cromwell had a narrow escape in Hyde Park while driving his own coach; the horses ran away, and the stern Protector was thrown off the box, and falling on the pole, while his feet were entangled in the harness, he was carried some distance. On this accident the old rhyming cavalier Cleveland wrote the following lines: