A. Cleveland Coxe

“ The cathedral of Wells struck me as surpassing all that I had yet seen, in its way. The exterior view is fine, and the front is enriched with the most lavish display of sculpture, kings, queens, and saints, each in an embellished niche, and all together conveying a most gorgeous impression to the beholder. But the interior was far more impressive. Its nave was fitted with a pulpit and benches, and had the appearance of being used and frequented. But the choir and Lady-chapel were in process of restoration, on a magnificent scale, and appeared, indeed, quite new. ”

“ Shall I ever forget this peaceful Sunday noon in England?” As I looked around, all seemed, as the Gospel would make the whole earth appear, if only sinful men would let it; all blossomed as the rose. A church but a few rods in one direction—and another less than a mile before us—and many others near us, all around! All churches too—not so many tokens of religious strife and schism, but each to its own little nest of villagers, the centre of one faith, of one baptism, and the worship of one Lord. ”

“ Never did I receive such ideas of the moral grandeur of the British Constitution, as comprehending Church, State and Society, as, when, from the fields of Eton College, I surveyed the unparalleled abode of the British sovereign; and then, from the terrace of the castle, looked back upon that nursery of British youth; its studious halls, its venerable chapel, its ample fields for sport, and the crystal waters of the Thames, flowing between; fit emblem of joyous youth, passing on to the burthen of the world and the ocean of eternity. ”

“ Is the British Peerage to grow brighter with high moral qualities, than with hereditary honours, and to be cherished by an enlightened spirit of public virtue as a standard of all that is honourable, and as a pattern of what is most excellent in the ideal of the true Christian gentleman? Or must the sad reverse be true, and must this House be the scene of the last act in the eventful history of England? Shall a factitious nobility be crowded into these chief seats of the realm; men devoid of ennobling antecedents, and not less so of honour and of worth? ”

“ The congregation had just withdrawn, and the breath of prayer seemed lingering in the sanctuary. My ramble was completed before the Evening Service began, and certainly never saw I Sunday so liveried before, to celebrate the holy tide. The hawthorn was everywhere in flower; butter-cups, daisies, lilacs, cowslips, and every variety of contemporary blossom, were to be seen in all the fields and cottage-gardens; and the very sheep and cattle, resting in the shadow of the trees, seemed to know it was the holy day. Where else, save in England, is holy tide ever so entirely what holy tide should be? ”

“ I could not but think how much we may owe it to his prayers, that the Church of England is now what she is, as compared with what she was in his day; and, in preaching, I took great delight in paying a parting tribute to that Church, as compared with the churches of the continent.
I am convinced that the debt which England and the world owe to the Anglican Reformers of the sixteenth century, has never been properly appreciated. Like the air which we breathe, but do not perceive, the spirit with which they have invested the religion of England, is that of life and health. ”

“ It is a mere watch-tower; but as the memorial of a great event, it would be hard to imagine a monument more striking. There is much more to interest the passenger as he goes on, looking now into houses built into the wall like swallows’ nests, and now into church-yards, and now into a race-course, and again into a river: but a thoughtful tourist, and especially one from America, will find it hard to think of anything but that Tower, and the mighty issues which were once deciding before it, in view of an august and awfully interested spectator. ”

“ Thus it seems that law is law in London, for all classes alike; and if the stranger, in his cab, is not permitted to violate it, he may at least console himself with the fact that he would fare no better if he were a home-born aristocrat in a dashing tilbury. It is this well-defined system of society, in which every man knows his rights, and where even privilege is limited, and as absolutely held in check as license, that makes even humble life in England, in spite of all its burdens, a life of liberty and contentment. ”

“ I appeal to the common sense of Christian men, and I ask, in what other country under heaven is there such a mass of domestic and social purity? Where else is there so large a benevolence, so masculine a religion, so enlightened a conscience, among any people? England has her shame as well as her glory; she is part and parcel of a sinful world; but her light is not hid under a bushel: and if the hope of the world be not in her candle, I am at a loss to know where to find encouragement as a Christian, that the Gospel is to become universal. ”

“ On the contrary, it is impossible to describe the flow of spirits with which I began and ended this walk. Passing Helm Crag, I decided that the “old woman” on the top, is far more like a millenial group, in colossal sculpture, for it greatly resembles a lion with a lamb in its embrace. At every step, Wordsworth and Southey revive in memory; every pebble seems to have attracted their love, and taken its place in their poetry. After a long, but gradual ascent, we reach the cairn that covers King Dunmail’s bones, and looking back at the charming view, say farewell to Grassmere. ”

“ The havoc made by the Puritans in this holy place is everywhere painfully visible. The beautiful chapel, in the rear of the choir, is filled with fragments of carved work and mutilated sculpture, which bear silent witness against the “axes and hammers” of the Puritans: while many a corresponding “stone out of the wall” seems to cry shame, and “many a beam out of the timber, to answer it.” The noble figure of a knight, in bronze, upon an altar tomb, bears the marks of their indiscriminate violence, in deep cuts or hacks made by a sword, apparently in a spirit of wanton brutality. ”

“ The bells discoursed their music for a full hour; the rooks chattered, and made holiday in the tree-tops; the sweet-briar and rose perfumed the cloisters; the deer bounded across the College park; and wherever I went, or wherever my eye rested, I saw nothing to remind me that this world is a wretched and work-day world, and that England is full of misery and sin. For a time, rhyme seemed reason, and fancy fact. In the enchantment of that delightful May-morning, one might be forgiven for loving life and being fain to see many such good days. ”

“ Pictures have made my readers familiar with the scenery of Guy’s Cliff. There it stands, on the Avon—in unpretending beauty, ivied up to its chimnies, here an oriel, and there a turret, the very ideal of a fair lady’s bower, and one of the goodliest of “the merry homes of England.” There is a mill over against it, where I stood and admired its quiet romance, in the glory of that summer morning, as the gilding of the sunlight lay on the cold gray of its towers. ”

“ The same charm which I had observed in the features of society, and which I had traced to harmony in religion, appeared to me, here and elsewhere, transferred in a great degree to the very soil, to its culture, and to its embellishment. Nature itself seemed to have borrowed a grace, and a glory, from the holy Faith, of which such monuments were visible at every turn, in spires and towers peering above the green trees, and gleaming amid the wide-spread bounties of God, whose adorable name they seemed to display as the giver of all. ”

“ Mary’s, on the preceding Sunday, to reflect that from those very aisles, not longer since than three such lives as Dr. Routh’s might measure, the venerable Primate of all England had been ruthlessly dragged forth, by the hands of brethren in the priesthood, and by the same hands burnt to death, hard by, with the mockery of thanksgiving to God, and in the name of zeal for His glory! Truly, Rome may thank herself for the abhorrence with which the universal Anglo-Saxon race (among whom a few emasculate exceptions are not to be reckoned,) regard alike her blandishments and her cruelties. ”

“ The nobility, the clergy, the gentry, the literati, the professional classes, and then the people—after all, in England they are one; “shade unperceived and softening into shade,” and joined and knit together by habits, tastes, alliances, and interests, in a wonderful order. Much yet remains to be done, and will be done, to smooth down remaining asperities between rank and rank; but the British aristocracy may be said, even now, to be a genuine one, identified with everything great and good in the nation, and, on the whole, presenting a wholesome example to other classes in the State. ”

“ The sun, through the half-misty atmosphere, is falling tenderly on the limes; birds are singing; a rook cawing; nobody is near, but the breeze whispers, socially, through the elms overhead. How still the old spire points up to heaven! How dearly the grass clings to the tower and belfry, growing there in every “coigne of vantage!” And this quiet old chancel, too! Within these walls was Shakspeare made a member of Christ, and here he waits the Judgment. ”

“ From Coventry to Kenilworth, of course. It was late in the afternoon when I started the rooks in those old ruins, and sat down to watch their flight about its ivied towers. Here was, indeed, a place for thought, and for sentimentalism. How the romance of Scott, that once so bewitched me, (as I read it, stretched in boyish luxury upon the floor of the verandah of an American villa, on the dear banks of the Hudson,) now rose about me in a strange dream of reality; and how tormenting the endeavour to separate the true history from the charming fable! ”

“ Two miles more of delightful scenery, and I stood again in Tintern Abbey, and wandered through its holy aisles, and climbed to its venerable summit. Here, over the lofty arches of the transept, I walked, as in a path through a wood, the shrubbery growing wildly on both sides, as on the brow of a natural cliff. White roses flourish there in abundance; and it is only at intervals that you can get a glimpse of the Abbey-floor beneath. Around you is a beautiful prospect of the river, and of an amphitheatre of hills ”

“ It is not as unfilial to America, but only as faithful to the antecedents of my own beloved country, that I ask no Englishman’s leave to walk the soil of England with filial pride, and in some sense to claim “a richer use of his,” than he himself enjoys. He dwells in it, and uses it of necessity for some ignoble purposes; but I have no associations with the malt-tax, or with manufactories. England reveals herself to me only in her higher and nobler character, as the mother, and nurse, and glorious preceptress of the race to which I belong. ”

“ The tomb of a boy-bishop, marked by a little figure in pontificals, is a curious relic of mediæval mummeries; and not less so is the sepulchre of Bishop Roger, a Norman, who first attracted the admiration of King Henry I., by the galloping pace at which he contrived to get through a mass. I paid a more reverent tribute to the plain slab that covers Bishop Jewell, who, with all his faults, deserves the rather to be reverenced, because this age has bred a set of men, who seem to take pleasure in spitting upon his memory, while defiling, with equal insolence, the face of their Mother the Church. ”