space,
With lightsome heart, and yet a graver face.
Too young for woe, though not for tears.”
—Allston
With what interest and deference most Americans of any education regarded England, her history, laws and institutions, in 1799! There were a few exceptions—warm political partisans, and here and there an individual whose feelings had become embittered by some particular incident of the revolution—but surprisingly few, when it is recollected that the country was only fifteen years from the peace. I question if there ever existed another instance of as strong provincial admiration for the capital, as independent America manifested for the mother country, in spite of a thousand just grievances, down to the period of the war of 1812. I was no exception to the rule, nor was Talcott. Neither of us had ever seen England before we made the Lizard on this voyage, except through our minds’ eyes; and these had presented quantities of beauties and excellencies that certainly vanished on a nearer approach. By this I merely mean that we had painted in too high colours, as is apt to be the case when the imagination holds the pencil; not that there was any unusual absence of things worthy to be commended. On the contrary, even at this late, hour, I consider England as a model for a thousand advantages, even to our own inappreciable selves. Nevertheless, much delusion was blended with our admiration.
English history was virtually American history; and everything on the land, as we made our way towards town, which the pilot could point out, was a source of amusement and delight. We had to tide it up to London, and had plenty of leisure to see all there was to be seen. The Thames is neither a handsome, nor a very magnificent river; but it was amazing to witness the number of vessels that then ascended or descended it. There was scarce a sort of craft known to Christendom, a few of the Mediterranean excepted, that was not to be seen there; and as for the colliers, we drifted through a forest of them that seemed large enough to keep the town a twelvemonth in fire-wood, by simply burning their spars. The manner in which the pilot handled our brig, too, among the thousand ships that lay in tiers on each side of the narrow passage we had to thread, was perfectly surprising to me; resembling the management of a coachman in a crowded thoroughfare, more than the ordinary working of a ship. I can safely say I learned more in the Thames, in the way of keeping a vessel in command, and in doing what I pleased with her, than in the whole of my voyage to Canton and back again. As for Neb, he rolled his dark eyes about in wonder, and took an occasion to say to me—“He’ll make her talk, Masser Miles, afore he have done.” I make no doubt the navigation from the Forelands to the bridges, as it was conducted thirty years since, had a great influence on the seamanship of the English. Steamers are doing away with much of this practice, though the colliers still have to rely on themselves. Coals will scarcely pay for tugging.
I had been directed by Captain Williams to deliver the brig to her original consignee, an American merchant established in the modern Babylon, reserving the usual claim for salvage. This I did, and that gentleman sent hands on board to take charge of the vessel, relieving me entirely from all farther responsibility. As the captain in his letter had, inadvertently I trust, mentioned that he had put “Mr. Wallingford, his third mate,” in charge, I got no invitation to dinner from the consignee; though the affair of the capture under Dungeness found its way into the papers, viâ Deal, I have always thought, with the usual caption of “Yankee Trick.” Yankee trick! This phrase, so often carelessly used, has probably done a great deal of harm in this country. The young and ambitious—there are all sorts of ambition, and, among others, that of being a rogue; as a proof of which, one daily hears people call envy, jealousy, covetousness, avarice, and half of the meaner vices, ambition—the young and ambitious, then, of this country, too often think to do a good thing, that shall have some of the peculiar merit of a certain other good thing that they have heard laughed at and applauded, under this designation. I can account in no other manner for the great and increasing number of “Yankee tricks” that are of daily occurrence among us. Among other improvements in taste, not to say in morals, that might be introduced into the American press, would be the omission of the histories of these rare inventions. As two-thirds of the editors of the whole country, however, are Yankees, I suppose they must be permitted to go on exulting in the cleverness of their race. We are indebted to the Puritan stock for most of our instructors—editors and school-masters—and when one coolly regards the prodigious progress of the people in morals, public and private virtue, honesty, and other estimable qualities, he must indeed rejoice in the fact that our masters so early discovered “a church without a bishop.”
I had an opportunity, while in London, however, of ascertaining that the land of our fathers, which by the way has archbishops, contains something besides an unalloyed virtue in its bosom. At Gravesend we took on board two customhouse officers, (they always set a rogue to watch a rogue, in the English revenue system,) and they remained in the brig until she was discharged. One of these men had been a gentleman’s servant, and he owed his place to his former master’s interest. He was a miracle of custom-house integrity and disinterestedness, as I discovered in the first hour of our intercourse. Perceiving a lad of eighteen in charge of the prize, and ignorant that this lad had read a good deal of Latin and Greek under excellent Mr. Hardinge, besides being the heir of Clawbonny, I suppose he fancied he would have an easy time with him. This man’s name was Sweeney. Perceiving in me an eager desire to see everything, the brig was no sooner at her moorings, than he proposed a cruise ashore. It was Sweeney who showed me the way to the consignee’s, and, that business accomplished, he proposed that we should proceed on and take a look at St. Paul’s, the Monument, and, as he gradually found my tastes more intellectual than he had at first supposed, the wonders of the West End. I was nearly a week under the pilotage of the “Admirable Sweeney.” After showing me the exteriors of all the things of mark about the town, and the interiors of a few that I was disposed to pay for, he descended in his tastes, and carried me through Wapping, its purlieus and its scenes of atrocities. I have always thought Sweeney was sounding me, and hoping to ascertain my true character, by the course he took; and that he betrayed his motives in a proposition which he finally made, and which brought our intimacy to a sudden close. The result, however, was to let me into secrets I should probably have never learned in any other manner. Still, I had read and heard too much to be easily duped; and I kept myself not only out of the power of my tempter, but out of the power of all that could injure me, remaining simply a curious observer of what was placed before my eyes. Good Mr. Hardinge’s lessons were not wholly forgotten; I could run away from him, much easier than from his precepts.
I shall never forget a visit I made to a house called the Black Horse, in St. Catherine’s Lane. This last was a narrow street that ran across the site of the docks that now bear the same name; and it was the resort of all the local infamy of Wapping. I say local infamy; for there were portions of the West End that were even worse than anything which a mere port could produce. Commerce, that parent of so much that is useful to man, has its dark side as everything else of earth; and, among its other evils, it drags after it a long train of low vice; but this train is neither so long nor so broad as that which is chained to the chariot-wheels of the great. Appearances excepted, and they are far less than might be expected, I think the West End could beat Wapping out and out, in every essential vice; and, if St. Giles be taken into the account, I know of no salvo in favour of the land over the sea.
Our visit to the Black Horse was paid of a Sunday, that being the leisure moment of all classes of labourers, and the day when, being attired in their best, they fancied themselves best prepared to appear in the world. I will here remark, that I have never been in any portion of Christendom that keeps the Sabbath precisely as it is kept in America. In all other countries, even the most rigorously severe in their practices, it is kept as a day of recreation and rest, as well as of public devotion. Even in the American towns, the old observances are giving way before the longings or weaknesses of human nature; and Sunday is no longer what it was. I have witnessed scenes of brawling, blasphemy and rude tumult, in the suburbs of New York, on Sundays, within the last few years, that I have never seen in any other part of the world on similar occasions; and serious doubts of the expediency of the high-pressure principle have beset me, whatever may be the just constructions of doctrine. With the last I pretend not to meddle; but, in a worldly point of view, it would seem wise, if you cannot make men all that they ought to be, to aim at such social regulations as