untouched. One of Lord Nelson's feet is white and the other black, the latter projecting forward as if seeking a shoeblack's services. Dr. Johnson's scroll looks like a roll of music in a waterproof case, while the bare legs and blanket of that philosopher are foul with dust. The personifications of the British Empire in Europe and Asia" round the tomb of Cornwallis are only of dusky hue, while "the other deities," said to be strikingly expressive, have become simply meaningless masks of dirt. Philanthropy and learning, valour, patriotism, and wit, are all victims of the same abominable neglect; and the strongest wish felt by the visitor who sees the Walhalla of England is that it may be speedily brushed and washed. A dozen men armed with long brooms could remove the worst part of the evil in an hour. Much of the deep-set and long-lingering filth is within reach of a pocket-handkerchief, and, but for the screens and barriers which keep the public off, we could have cleansed part of the memorials to Hallam and Collingwood without standing on tip-toe. A few amateur cleaners might relieve the City of London of a grave scandal and reproach by giving up an hour once a month to the cathedral. And the dirt I speak of is seen every day by visitors. It greets you the instant you pass under the curtains of the north door, and you never lose sight of it until you are on the stairs leading to the bell and ball. Surely, in these days of voluntary effort, it would not be difficult to organise a little staff of churchmen who would each undertake to keep a statue clean; or, if this were too much labour, who would take a leg or an arm, or a cherub or an animal, under his individual care. Few tasks would be more immediately effective, and I beg to throw out, as a suggestion to the gentlemen of London, that an amateur cleaning society be formed for the restoration of the statues of St. Paul's. For the whole matter is so easy of accomplishment that there must be some good reason why the vergers or other servants of the dean and chapter don't attempt to cope with it. If the labour were dangerous or costly-even if it involved hard work-one could understand its being shirked. But the mere application of a housemaid's duster would convert disgrace into compliment, and a cruel gibe against the dead into a national honour. Let any one who thinks our statement overdrawn look into St. Paul's the next time he is in the City. A momentary glance inside will be sufficient. The monument by Chantrey, erected at the public expense to the memories of Generals Gore and Skerrett, and that to Admiral Lord Duncan, also a tribute from the nation, are both within sight of the threshold, and both prove my case. Note their degraded condition; remark the abject grimness of Fame and Britannia in the first, and the blackness of the face and uniform and hands in the second; and say whether you do not agree with me that if ever Lord Palmerston's celebrated definition of dirt as "matter in the wrong place" applied with irresistible force, it is to the national monu ments in our City cathedral. Wondering what laws would be violated and what penalty be enforced if a party of a score or so of visitors, all armed with dusters and soft hand-brushes, were to plant themselves at given portions of the interior, and at a preconcerted signal commence statue-cleaning as a labour of love, we pass up a staircase to find four able-bodied persons in a high state of jocularity, One sits at a sort of pay place, and obligingly acts as money. changer; two others are lounging on the stairs near him, and have evidently perpetrated some jest at the expense of a fourth, who butts hastily against me on the stairs, grinning meanwhile with great good humour, and, holding up some silver coin, cries, "Were it enough, think ye?" On seeing me, the money-changer and the two loungers assume an expression of pensive interest, and all speak at once when I ask a question. "Up-stairs, sir, as far as you can go, sir, until you meet a man who'll show you the liberry, sir. Sixpence, if you please. Like to see everything, would you, sir; that will be three shillings, if you please. Sixpence to whispering and outside galleries, sixpence the liberry, sixpence to crypt, and eighteenpence to the ball. A guide-book, sir?—sixpence-three shillings and sixpence in all; and here are four tickets, which you'll give up when called upon." Mounting some spacious stairs, the stone steps of which are protected by a wooden covering, we are stopped by a man on guard, who calls "Philip;" whereupon one of the loungers presents himself from below with a consummate air of never having seen me before. The first of my sixpenny tickets is given up, and I am conducted through a long gallery, like an exaggerated lumber-room, and deposited in the library. I am turning to the guide-book I have just bought when my companion observes, pleasantly, that "I shan't find nothing about it in there," but that for one shilling he can let me have a book which not only contains the whole of my sixpenny purchase, but other information which is essential to the comprehension of St. Paul's. "Wy didn't the other man offer you this sort, instead of takin' sixpence for what ain't much use? Can't say, sir, I'm sure; I 'avn't got nothin' to do with 'im. I sells these books myself at one shilling, and they include every thing that you've got there, and a good deal more besides. Yours is for the monuments, and mine is for the monuments, and for all the rest as well. No, sir, I can't take your guidebook back in exchange. You see it's another man's business to sell that altogether, and his book wouldn't be no use to me, would it now, sir ?" I take my ingenuous friend's book, and after offering him sixpence and the useless sixpenny book in vain, I become so absorbed in its contents as to forget my debt. "You haven't paid me for the guide-book, sir; and, if you please, I will take back the one you bought first," follows so soon upon the knowledge that our visit is for a public purpose, and that what we denounce as a fraudulent trick will be ex posed, that the fate of country cousins and round to see who is following us so closely, and foreigners becomes additionally clear. In our find we are deceived by our own echo. We case we took tickets for viewing the whole of next listen to "This church was built, &c.," in the interior of the cathedral, and bought the the old man's shrillest whisper, with polite enonly guide-book offered us. The seller, and joyment and a keen sense of relief when it is those whom I must call his accomplices, were over. A young couple from the country, and, as well aware that the work they sold would be I guess, recently from the altar, are now received insufficient for my purpose, and deliberately by the old man with the same formula which suppressed the fact of there being a more com- greeted me, and are in their turn waved to the plete one until, as they thought, they had me opposite side of the gallery. I watch that at disadvantage, and I was under the necessity couple. He is a gawky, high-shouldered, redof buying both. No, sir, not the least diffi-whiskered, raw-boned, healthy, happy monster culty in getting the sixpence from the other of one-and-twenty, whose brown coat looks as man for this one, sir, thank you, sir. I'll ar- if it had been made for a deformed relative of range it with 'im, sir, thank you!"-all came stunted growth; whose hat tilts itself at the after the discovery concerning my public duties back of his head with an air of ostentatious inand possible public strictures, and were as com- dependence, and whose hands and feet are on pletely the reverse of the aggressive insolence of the scale of those which adorn the exterior of the first refusal as affirmative and negative can glovers' and lastmakers' shops. I pronounce well be. I am sent up alone to look at the him to be- I scarcely know why-a proclock and the bell, and don't in the least under- vincial pawnbroker, and wonder whether he stand either. A clockmaker is winding up the is hard or impressionable in his business dealfirst, and informs me it is hard work, and always ings. His companion is a dainty little person, takes an hour. The clapper of the second and whose trim figure is set off in the neatest a portion of its sides are just visible through of jackets, and whose hat and dress and gloves an aperture in some boards above me, and are in such pretty harmony as to make one after craning my neck until it aches, I decide exclaim for the thousandth time upon the that I have beheld more exciting spectacles, native taste, which so often makes a woman and think myself scantily repaid for the look refined, when the male companion of her labour of ascending one hundred additional own rank out of his working clothes is no more steps. The outside of seven thousand volumes, than a bad and weak imitation of another social a fine oil portrait of Bishop Compton, under grade. I make these observations musingly, whom the cathedral was built, some oak carving and from behind the railings of the gallery; by Gibbons, and a flooring made up of pieces of for I have plodded three-quarters of the way oak inlaid without nails or pegs, are shown me in round, and when the young couple enter I am the library. A glance down the geometrical seated, and peeping down upon the chairs and staircase, "the hundred and ten steps of which people in the nave below. Thus, without hang without visible support, all resting upon thought of concealment, I escape observation, the bottom step," and we take leave of our and the young couple fancy they have the gal guide, who has by this time put on a look of lery to themselves. I did not find this out sheepish guilelessness, as of a simple man whose until the old man turned his face to the wall, life is devoted to others, and to whom mercenary and began whispering to it as before; when or other unworthy motives are unknown. Up the awkward youth and pretty girl put their more steps of the same spacious staircase as be- faces to the wall to listen, and show an apprefore and we come upon a shrivelled little mummy ciation of the contiguity which convinced me of a man whose life is spent in whispering, and they considered themselves unobserved. who seems to have become chronically hoarse in To turn my back, and after giving a sonorous consequence. His neck and chin are hidden in "Hem!" to scuttle out of the gallery and upa huge muffler, which has been white, but is stairs without looking round, is the work of now of dubious hue, and his frame is hidden a moment, the old man giving me, "And a in a black surtout which buttons across the beautiful prospect you'll have, sir, so far as the chest and has an air of being slept in. This weather will permit," as a parting salute. A old man is of a flue-y habit of body, and when general view of fog, and river, and roof are the he coughs or wheezes, minute particles, such as strongest impressions I have of the first outside float in the air after the shaking of a feather bed, gallery. The dome from here looks as enormous, exude from his clothes and envelop him in a halo and the ball and cross as far off as from of fluff. He is eminently polite. Walk in, sir- the street below, and I resume my pilgrimage walk into the gallery, if you please," is given up the stairs, with a strong feeling that I with a courtly bow, as if doing the honours of the whispering gallery of St. Paul's were not a thing to be undertaken lightly; and when we have walked in, the wave of the arm with which we are sent on, and the "Stop where you are now, sir, if you please," when we are half round, are suggestive of a faded shabby royalty, as of some stage-monarch who has fallen upon evil times. Forgetting the speciality of the place, we turn shall see little more from the ball than I have beheld already. Stairs give way to fixed ladders before we reach the top, and the pleasant genial guide who accompanies us there, and whose cheerful merits call for special mention, advises us to discard hat, and stick, and overcoat at a certain stage. A little narrow for a man of your figure, sir," is the candid explanation; though what is narrow and why corner by the Cathedral Coffee-house, a Hammersmith omnibus, with two passengers outside. The numerous trains within ear-shot, the whistle and steam from locomotives, are points I don't remember in any panorama, and are of constant occurrence. Blackfriars, Cannon-street, and London Bridge are all busy, and it is plea sant to think of the holiday-makers behind each wreath of white smoke, who are rushing home a few hours earlier in honour of Saturday. my figure is called into question are for the the creatures carrying them one_would not moment profound mysteries to me. Up ladder recognise them to be carcases. Immediately after ladder, the angle of each being sharper below us the grass of the churchyard looks than its predecessor, and I stand panting green and fresh, and I am able to recognise in before two iron bars, with odd out-of-the-the little red box upon wheels, turning the way muscles asserting their presence in my calves, and wrists, and arms. I am to force my way through those bars, and at first this seems impossible. Many a one had to turn back here besides you, sir-ladies in particular, for crinoline won't compress, you know, and they can't get through. I think, though, if you stoop so as to get your body sideways between the two nuts, you may manage it with a squeege." I do manage it with a squeeze, and, panting more than ever and a little sore, am soon making "No, sir, you couldn't see up to Charingmy way up the final ladder and looking out cross, not if it was ever so clear, nor yet the upon London, between the openings below the Strand, for there's a great bend towards the ball. But there is something terribly uncom- river, like a helber, just beyond Temple-bar, and fortable in this perch, and I am speedily down that blocks the view like. Well, there is a again, for a sudden thought occurs to me: sup-good deal o' change in the look o' things since pose I could not re-pass the iron-bars, what I fust began to come up here with visitors would be my fate? I struggle through them, forty year ago. There's bin so many new however, after a degree of compression I had streets and buildings that they make a show hitherto believed to be confined to gutta-percha even from here; and there ain't a doubt as to toys, and descend the long ladders until I reach the spread there's bin of London, and the way the place where I left my hat and coat. This is a your eye has to travel before it lights on green. little round chamber a few feet in diameter, and Oh yes, sir, you see green all round when it's high up in the summit of the cupola. There is fine. Fields and trees and perfect country beroom for perhaps three people to walk abreast yond the miles of houses are just as distinct as round a railing which encircles the space of an in a picture. But of course you might come up ordinary well in the centre. This space is here twenty times without getting the right loosely boarded over, a hole being left in it, sort of day, even in summer, before the fires are through which my guide directs me to look. It lit; but when you do get it, there ain't anyis not a pleasant notion. To climb over the thing finer, in my opinion, in the world. No, railings and to stand with nothing but some sir, I've never been abroad, having bin temporary boarding between you and the nave, kept pretty close to the cathedral during the where the people may be seen like small insects, years I've served in it, and so, perhaps, I to kneel down upon loose planks, and for one of oughtn't to argue much about the world. But these to jump upwards with a bang, are incidents I've known great travellers say so when they've highly discomposing to the nerves. But I un- come up, and I can't fancy anything much dergo them without question or demur, conceal- finer. Accidents since I've shown people about ing my nervousness as far as possible. I am here? Never heard of one. We have larky heartily glad, however, to clamber over the rail- young boys and girls, and ladies who are wilful ings again, and to gradually get down to the out- and bad to manage, but none of 'em's come to side gallery, known as the "golden," below. harm in my time, nor before it, so far as I One hundred and thirty-two churches are to be know. You see, the ladders are strong and counted from here on a clear day; but now our firm, and, bein' boarded at the back, they're view is practically bounded by some large like real stairs, only narrer and steep, so that buildings ("New offices, sir, in the neighbour-people couldn't very well slip off even if they hood of Lincoln's Inn") in one direction, and was to try." the Royal Exchange in the other. These two The bell is tolling for afternoon service when points represent the range of view on all sides; we reach the nave, and we determine to reserve and my first impression is, that I have been here our visit to the crypt for another day. Just as before. The panoramas and great pictures of we reach the barrier, however, and recognise bird's-eye views from St. Paul's are so wonder- that the men who sold us guide-books have fully like reality, that any one seeing them may put on vergers' gowns, a brisk little person rest satisfied without enlarging his experience. asks reproachfully whether we are going to The roofs of slate and tiles run at strange miss the best part of the cathedral. "Time, odd angles, and look very new. Ludgate- sir? Oh yes. I'll show you through quickly. hill and Fleet-street form a tolerably straight Your ticket, sir. It won't take five minutes, gutter up to the point where the fog droops and we'll be up again before the service down and shuts them in. Newgate Market is almost cleared of its meat this Saturday afternoon, but a few blue dots are walking to and fro with what looks like raw mutton-chops upon their backs. But that the chops are as big as begins." Passing the tombs, below the nave, of painters, architects, and engineers, we come to the resting-place of Nelson and Wellington, and finally to the funeral car which brought the remains of the latter to their rest. Gas is kept burning round the massive tomb of porphyry beneath which Wellington lies, and the famous car is set off by accessories which are at once lugubrious and theatrical. Three sham horses stand in prancing attitude in its shafts, their nodding black plumes and the draperies spread out upon them being those actually used. The walls are hung with the black cloth employed at the funeral, and this is picked out with tinsel heraldry and ornament. The arms of the different orders conferred upon the departed hero, his ducal coronet, and field-marshal's bâton, are all laid out for display; and the general effect is as if the property-room of a theatre and the show-room of some fashionable mourning warehouse had been suddenly fused. The care and formality of these arrangements make the neglected statues look filthier and more woebegone than ever as we pass out, and the fact of their standing in the only portion of the cathedral for which no admission-fee is charged does not lessen the significance of the contrast. THE RUSSIAN PEASANTRY. THE wheels of my carriage have caught fire somewhere about midway between the Russian city of Kiev and the town of Balta. My courier is a soldier, an under officer in a regiment of Cossacks, and he takes counsel with the postilion as to the repairs necessary. I am an old traveller, and accustomed to make shifts of all kinds on the road, but I do not see how to get out of our difficulty. The case seems hopeless. The boxes of the wheels are charred and almost burnt away. Russian peasants, however, are handy fellows, and the postilion makes very light of the accident. For the last half hour since we changed horses he has sat motionless, but howling, on the coach-box, and we have galloped over a flat, monotonous country as fast as ten wiry ponies could carry us under the influence of yells, scolding, and thwacks. The thwacks have been administered in a peculiar manner. Suddenly the motionless little man has started up and applied a long stick with great vigour and decision to the back of every pony within reach of it. Then the carriage has begun to roll and sway about violently from side to side in ruts and out of ruts, jolting over stones, splashing through quagmires, till at last the wheels caught fire, and we come to a dead stop, as I have said. What on earth the Cossack soldier and the postilion are about with the springs and axletree of the carriage I have never been able to ascertain, but they seem quite at home at their work. The horses stand at easee-a disorderly little mob, and the cries which worried them five minutes ago are silent, the sharp stinging stick is still. There are the two peasants mute, and busy as ants. The Cossack soldier, a smart dapper little man, neat and trim as may be, with the breast of his coat all covered with medals and military decorations, nevertheless produces from his pocket a long piece of tallow candle. The postilion unties the rope which has served him for a belt, and nimbly picks it to pieces. They apply the tow thus produced well greased with tallow to the blackened wheels, and then so manage to tie and bind them as to produce a very workmanlike effect. In short, we are able to continue our journey, and I prepare to take my seat, and resume a doze interrupted by this unexpected halt. Suddenly, the little soldier surprises me by dropping down swiftly on both his knees, and holding his uplifted hands together in the attitude of prayer. He looks a queer, stiff figure, like a wooden man, or a puppet moved by machinery. He remains silent, but suppliant. On inquiry it appears that he wishes to sit behind the carriage on the footboard instead of in front, as he usually does, for parade purposes, in order that he may watch the wheels in case they should catch fire again. He merely prefers this request on his knees as a matter of custom and habit. It is his way of being civil after the usual manner of his class and country, nothing more. When he was with his regiment, if he had put a question to his colonel without this formality he would have probably fared badly. He has remembered the lessons of his early life, and will remember them as long as he is capable of recollecting anything. When this little affair is settled, he has another also to perform, which he considers part of his professional duty as body-guard in charge of my safety. It is to thump the postilion. The man has done nothing wrong, but a mischance has happened, and therefore concludes his fellow-slave, somebody must be punished. The postilion takes his thumping in very good part. It is bestowed upon him without any passion or opprobrium, in a business-like sort of way, and as something necessary for his good. It would never occur to a Russian peasant to bandy blows or words with a soldier in uniform, under any provocation whatever, although they might both have been born and bred in the same village. A uniform is far too sacred a symbol to be touched by the hottest and angriest hand. When the beating is over, the postilion climbs up on to the coachbox, recommences his howling noises as before, and on we roll to the next station, a market town in the corn countries. On entering the post-house I find the little soldier is already before me, on his knees near a picture of the Virgin, illuminated by a small oil lamp constantly burning. No Russian peasant's house is without some such picture in the best room of it; and all who go in and out cross themselves devoutly when they look at it. My soldier is now crossing himself all over with extreme rapidity as if to make the most of his time, or to fulfil a vow. When he rises from his knees he explains to me that we shall find it impossible to continue our journey that night, and that he has just been returning thanks to all his saints for our safe arrival. He observes, however, that he had no real apprehension of danger owing to the intervention of a small pocket saint which he bought of a holy it. I know well that an Italian cook, who gave man in the Kiev catacombs, and has ever since a chance blow to one of his scullions, had carried about with him; the saint in question lately to pay altogether an unreasonable sum being an infallible protector of travellers. for his enjoyment. But my Cossack walks up So, as I am about to pass a night at the post- to the first man he meets and pummels him house, I begin to examine my quarters. It is without mercy or remonstrance. The man a long, low, whitewashed building of only one being duly awakened by this process becomes story high, but standing with its outhouses and instantly endowed with the conversational stabling upon considerably more than an acre of faculty which had previously lain dormant in ground. It is a straggling, infirm, unsubstantial his mind. Being then informed that the postplace, partly in ruins; but all its imperfections master, or somebody belonging to his establishare covered by the omnipresent whitewash. ment, is required to get something to eat, he My luggage has been conveyed to a small, dark cheerfully expresses his willingness to go in den of a room, so full of close air, and empty search of one or both of them. Half an of comfort that there is no temptation to hour is dawdled away, and nobody coming remain in it. So leaving the Cossack to mount in reply to this message, the Cossack and I set guard over my goods, and to protect them from forth on an expedition of discovery. After light fingers, I wander out into the town; and roaming for some time about the nooks and make my way towards the market-place, where passages of the interminable range of buildings the manners of a people are always seen to most which form the post-house, we at last come advantage. The market is held on a large upon a smoky den whence issue low sounds of open pace where some disorderly huts and muttered talk. The Cossack puts a forefinger tents have been set up. Very little of an edible to his lips in a knowing manner, and then nature is sold there, and nothing at all nice or points to the door, before which, coiled up in a tempting. There are some lean, damp fowls in ball like a dormouse, crouches our messenger, hen-coops, and some geese of disconsolate waiting for an answer to his communication. aspect tied by the leg together, and worn slung He motions silently towards the interior of the over the shoulder of the seller head downwards room, and we enter. There sits the postmaster till they find a purchaser. Some white cabbages with his head tied up in a red handkerchief, and and a few onions complete the marketable a cigar between his lips, playing with a stock in trade of a considerable town. There is no personal friend at the exciting game of double life or bustle anywhere, and the mud under dummy. Fortunately for that postmaster the foot is so deep and stiff as to render walking laborious and unpleasant. There is nothing for it but to go back to the post-house and make the most of a dull afternoon, while my carriage is being mended. Returning to the post-house, I notice that the only visible shops are a chemist's and a tea-room. There are very few people about the streets; hardly any indeed, though they are all wider than Piccadilly. It looks inexpressibly melancholy to see only one or two people dotted about them at long intervals; and those in the grey sullen light of a Russian day seem lost and unhappy. with superior authorities at St. Petersburg some years ago found it necessary to confer upon his order throughout Russia an official rank sufficiently high to protect them from beatings. The backs of all the postmasters in the empire had been made so sore by the consequences of their supine behaviour that this measure was found indispensable, or the cardplaying pair would have infallibly come to grief on the present occasion. As it is my little Cossack makes himself and his medals felt rather oppressively, and the postmaster turns white and begins to shake like a man I am hungry, and the thoughts of dinner the ague; for the fact is, I am travelling with present themselves to my mind with increasing a way-bill having two seals, which is a sort of frequency and attraction every minute. There certificate that my business is of importance to is no eager host about the place, however; no the Imperial Government, and that any one who brisk waiter. My room being now sufficiently hinders or troubles me is likely to suffer for sweetened to admit of examination is found to it. No sooner is this mysterious document contain an insecure wooden bedstead without produced than all becomes smooth. The postmattress or bedding, a rickety table, a pie dish, master has got no dinner himself, he never has an empty tumbler, and a chair. Nothing more. had, and never will have any; but he will send There is no bell or other means of summoning to the local prince's German land agent, who the natives All communication with the outer will supply me at once with all things necessary; world must be made by means of bawling So by-and-by comes a good homely dinner and till somebody comes. Nobody appearing, in a bottle of brave German wine; and then a little answer to my first series of shouts, the later comes the agent himself to bear me Cossack walks on tiptoe to a corner where he company. has left the stick which is his councillor in every difficulty, and sallies forth in quest of a pair of shoulders to fit it. There is little doubt that if in the present altered state of the Russian law I were myself to raise a finger against any of the bumpkins lounging about I should never hear the last of The agent is a baldheaded gentlemanly man, who has passed the early part of his life in medical studies, and has a strong passion for the pursuit of investigations in comparative anatomy. He knows nothing whatever about the management of land, but having been exiled from the Austrian dominions, because his brother |
