LANGHAM PLACE CHURCH, THE announcement of so great a number of Metropolitan churches, might have justified a less imaginative class of persons than our artists, in looking for a sensible improvement in the architectural scenery of London, in expecting such an exhibition of tasteful design and skilful execution, as should gratify the cultivated mind, while they instructed, by actual models, the less refined por tions of the community, and set before the absolutely unlettered temples of the national worship, which should awaken the faculty of observation, call into exercise the perception of beauty and excellence, and by a natural progress, inspire and heighten the devotional taste. These edifices have shot up before us, with all the rapidity and business-like punctuality to be expected from the contracts of English tradesmen, but the end rationally to be looked for is not satisfied; the activity of the mason is every where applauded, the taste of the architect every where the subject of animadversion. The churches which thus every day spring up, do in truth, in reference to our national feelings and prejudices, produce no distinct feature, no depth of impression. London churches do not in any case carry with them to the English bosom, that touching and quiet sim plicity, the air of pious humility, with which our best associations have invested the parish church. The structures in question break in upon these our preconceived notions with painful violence; they have neither the vastness and sublimity, which elevates, and as it were surprises into the devotional feeling, nor do they by any means whatever attempt to accommodate themselves to our early impressions and best feelings; they seem rather to belong to a system going on for the establishment of a great city, than as temples of the Most High, suited to the taste and feelings of a modest and pious people. It that we are indisposed to cherish a faste In our walks among these secondary churches, if we may so term them, and witness the lavish expenditure of so much labour, with so much cost, we are forcibly reminded of those monuments of misapplied human industry, which belong to a period when the manual operation of quarrying, of masonry, and sculpture, had arrived to a high degree of excellence, while the arts of scientific construction were unknown; when the priest of the monarch could command the patient industry of a thousand hands, but not the skill of one intelligent head. Let it not be imagined new we FUGITIVE SKETCHES. and lavished upon edifices of comparatively base materials, and of scarcely any assignable proportion in point of magnitude. But architecture, like every art in which the luxury of man can be indulged, or his vanity gratified, has its fashions, and the building of second rate churches is the present rage. In few words, we would not in our churches adopt the utter contempt and rejection of ornament, with the sectarians, nor make trifling designs the mere vehicle of ornament: we are of that number who think that we have not enough of magnificence in the national religion; the beauty of holiness should not with us be confined to metaphor; but we would have our churches at least,built under more responsible judgment than that of any individual architect. What solid reason can be given in the way of objection to such edifices being under the controlling management of a well-constituted COMMITTEE OF TASTE? Our limits, however, remind us that these general remarks are o'ergrowing their proper channel, and we conclude with a few words which may fairly connect our observations with the actual production before us. This church is, we believe, designed and built by Mr. Nash; and, among churches of the florid class, will, we venture to predict, eventually take a fore most rank. Much of that vulgar and illiterate abuse by which the bolder flights of genius are ever assailed, has been heaped on Mr. Nash, and we consider most undeservedly. The man of wit and letters may have his joke, and the man of pun and caricature may convert a wholesome material into garbage suited to his taste and calling; but we predict the performance will outlive censure, and be approved even by the many, as they become better informed on the subject. To speak of it technically, much might be said both for and against the idea of making the spire an entire and unbroken cone. With Wren's examples of the spires of Bow Church, and that of St. Bride's, no architect of inventive faculty need be at a loss for the means of producing a bold spire of conical arrangement, which shall still be so broken in its slope surface as to make the variations graceful. The tower and spire of Bow Church cost somewhat more than £8000 sterling, and we are not to look to our present economical church builders for exertions disproportioned to the pecuniary means allotted them: but the examples are before them, and should be attended to. The effect of the New Church frora the south, and from that point of the main 67 street at which it first comes into view, is picturesque (in the best and most artist-like sense of the term), and eminently beautiful; and when completed, and the front clear, the conical spire, the great subject of complaint, will be found to compass but a subordinate portion of the whole, while the general effect will bear us handsomely out in all we have taken the licence to say of it. FUGITIVE SKETCHES. No. III. BY WILMINGTON FLEMING. A COBBLER IN HIS STALL. In what consists this greatness in the mind, All men are great within their several spheres; THAT every rank and condition of life has its leading characters, or, in other words, Great men, is a truth founded upon an attentive survey of human nature. That degree of personal influence which some men attain, is derived more from local associations than from any positive influence of phy sical or mental superiority. "Some men are born great, and some achieve greatness;" the first steps into his situation by hereditary right, without awakening our surprise, or exciting our envy; and we feel inclined to obey him, who is born great, with less reluctance than we can yield to the superiority of the man who has achieved his own greatness, because the influence of the latter is the more evident, and the supremacy of mind, while it commands our obedience, gives us a conscious twinge of our own inferiority. It is perhaps on this very feeling of selfishness, that makes us so repugnant to acknowledge the claims of superior talent, when unsupported by the distinction of ancestry, that the political doctrine of legitimacy has laid its broad foundations in the mind; not that I would dispute the justice of its influence within certain moral limits,--~; considering (as I do) that monarchs are entitled to the quiet possession of their thrones, upon the same tenure that a freeholder succeeds to the enjoyment of his land: but there are millions, uninfluenced by this perception of moral justice, who would rather obey a legisi mate Tyrant, with no personal or mental attribute of true greatness to countenance his elevation, than they would acknowledge the influence, or bend to the patriot sway, of the liberating hero, whose sword has been drawn in the defence of mankind, and for the punishment of oppression. We hate to acknow ledge our individual littleness, and even attempt to disguise it from ourselves: thus fraud and tyranny become venerable in the inanity of public feeling; the greatness of situation is made superior to that of effort; and generation rolls upon generation, like waves, in this immense ocean of existence; and the sweep of sudden passion may sometimes rouse them into momentary fury, the land-marks of the world may be removed, and the fertility of empires swallowed up; and then again the storm subsides into its original apathetic calmness, and we continue to slumber on, in the enjoy ment of old systems,---and old abuses, united to ancient claims and hereditary errors. There is another species of the Great, whom Shakspeare has humorously added to the two we have been considering,--those who have "Greatness thrust upon them." Such, for instance, as the titled Civic turtle-hunter,---or the Court parasite, who receives a Peerage as a small recompence for private service, or other dirty-work; though what dirty-work can possibly be performed within the splendid precincts of a palace, to us who are without the pale of great ness, it would be folly to conjecture, We can be certain, however, that it does not soil the hands;---a stain might be found, to be sure, but then a brilliant star can cover it; and who beneath so refulgent a badge of distinction, would be vain enough to penetrate the heart? Under this latter class we may also rank the humble individual upon whom I have thrust the great distinction of an introduction to the public. Oliver Cromwell used to say (in allusion to his own sin gular elevation), that a man never went so far as when he did not know where he was going: so it frequently happens that an author seldom writes more, then when he has some trifling matter-of-fact incident to mingle with the exuberance of imagination. Thus I have been seriously expatiating upon greatness, when I had sat down to give some account of a Cobbler !---and yet a Cobbler may be a great man, since all true greatness consists in hereditary or local influence,--Kings are but great men on their Thrones; (and we have had opportunities of seeing them out of their spheres, more than once in our own times); and why may not a Blacksmith be a great man at his anvil?---a Barber in his shop?---and a Cobbler in his stall? ---I have mentioned those three ancient professions more from design than otherwise, seeing that they have been from the olden time the living depositaries of oral tradition and local anecdotes, which, with the additional knowledge of each successive proprietor, has descended as lineally, and with as much mystery, per. haps, as the Sacred learning of the Druids, which was scarcely whispered beneath the venerable Oaks, in the hallowed groves of Mona!--those useful, (I had almost said learned) professions, have, time out of mind, produced their Great men,---Reformers---Astrologers--~ Orators---and Poets!---Wat Tyler had nearly given law to his Sovereign in Smithfield, if the Civic Monarch had not taken him unawares; and Shakspeare, who understood human nature better than any man, has introduced a group of those gentlemen, to give a higher effect to a relation of those prodigies which were seen in the Heavens in the reign of that gloomy tyrant King John; and I doubt not but they gave an interpretation with as much astrological ability as Lilly, Culpepper, or Francis Moore himself. In one of my desultory rambles after amusement, it was my misfortune to discover a most formidable rent in my shoe, which threatened to let my toe see more of the world than is consonant with respectability. I was at this juncture slowly perambulating that teeming labyrinth to the strangers in London," Seven Dials;" but let not the reader suppose that I had any business to transact in Monmouth Street.---No !---I had proudly passed that emporium of departed fashions, and glancing a look of ineffable complacency on the sleeve of my fashionable Surtout, "as good as new," I had only proceeded a few paces, when I discovered the unlucky rent, which seemed gaping to swallow up all my former pretensions to gentility. To get it mended was my next idea; but how was not so easy to determine. I perceived several cellars in the vicinity, where old shoes, neatly repaired were most tastefully disposed for sale; but on applying for the requisite assistance, I was proudly given to understand, that they were dealers, and did not repair. My case had now grown desperate,---at every step away went a stitch,---and never did physician take more pains to confine the spirit within its decaying tenement, than I did to coax my unlucky sole to adhere in its former attachment to the upper leather; MORE ENGLISH THAN EVER. but all would have been to no purpose, had not the welcome sounds of a hammer falling most musically on its concomitant lapstone saluted my ears, like the voice of friendship in the hour of adversity,--or the cry of "Laud!" to the voyager from some distant region. The knocking became every moment louder as I advanced; and I was within a few paces of the cellar from whence it proceeded, when my attention was suddenly arrested by a good-humoured though rather broken voice, that merrily chaunted,-- A frog he would a wooing go, Heigho! says Rowly, At any other time it is probable that I' (To be continued.) MORE ENGLISH THAN EVER. I LEARNED yesterday, that Sir R. W. had returned from his first continental tour. We were intimately acquainted at college, and I always observed in him the greatest attachment to his country, to the customs of his ancestors, and even to those prejudices which the vicissitudes of the times have not yet effaced from our national manners. I went early in the morning to see him, and found him just sitting down to breakfast. -Alas! my friend, said he, embracing me, how I longed to see old England! what reason have I had to be confirmed in my former opinions! and how justly can I say with a poet, who however was no Englishman : "Plus je vis l'etranger, plus j'aimai ma patrie!" You are still then, said I, as firm in your principles as when we were at college?The same thing, answered he: I have had the good fortune to preserve myself from the contagion of our dandies: I left this an Englishman, and I am returned more English than ever. Whilst he was speaking, breakfast was brought in. There was a chicken fricasee, an herb omelet, and a batch of hermitage. You dine very early, said I, surprised at this display? Oh no, answered he, this is my breakfast. I 69 take it as I did at Grignon's, at Paris, for tea disagrees with me horribly. Be sides, you know, that I am fond of economy; and, taking a solid breakfast, one has no occasion for a lunch. He began to eat like a famished wolf, and did not discontinue this occupation till the servant brought him in a note. -Do you know who this is from, said he? From a charming girl whom I met in the Rue Vivienne, and whom I accom panied from thence to Leicester-square: You have then deserted your beautiful Eliza, the loveliest blonde that ever danced at Almac's?-Don't mention ber; she's so languid, so sentimental; she cannot even guess a charade, or condescend to trifle. Breakfast concluded, the toilette commenced. My friend wished me to be a witness of this operation. He made me admire his coat, a chef-d'œuvre of a celebrated artist of the Rue St. Honore; and his boots made by the Pole of the Palais Royale. He assured me, that his waistcoat was of the real Lyons Cashmere; and that his watch had cost him a hundred pounds at Breguet's. To interrupt the conversation, I asked him how he purposed to pass his time this autumn. Ma foi! I really do not know, for Brighton wearies me; fox hunting appears to me a barbarous amusement; I have lost all relish for races; and I like pheasants only when they are stuffed with truffles. But I intend to take a fencing master, and I have bought all the Vaudvilles played at Paris since the Restoration. I shall read them constantly, for I assure y ou I am passionately fond of Vaudvilles. One o'clock struck. My friend left me to pursue my amusement. In the evening, I met him at the door of the Sabloniere Hotel. I have just been eating, said he, a dish of macaroni, and a Patè d'Angouleme; I wish to go to the theatre, but I know not which to prefer. I see on a bill, "Twould puzzle Conjuror," but this title has too much of John Bull about it! Don't suppose it,' said I; 'tis the "Bourgmestre de la Porte St. Martin." What do you say? I am off!-And, so saying, he darted away like lightning.. MATRIMONIAL ADVENTURE. A NATIVE of Paris, who had acquired a large fortune in one of the French West India Islands, when somewhat advanced in life, resolved to share his fortune with a woman of merit ; but not meeting with" one to please him, he determined to apply to a personal friendand commercial correspondent in Paris. Bred up exclu sively to commerce, he knew no other style than that he used in trade, and treated of the affairs of love as he did those of business. He wrote to a friend, and among a number of commissions, was the following: "Item.--Seeing that I have taken a resolution to marry, and that I do not find a suitable match for me here, do not fail to send, by next ship bound hither, a young woman of the qualifications and form following: As for a portion, I demand none. Let her be of an honest family, between twenty and twenty-five years of age, of a middle stature and wellproportioned, her face agreeable, her temper mild, her character blameless, her health good, and her constitution strong enough to bear the change of the climate, that there may be no occasion to look out for a second through lack of the first, soon after she comes to hand, which must be provided against as much as possible, considering the great distance and the dangers of the sea. If she arrives here, conditioned as abovesaid, with the present letter endorsed by you, or at least an attested copy thereof, that there may be no mistake or imposition, I hereby oblige and engage myself to satisfy the said letter, by marrying the bearer at fifteen days sight. In witness whereof, I subscribe this," &c. The writings which were thought necessary for so exact a man as her future husband, were, an extract from the parish register; a certificate of her character, signed by the curate; an attestation of her neighbours, setting forth that she had, for the space of three years, lived with an old aunt, who was intolerably peevish, and yet she had not, during the whole of that time, given her the least cause of complaint; and lastly, the goodness of her constitution was certified by four physicians of eminence. The Parisian merchant, who during a long life of commercial industry, had never before had such a commission, read over and over his singular order, which put the future spouse of his friend on the same footing as the bales of goods he had to send him. He endeavoured, however, to execute his trust as faithfully as he could; and after many enquiries, he thought he had found a lady who possessed the necessary qualifications, in a young woman of reputable family, but without fortune, of good education, and tolerably handsome. He made the proposal to her, as his friend had directed; and the young gentlewoman, who had no subsistence but from a cross old aunt, who gave her a great deal of uneasiness,' accepted it. A ship bound for the island was then fitting at Rochelle; the gentle woman went on board it, together with the bales of goods, being well provided with all necessaries, and particularly with a certificate in due form, and endorsed by the correspondent. She was also included in the invoice, the last article of which run thus: "ItemA young gentlewoman of twenty-five years of age, of the quality and shape and conditioned as per order, as appears by the affidavits and certificates sh chas to produec” Previous to her departure on so singular an errand, the Parisian merchant sent letters of advice by other ships, to his friend, announcing that by such a ship he should send a young woman, describing her age, character, and appearance. The letters of advice, the bales, and the lady, all arrived safe in port; and the expectant merchant, who was one of the foremost on the pier, when she landed, was gratified to see in a handsome young woman, that his wishes had been attended to. The lady being introduced, presented him with his correspondent's letter, endorsed, "The bearer of this, is the spouse you ordered me to send you." A few days were devoted to courtship, and to ascertaining each other's dispositions, when the nuptial ceremony took place with great magnificence, and Martinique did not boast a happier couple than the one thus singularly united. THE DON AND, DEE.-Original. Like silver shines the dimpling Dee, That seeks with rapid speed the sea, Wide wandering on a pebbled path, Through many a wild and woody strath; Whilst cross'd with cruives," the darker Den, Its sister stream, winds slowly on, And bonnie baith their scenes to see, The banks and braes of Don and Dee. Oft have I by Balgownie's brig Pluck'd hawthorn spray and beather sprig; On Tolla's tap, and Banchary's brae, For shell and sea-weed, near the Daig, The wild-hill berries, black and blae; At ocean's ebb, crawled o'er the craig; Roved light as air, as fresh and free," The banks and braes of Don and Dee, When yet a boy,-when but a bairn,sought the quarry, cave, and cairn; And down the den and bickering rill Of Rubslaw's rock and whinny hill! But ah! the distant and the dead! Those scenes with me again must tread, E'er dear as they have been, can be The banks and braes of Don and Dee. To sea, my ship!-Slack every sail, For fresh and favouring comes the gale: Swift be thy speed!-may tempests sleep, Whilst thy proud prow divides the deep! Till thy keel eatch on Scotia's strand! Nor beach nor breeze thy way withstand, O! then I'll seek, with thanks to thee, The banks and braes of Don and Dee! A. P. • Embankments made to prevent the salmon getting up the river farther then fishing stations. |