Essex, and Anne Boleyn, and Lady Jane Grey and her husband. Lady Jane Grey's apartment is over this spot, and commands the view of it. Those parts of the Tower, also, in which Elizabeth was confined by her sister Mary, and where the young sons of Edward were caused to be put to death by their uncle Richard, are pointed out, but the visiter is not allowed to enter them. Some of the buildings within the Tower wall-for it is quite a cluster of houses are used as armories. One immense hall, more than three hundred feet long, contains in beautiful order one hundred thousand muskets. Others are filled with naval and military trophies. One of them is appropriated to the celebrated exhibition of kings and knights on horseback, dressed in ancient armour; and to be sure, the effigies looked grim enough. They must have had other thews and sinews than the men of these days, to wear such armour. But they were trained to it from childhood. We saw suits of armour-quite an entire clothing of steel plate, that is-for small boys.

April 4.-To-day I have visited the Tunnel and Greenwich. To reach the Tunnel, you descend by a circular stairway, one hundred and fifty feet, I should think. You are then on a level with the tunnel which is a finely arched passage under the river, reaching, as yet, not quite half-way across. The work is suspended, at present, from want of funds. It is quite tremendous to think, as you walk along a beautiful road, lighted with gas, under an arch of hammered stone, that a large river is flowing, and mighty ships are sailing, above you.

The Tunnel is lower down on the Thames than the Tower; and Greenwich, the seat of the celebrated and very beautiful Marine Hospital, is farther down yet. I might perhaps describe the fine Greenwich park as well as hospital, if I had not visited them at a season which offered more entertaining matters. It was the time of the Greenwich fair in the Easter holidays, and I was very glad of an opportunity to witness some of the English sports, common on such occasions. They were certainly of a very humble description, like those of all Europe. It was chiefly a Punch and Judy sort of exhibition. Punch and Judy, indeed, in propriis personibus, figure among the principal performers on these occasions. We passed through a crowded street, half a mile long, lined on one side with small booths, for the sale of toys, trinkets, cakes, and gingerbread, and on the other, with successive stages, filled with mountebanks and low actors in harlequin dresses, bands of musicians, and troops of dancers. Other methods of entertainment were swinging cars, resembling carriages, which swung up fearfully high, till, indeed, no angle was left between them and the horizon-running down hill in the park-and a game, within a ring formed by the players, in which the principal business and result seemed to be kissing. There was a publicity and grossness about it, to which, I am sure no young country girl of ours, though of the humblest class, would submit.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE ARISTOCRATIC SYSTEM-ITS ESSENTIAL INJUSTICE-TORY ARGUMENT IN REPLY, CONSIDERED: THAT SOCIETY CANNOT GET ALONG WITHOUT IT; THAT UNDER REPUBLICAN FORMS, PROPERTY WILL LOSE ITS SECURITY, LAW ITS AUTHORITY AND DIGNITY, AND MANNERS ALL THEIR HIGH BREEDING AND COURTESY.

The great subject, I think, which a visit to England presses upon the attention of the American traveller, is the all-engrossing theme of the age-politics. The distinction of ranks, the difference of condition, the castle and the hovel, the lord and his liveried attendants, the idler and the labourer, continually present themselves to the traveller's notice, and provoke comparisons and reflections. America knows nothing of such marked contrasts. The idler, the lord, the castle, the entailed estate, the hereditary title to honour and power, have no place with us: and while all this falls in with the natural course of an Englishman's ideas, and seems to him, perhaps, as if it were among the ordinances of nature, it appears to an American, strange and unnatural, if not unreasonable and unjust.

There is no city in the world, perhaps, which presents, in broader contrast, the extremes of the human condition than London. Regent's Park, Grosvenor Square, the whole west end, shows like a city of the gods; St. Giles and Wapping appear like the habitations of devils. Men, women, live there, whose aspect, stripped of almost every lineament of humanity, fills you with horror, and hurries away your involuntary footsteps as you look at them. In London, there are twenty thousand persons, perhaps, who live in all the luxury that their imagination can devise; and there are twenty thousand who know not, when they rise in the morning, where they shall lay their heads at night.

The same contrasts, only in less striking forms, appear throughout England. If you take a journey into the country-no matter in what direction you will soon find yourself travelling along an extensive park, surrounded by a high wall or hedge, running for miles in length. At a distance, within this magnificent domain, half hidden by embowering groves, half seen across the smooth-shaven lawn, you will descry the stately mansion; a flag, perhaps, floating from its loftiest tower, to show that the lord of the domain is at his castle; everything, indeed, indicating that he keeps the state of a prince. You turn aside, perhaps, to visit this abode of grandeur; you pass through a noble avenue of majestic trees, to the grand portico and portal; you are courteously admitted- you are taken through ranges of splendid apartments-you find them filled with the works of art and the devices of luxury, with paintings and statues, with soft couches, and gorgeous furniture, and costly libraries; you behold a scene richer, if mere cost is considered, than is often spread forth in the palaces of oriental magnificence. You are likely enough to retire from this fairy scene, in a mood to muse and meditate; and it will not be strange, if at every step and turn, you

meet with something that urges upon you, in some new form, the very questions you are considering. You take up your route again, and a few miles, upon one of the smooth and beautiful roads of England, brings you to a village, which presents another contrast to the splendour that surrounds the nobles of England. I certainly speak of this splendour with no unkind feeling; it spreads a fairy scene for the eye to dwell upon; I speak only of the fact. And for another fact of the same nature, enter the village inn, and listen to the news that is circulating there, and you will hear it announced, very likely, that the lord of the neighbouring castle is about to come down to the country; and it will be announced in a tone I do not say disproportioned to the importance of the event-but yet in a tone as if to shake the whole country with the anticipated roll of his chariot wheels.

And now who is this personage, that cannot move without making all this stir and sensation in the country? He is a person, probably, who is not distinguished either by talent or virtue, or any other merit, from thousands of his countrymen. The consideration in which he is held, is conferred upon him entirely by the institutions of society. It is factitious; and it must be admitted, that in the same proportion, it is unjust to the rest of the people. There is an aristocracy of nature's ordaining; the aristocracy of talent, of virtue, of accomplishments and manners, and of wealth, against which no such objection lies. The distinctions of merit are but just to individual exertion, and they are beneficial to the whole people. There is the descent, too, of a good name, and of property, from father to son, which is the order of Providence; a special premium bestowed by Heaven upon good conduct. But that feudal aristocracy, that transmission of hereditary honour, protected property, and actual power, from generation to generation, which obtains in Europe, is, in theory, most manifestly unjust. It takes away from individual respectability and influence, to bestow them upon a favoured class. It depresses the many, that it may raise the few. It tends to deprive virtue of its just reward; nay, and of its highest earthly reward; I mean social honour, human approbation. Let it be proposed to any people to take a fifth part of their property from them to make a favoured class rich. Would they consent to it? Would they not say, that it was depriving industry of its fair reward? Would they not hold it to be intolerable oppression? But is property the dearest treasure in the world; the highest reward of good conduct that is bestowed on earth? Far from it. The respect of our fellowbeings is a more valued good. There is nothing on earth which men so earnestly and universally desire of one another, no reward of good conduct which they so eagerly covet, as respect, esteem, admiration. Now, it is this special, this highest earthly treasure, which the principle of a feudal aristocracy invades: it is this, of which a certain amount is taken from the people, to make a particular class among them great. Nor is this all; for it is equally true, that hereditary power is given up to this class; and it is equally true, though it may not be so directly manifest, that property is given up to it—at least it is manifestly garnered up and kept for the favoured class.

If any one can doubt about the essential injustice of this system, let me ask him to go back in his thoughts to the origin of society. Let me ask him to suppose that he, with a thousand other persons, all standing

upon terms of equality, were about to reconstruct society, or to establish a colony on some distant shore. Suppose this company assembled, at the commencement of their enterprise, to form a civil constitution. At this meeting they all stand upon a level. Now imagine ten of these colonists to propose that they should be made earls or lords; that they should be made an hereditary branch of the legislature, with a negative upon the wishes and interests of all the rest; and that, in order to secure their permanent respectability, they should be permitted to hold their estates in entail. A proposition very palatable and pleasant to the ten, doubtless; but could the rest of the company listen to it? I put it to the veriest Tory in the world to say, whether, as one of that company, he would listen to it. I put it to him to say, whether he would consent that lots should be cast, to determine on whom the mantle of nobility should fall.

It would be amusing-for seriously the case never can be contemplated -to consider the arguments with which the ten would support their proposition. "Good people!" they would say,

"Order is Heaven's first law, and this confessed,

Some are, and must be, greater than the rest.' Society cannot be constructed without its base, its columns, and its Corinthian capitals; we propose to be those capitals. You want objects to reverence; we offer ourselves to be those objects. We propose that your sons shall reverence our sons, and so on, in successive generations, to the end of time. Not that our sons will certainly be any better than your sons; they may be worse; their situation will be likely to make them worse, because they will be more independent of public opinion than yours; but then the great point will be gained— your children will have something to reverence; they may even learn to hold the splendid vices of ours in respect!-but then, the great essential point will be gained. Besides all this, the institution we recommend will be an indispensable restraint upon the popular will. cannot be trusted with the care of your own interests; we propose ourselves and our successors as a house of lords to hold you in perpetual check." Now if all this would be ridiculous in a new construction of society, what is there in the consent of ages to make it any less absurd? Does the perpetuity of folly make it wisdom?

You

But I suppose it may be safely said that nobody maintains the aristocratic system to be strictly just. The Tory doctrine is, that it is expedient and necessary. That it is so for many nations, I admit. That government is to be constructed or changed, always with reference to the character and capacity of the people to be governed, is undoubtedly The question is, Are there any nations in modern times that can bear a more impartial system? Can human imperfection never be trusted with the trial of republican institutions?

true.

This is a question on which the minds, not only of statesmen, but of many private persons, both in England and America, are most earnestly and anxiously employed; and one on which I shall venture to offer a few suggestions. My limits, the plan I am pursuing in these volumes, forbid any thorough discussion, even if I were capable of it. Hints are all that I shall venture to propose; and even these, I anticipate, from my habits of thinking, will bear much more reference to the perils of liberty, than to the evils and wrongs to which it is opposed.

I find in constant conversation, not only in England, but in America, that there are two parties to this great political question of modern That it should be so in England is not surprising. But I should be glad to ask the American Tory what ground he does take. Would he have an hereditary nobility and a king? If he would, if he is such a thorough advocate of the aristocratic system, that he would consent to throw himself into the commonalty, and his children for ever after him, then is he indeed an honest and consistent Tory, and he is entitled, doubtless, to employ every weapon of argument and satire against the popular system in America. But if he would not take this ground, if he is the friend of republican institutions in any form, then I would humbly submit to him whether the course he is taking is agreeable to the highest wisdom and patriotism. "Course!" he will say, perhaps, "he is taking no course!" That is partly what I complain of; for American Toryism manifests itself chiefly in irregular attacks upon the institutions of the country, rather than in any settled plan for their amendment, or improvement, or destruction. But then I conceive, also, that there is a course in conversation, as well as in action. Well, and must not we talk? Is that your freedom?" Every man may talk, indeed, if he pleases; but that liberty, too, must be conceded to the atheist, the blasphemer, the corrupter of society. How ought a patriotic citizen to talk upon points that involve all the hopes of his country? 1 must think that the language of his distrust should still be kindly, helpful, and admonitory to the people, and not bitter and disheartening. I speak not this disrespectfully. If there be any one to whom my language might be thought to apply, who is my seniormore experienced, learned, and wise than I-to such a one I speak not. But if I could speak to the young men who are rising into life at this momentous period, I would say, "In God's name come to the help of your country in its great trial and peril; and stand not aloof, coldly to prophesy evil and ruin to it."

86

In short, I cannot understand the consistency of a man, who, having adopted the republican system in theory, practically gives it up to the Tory assailment, by admitting that our free institutions are too free for human virtue to bear; that all freedom bears in it the marks of inevitable destiny to evil. Let him say that he takes high ground, that he is a republican of the school of Washington and Hamilton; and I object nothing to his position. Let him say that all changes in government or in law should be gradual and cautious, and he will speak wisely. Lord Bacon, in his Political Essays, says, that "it is improper to try new experiments in the political body, unless the necessity be urgent, and the utility evident." And again: "Let all novelty, though it cannot, perhaps, be rejected, be held suspected."* Aristotle says, that "even the rust of government is to be respected, and that its fabric is never to be touched but with a fearful and trembling hand."† These are the wise suggestions of great and wise men. Improvement should be slow, experiments cautious, the popular tendencies carefully watched; but all this is very different from saying that they are tendencies to inevitable evil- a language from America most disheartening and provoking to the friends of popular liberty in the Old World;

* Essay xi.

† Aristotle's Politics, book ii.