rheumatism, is happiest when congregations are smallest and there are no week-day services to "molest her ancient solitary reign."
* * * * * *
Evensong is over. The organist is struggling with an inconceivable tune from "The English Hymnal" (for at St. Ursula's we are nothing if not up to date). The Curate, sicklied o'er with that indescribable horror which in his boating days he would have described as "The Needle," is furtively reperusing his manuscript before mounting the pulpit, and does not detect my craven flight as I slip through the baize door and disappear. It is characteristic of St. Ursula's that, even when empty, it is fusty; but this need surprise no one, for the architect was strong on a "scientific system of ventilation," and that, as we all know, means very little ventilation and an overwhelming amount of system.
However, my courageous flight has delivered me from asphyxiation, and, before returning to my modest Sunday supper of Paysandu Ox-tongue and sardines, I think that I will reinflate my lungs by a stroll round Hyde Park. There is a lovely redness in the western sky over the Serpentine Bridge, but it is still broad daylight. The sere and yellow turf of the Park is covered by some of those four millions who do not count and do not go to church, but who, apparently, are fond of sermons. At the end of each hundred yards I come upon a preacher of some religious, social, or political gospel, and round each is gathered a crowd of listeners who follow his utterances with interested attention. When I think of St. Ursula's and the pavid Curate and my graceless flight, I protest that I am covered with shame as with a garment. But the wrong done in the church can be repaired in the Park. I have missed one sermon, but I will hear another. Unluckily, when these compunctious visitings seized me I was standing by a rostrum of heterodoxy. For all I know the preacher may have followers among my readers; so, as I would not for the world wound even the least orthodox susceptibilities, I forbear to indicate the theory which he enounced. As he spoke, I seemed to live a former life over again; for I had once before been present at an exactly similar preaching, in company, either bodily or spiritual, with my friend Mr. James Payn, and his comments on the scene revived themselves in my memory, even as the remote associations of Ellangowan reawoke in the consciousness of Harry Bertram when he returned from his wanderings, and gazed, bewildered, on his forgotten home. (Henceforward it is Payn that speaks.) The preacher of Heterodoxy was entirely without enthusiasm, nor did his oratory borrow any meretricious attractions from the Muse. It was a curious farrago of logic without reason and premisses without facts, and was certainly the least popular, though not the least numerously attended, of all the competing sermons in the Park. Suddenly the preacher gave expression to a statement more monstrous than common, on which an old lady in the crowd, who had heretofore been listening with great complacency, exclaimed in horror, "I'm sure this ain't true Gospel," and immediately decamped. Up to that point, she had apparently been listening under the impression that the preacher belonged to her own blameless persuasion, and was in the blankest ignorance of all that he had been driving at.
But Sunday in London has religious attractions to offer besides those purveyed by St. Ursula's and Hyde Park. I said at the outset that the Country Cousin and the Transatlantic Brother have their own methods and places of devotion—their Mecca is St. Paul's Cathedral. One of the pleasantest ways of spending a Sunday evening in London is to join the pilgrim-throng. The great west doors of the Cathedral are flung wide open, as if to welcome the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Lord Mayor, and all at once we find ourselves, hushed and awestruck, in the illimitable perspective. Even the staunchest believer in Gothic as the only religious architecture may admit, with disloyalty to his faith, that every year St. Paul's becomes more like a place of Christian worship and less like a glorified Council-hall or an Imperial Senate-house. And it is seen at its best in twilight. The shadows temper the garish splendour of mosaic and gold and electricity, and enhance the dominant sense of vastness and grandeur. And prayer ascends on the wings of music and sweet boy-voices ring, and the distant altar, with its gleaming lights, focuses the meaning and purpose of the whole. And then the great "Communion of Hymns" unites us all, American and English, Londoner and countryman, as citizens of a city not built with hands, patriots of a country which is not marked on the terrestrial globe. Bernard of Cluny and William Cowper and John Keble all contribute of their best. "Brief life is here our portion" seems to utter the real heart's desire of a tired-looking mechanic who stands by my side. "Hark, my soul!" seems to communicate its own intensity to the very tone and look of the people who are singing it. "Sun of my soul" is an evening prayer which sounds just as natural and as fitting in the inmost heart of London's crowd and grind and pressure as in the sweet solitude of the Hursley fields. In the pulpit a pale preacher, himself half worn-out before his prime by ten years' battle in a slum, is extolling the Cross as the test and strength and glory of human life—
"While at his feet the human ocean lay,
And wave on wave rolled into space away."
A human stream indeed, of all sorts and conditions—old men and maidens, young men and children, rich and poor, English and foreigners, sightseers and citizens, dapper clerks and toil-stained citizens and red-coated soldiers—all interested, and all at ease, and all at home at what Bishop Lightfoot called "the centre of the world's concourse"—under the cross-crowned Dome of St. Paul's.
A chapter from
Seeing and Hearing, 1868
CAMBRIDGE
AS VILLAGE AND CITY
By John Fiske
We have met together this evening on one of those occasions, which keep recurring, for communities as well as for individuals, when it is desirable to take a retrospect of the past, to call attention to some of the characteristic incidents in our history, to sum up the work we have done and estimate the position we occupy in the world. As long as we retain the decimal numeration that is natural to ten-fingered creatures, we shall encounter such moments at intervals of half centuries and centuries, and happy are the communities that can meet them without shameful memories that shun the light of history; happy are the people that can look back upon the work of their fathers and in their heart of hearts pronounce it good! What a blot it was upon the civic fame of every Greek community that took part in putting out the brightest light of Hellas in the wicked Peloponnesian War! Can any right-minded Venetian look without blushing at the bronze horses that surmount the stately portal of St. Mark's?—a perpetual memento of that black day when ravening commercial jealousy decoyed an army of Crusaders to the despoiling of the chief city of Christendom, and thus broke away the strongest barrier in the path of the advancing Turk! What must the citizen of Paris think to-day of cowardly massacres of unresisting prisoners, such as happened in 1418 and in 1792? Is there any dweller in Birmingham who would not gladly expunge from the past that summer evening which witnessed the burning of the house and library of Dr. Priestley? From such melancholy scenes, and from complicity in political crime, our community, our neighbourhood, has been notably free. The annals of Massachusetts, during its existence of nearly three centuries, are written in a light that is sometimes dull or sombre, but very seldom lurid. In particular the career of Cambridge has been a placid one. We do not find in it many things to startle us; but there is much that we can approve, much upon which, without falling into the self-satisfied mood that is the surest index of narrowness and provincialism, we may legitimately pride ourselves. In commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of Cambridge as a city, a retrospect of the half century is needful; but we shall find it pleasant to go farther back, and start with a glimpse of the beginnings of our town.
I came near saying "humble beginnings;" it is a stock phrase, and perhaps savours of tautology, since beginnings are apt to be humble as compared with long-matured results. But an adjective which better suits the beginnings of our Cambridge is "dignified." Circumstances of dignity attended the selection of this spot upon the bank of Charles River as the site of a town, and there was something peculiarly dignified in the circumstances of the change of vocation which determined the change in its name. The story is a very different one from that of the
