ESSAYS

ESSAYS

STREET LIFE

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

"——the sounding cataract

Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to him

An appetite;—"

and confessed that to him

"——the meanest flower that blows could give

Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears."

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

"Earth has not anything to show more fair,—

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty."

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

If it be true that "the proper study of mankind is man," then are the crowded streets of the city more improving and elevating to us (if rightly meditated upon) than the academic groves. If you desire society,—in a city you may find it to your taste, however fastidious you may be. If you are a lover of solitude, where can you be more solitary than in the very whirl of a multitude of people intent upon their own pursuits, and all unknown to you! That honey-tongued doctor, St. Bernard, said that he was never less alone than when alone—a sentiment which, in its reversed form, might be uttered by any denizen of a metropolis. I always loved solitude: the old monastic inscription was always a favourite motto of mine:—

"O beata solitudo!

O sola beatitudo!"

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

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

But I did not take up my pen to write about dead cities; I have somewhat to say about the life that now renders the streets of our own towns so pleasant, and makes us so forgetful of their inevitable fate. I am not going to claim for the street life of our new world the charms which abound in the ancient cities of Europe. We are too much troubled about many things, and too utilitarian to give thought to those lesser graces which delight us abroad, and which we hardly remember until we come home and miss them. Our street architecture, improved though it may have been within a few years, is yet far behind the grace and massive symmetry of European towns. Our builders and real estate owners need to be reminded that it costs no more to build in good taste than in bad; that brick work can be made as architectural as stone; and that architecture is a great public instructor, whose works are constantly open to the public eye, and from which we are learning lessons, good or bad, whether we will or not. I think it is Goethe who calls architecture frozen music. I am glad to see these tall piles rearing their ornamented fronts on every side of us, even though they are intended for purposes of trade; for every one of them is a reproach to the untasteful structures around it, and an example which future builders must copy, if they do not surpass. The quaint beauty which charms us in Rouen, and in the old towns of Belgium,—the high pitched gables leaning over, as if yearning to get across the narrow street,—these all belong to another age, and we may not possess them; but the architecture which, in its simplicity or its magnificence, speaks its adaptedness to our climate and our social wants, is within our reach, and is capable of making our cities equal to any in the world.

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

A little later in the morning, and the silence is broken by the clattering carts of the dispensers of that fluid without which custards would be impossible. The washing of doorsteps and sidewalks, too, begins to interfere with your perambulations, and to dim the lustre which No. 97, High Holborn, has imparted to your shoes. Bridget leans upon her wet broom, and talks with Anne, who leaves her water-pail for a little conference, in which the affairs of the two neighbouring families of Smith and Jenkins receive, you may be sure, due attention. Men smoking short and odorous pipes, and carrying small, mysterious-looking tin pails, begin to awaken the echoes with their brogans, and to prove him a slanderer who should say they have no music in their soles. Newspaper carriers, bearing the damp chronicles of the world's latest history bestrapped to their sides, hurry along, dispensing their favours into areas and doorways, seasoning my friend Thompson's breakfast with the reports of the councils of kings, or with the readable inventions of "our own correspondent," and delighting the gentle Mrs. Thompson with a full list of deaths and marriages, or another fatal railway accident. Then the omnibuses begin to rattle and jolt along the streets, carrying such masculine loads that they deserve for the time to be called mail coaches. Later, an odour as of broiled mackerel salutes the sense; school children, with their shining morning faces, begin to obstruct your way, and the penny postman, with his burden of joy and sorrow, hastens along and rings peremptorily at door after door. Then the streets assume by degrees a new character. Toil is engaged in its workshops and in by-places, and staid respectability, in its broadcloth and its glossy beaver, wends its deliberate way to its office or its counting-house, unhindered by aught that can disturb its equanimity, unless, perchance, it meets with a gang of street-sweepers in the full exercise of their dusty avocation.

Who can adequately describe that most inalienable of woman's rights—that favourite employment of the sex—which is generally termed shopping? Who can describe the curiosity which overhauls a wilderness of dress patterns, and the uncomplaining patience of the shopman who endeavours to suit the lady so hard to be suited,—his well-disguised disappointment when she does not purchase, and her husband's exasperation when she does? Not I, most certainly, for I detest shops, have little respect for fashions, lament the necessity of buying clothes, and wish most heartily that we could return to the primeval fig-leaves.

I love the by-streets of a city—the streets whose echoes are never disturbed by the heavy-laden wagons which bespeak the greatness of our manufacturing interests. Formerly the houses in such streets wore an air of sobriety and respectability, and the good housewifery which reigned within was symbolized by the bright polish of the brass door-plate, or bell-pull, or knocker. Now they are grown more pretentious, and the brass has given place to an outward and visible sign of silver. But the streets retain their old characteristics, and are strangers to any sound more inharmonious than the shouts of sportive children, or the tones of a hand-organ. I do not profess to be a musical critic, but I have been gifted by nature with a tolerable idea of time and tune; yet I am not ashamed to say that I do not despise hand-organs. They have given me "Sweet Home" in the cities of Italy, Yankee Doodle in the Faubourg St. Germain; and the best melodies of Europe's composers are daily ground out under my windows. I have no patience with these canting people who talk about productive labour, and who see in the organ-grinder who limps around, looking up expectantly for the remunerating copper, only a vagabond whom it is expedient for the police to counsel to "move on." These peripatetic dispensers of harmony are full as useful members of society as the majority of our legislators, and have a far more practical talent for organization. Douglas Jerrold once said that he never saw an Italian image merchant, with his Graces, and Venuses, and Apollos at sixpence a head, that he did not spiritually touch his hat to him: "It is he who has carried refinement into the poor man's house; it is he who has accustomed the eyes of the multitude to the harmonious forms of beauty." Let me apply these kindly expressions of the dead dramatist and wit to the organ-grinders. They have carried music into lanes and slums, which, without them, would never have known any thing more melodious than a watchman's rattle, and have made the poorest of our people familiar with harmonies that might "create a soul under the ribs of death." Occasionally their music may be instrumental in producing a feeling of impatience, so that I wish that their "Mary Ann" were married off, and that Norma would "hear," and make an end of it; but my better feelings triumph in the end, and I would not interfere with the poor man's and the children's concert to hear a strain from St. Cecilia's viol. Let the grinders be encouraged! May the evil days foretold in ancient prophecy never come among us, when the grinders shall cease because they are few!

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

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

HARD UP IN PARIS

Money, whatever those who affect misanthropy or a sublime superiority to all temporal things may say to the contrary, is a very desirable thing. We all enjoy the visit of the great Alexander to the contented inhabitant of the imperishable tub, who was alike independent of the good will and displeasure of that mighty monarch; we sympathize with all the bitter things that Timon says when he is reduced from wealth to beggary; and we are never tired of lamenting, with Virgil, that the human heart should be such an abject prey to this accursed hunger for gold. I am not sure that Horace would not be dearer to us, if he had lived in a "three-pair-back" in some obscure street, and his deathless odes had been inspired by fear of a shrewish landlady or an inexorable sheriff, instead of being an honoured guest at the imperial court, and a recipient of the splendid patronage of a Mæcenas and an Augustus. Poetical justice seems to require a setting of the most cheerless poverty for the full development of the lustre of genius. At least, we think so, at times;—though, under it all, admire as we may the successful struggles of the want-stricken bard,—we do not envy him his penury. We should shrink from his gifts and his fame, if they were offered to us with his sufferings. For underneath our abstract magnanimity lurks the conviction that money is by no means a bad thing, after all. Our enthusiasm is awakened by contemplating the self-forgetful career of Francis of Assisi, who chose Poverty for his bride, and whose name is in benediction among men, even six centuries after he entered into possession of that kingdom which was promised to the poor in spirit; and, if we should chance to see a more modern bearer of that Christian name, who worshipped the wealth which the ancient saint despised; who trampled down honest poverty in his unswerving march towards opulence; who looked unmoved upon the tears of the widow and the orphan; who exercised his sordid apostolate even to the last gasp of his miserable life; and whose name (unblessed by the poor, and unhonoured by canonization) became, in the brief period that it outlived him, a byword and a synonyme of avarice,—we should not fail to visit his memory with a cordial malediction. But, in spite of all our veneration for Francis, the apostle of holy poverty, and of loathing for his namesake, the apostle of unholy wealth, we cannot help wishing that we had a little more of that which the Saint cast away, and the miser took in exchange for his soul.

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

"He is most rich who stops at competence,—

Not labours on till the worn heart grows sere,—

Who, wealth attained, upon some loftier aim

Fixes his gaze, and never turns it backward."

"Give me neither poverty nor riches," has been my prayer through life, as it was that of the ancient sage; and it has always been my opinion that a man who owns even a single acre of land within a convenient distance of State Street or of the Astor House, is just as well off as if he were rich. My petition has been answered: but it must be confessed that when I mouse in the book shops, or turn over the rich portfolios of the print dealers, I feel that I am poor indeed. I do not envy him who can adorn the walls of his dwelling with the masterpieces of ancient or modern art on their original canvas; but I do crave those faithful reproductions which we owe to the engraver's skill, and which come so near my grasp as to aggravate my covetousness, and make me speak most disrespectfully of my unelastic purse.

Few people have spent any considerable time abroad without being for a season in straitened circumstances. A mistake may have been made in reckoning up one's cash, or a bill may be longer than was expected, or one's banker may temporarily suspend payment; and suddenly he who never knew a moment's anxiety about his pecuniary affairs finds himself wondering how he can pay for his lodgings, and where his next day's beefsteak is coming from. It was my good fortune once to undergo such a trial in Paris. I say good fortune—for, unpleasant as it was at the time, it was one of the most precious experiences of my life. I do not think that a true, manly character can be formed without placing the subject in the position of a ship's helm, when she is in danger of getting aback; to speak less technically, he must (once in his life, at least) be hard up.

I was younger in those days than I am now, and was living for a time in the gay capital of France. My lodgings were in one of those quiet streets that lead to the Place Ventadour, in which the Italian Opera House stands. My room was about twelve feet square, was handsomely furnished, and decorated with a large mirror, and a polished oaken floor that rivalled the mirror in brilliancy. Its window commanded an unobstructed view of a court-yard about the size of the room itself; but, as I was pretty high up (on the second floor coming down) my light was good, and I could not complain. As I write, it seems as if I could hear the old concierge blacking boots and shoes away down at the bottom of that well of a court-yard, enlivening his toil with an occasional snatch from some old song, and now and then calling out to his young wife within the house, with a clear voice, "Marie!"—the accent of the final syllable being prolonged in a preternatural manner. And then out of the same depths came a melodious response from Marie's blithesome voice, that made me stop shaving to enjoy it—a voice that seemed in perfect harmony with the cool breath and bright sky of that sunny spring morning. Marie was a representative woman of her class. I do not believe that she could have been placed in any honest position, however high, that she would not have adorned. Her simplicity and good nature conciliated the good will of every one who addressed her, and I have known her quiet, lady-like dignity to inspire even some loud and boastful Americans, who called on me, with a momentary sentiment of respect. They appeared almost like gentlemen for two or three minutes after speaking with her. Upon my honour, sir, it was worth considerably more than I paid for my room to have the privilege of living under the same roof with such a cheery sunbeam—to see her seated daily at the window of the conciergerie with a snow-white cap on her head and a pleasant smile on her face; to interrupt her sewing, with an inquiry whether any letters had come for me, and be charmed with her alacrity in handing me the expected note, and the key of numero dix-huit. Her nightly Bon soir, M'sieur, was like a benediction from a guardian angel; her vivacious Bon jour was an augury of an untroubled day; it would have made the darkest, foggiest November afternoon seem as bright, and fresh, and exhilarating as a morning in June. These are trifles, I know, but it is of trifles such as these that the true happiness of life is made up. Great joys, like great griefs, do not possess the soul so completely as we think, as Wellington victorious, or Napoleon defeated, at Waterloo, would have discovered, if, in that great hour, they had been visited with a twinge of neuralgia in the head, or a gnawing dyspepsia.

The influenza, or grippe, as the French call it, is not a pleasant thing under any circumstances; but I think of a four days' attack, during which Marie attended to my wants, as a period of unmixed pleasure. She seemed to hover about my sick bed, she moved so gently, and her voice (to use the words of my former cherished friend, S. T. Coleridge,) was like

"——a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night

Singeth a quiet tune."

"Was it that Monsieur would be able to drink a little tea, or would it please him to taste some cool lemonade?" Hélas! Monsieur was too malade for that; but the kind attentions of that estimable little woman were more refreshing than a Baltic Sea of the beverage that cheers but does not inebriate, or all the aid that the lemon groves of Italy could afford. Marie's politeness was the genuine article, and came right from her pure, kind heart. It was as far removed from that despicable obsequiousness which passes current with so many for politeness, as old-fashioned Christian charity is from modern philanthropy.

But—pardon my garrulity—I am forgetting my story. In a moment of kindly forgetfulness I lent a considerable portion of my available funds to a friend who was short, and who was obliged to return to America, via England. I was in weekly expectation of a draft from home that would place me once more upon my financial legs. One, two, three weeks passed away, and the letters from America were distributed every Tuesday morning, but there was none for me. It gave me a kind of faint sensation when the clerk at the banker's gave me the disappointing answer, and I went into the reading-room of the establishment to read the new American papers, and to speculate upon the cause of the unremitting neglect of my friends at home. I shall never forget my feelings when, in the third week of my impecuniosity, I found my exchequer reduced to the small sum of eight francs. I saw the truth of Shakespeare's words describing the "consumption of the purse" as an incurable disease. I had many acquaintances and a few friends in Paris, but I determined not to borrow if it could possibly be avoided. Five days would elapse before another American mail arrived, and I resolved that my remaining eight francs should carry me through to the eventful Tuesday, which I felt sure would bring the longed-for succor. I found a little dingy shop, in a narrow street behind the Church of St. Roch, where I could get a breakfast, consisting of a bowl of very good coffee and piece of bread (I asked for the end of the loaf) for six sous. My dinners I managed to bring down to the sum of twelve sous, by choosing obscure localities for the obtaining of that repast, and confining myself to those simple and nutritious viands which possessed the merit attributed to the veal pie by Samuel Weller, being "werry fillin' at the price." Sometimes I went to bed early, to avoid the inconveniences of a light dinner. One day I dined with a friend at his lodgings, but I did not enjoy his hospitality; I felt guilty, as if I had sacrificed friendship to save my dwindling purse. The coarsest bread and the most suspicious beef of the Latin Quarter would have been more delicious to me under such circumstances than the best ragout of the Boulevards or the Palais Royal.

Of course, this state of things weighed heavily upon my spirits. I heard Marie tell her husband that Monsieur l'Anglais was bien triste. I avoided the friends with whom I had been used to meet, and (remembering what a sublime thing it is to suffer and be strong) sternly resolved not to borrow till I found myself completely gravelled. It grieved me to be obliged to pass the old blind man who played the flageolet on the Pont des Arts without dropping a copper into his tin box; but the severest blow was the being compelled to put off my obliging washerwoman and her reasonable bill. The time passed away quickly, however. The Louvre, with its treasures of art, was a blessed asylum for me. It cost me nothing, and I was there free from the importunities of distress which I could not relieve. In the halls of the great public library—now the Bibliothèque Impériale—I found myself at home. Among the studious throng that occupied its vast reading rooms, I was as independent as if my name had been Rothschild, or the treasures of the Bank of France had been at my command. The master spirits with whom I there communed do not ask what their votaries carry in their pockets. There is no property-test for admission to the privileges of their companionship. I felt the equality which prevails in the republic of letters. I knew that my left hand neighbour was not, in that quiet place, superior to me on account of his glossy coat and golden-headed cane, and that I was no better than the reader at my right hand because he wore a blouse. I jingled my two or three remaining francs in my pocket, and thought how useless money was, when the lack of it was no bar to entrance into the hallowed presence of

"Those dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule

Our spirits from their urns."

I shall not soon forget the intense satisfaction with which I read in the regulations of the library a strict prohibition against offering any fees or gratuities whatever to its blue-coated officials.

At last the expected Tuesday morning came. My funds had received an unlooked-for diminution by receiving a letter from my friend whose wants had led me into difficulty. He was just embarking at Liverpool—hoped that my remittance had arrived in due season—promised to send me a draft as soon as he reached New York—envied my happiness at remaining in Paris—and left me to pay the postage on his valediction. It would be difficult for any disinterested person to conceive how dear the thoughtless writer of that letter was to me in that unfortunate hour. Then, too, I was obliged to lay out six of those cherished copper coins for a ride in an omnibus, as I was caught in a shower over in the vicinity of St. Sulpice, and could not afford to take the risk of a rheumatic attack by getting wet. I well remember the cool, business-like air with which that relentless conducteur pocketed those specimens of the French currency that were so precious in my sight. Yet, in spite of these serious and unexpected drains upon my finances, I had four sous left after paying for my breakfast on that memorable morning. I felt uncommonly cheerful at the prospect of being relieved from my troubles, and stopped several minutes after finishing my coffee, and conversed with the tidy shopwoman with a fluency that astonished both of us. I really regretted for the moment that I was so soon to be placed in funds, and should no longer enjoy her kindly services. I chuckled audibly to myself as I pursued my way to the banker's, to think what an immense joke it would be for some skilful Charley Bates or Artful Dodger to try to pick my pocket just then. An ancient heathen expecting an answer from the oracle of Delphos, a modern candidate for office awaiting the count of the vote, never felt more oppressed with the importance of the result than I did when I entered the banking-house. My delight at having a letter from America put into my hands could only be equalled by my dismay when I opened it, and found, instead of the draft, a request from a casual acquaintance who had heard that I might possibly return home through England, and who, if I did, would be under great obligations if I would take the trouble to procure and carry home for him an English magpie and a genuine King Charles spaniel!

I did not stop to read the papers that morning. As I was leaving the establishment, I met its chief partner, to whom I could not help expressing my disappointment. He was one of your hard-faced, high-cheek-boned Yankees, with a great deal of speculation in his eyes. I should as soon have thought of attempting the cultivation of figs and dates at Franconia as of trying to get a small loan from him. So I pushed on into those busy streets whose liveliness seemed to mock my pitiable condition. I had come to it at last. I had got to borrow. A physician, who now stands high among the faculty in Boston, was then residing in Paris, and, as I had been on familiar terms with him, I determined to have recourse to him. He occupied two rooms in the fifth story of a house in the Rue St. Honoré. His apartments were more remarkable for their snugness than for the extent of accommodation they afforded. A snuff-taking friend once offered to present the doctor with one of his silk handkerchiefs to carpet that parlour with. But the doctor's heart was not to be measured by the size of his rooms, and I knew that he would be a friend in need. The concierge told me that the doctor had not gone out, and, in obedience to the instructions of that functionary, I mounted the long staircase and frapped at the door of that estimable disciple of Galen. It was not my usual thrice-repeated stroke upon the door; it was a timid and uncertain knock—the knock of a borrower. The doctor said that he had been rather short himself for a week or two, but that he should undoubtedly find a letter in the General Post that morning that would place him in a condition to give me a lift. This was said in a manner that put me entirely at my ease, and made me feel that by accepting his loan I should be conferring an inestimable favour upon him. As we walked towards the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, I amused him with the story of the preceding week's adventures. He laughed heartily, and after a few minutes I joined with him, though I must say that the events, as they occurred, did not particularly impress me as subjects for very hilarious mirth. The doctor inquired at the poste restante in vain. His friends had been as remiss as mine, and we had both got to wait another week. The doctor was not an habitually profane man, but as we came through the court-yard of the post office, he expressed his anxiety as to what the devil we should do. He examined his purse, and found that his available assets amounted to a trifle more than nineteen francs. He looked as troubled as he had before looked gay. I generously offered him my four remaining coppers, and told him that I would stand by him as long as he had a centime in his pocket. Such an exhibition of magnanimity could not be made in vain. We stopped in front of the church of Our Lady of Victories, and took the heroic resolve to club our funds and go through the week of expectation together. And we did it. I wish that space would allow of my describing the achievements of that week. Medical books were cast aside for the study of domestic economy. I do not believe that a similar sum of money ever went so far before, even in Paris. We found a place in a narrow street, near the Odeon, where fried potatoes were sold very cheap; we bought our bread by the loaf, as it was cheaper—the loaves being so long that the doctor said that he understood, when he first saw them, why bread was called the staff of life. We resorted to all sorts of expedients to make a franc buy as much as possible of the necessaries of life. We frequented with great assiduity all places of public amusement where there was no fee for admission. The public galleries, the libraries, the puppet shows in the Champs Elysées, were often honoured with our presence. We made a joke of our necessities, and carried it through to the end. The next Tuesday morning found us, after breakfasting, on our way to the post office, with a franc left in our united treasury. I had begun to give up all hopes of our ever getting a letter from home, and insisted upon the doctor's trying his luck first. He was successful, but the severest part of the joke came when he found that his letter (contrary to all precedent) was not postpaid. The polite official at the window must have thirty-two sous for it, and we had but twenty. Our laughter showed him the whole state of the case, and we left him greatly amused at our promises to return soon, and get the desirable prize. My application at the banker's was successful, too, and before noon we were both prepared to laugh a siege to scorn. I paid the rosy-cheeked washerwoman, bought Marie a neat crucifix to hang up in the place of a very rude one in her conciergerie, out of sheer good humour; and that evening the doctor and I laughed over the recollections of the week and a good dinner in a quiet restaurant in the Palais Royal.

THE OLD CORNER

The human heart loves corners. The very word "corner" is suggestive of snugness and cosy comfort, and he who has no liking for them is something more or less than mortal. I have seen people whose ideas of comfort were singularly crude and imperfect; who thought that it consisted in keeping a habitation painfully clean, and in having every book or paper that might give token of the place being the dwelling of a human being, carefully out of sight. We have great cause for thankfulness that such people are not common, (for a little wholesome negligence is by no means an unpleasant thing,) so that we can say that mankind generally likes to snuggify itself, and is therefore fond of a corner. This natural fondness is manifested by the child with his playthings and infantile sports, in one of which, at least, the attractions of corners for the feline race are brought strongly before his inquisitive mind. And how is this liking strengthened and built up as the child increases in secular knowledge, and learns in the course of his poetical and historical researches all about the personal history of Master John Horner, whose sedentary habits and manducation of festive pastry are famous wherever the language of Shakespeare and Milton is spoken!

This love of nooks and corners is especially observable in those who are obliged to live in style and splendour. Many a noble English family has been glad to escape from the bondage of its rank, and has found more real comfort in the confinement of a Parisian entresol than amid the gloomy grandeur of its London home. Those who are condemned to dwell in palaces bear witness to this natural love of snugness, by choosing some quiet sunny corner in their marble halls, and making it as comfortable as if it were a cosy cottage. Napoleon and Eugenie delight to escape from the magnificence of the Tuileries to that quiet and homelike refuge for people who are burdened with imperial dignity, amid the thick foliage and green alleys of St. Cloud. Even in that mighty maze, the Vatican, the rooms inhabited by the Sovereign Pontiff are remarkably comfortable and unpalatial, and prove the advantages of smallness and simplicity over gilding and grandeur, for the ordinary purposes of life. An American gentleman once called on the great and good Cardinal Cheverus, and while talking with him of his old friends in America, said that the contrast between the Cardinal's position in the episcopal palace of Bordeaux and in his former humble residence when he was Bishop of Boston, was a very striking one. The humble and pious prelate smiled, and taking his visitor by the arm, led him from the stately hall in which they were conversing, into a narrow room furnished in a style of austere simplicity: "The palace," said he, "which you have seen and admired is the residence of the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux; but this little chamber is where John Cheverus lives."

Literary men and statesmen have always coveted the repose of a corner where they might be undisturbed by the wranglings of the world. Twickenham, and Lausanne, and Ferney, and Rydal Mount have become as shrines to which the lover of books would fain make pilgrimages. Have we not a Sunnyside and an Idlewild even in this new land of ours! Cicero, in spite of his high opinion of Marcus Tullius, and his thirst for popular applause, often grew tired of urban life, and was glad to forsake the Senatus populusque Romanus for the quiet of his snug villa in a corner of the hill country overlooking Frascati. And did not our own Tully love to fling aside the burden of his power, and find his Tusculum on the old South Shore? In the Senate Chamber or the Department of State you might see the Defender of the Constitution, but it was at Marshfield that Webster really lived. Horace loved good company and the entertainment of his wealthy patrons and friends, but he loved snugness and quiet even more. In one of his odes he apostrophizes his friend Septimius, and describes to him the delight he takes in the repose of his Tiburtine retreat from the bustle of the metropolis, saying that of all places in the world that corner is the most smiling and grateful to him:—

Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes

Angulus ridet.

If we look into our hearts, I think we shall most of us find that we have a clinging attachment to some favourite corner, as well as Mr. Horatius Flaccus. There is at least one corner in the city of Boston, which has many pleasant associations for the lover of literature. Allusion was made a few days since, in an evening paper, to the well-known fact that the old building at the corner of Washington and School Streets was built in 1713, and is therefore older by seventeen years than the Old South Church. That little paragraph reminded me of some passages in the history of that ancient edifice related to me by an ancestor of mine, for whom the place had an almost romantic charm.

The old building (my grandfather used to tell me) was originally a dwelling-house. It had the high wainscots, the broad staircases, the carved cornices, and all the other blessed old peculiarities of the age in which it was built, which we irreverently have improved away. One hundred years ago the old corner was considered rather an aristocratic place of residence. It was slightly suburban in its position, for the town of Boston had an affection for Copp's Hill, and the inhabitants clustered about that sacred eminence as if the southern parts of their territory were a quicksand. Trees were not uncommon in the vicinity of the foot of School Street in those days, and no innovating Hathorne had disturbed the quiet of the place with countless omnibuses. The old corner was then occupied by an English gentleman named Barmesyde, who gave good dinners, and was on intimate terms with the colonial governor. My venerated relative, to whom I have already alluded, enjoyed his friendship, and in his latter days delighted to talk of him, and tell his story to those who had heard it so often, that Hugh Greville Barmesyde, Esquire, seemed like a companion of their own young days.

Old Barmesyde sprang from an ancient Somersetshire family, from which he inherited a considerable property, and a remarkable energy of character. He increased his wealth during a residence of many years in Antigua, at the close of which he relinquished his business, and returned to England to marry a beautiful English lady to whom he had engaged himself in the West Indies. He arrived in England the day after the funeral of his betrothed, who had fallen a victim to intermittent fever. Many of his relations had died in his absence, and he found himself like a stranger in the very place where he had hoped to taste again the joys of home. The death of the lady he loved so dearly, and the changes in his circle of friends, were so depressing to him, that he resolved to return to the West Indies. He thought it would be easier for him to continue in the associations he had formed there than to recover from the shock his visit to England had given him. So he took passage in a brig from Bristol to Antigua, and said farewell forever, as he supposed, to his native land. Before half the voyage was accomplished, the vessel was disabled: as Mr. Choate would express it, a north-west gale inflicted upon her a serious, an immedicable injury; and she floated a wreck upon the foamy and uneven surface of the Atlantic. She was fallen in with by another British vessel, bound for Boston, which took off her company, and with the renewal of the storm she foundered before the eyes of those who had so lately risked their lives upon her seaworthiness. When Mr. Barmesyde arrived in Boston, he found an old friend in the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Governor Pownall had but lately received his appointment from the Crown, and being a comparative stranger in Boston, he was as glad to see Mr. Barmesyde as the latter was to see him. It was several months before an opportunity to reach the West Indies offered itself, and when one did occur, Mr. Barmesyde only used it to communicate with his agent at Antigua. He had given up all ideas of returning thither, and had settled down, with his negro servant Cato, to housekeeping at the corner of School Street, within a few doors of his gubernatorial friend.

Governor Pownall's term of office was not a long one, but even when he was removed, Mr. Barmesyde stuck faithfully to the old corner. He had found many warm friends here, and could no longer consider himself alone in the world. He was a man of good natural powers, and of thorough education. He was one of those who seem never to lose any thing that they have once acquired. In person he was tall and comely, and my grandfather said that he somewhat resembled General Washington as he appeared twenty-five years later, excepting that Mr. Barmesyde's countenance was more jolly and port-winy. From all I can learn, his face, surmounted by that carefully-powdered head of hair, must have resembled a red brick house after a heavy fall of snow. If Hugh Barmesyde had a fault, I am afraid it was a fondness for good living. He attended to his marketing in person, assisted by his faithful Cato, who was as good a judge in such matters as his master, and who used to vindicate the excellence of his master's fare by eating until he was black in the face. For years there were few vessels arrived from England without bringing choice wines to moisten the alimentary canal of Mr. Barmesyde. The Windward Isles contributed bountifully to keep alight the festive flame that blazed in his cheery countenance, and to make his flip and punch the very best that the province could produce. Every Sunday morning Mr. Barmesyde's best buckles sparkled in the sunbeams as he walked up School Street to the King's Chapel. Not that he was an eminently religious man, but he regarded religion as an institution that deserved encouragement for the sake of maintaining a proper balance in society. The quiet order and dignity of public worship pleased him, the liturgy gratified his taste, and so Sunday after Sunday his big manly voice headed the responses, and told that its possessor had done many things that he ought not to have done, and had left undone a great many that he ought to have done.

Mr. Barmesyde was not a mere feeder on good things, however; he had a cultivated taste for literature, and his invoices of wine were frequently accompanied by parcels of new books. The old gentleman took a great delight in the English literature of that day. Fielding and Smollett were writing then, and no one took a keener pleasure in their novels than he. He imported, as he used to boast, the first copy of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary that ever came to America, and was never tired of reading that stately and pathetic preface, or of searching for the touches of satire and individual prejudice that abound in that entertaining work. His well-worn copy of the Spectator, in eight duodecimo volumes, presented by him to my grandfather, now graces one of my book shelves. His books were always at the service of his friends, who availed themselves of the old gentleman's kindness to such an extent that his collection might have been called a circulating library. But it was not merely for the frequent "feast of reason and flow of soul" that his friends were indebted to him. He was the very incarnation of hospitality. I am afraid that my excellent grandparent had an uncommon admiration for this trait in the old fellow's character, for a frequent burning twinge in one of the toes of my right foot, and occasionally in the knuckles of my left hand, reminds me of his fondness for keeping his legs under Mr. Barmesyde's festive mahogany. A few years ago, when a new floor was laid in the cellar at the old corner, a large number of empty bottles was discovered, whose appearance bore witness to the previous good character of the place as a cellar. Some labels were also found bearing dates like 1697, 1708, 1721, &c. To this day the occupants of the premises take pleasure in showing the dark wine stains on the old stairs leading to the cellar.

But Mr. Barmesyde's happiness, like the gioia de profani, which we have all heard the chorus in the last scene of Lucrezia Borgia discordantly allude to, was but transient. The dispute which had been brewing for years between the colonies and the mother country, began to grow unpleasantly warm. Mr. B. was a stanch loyalist. He allowed that injustice had been done to the colonies, but still he could not throw off his allegiance to his most religious and gracious king, George III., Defender of the Faith. He was ready to do and to suffer as much for his principles as the most ardent of the revolutionists. And he was not alone in his loyalty. There were many old-fashioned conservative people in this revolutionary and ismatic city in those days as well as now. The publication in this city of a translation of De Maistre's great defence of the monarchical principle of government, (the Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions,) and of the late Mr. Oliver's "Puritan Commonwealth," proves that the surrender of Cornwallis and the formation of the Federal Constitution did not destroy the confidence of a good many persons in the truth of the principles on which the loyalists took their stand. The unfortunate occurrence in State Street, March 5, 1770, gave Mr. B. great pain. He regretted the bloodshed, but he regretted more deeply to see many persons so blinded by their hatred of the king's most excellent majesty, as to defend and praise the action of a lawless mob just punished for their riotous conduct. The throwing overboard of the tea excited his indignation. He stigmatized it (and not without some reason on his side) as a wanton and cowardly act,—a destruction of the property of parties against whom the town of Boston had no cause of complaint,—a deed which proved how little real regard for justice and honour there might be among those who were the loudest in their shrieks for freedom. Of course he could not give utterance to these sentiments without exciting the ire of many people; and feeling that he could no longer safely remain in this country, he concluded to return to England. In the spring of 1774, Hugh Greville Barmesyde gave his last dinner to a few of the faithful at the old corner, and sailed the next day with a sorrowing heart and his trusty Cato for the land of his birth. He spent the remainder of his days in London, where he died in 1795. He was interred in the vault belonging to his family, in the north transept of the Parish Church of Shepton Mallet, in Somersetshire, where there is still a handsome tablet commemorating his many virtues and the inconsolable grief of the nephews and nieces whom his decease enriched.

Some of the less orderly "liberty boys" bore witness to the imperfect sympathy that existed between them and the late occupant of the old corner, by breaking sundry panes of glass in the parlour windows the night after his departure. The old house, during the revolutionary struggle, followed the common prosaic course of ordinary occupancy. There was "marrying and giving in marriage" under that steep and ancient roof in those days, and troops of clamorous children used to play upon the broad stone steps, and tarnish the brasses that Cato was wont to keep so clean and bright. In the latter part of the last century the old house underwent a painful transformation. An enterprising apothecary perverted it to the uses of trade, and decorated its new windows with the legitimate jars of various coloured fluids. It is now nearly half a century since it became a bookstore. Far be it from me to offer any disturbance to the modesty of my excellent friends, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, by enlarging upon the old corner in its present estate. It were useless to write about any thing so familiar. They are young men yet, and must pardon me if I have used the prerogative of age and spoken too freely about their old establishment and its reminiscences. I love the old corner, and should not hesitate to apply to it the words of Horace which I have quoted above. I love its freedom from pretence and ostentation. New books seem more grateful to me there than elsewhere; for the dinginess of Paternoster Row harmonizes better with literature than the plate glass and gairish glitter of Piccadilly or Regent Street.

The large looking-glass which stands near the Washington Street entrance to the old corner used to adorn the dining-room where Mr. Barmesyde gave so many feasts. It is the only relic of that worthy gentleman now remaining under that roof. If that glass could only publish its reflexions during the past century, what an entertaining work on the curiosities of literature and of life it might make! It is no ordinary place that may boast of having been the familiar resort of people like Judge Story, Mr. Otis, Channing, Kirkland, Webster, Choate, Everett, Charles Kemble and the elder Vandenhoff with their gifted daughters, Ellen Tree, the Woods, Finn, Dickens, Thackeray, James, Bancroft, Prescott, Emerson, Brownson, Dana, Halleck, Bryant, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Willis, Bayard Taylor, Whipple, Parkman, Hilliard, Sumner, Parsons, Sprague, and so many others whose names will live in literature and history. It is a very pleasant thing to see literary men at their ease, as they always are around those old counters. It is a relief to find that they can throw off at times the dignity and restraint of authorship. It is pleasant to see the lecturer and the divine put away their tiresome earnestness and severe morality, and come down to the jest of the day. It refreshes one to know that Mr. Emerson is not always orphic, and that the severely scholastic Everett can forget his elegant and harmonious sentences, and descend to common prose. For we can no more bear to think of an orator living unceasingly in oratory than we could of Signorina Zanfretta being obliged to remain constantly poised on the corde tendue.

The bust of Sir Walter Scott has filled the space above the mirror I have spoken of, for many years. It is a fine work of Chantrey's, and a good likeness of that head of Sir Walter's, so many stories high that one can never wonder where all his novels came from. Except this specimen of the plastic art, and one of Professor Agassiz, there is little that is ornamental in the ancient haunt. The green curtain that decorates the western corner of the establishment is a comparatively modern institution. It was found necessary to fence off that portion of the shop for strict business purposes. The profane converse of the world cannot penetrate those folds. Into that sanctissimum sanctissimorum no joke, however good, may enter. What a strange dispensation of Providence is it, that a man should have been for years enjoying the good society that abounds at that corner, and yet should seem to have so little liking for a quiet jest as the estimable person who conceals his seriousness behind that green curtain!

But every thing must yield to the law of nature, and the old corner must share the common lot. Some inauspicious night, the fire-alarm will sound for District III.; hoarse voices will echo at the foot of School Street, calling earnestly on No. 3 to "hold on," and No. 9 to "play away"; where erst good liquor was wont to abound water will more abound, and when the day dawns Mr. Barmesyde's old house will be an unsightly ruin,—there will be mourning and desolation among the lovers of literature, and wailing in the insurance offices in State Street. When the blackened ruins are cleared away, boys will pick up scraps of scorched manuscripts, and sell them piecemeal as parts of the original copy of Hiawatha, or Evangeline, or the Scarlet Letter. In the fulness of time, a tall, handsome stone or iron building will rise on that revered site, and we lovers of the past shall try to invest it with something of the unpretending dignity and genial associations of the present venerable pile, which will then be cherished among our most precious memories.

SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY

We are all associationists. There is no man who does not believe in association in some degree. For myself, I am firm in the faith. Let me not be misunderstood, however; I do not mean that principle of association which the late Mr. Fourier advocated in France, and Mr. Brisbane in America. I do not believe in the utopian schemes which have been ground out of the brains of philosophers who mistake vagueness and impracticability for sublimity, and which they have misnamed association. The principle of association to which I pay homage is one which finds a home in every human heart. It is that principle of our nature which, when the bereaved Queen Constance was mourning for her absent child, "stuffed out his vacant garments with his form." It is that principle which makes a man love the scenes of his boyhood, and which brings tears to the eyes of the traveller in a foreign land, when he hears a familiar strain from a hand organ, however harsh and out of tune. Even the brute creation seems to share in it; the cat is sure to be found in her favourite place at the fireside, while the tea kettle makes music on the hob; the dog, too, (let Hercules himself do what he may,) will not only have his day, but will have his chosen corner for repose, and will stick to it, however tempting you may make other places by a superabundance of door mats and other canine furniture. And the tired cart horse, when his day's labour is over, and he finds himself once more in the familiar stall, with his provender before him—do you not suppose that the associations of equine comfort by which he is surrounded are dearer to him than any hopes of the luxury and splendour of Her Britannic Majesty's stables at Windsor could be? Ask him if he would leave his present peck of oats for the chances of royal service, and a red-waistcoated, white-top-booted groom to wait upon him, and I will warrant you that he will answer nay!

There is no nation nor people that is free from this bondage of association. We treasure General Jackson's garments with respectful care in a glass case in the Patent Office at Washington; in the Louvre, you shall find preserved the crown of Charlemagne and the old gray coat of the first Napoleon; and at Westminster Abbey, (if you have the money to pay your admission fee,) you may see the plain old oaken chair in which the crowned monarchs of a thousand years have sat. Go to Rome, and stand "at the base of Pompey's statua," and association shall carry you back in imagination to the time when the mighty Julius fell. Stand upon the grassy mounds of Tusculum, and you will find yourself glowing with enthusiasm for Cicero, and wonder how you could have grown so sleepy over Quousque tandem, &c., in your schoolboy days. Climb up the Trasteverine steep to where the convent of San Onofrio suns itself in the bright blue air of Rome, and while the monks are singing the divine office where the bones of Tasso repose, you may fill your mind with memories of the bard of the crusades, in the chamber where his weary soul found the release it craved. Go to that fair capital which seems to have hidden itself among the fertile hills of Tuscany; walk through its pleasant old streets, and you shall find yourself the slave of many pleasing associations. The very place where Dante was wont to stand and gaze at that wondrous dome which Michel Angelo said he was unwilling to copy and unable to excel, is marked by an inscription in the pavement. Every street has its associations that appeal to your love of the beautiful or the heroic. Walk out into the lively streets of that city which stands at the head of the world's civilization, and you are overwhelmed with historic associations. You seem to hear the clatter of armed heels in some of those queer old alleys, and the vision of Godfrey or St. Louis, armed for the holy war, would not astonish you. The dim and stately halls of the palaces are eloquent of power, and you almost expect to see the thin, pale, thoughtful face of the great Richelieu at every corner. Over whole districts, rebellion, and anarchy, and infidelity, once wrote the history of their sway in blood, and even now, the names of the streets, as you read them, seem to fill you with terrible mementoes.

But to us, Americans, connected as we are with England in our civilization and our literature, how full of thrilling associations is London! From Whitehall, where Puritanism damned itself by the murder of a king, to Eastcheap, where Mistress Quickly served Sir John with his sherris-sack; from St. Saviour's Church, where Massinger and Fletcher lie in one grave, to Milton's tomb in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, there is hardly a street, or court, or lane, or alley, which does not appeal by some association to the student of English history or literature. He perambulates the Temple Gardens with Chaucer; he hears the partisans of the houses of York and Lancaster, as they profane the silence of that scholastic spot; he walks Fleet Street, and disputes in Bolt Court with Dr. Johnson; he smokes in the coffee-houses of Covent Garden with Dryden and Pope, and the wits of their day; he makes morning calls in Leicester Square and its neighbourhood, on Sir Philip Sidney, Hogarth, Reynolds, and Newton; he buys gloves and stockings at Defoe's shop in Cornhill; and makes excursions with Dicky Steele out to Kensington, to see Mr. Addison. Drury Lane, despite its gin, and vice, and squalour, has its associations. The old theatre is filled with them. They show you, in the smoky green-room, the chairs which once were occupied by Siddons and Kemble; the seat of Byron by the fireside in the days of his trusteeship; the mirrors in which so many dramatic worthies viewed themselves, before they were called to achieve their greatest triumphs.

Every where you find men acknowledging in their actions their allegiance to this great natural law. Our own city, too, has its associations. Who can pass by that venerable building in Union Street, which, like a deaf and dumb beggar, wears a tablet of its age upon its unsightly front, without recalling some of the events that have taken place, some of the scenes which that venerable edifice has looked down upon, since its solid timbers were jointed in the year of salvation 1685? Who can enter Faneuil Hall without a quickening of his pulse? Who can walk by the old Hancock House, and not look up at it as if he expected to see old John (the best writer on the subject of American independence) standing at the door in his shad-bellied coat, knee-breeches, and powdered wig? Who can look at the Old South Church without thinking of the part it played in the revolution, and of the time when it was obliged to yield its unwilling horsepitality to the British cavalry? Boston is by no means deficient in associations. Go to Brattle Street, to Copp's Hill, to Mount Washington, to Deer Island,—though it must be acknowledged, the only association connected with the last-named place is the Provident Association.

If there be a fault in the Yankee character, I fear it is a lack of sufficient respect for the memory of the past. Nature will have her way with us, however we may try to resist her and trample old recollections under foot. We worship prosperity too much; and the wide, straight streets of western cities, with the telegraph posts standing like sentinels on the edge of the sidewalks, and a general odour of pork-packing and new houses pervading the atmosphere, seem to our acquisitive sense more beautiful than the sculptured arch, the moss-grown tower, the quaint gable, and all the summer fragrance of the gardens of the Tuileries or the Unterdenlinden. I am afraid that we almost deserve to be classed with those who (as Mr. Thackeray says) "have no reverence except for prosperity, and no eye for any thing but success."

Many are kindled into enthusiasm by meditating upon the future of this our country,—"the newest born of nations, the latest hope of mankind,"—but for myself I love better to dwell on the sure and unalterable past, than to speculate upon the glories of the coming years. While I was young, I liked, when at sea, to stand on the top-gallant forecastle, and see the proud ship cut her way through the waves that playfully covered me with spray; but of late years my pleasure has been to lean over the taffrail and muse upon the subsiding foam of the vessel's wake. The recollection even of storms and dangers is to me more grateful than the most joyful anticipation of a fair wind and the expected port. With these feelings, I cannot help being moved when I see so many who try to deaden their natural sensibility to old associations. When the old Province House passed into the hands of the estimable Mr. Ordway, I congratulated him on his success, but I mourned over the dark fate of that ancient mansion. I respected it even in its fallen state as an inn,—for it retained much of its old dignity, and the ghosts of Andros and his predecessors seemed to brush by you in its high wainscoted passages and on its broad staircases; but it did seem the very ecstasy of sacrilege to transform it into a concert-room. I rejoiced, however, a few years since, when the birthplace of B. Franklin, in Milk Street, was distinguished by an inscription to that effect in letters of enduring stone. That was a concession to the historic associations of that locality which the most sanguine could hardly have expected from the satinetters of Milk Street.

But I am forgetting my subject, and using up my time and ink in the prolegomena. My philosophy of association received a severe blow last week. It was a pleasant day, and I hobbled out on my gouty timbers for a walk. I wandered into Franklin Place, but it was not the Franklin Place of my youth. The rude hand of public improvement had not been kept even from that row of houses which, when I was a boy, was thought an ornament to our city, and was dignified with the name of the Tontine Buildings. Franklin Place looked as if two or three of its front teeth had been knocked out. I walked on, and my sorrow and dismay were increased to find that the last vestige of Theatre Alley had disappeared. It was bad enough when the old theatre and the residence of the Catholic bishops of Boston were swept away: I still clung to the old alley, and hoped that it would not pass away in my time—that before the old locality should be improved into what the profane vulgar call sightliness and respectability, I should (to use the common expressions of one of our greatest orators, who, in almost every speech and oration that he has made for some years past, has given a sort of obituary notice of himself before closing) have been "resting in peace beneath the green sods of Mount Auburn," or should have "gone down to the silent tomb."

Do not laugh, beloved reader, at the tenderness of my affection for that old place. There is a great deal of romance of a quiet and genial kind about Theatre Alley. As I first remember it, commerce had not encroached upon its precincts; no tall warehouses shut out the light from its narrow footway, and its planks were unencumbered by any intrusive bales or boxes. Old Dearborn's scale factory was the only thing to remind one of traffic in that neighbourhood, which struck a balance with fate by becoming more scaley than before, when Dearborn and his factory passed away. The stage door of the theatre was in the alley, and the walk from thence, through Devonshire Street, to the Exchange Coffee House, which was the great hotel of Boston at that time, was once well known to many whose names are now part of the history of the drama. How often was I repaid for walking through the alley by the satisfaction of meeting George Frederick Cooke, the elder Kean, Finn, Macready, Booth, Cooper, Incledon, old Mathews, or the tall, dignified Conway—or some of that goodly company that made Old Drury classical to the play-goers of forty years ago.

The two posts which used to adorn and obstruct the entrance to the alley from Franklin Street, when they were first placed there, were an occasion of indignation to a portion of the public, and of anxiety and vexation to Mr. Powell, the old manager. That estimable gentleman had often been a witness to the terror of the children and of those of the weaker sex (I hope that I shall be forgiven by the "Rev. Antoinette Brown" for using such an adjective) who sometimes met a stray horse or cow in the alley; so he placed two wooden posts just beyond the theatre, to shut out the dreaded bovine intruders. But the devout Hibernians who used to worship at the church in Franklin Street could not brook the placing of any such obstacles in their way to the performance of their religious duties; and they used to cut the posts down as often as Mr. Powell set them up, until he took refuge in the resources of science, and covered and bound them with the iron bands which imprisoned them up to a very recent period.

Old Mr. Stoughton, the Spanish consul, used to occupy the first house in Franklin Street above the alley, behind which his garden ran back for some distance. How little that worthy gentleman thought that his tulip beds and rose bushes would one day give place to a dry goods shop! Señor Stoughton was one of the urbanest men that ever touched a hat. If he met you in the morning, the memory of his bland and gracious salutation never departed from you during the day, and seemed to render your sleep sweeter at night. He always treated you as if you were a prince in disguise, and he were the only person in the secret of your incognito. He enjoyed the intimate friendship of that great and good man, Dr. Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, who was afterwards transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Bordeaux, and decorated with the dignity of a Prince of the Church. He, too, often walked through the old alley. The children always welcomed his approach. They respected Don Stoughton; Bishop Cheverus they loved. His very look was a benediction, and the mere glance of his eye was a Sursum corda. That calm, wise, benignant face always had a smile for the little ones who loved the neighbourhood of that humble Cathedral, and the pockets of that benevolent prelate never knew a dearth of sugar plums. Years after that happy time, a worthy Protestant minister of this vicinity—who was blessed with few or none of those prejudices against "Romanism" which are nowadays considered a necessary part of a minister's education—visited Cardinal Cheverus in his palace at Bordeaux, and found him keenly alive to every thing that concerned his old associations and friends in Boston. He declared, with tears in his eyes, and with that air of sincerity that marked every word he spoke, that he would gladly lay down the burden of the honour and power that then weighed upon him, to return to the care of his little New England flock. Now, Cardinal Cheverus was a man of taste and of kind feelings, and I will warrant you that when he thought of Boston, Theatre Alley was included among his associations, and enjoyed a share in his affectionate regrets.

Mrs. Grace Dunlap's little shop was an institution which many considered to be coexistent with the alley itself. It was just one of those places that seem in perfect harmony with Theatre Alley as it was twenty-five years ago. It was one of those shops that always seem to shun the madding crowd's ignoble strife, and seek a refuge in some cool sequestered way. The snuff and tobacco which Mrs. Dunlap used to dispense were of the best quality, and she numbered many distinguished persons among her customers. The author of the History of Ferdinand and Isabella was often seen there replenishing his box, and exchanging kind courtesies with the fair-spoken dealer in that fragrant article which is productive of so many bad voices and so much real politeness in European society. Mrs. Dunlap herself was a study for an artist. Her pleasant face, her fair complexion, her quiet manner, her white cap, with its gay ribbons, rivalling her eyes in brightness, were all in perfect keeping with the scrupulous neatness and air of repose that always reigned in her shop. Her parlour was as comfortable a place as you would wish to see on a summer or a winter day. It had a cheerful English look that I always loved. The plants in the windows, the bird cage, the white curtains, the plain furniture, that looked as if you might use it without spoiling it, the shining andirons, and the blazing wood fire, are all treasured in my memory of Theatre Alley as it used to be. Mrs. Dunlap's customers and friends (and who could help being her friend?) were always welcome in her parlour, and there were few who did not enjoy her simple hospitality more than that pretentious kind which sought to lure them with the pomp and vanity of mirrors and gilding. Her punch was a work of art. But I will refrain from pursuing this subject further. It is no pleasure to me to harrow up the feelings of my readers by dwelling upon the joys of their præteritos annos.

When Mrs. Dunlap moved out of the alley, its glory began to decline. From that day its prestige seemed to have gone. Even before that time an attempt had been made to rob it of its honoured name. Signs were put up at each end of it bearing the inscription, "Odeon Avenue"; but the attempt was vain, whether it proceeded from motives of godliness or of respectability; nobody ever called it any thing but Theatre Alley. At about that time nearly all the buildings left in it were devoted to the philanthropic object of the quenching of human thirst. We read that St. Paul took courage when he saw three taverns. Who can estimate the height of daring to which the Apostle of the Gentiles might have risen had it been vouchsafed to him to walk through Theatre Alley. One of the most frequented resorts there rejoiced in the name of "The Rainbow"—an auspicious title, certainly, and one which would attract those who were averse to the cold water principle. Some of the places were below the level of the alley, and verified, in a striking manner, the truth of Virgil's words, Facilis descensus taverni. Among certain low persons, not appreciative of its poetic associations, the alley at that time was nicknamed "Rum Row"; and he was considered a hero who could make all the ports in the passage through, and carry his topsails when he reached Franklin Street. Various efforts were made at that period to bring the alley into disrepute. Among others, a sign was put up announcing that it was dangerous passing through there; I fear that Father Mathew would have thought a declaration that it was dangerous stopping, to have been nearer the truth. But the daily deputations from the Old Colony and Worcester Railways could not be kept back by any signs, and the alley echoed to their multitudinous tramp every morning. Mr. Choate, too, was faithful to the alley through good and evil report, and while there was a plank left, it was daily pressed by his India rubbers. To such a lover of nature as he, what shall take the place of a morning walk through Theatre Alley!

But venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus, and the old alley has been swept away. During the past century how many thousands have passed through it! how many anxious minds, engrossed with schemes of commercial enterprises, how many hearts weary with defeat, how many kind, and generous, and great, and good men, who have passed away from earthly existence, like the alley through which they walked! But while I mourn over the loss, I would not restore it if I could. When so many of its old associations had been blotted out; when low dram-drinking dens had taken the place of the ancient, quiet dispensatories of good cheer; when grim and gloomy warehouses, with their unsocial, distrustful iron shutters, had made the warm sunlight a stranger to it,—it was time for it to go. It was better that it should cease to exist, than continue in its humiliation, a reproach to the neighbourhood, and a libel upon its ancient and honourable fame.

THE OLD CATHEDRAL

In many people who have been abroad, the mere mention of the old city of Rouen is enough to kindle an enthusiasm. If you would know why this is,—why those who are familiar with the cathedrals of Cologne, Milan, Florence, and the basilicas of Rome, have yet so deep a feeling about the old capital of Normandy,—the true answer is, that Rouen, with its Gothic glories and the thrilling history of the middle ages written on its every stone, was the first ancient city that they saw, and made the deepest impression on their minds. They had left the stiff and unsympathetic respectability of Boston, the tiresome cleanliness of Philadelphia, or the ineffable filth of New York behind them; or perchance they had been emancipated from some dreary western town, whose wide, straight, unpaved streets seemed to have no beginning and to end nowhere; whose atmosphere was pervaded with an odour of fresh paint and new shingles, and whose inhabitants would regard fifty years as a highly respectable antiquity,—and had come steaming across the unquiet Atlantic to Havre, eager to see an old city. A short railway ride carried them to one in which they could not turn a corner without seeing something to remind them of what they had seen in pictures or read in books about the middle ages. The richly-carved window frames, the grotesque faces, the fanciful devices, the profusion of ornament, the shrines and statues of the saints at the corners of the streets, and all the other picturesque peculiarities of that queer old city, filled them with wonder and delight. Those fantastic gables that seemed to be leaning over to look at them, inspired them with a respect which all the architectural wonders and artistic trophies of the continent are powerless to disturb.

It was not my fortune thus to make acquaintance with Rouen. I had several times tasted the pleasure of a continental sojourn. The streets of several of the great European capitals were as familiar to me as those of my native city. Yet Rouen captivated me with a charm peculiarly its own. I shall not easily forget the delicious summer day in which I left Paris for a short visit to Rouen. That four hours' ride over the Western Railway of France was full of solid enjoyment for every sense. The high cultivation of that fertile and unfenced country—the farmers at work in the sunny broad-stretched fields—the hay-makers piling up their fragrant loads—the château-like farm houses, looking as stately as if they had strayed out of the city, and, getting lost, had thought it beneath their dignity to inquire the way back—and those old compactly built towns, in each of which the houses seem to have nestled together around a moss-grown church tower, like children at the knees of a fond mother,—made up a scene which harmonized admirably with my feelings and with the day, "so calm, so cool, so bright, the bridal of the earth and sky." My fellow-passengers shared in the general joy which the blithesomeness of nature inspired. We all chatted merrily together, and a German, who looked about as lively as Scott's Commentaries bound in dark sheep-skin, tried to make a joke. So irresistible was the contagion of cheerfulness, that an Englishman, who sat opposite me, so far forgot his native dignity, as to volunteer the remark that it was a "nice day."

At last we began to consult our watches and time tables, and, after a shrill whistle and a ride through a long tunnel, I found myself, with a punctuality by which you might set your Frodsham, in the station at Rouen. I obeyed the instructions of the conductor to Messieurs les voyageurs pour Rouen to descendez, and was, in a very few minutes, walking leisurely through narrow and winding streets, which I used to think existed only in the imaginations of novelists and scene-painters. I say walking, but the fact is, I did not know what means of locomotion I employed in my progress through the town. My eyes and mind were too busy to take cognizance of any inferior matters. My astonishment and delight at all that met my sight was not so great as my astonishment and delight to find myself astonished and delighted. I had seen so many old cities that I had no thought of getting enthusiastic about Rouen, until I found myself suddenly in a state of mental exaltation. I had visited Rouen as many people visit churches and galleries of art in Italy—because I had an opportunity, and feared that in after years I might be asked if I had ever been there. But, if a dislike to acknowledge my ignorance led me to Rouen, it was a very different sentiment that took possession of me as soon as I caught the spirit of the place. The genius of the past seemed to inhabit every street and alley of that strange city. I half expected, whenever I heard the hoofs of horses, to find myself encompassed by mailed knights; and if Joan of Arc, with her sweet maidenly face beaming with the inspiration of religious patriotism, had galloped by, it would not have surprised me so much as it did to realize that I—a Yankee, clad in a gray travelling suit, with an umbrella in my hand, and drafts to a limited amount on Baring Brothers in my pocket—was moving about in the midst of such scenes, and was not arrested and hustled out of the way as a profane intruder.

Wandering through the mouldy streets without any definite idea whither they led, and so charmed by all I saw, that I did not care, I suddenly turned a corner and suddenly found myself in a market-place well filled with figures, which would have graced a similar scene in any opera-house, and facing that stupendous cathedral which is one of the glories of France. I do not know how to talk learnedly about architecture; so I can spare you, dear reader, any criticism on the details of that great church. I have no doubt that it is full of faults, but my unskilful eyes rested only on its beauties. I would not have had it one stroke of the chisel less ornate, nor one shade less dingy. I could not, indeed, help thinking what it must have been centuries ago, when it was in all the glory of its fresh beauty; but still I rejoiced that it was reserved for me to behold it in the perfected loveliness and richer glory of its decay. Never until then did I fully appreciate the truth of Mr. Ruskin's declaration, that the greatest glory of a building is not in its sculptures or in its gold, but in its age,—nor did I ever before perfectly comprehend his eloquent words touching that mysterious sympathy which we feel in "walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity."

After lingering for a while before the sacred edifice, I entered, and stood within its northern aisle. Arches above arches, supported by a forest of massive columns, seemed to be climbing up as if they aspired to reach the throne of Him whose worship was daily celebrated there. The sun was obscured by a passing cloud as I entered, and that made the ancient arches seem doubly solemn. The stillness that reigned there was rendered more profound by the occasional twitter of a swallow from some "jutty frieze," or "coigne of vantage," high up above my head. I walked half way up the aisle, and stopped on hearing voices at a distance. As I stood listening, the sun uncovered his radiant face, and poured his golden glory through the great western windows of the church, bathing the whole interior with a prismatic brilliancy which made me wonder at my presumption in being there. At the same moment a clear tenor voice rang out from the choir as if the sunbeams had called it into being, giving a wonderful expression to the words of the Psalmist, Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea; quem timebo. Then came a full burst of music as the choir took up the old Gregorian Chant—the universal language of prayer and praise. As the mute groves of the Academy reëcho still the wisdom of the sages, so did that ancient church people my mind with forms and scenes of an age long passed away. "I was all ear," and those solemn strains seemed to be endowed with the accumulated melody of the Misereres and Glorias of a thousand years.

I have an especial affection for an old church, and I pity with all my heart the man whom the silent eloquence of that vast cathedral does not move. The very birds that build their nests in its mouldering towers have more soul than he. Its every stone is a sermon on the transitoriness of human enterprise and the vanity of worldly hopes. Beneath its pavement lie buried hopes and ambitions which have left no memorial but in the unread pages of forgotten historians. Richard, the lion-hearted, who made two continents ring with the fame of his valour, and yearned for new conquests, was obliged at last to content himself with the dusty dignity and obscurity of a vault beneath those lofty arches which stand unmoved amid the contentions of rival dynasties and the insane violence of republican anarchy.

But it was not merely to write of the glories of Rouen and its churches, that I took up my neglected pen. The old cathedral of which I have now a few kind words to say, does not, like that of Rouen, date back sixteen centuries to its foundation; neither is it one of those marvels of architecture in which the conscious stone seems to have grown naturally into forms of enduring beauty. No great synods or councils have been held within its walls; nor have its humble aisles resounded daily with the divine office chanted by a chapter of learned and pious canons. Indeed it bears little in its external appearance that would raise a suspicion of its being a cathedral at all. Yet its plain interior, its simple altars, and its unpretentious episcopal throne, bear witness to the abiding-place of that power which is radiated from the shrine of the Prince of the Apostles—as unmistakably as if it were encrusted with mosaics, and the genius of generations of great masters had been taxed in its adornment.

The Cathedral of Boston is the last relic of Franklin Street as I delight to remember it. One by one, the theatre, the residence of the Catholic bishops, and the old mansions that bore such a Berkeley Square-y look of respectability have passed away; and the old church alone remains. Tall warehouses look down upon it, as if it were an intruder there, and the triumphal car of traffic makes its old walls tremble and disturbs the devotion of its worshippers. An irreverent punster ventured a few months since to suggest that, out of regard to its new associations, it ought to be rededicated under the invocation of St. Casimir, and to be enlarged by the addition of a chapel built in honor of St. Pantaleone.