On Thursday, At Five P. M., We Drove To Stafford House, To Go With Her
Grace To The House Of Parliament.
What a magnificent building!
I say
so, in contempt of all criticism. I hear that all sorts of things are
said against it. For my part, I consider that no place is so utterly
hopeless as that of a modern architect intrusted with a great public
building. It is not his fault that he is modern, but his misfortune.
Things which in old buildings are sanctioned by time he may not
attempt; and if he strikes out _new_ things, that is still worse.
He is fair game for every body's criticism. He builds too high for
one, too low for another; is too ornate for this, too plain for that;
he sacrifices utility to aesthetics, or aesthetics to utility, and
somebody is displeased either way. The duchess has been a sympathizing
friend of the architect through this arduous ordeal. She took pleasure
and pride in his work, and showed it to me as something in which she
felt an almost personal interest.
For my part, I freely confess that, viewed as a national monument, it
seems to me a grand one. What a splendid historic corridor is old
Westminster Hall, with its ancient oaken roof! I seemed to see all
that brilliant scene when Burke spoke there amid the nobility, wealth,
and fashion of all England, in the Warren Hastings trial. That speech
always makes me shudder. I think there never was any thing more
powerful than its conclusion. Then the corridor that is to be lined
with statues of the great men of England will be a noble affair. The
statue of Hampden is grand. Will they leave out Cromwell? There is
less need of a monument to him, it is true, than to most of them. We
went into the House of Lords. The Earl of Carlisle made a speech on
the Cuban question, in the course of which he alluded very gracefully
to a petition from certain ladies that England should enforce the
treaties for the prevention of the slave trade there; and spoke very
feelingly on the reasons why woman should manifest a particular
interest for the oppressed. The Duke of Argyle and the Bishop of
Oxford came over to the place where we were sitting. Her grace
intimated to the bishop a desire to hear from him on the question, and
in the course of a few moments after returning to his place, he arose
and spoke. He has a fine voice, and speaks very elegantly.
At last I saw Lord Aberdeen. He looks like some of our Presbyterian
elders; a plain, grave old man, with a bald head, and dressed in
black; by the by, I believe I have heard that he is an elder in the
National kirk; I am told he is a very good man. You don't know how
strangely and dreamily this House of Lords, as _seen_ to-day,
mixed itself up with my historic recollections of by-gone days.
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