This might prove an objection, possibly, to those who
wish to talk; but as I greatly prefer to hear, it would prove none to
me. I must say, however, that on this occasion the matter was quite
equitably managed. There were, I should think, some twenty or thirty
at the breakfast table, and the conversation formed itself into little
eddies of two or three around the table, now and then welling out into
a great bay of general discourse. I was seated between Macaulay and
Milman, and must confess I was a little embarrassed at times, because
I wanted to hear what they were both saying at the same time. However,
by the use of the faculty by which you play a piano with both hands, I
got on very comfortably.
Milman's appearance is quite striking; tall, stooping, with a keen
black eye and perfectly white hair - a singular and poetic contrast. He
began upon architecture and Westminster Abbey - a subject to which I am
always awake. I told him I had not yet seen Westminster; for I was now
busy in seeing life and the present, and by and by I meant to go there
and see death and the past.
Milman was for many years dean of Westminster, and kindly offered me
his services, to indoctrinate me into its antiquities.
Macaulay made some suggestive remarks on cathedrals generally. I said
that I thought it singular that we so seldom knew who were the
architects that designed these great buildings; that they appeared to
me the most sublime efforts of human genius.
He said that all the cathedrals of Europe were undoubtedly the result
of one or two minds; that they rose into existence very nearly
contemporaneously, and were built by travelling companies of masons,
under the direction of some systematic organization. Perhaps you knew
all this before, but I did not; and so it struck me as a glorious
idea. And if it is not the true account of the origin of cathedrals,
it certainly ought to be; and, as our old grandmother used to say,
"I'm going to believe it."
Looking around the table, and seeing how every body seemed to be
enjoying themselves, I said to Macaulay, that these breakfast parties
were a novelty to me; that we never had them in America, but that I
thought them the most delightful form of social life.
He seized upon the idea, as he often does, and turned it playfully
inside out, and shook it on all sides, just as one might play with the
lustres of a chandelier - to see them glitter. He expatiated on the
merits of breakfast parties as compared with all other parties.
