had a natural apprehension that he must be breaking down from excessive labor. But he assured me that he was in robust health. He said that his constant speaking was the best exercise for him, and that he should die if he did not preach twelve times a week. I asked him when he found time to study, to which he replied that he could give but little preparation to his sermons, often entering the pulpit with not more than fifteen minutes previous thought of his subject.

But he has lately contrived to secure some degree of leisure. He has taken a house by Clapham Common, at several miles' distance from his church, to avoid interruptions. His deacons do all his visiting, and hence, in the interval of his public duties, he is able to snatch a few hours for study and books. I suspect, too, that he has read largely in former years. He appears to be very familiar with the old divines, especially with Bunyan, whom he calls "the greatest of Englishmen." In this very sermon, when speaking of the holy dead, he paid an eloquent tribute to the memory of the marvellous dreamer. Traces of his familiarity with the writings of Bunyan are seen everywhere in his style.

Such are my impressions of Mr. Spurgeon. I rank him very highly among the living men of his country. Sometimes I hear a fling at him, that he is a coarse, vulgar man, and that he is puffed up with conceit. Perhaps he is vain of his popularity. I can only say that I did not discover it in his public preaching, nor in his private con

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versation. As to his low breeding, certainly he has not an aristocratic air. As he has sprung out of the ground, he shows plain marks of his origin. He is of the earth, earthy. But that very fact may give him half his power. His thoughts and language are racy of the soil, and thus he is fitted to be what he is not a fashionable preacher, but a real tribune of the people, swaying the hearts of thousands of men. I think he would have been injured rather than benefited if he had been educated at one of the universities, and spent the years in studying Latin and Greek, which he has turned to much better account in studying Bunyan and the people of England. Let critics carp at him if they will. I shall still love, and honor, and admire Mr. Spurgeon—as a man of rare eloquence, and what is better still, of a great and noble Christian heart-a heart that loves his fellow-men, and seeks their good, and I believe that God has raised him up to be a great blessing to England.

CHAPTER IV.

ENGLISH MANNERS-RESERVE-PRIDE-SNOBBERY-WORSHIP of Rank -BETTER QUALITIES-ENGLISH HEARTS AND ENGLISH HOMES.

LONDON, June, 1858.

WHEN two Americans meet in England, the first question they ask each other, after bowing and shaking hands, is, What do you think of these English? Each answers according to his own experience. As he has chanced to fall in with favorable specimens or otherwise, so is his judgment of the whole people, which he is not slow to express in that peculiarly energetic and forcible language in which Brother Jonathan is apt to set forth his ideas of men and nations. One who should keep silence and listen to these off-hand verdicts, would be amused by their variety. I hear so many contradictory opinions that I feel much hesitation in expressing my own. Nor is this diffidence diminished by seeing the greater carefulness of those who know more.

We have in Liverpool a very excellent representative of our countrymen in the person of Rev. William H. Channing, of Boston, who has spent five years in that city, preaching to a Unitarian congregation. He is a man of fine culture and of large and liberal heart; full

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of enthusiasm for all that is true, noble, and beautiful, wherever he finds it; and whose reverence for the Old World is only equalled by his hope for the New. The other day a friend of mine, who had just landed from America, asked him the usual question, What he thought of the English? His answer was very significant. He said he did not think he understood them so well as he did when he came to England five years before! I commend this answer to those who are so prompt and even flippant in their judgment of a great people. If a man of so much intelligence, and with such excellent opportunities of seeing the better class of English society, has to confess himself perplexed in trying to comprehend the English character, a stranger who has been but a few weeks in the country had better be modest in expressing his opinion. At least it will be safer to confine himself to marked and salient points.

It does not surprise me at all to hear opinions so diverse, for it is clear to the least penetrating observer, that the English character combines some most contradictory elements, so that a man can hardly mingle with them for a few days without finding himself in different moods, alternately attracted and repelled.

outside of the English

Yet, unfortunately, it is

Equally clear is it that the character is not the best side. all which most travellers see. A young American comes to England, full of interest and admiration for the country of his fathers. Yet he hardly gets on shore before

his enthusiasm suffers a rude shock. His first experience falls upon him like a shower bath. At his landing, he is thrown, like Jonah into the whale's mouth, into the jaws of the Custom-house, where he is apt to be roughly handled. This is his introduction to John Bull, and he comes out of his embraces, thinking he is but a surly fellow.

This is experience No. 1. Now for experience No 2. He gets into a railway carriage, and begins to ride over the country. He is full of eager curiosity, and has a thousand questions to ask of what he sees. But his travelling companions are not at all communicative. For the interchange of thought that passes between them, they might as well be deaf and dumb. This reserve wounds the pride of a stranger. An American especially likes to talk and to exercise his national liberty of asking questions. And this distant manner, which repels intercourse, he resents as a silent insult, as a disdain of his society. One must be disposed to judge very kindly of his fellow-creatures, who can ride all day in the same carriage with a man who deigns him never a word, without thinking in his heart that he is a disagreeable churl. If this be a prejudice, it is certainly a very natural one, and one which it takes a long time to

cure.

And yet nothing can be more unjust than to impute this reserve always to pride or disdain, or to suppose that it is manifested only towards foreigners. I find, in