We passed through the guard room, library, and along a corridor where
hung a row of pictures of all the archbishops from the very earliest
times; and then the archbishop took me into his study, which is a most
charming room, containing his own private library: after that we all
sat down to lunch in a large dining hall. I was seated between the
archbishop and a venerable admiral in the navy. Among other things,
the latter asked me if there were not many railroad and steamboat
accidents in America. O my countrymen, what trouble do you make us in
foreign lands by your terrible carelessness! I was obliged, in candor,
to say that I thought there was a shocking number of accidents of that
sort, and suggested the best excuse I could think of - our youth and
inexperience; but I certainly thought my venerable friend had touched
a very indefensible point.
Among other topics discussed in the drawing room, I heard some more
_on dits_ respecting spiritual rappings. Every body seems to be
wondering what they are, and what they are going to amount to.
We took leave of our kind host and his family, gratefully impressed
with the simplicity and sincere cordiality of our reception. There are
many different names for goodness in this world; but, after all, true
brotherly kindness and charity is much the same thing, whether it show
itself by a Quaker's fireside or in an archbishop's palace.
Leaving the archbishop's I went to Richmond's again, where I was most
agreeably entertained for an hour or two. We have an engagement for
Playford Hall to-morrow, and we breakfast with Joseph Sturge: it being
now the time of the yearly meeting of the Friends, he and his family
are in town.
LETTER XXIV.
MY DEAR S.: -
The next morning C. and I took the cars to go into the country, to
Playford Hall. "And what's Playford Hall?" you say. "And why did you
go to see it?" As to what it is, here is a reasonably good picture
before you. As to why, it was for many years the residence of Thomas
Clarkson, and is now the residence of his venerable widow and her
family.
Playford Hall is considered, I think, the oldest of the fortified
houses in England, and is, I am told, the only one that has water in
the moat. The water which is seen girdling the wall, in the picture,
is the moat: it surrounds the place entirely, leaving no access except
across the bridge, which is here represented.
After crossing this bridge, you come into a green court yard filled
with choice plants and flowering shrubs, and carpeted with that thick,
soft, velvet-like grass which is to be found nowhere else in so
perfect a state as in England.
