FROM

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER.

SERIES III.

VOL. IV.	B E T H A N Y, OCTOBER, 1847.	NO. X.

      My dear Clarinda--WHILE tradition and poetry assign to Leicester an origin older than the New Testament, authentic record only assumes for it a foundation anterior to the invasion of the island by the Romans. Antiquaries derive its ancient name, Ratae, from the Celtic Rath, "a cleared space," a Latinized form of a British term. It paid a regular stipend to the Roman government while possessed by its soldiery and occupied as a Roman camp. It finally became a walled town, with gates and bulwarks, a seat of temples, a forum, and princely dwellings, with tesselated pavements.

      As early as 658 a cathedral and bishop's palace are said to have been founded in this city. From the invasion of the Saxons down to the times of Edmund Ironsides, 1016, and during the Norman conquest it was the theatre of numerous conflicts, of triumphs, and defeats.

      An Abbey was founded here in 1137, by Robert Bossu, the second Norman Earl of Leicester. Assemblies of Barons and Parliaments were here occasionally convened, connected with various important events--such as the obtaining of Magna Charta, and the framing statutes against the. Lollards and other heretics, down to 1414.--This, too, was the seat of the famous "Parliament of Bats," wearing staves and bludgeons instead of swords and weapons of war. Here Richard III had his last sleep on the night before the fatal battle of Aug. 22, 1485. Here Cardinal Wolsey died in the Abbey in 1530. Here, in 1556, Thomas Moore was burnt to death for denying that the bread and wine used in "the sacrament" were the real body and blood of Christ. Here, too, "one Mother Cook" was burned for being a witch, not long after the unfortunate Thomas Moore; and as late as as July, 1616, nine other poor women were burned under the charge of witchcraft.

      Leicester has had the honor of being often visited by English Kings. Queen Anne, consort of James I, Prince Henry, Charles I visited it; but for these visits, the last, Indeed, being a visitation, it paid a large price in the blood of its citizens. Puritanism was [546] very active here. Some of the Leicester Puritans led jack-asses before the altars of the churches in ridicule of the ordinance of baptism about the middle of the 17th century. Many other important incidents, political and ecclesiastical, are related in the details of the history of this venerable city, of which I cannot now speak particularly.

      I spent three days in Leicester; but being much fatigued with our protracted meeting in Nottingham, I was able to deliver but two lectures during my sojourn. They were both heard by large and attentive auditories, in one of its most spacious Halls. Meantime I was curious to visit some ancient celebrated spots. Amongst these were the celebrated Abbey and its beautiful gardens above alluded to, made more interesting to me by the death of Cardinal Wolsey. The gateway still stands through which the Cardinal entered, and the spot of ground at the door of the lodge is still known where the Cardinal stood when addressing the Father Abbot he pronounced the humiliating confession, "Had I served my God with half the zeal I have served my King, he would not thus have deserted my grey hairs." Shakspeare tells the story thus:--

      Thus died Wolsey, who, from being born a butcher's son, at Ipswich, rose above the king himself, in glory--built a palace at Hampton Court, with a hall the proudest in England or the world, and made a present of it to a King. I have walked through that hall and palace, and stood on the spot on which the Cardinal confessed his follies, where, in three days after, at 8 o'clock A. M., November 29, 1530, he died and was buried in the ground he begged in "Our Lady's Chapel" at the Abbey; and, while standing there, was never more deeply impressed with the folly of human ambition. I remembered his splendid feast, and his 270 beds of down [547] provided for his noble and royal guests at one illustrious banquet, and pictured to myself the poor old man begging a burial spot from an old Abbot, deserted and persecuted by his king. Sic transit gloria mundi.

      The leafless branches of the old trees, the dense masses of ivy on the decaying turrets, and the dilapidated ruins all around, associating with the melancholy reminiscences of the fallen Wolsey, occasioned trains of reflection which may be more easily imagined than expressed. The words of David occurring led me into a more pleasant field of thought:--"I saw," says he, "the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree; yet he passed away, and lo he was not; yea, I sort him, but he could not be Found. Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace."

      From the Abbey we were induced by our kind friend, Mr. Manning, to extend our ride to Bradgate Hall, erected in l546, the birth place of Lady Jane Grey, some six miles from Leicester. This is a sequestered spot, of great interest and melancholy associations. Here are the ruins of ancient grandeur and magnificence, covering a large space. It lies in a valley surrounded with hills, studded with ancient oaks, in the midst of a park seven miles in circumference. It was amidst these hills, and under the splendid chesnut trees that surround these ruins, that Lady Jane spent her sunny evenings in reading Plato as embodied in his Phædo. It was here that Roger Ascham, the celebrated scholar and royal preceptor, found her communing with the melifluous philosopher, while her youthful companions were engaged in the pleasures of the chase in the neighboring park and woodlands. A few years after this she was Queen of England for ten days; but at the shrine of the bloody Mary's ambition her head rolled from the scaffold in the Tower of London. The oaks all round these ivy mantled ruins, are made to record the melancholy tale by their singular appearance, having all been beheaded by an indignant tenantry, to whom the memory of Lady Jane was dearer far than all the oaks of Bradgate Park. Their broad and bushy tops, as weeping willows round the chapel and the towers of the once castellated mansion, present to those who are informed of the cause, a very pleasing though melancholy tribute to the memory of a lady of refined learning and manners, and of an unambitious and unassuming mind.

      Among the ruins remain yet parts of two towers builded of brick, with coins on the angles, and cornice mouldings of soft red sandstone. It is difficult to comprehend the purpose for which the [548] different parts of the pile were erected. It tells the melancholy tale of departed greatness, and silently bears witness to the oft forgotten and neglected truth--"They build too low," for happiness and glory, "who build beneath the skies."

      While standing on the ruins and eating a luncheon, I could count, in sight, some hundred and twenty deer, pasturing immediately in sight of the chapel where lie the ashes of Henry, Lord Grey, of Grosby. We saw no human being but ourselves in sight of the old castle. In the decayed pleasure grounds, amidst the chesnut promenades, I saw one of the most magnificent white thorns I have ever observed. Its wide-spreading top filled a circle of some 150 Feet circumference. We observed two or three others nearly as large. They must have been centuries old. Indeed they would seem, from their position, to have been a part of the original plan of beautifying the grounds; but as Lady Jane was beheaded, February 12th, 1554, they could scarcely have been planted in her day. But we must again return from this pleasing excursion to Leicester.

      There are many curiosities in Leicester which will interest every antiquary of taste; but I have more interesting matters on hand, and will only note a Roman pavement and a Roman mile-stone of great antiquity. Some romantic genius makes out a Temple of Janus near the gate of the old city, from various indications; but especially from a most singularly beautiful tesselated pavement found in digging a cellar in 1830. Some eighteen feet of it were laid bare. We descended into it, and found it a very curious work, indeed. The whole pavement is enclosed with double borders, within which are squares, circles, octagonal forms, diamonds, foliations, variegated in color, and of tesselae not more than a half or three quarters of an inch square, placed in lime cement upon red sand. It is probable, indeed, that a temple dedicated to Janus, being near the gate of the ancient city, was erected here. Eleven such pavements, however, have been found in that city.¹

      There was dug up, about two miles from Leicester, in 1771, a cylindrical mile-stone, three and a half feet high, five feet seven inches in circumference. The letters of the inscription are rudely cut. They are--

It has been translated by some person thus:--"To the Emperor Cesar Trajan, Hadrian, son of the illustrious Trajan, conqueror of Parthia and grand-son or the godlike Nerva the Augustus, the chief in the Pontificate. Having been endowed with the tribunitian power four years, and in his third consulate. From the Ratae of the Coritani, three miles." This would assign it to some year between A. D, 117 and 138.

      But I found matters of much more interest to me in Leicester than these. This was the city of Carey and Robert Hall, two Baptist ministers of illustrious fame--the one for his eloquence; the other for his missionary zeal and labors. They both were pastors of the same church. The commencement of this church, over which presided these distinguished men, is singularly interesting.

      Some seventy years ago five poor obscure journeymen wool-carders migrated into Leicester. They for a time went abroad to worship; but finally concluded to form a little society in this city, and invited some one to preach to them. They struggled through much obscurity and difficulty, and ultimately made a fair commencement as a church. They obtained help from abroad, and finally the shoemaker Carey become their pastor. This shoemaker, by great zeal and labor and study, became the learned and gifted and useful Dr. Carey, whose fame is commensurate with Baptist missionary labors. Robert Hall succeeded him after his removal, and occupied the pulpit eighteen years. I walked round this twice patched old meeting-house--a monument of old-fashioned Baptist simplicity in their days of poverty and consequent humility.

      All mouths are full of the fame and zeal and labors and success of Carey. Of the fine Saxon, pure, chaste, and beautiful written sermons of Robert Hall, all critics speak with approbation and even admiration. Of his pulpit eloquence all that have heard him speak in unmeasured strains of eulogy and rapture. Some of those who sat under his whole ministry in this city, during eighteen years, and who were members not of his church, but of his congregation, though still unbaptized and unprofessing, have held me in profound attention while they dilated upon his inimitable power of oratory. They have been chained, overwhelmed, absorbed, lost in his flights angelic and sublime; still were not converted. I was then led to ask why Mr. Hall left Leicester and migrated to Bristol. They could not tell, save that he desired to change his field of labor himself, complaining that many of his hearers were going to hell and that he could not prevent it. Eloquent and powerful preachers, as the world calls them, are not always successful preachers. They [550] are too eloquent to be useful. We have still a few of that character in England, as well as in America; yet the church, as well as the world, glories in eloquent preachers. We want preachers eloquent indeed in scripture doctrine, eloquent in argument, eloquent in exhortation, eloquent in good works; but the lrvings, the Chalmers's, the Halls, and all the superlatives of pulpit oratory, are indeed acceptable to those who love the theory of Christianity more than the practice, the style of the preacher more than his doctrine, and his learning more than his piety.

      I am just here reminded of the tinker John Bunyan, on two accounts. Dr. John Owen said, or else my memory is at fault, that he would give all his learning (and he had as much of it as any man in his day) for the preaching talents of John Bunyan. I am also reminded of that truly great man from being shown in Leicester the guard-house, yet standing on the wall, in which, as a soldier in the wars of Cromwell, he kept guard in turn. One night it was his turn to keep guard; but some meeting or some cause calling his attention away, he promised a fellow soldier, should he take his place that night, he would take his place the next. His companion consented. But a ball being fired at the guard-house by some of the enemy during the night, and it happening to pass between the logs, killed the substitute; and thus, by a kind and special providence, Bunyan's life was saved, and that without the obligation to pay the stipulated consideration.

      I visited the new Baptist church in Leicester. It is a large, spacious, and beautiful affair. It is well constructed for seeing and hearing. It will hold some fifteen hundred persons. The church is at present under the pastoral care of Elder Mursell, a gentleman of popular manners, of good declamatory powers, of much policy and management. His salary is the largest in the kingdom among the Baptists, being four hundred pounds sterling, or two thousand dollars per annum. He was so polite as to call to see me at Mr. Manning's, but it was neither convenient for him to hear my lectures nor to cultivate my acquaintance. In the new meeting-house there stands on the right of the pulpit a monument to Robert Hall, and another on the left to Carey. The church reports four hundred members. Thus from five wool-carders, in seventy years, have been reared five churches in and around Leicester. But the house is now so splendid, and some of its members so rich, that I do not think the present four hundred will accomplish as much, pro rata, in the next seventy years, as the five journeymen have accomplished in the last seventy. [551]

      I formed a very pleasant acquaintance with Elder Winks, of the general Baptist denomination, resident at Leicester; as also with one of the deacons of Robert Hall's church, now under the pastoral care of Elder Mursell. Both heard my lectures in Leicester with much candor, and expressed a cordial concurrence with all that they heard. One of my lectures was on the theory of Christianity--the other on the practice. Elder Winks is one of the editorial corps, and possesses much influence amongst his denomination.

      Having just returned much fatigued from the palace of the Tuilleries, and from the church La Magdalene, founded by Napoleon, and finished by Louis Philippe, the most splendid in the world, if we except St. Peter's at Rome, I must close for the present.

      Having spoken fifteen discourses in London, at seven different places, and being much exhausted with so much labor, I fled for rest from that metropolis to this, the next in population and magnificence in Europe. The two hundred and fifty miles by sea and land from London here are passed over in some twenty hours, when all things happen favorably. In my voyage here there was some little detention, and I am already tired of being a stranger and alone in this great metropolis. I will tell you something of London and my labors there in my next. Meantime I sigh for repose, and often think of the hills around Bethany, and the enviable lot of those I left behind me, compared with that of the millions through which I am passing in this Old World of palaces and hovels, of princes and beggars, of exuberant wealth and cheerless poverty. May the Lord in his mercy watch over the destiny of your native country, and long preserve it from the vices and follies which have entailed on France, on England, and Europe, an inheritance of miseries and misfortunes from which neither the wisdom of politicians nor the benevolence of Christians can rescue them for generations to come.

      With my Christian salutation to all the brethren and sisters in the church at Bethany, I remain, as ever, most affectionately, your father,

      P. S. Letters to your mother and other members of my family, will, I hope, safely accompany this.

[The Millennial Harbinger, Third Series, 4 (October 1847): 546-552.]