Book: A Trip Abroad

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On the wall, just at hand, is a bust made from a cast taken after his
death. Near by is a stained-glass window with the inscription,
"America's gift to Shakespeare's church," and not far away is a card
above a collection-box with an inscription which informs "visitors from
U.S.A." that there is yet due on the window more than three hundred
dollars. The original cost was about two thousand five hundred dollars.
The Shakespeare Memorial is a small theater by the side of the Avon,
with a library and picture gallery attached. The first stone was laid in
1877, and the building was opened in 1879 with a performance of "Much
Ado About Nothing." The old school once attended by the poet still
stands, and is in use, as is also the cottage of Anne Hathaway, situated
a short distance from Stratford. I returned to Birmingham, and soon went
on to Bristol and saw the orphans' homes founded by George Muller.

These homes, capable of accommodating two thousand and fifty orphans,
are beautifully situated on Ashley Downs. Brother William Kempster and I
visited them together, and were shown through a portion of one of the
five large buildings by an elderly gentleman, neat, clean, and humble,
who was sent down by the manager of the institution, a son-in-law of Mr.
Muller, who died in 1898, at the advanced age of ninety-three years. We
saw one of the dormitories, which was plainly furnished, but everything
was neat and clean. We were also shown two dining-rooms, and the
library-room in which Mr. Muller conducted a prayer-meeting only a night
or two before his death. In this room we saw a fine, large picture of
the deceased, and were told by the "helper" who was showing us around
that Mr. Muller was accustomed to saying: "Oh, I am such a happy man!"
The expression on his face in this picture is quite in harmony with his
words just quoted. One of his sayings was: "When anxiety begins, faith
ends; when faith begins, anxiety ends."

Mr. Muller spent seventy years of his life in England and became so
thoroughly Anglicized that he wished his name pronounced "Miller." He
was the founder of the "Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and
Abroad" and was a man of much more than ordinary faith. His work began
about 1834, with the distribution of literature, and the orphan work, if
I mistake not, was begun two years later. "As the result of prayer to
God" more than five millions of dollars have been applied for the
benefit of the orphans. He never asked help of man, but made his wants
known to God, and those who are now carrying on the work pursue the same
course, but the collection-boxes put up where visitors can see them
might be considered by some as an invitation to give. The following
quotation from the founder of the orphanages will give some idea of the
kind of man he was. "In carrying on this work simply through the
instrumentality of prayer and faith, without applying to any human being
for help, my great desire was, that it might be seen that, now, in the
nineteenth century, _God is still the Living God, and now, as well as
thousands of years ago, he listens to the prayers of his children and
helps those who trust in him._ In all the forty-two countries through
which I traveled during the twenty-one years of my missionary service,
numberless instances came before me of the benefit which this orphan
institution has been, in this respect, not only in making men of the
world see the reality of the things of God, and by converting them, but
especially by leading the children of God more abundantly to give
themselves to prayer, and by strengthening their faith. _Far beyond what
I at first expected to accomplish_, the Lord has been pleased to give
me. But what I have _seen_ as the fruit of my labor in this way may not
be the thousandth part of what I _shall_ see when the Lord Jesus comes
again; as day by day, for sixty-one years, I have earnestly labored, in
believing prayer, that God would be pleased, most abundantly, to bless
this service in the way I have stated."

The objects of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution are set forth as
follows: "To assist day schools and Sunday-schools in which instruction
is given upon scriptural principles," etc. By day schools conducted on
scriptural principles, they mean "those in which the teachers are
believers; where the way of salvation is pointed out, and in which no
instruction is given opposed to the principles of the Gospel." In these
schools the Scriptures are read daily by the children. In the
Sunday-schools the "teachers are believers, and the Holy Scriptures
alone are the foundation of instruction." The second object of the
Institution is "to circulate the Holy Scriptures." In one year four
thousand three hundred and fifty Bibles were sold, and five hundred and
twenty-five were given away; seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-one
New Testament were sold, and one thousand five hundred and seventy-four
were given away; fifty-five copies of the Psalms were sold, and
thirty-eight were given away; two thousand one hundred and sixty-three
portions of the Holy Scriptures were sold, and one hundred and sixty-two
were given away; and three thousand one hundred illustrated portions of
the Scriptures were given away. There have been circulated through this
medium, since March, 1834, three hundred and eleven thousand two hundred
and seventy-eight Bibles, and one million five hundred and seven
thousand eight hundred and one copies of the New Testament. They keep in
stock almost four hundred sorts of Bibles, ranging in price from twelve
cents each to more than six dollars a copy.

Another object of the Institution is to aid in missionary efforts.
"During the past year one hundred and eighty laborers in the Word and
doctrine in various parts of the world have been assisted." The fourth
object is to circulate such publications as may be of benefit both to
believers and unbelievers. In a single year one million six hundred and
eleven thousand two hundred and sixty-six books and tracts were
distributed gratuitously. The fifth object is to board, clothe, and
scientifically educate destitute orphans. Mr. Muller belonged to that
class of religious people who call themselves Brethren, and are called
by others "Plymouth Brethren."

After leaving Bristol, I went to London, the metropolis of the world.
The first important place visited was Westminster Abbey, an old church,
founded in the seventh century, rebuilt in 1049, and restored to its
present form in the thirteenth century. Many eminent men and women are
buried here. Chaucer, the first poet to find a resting place in the
Abbey, was interred in 1400. The place where Major Andre is buried is
marked by a small piece of the pavement bearing his name. On the wall
close by is a monument to him. Here are the graves of Isaac Newton,
Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, and many others,
including Kings and Queens of England for centuries. In the Poets'
Corner are monuments to Coleridge, Southey, Shakespeare, Burns,
Tennyson, Milton, Gray, Spencer, and others, and one bearing the
inscription "O Rare Ben Jonson." There is also a bust of Longfellow, the
only foreigner accorded a memorial in the Abbey. The grave of David
Livingstone, the African explorer and missionary, is covered with a
black stone of some kind, which forms a part of the floor or pavement,
and contains an inscription in brass letters, of which the following
quotation is a part: "All I can add in my solitude is, may heaven's
rich blessings come down on every one, American, English, or Turk, who
will help to heal this open sore of the world."

Concerning this interesting old place which is visited by more than
fifty thousand Americans annually, Jeremy Taylor wrote: "Where our Kings
are crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their
grandsires to take the crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the
copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to
arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There the warlike
and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and
despised princes mingle their dust and pay down their symbol of
mortality, and tell all the world that when we die our ashes shall be
equal to Kings, and our accounts easier, and our pains for our sins
shall be less." While walking about in the Abbey, I also found these
lines from Walter Scott:

"Here, where the end of earthly things
Lays heroes, patriots, bards and kings;
Where stiff the hand and still the tongue
Of those who fought, and spoke, and sung;
Here, where the fretted aisles prolong
The distant notes of holy song,
As if some Angel spoke again
'All peace on earth, good will to men';
If ever from an English heart,
Here let prejudice depart."

Bunhill Fields is an old cemetery where one hundred and twenty thousand
burials have taken place. Here lie the ashes of Isaac Watts, the hymn
writer; of Daniel De Foe, author of "Robinson Crusoe," and of John
Bunyan, who in Bedford jail wrote "Pilgrim's Progress." The monuments
are all plain. The one at the grave of De Foe was purchased with the
contributions of seventeen hundred people, who responded to a call made
by some paper. On the top of Bunyan's tomb rests the figure of a man,
perhaps a representation of him whose body was laid in the grave below.
On one of the monuments in this cemetery are the following words
concerning the deceased: "In sixty-seven months she was tapped sixty-six
times. Had taken away two hundred and forty gallons of water without
ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation."

Just across the street from Bunhill Fields stands the house once
occupied by John Wesley (now containing a museum) and a meeting-house
which was built in Wesley's day. The old pulpit from which Mr. Wesley
preached is still in use, but it has been lowered somewhat. In front of
the chapel is a statue of Wesley, and at the rear is his grave, and
close by is the last resting place of the remains of Adam Clarke, the
commentator.

A trip to Greenwich was quite interesting. I visited the museum and saw
much of interest, including the painted hall, the coat worn by Nelson at
the Battle of the Nile, and the clothing he wore when he was mortally
wounded at Trafalgar. I went up the hill to the Observatory, and walked
through an open door to the grounds where a gentleman informed me that
visitors are not admitted without a pass; but he kindly gave me some
information and told me that I was standing on the prime meridian. On
the outside of the enclosure are scales of linear measure up to one
yard, and a large clock.

After the trip to Greenwich, I went over the London Bridge, passed the
fire monument, and came back across the Thames by the Tower Bridge, a
peculiar structure, having two levels in one span, so passengers can go
up the stairs in one of the towers, cross the upper level, and go down
the other stairs when the lower level is opened for boats to pass up and
down the river. While in Scotland, I twice crossed the great Forth
Bridge, which is more than a mile and a half long and was erected at a
cost of above fifteen millions of dollars. There are ten spans in the
south approach, eight in the north approach, and two central spans each
seventeen hundred feet long. The loftiest part of the structure is three
hundred and sixty-one feet above high-water mark.

The Albert Memorial is perhaps the finest monument seen on the whole
trip. The Victoria and Albert Museum contains the original Singer
sewing-machine, and a printing-press supposed to have been used by
Benjamin Franklin, and many other interesting things. The Natural
History Museum also contains much to attract the visitor's attention.
Here I saw the skeleton of a mastodon about ten feet tall and twenty
feet long; also the tusks of an extinct species of Indian elephant,
which were nine feet and nine inches long. There is also an elephant
tusk on exhibition ten feet long and weighing two hundred and eighty
pounds.

Madam Tussaud's exhibition of wax figures and relics is both interesting
and instructive, and well repays one for the time and expense of a
visit. Several American Presidents are represented in life-size figures,
along with Kings and others who have been prominent in the affairs of
men. In the Napoleon room are three of the great warrior's carriages,
the one used at Waterloo being in the number. London Tower is a series
of strong buildings, which have in turn served as a fortress, a palace,
and a prison. I saw the site of Anne Boleyn's execution, but that which
had the most interest for me was the room containing the crown jewels.
They are kept in a glass case ten or twelve feet in diameter, in a
small, circular room. Outside of the case there is an iron cage
surrounded by a network of wire. The King's crown is at the top of the
collection, which contains other crowns, scepters, swords, and different
costly articles. This crown, which was first made in 1838 for Queen
Victoria, was enlarged for Edward, the present King. It contains two
thousand eight hundred and eighteen diamonds, two hundred and
ninety-seven pearls, and many other jewels. One of the scepters is
supposed to contain a part of the cross of Christ, but the supposition
had no weight with me. One of the attendants told me the value of the
whole collection was estimated at four million pounds, and that it would
probably bring five times that much if sold at auction. As the English
pound is worth about four dollars and eighty-seven cents, this little
room contains a vast treasure--worth upwards of a hundred million
dollars.

I will only mention Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, the
Parliament Buildings, St. Paul's Cathedral, Kew Gardens, Hampton Court
Palace, and the Zoological Gardens. I also visited the Bank of England,
which "stands on ground valued at two hundred and fifty dollars per
square foot. If the bank should ever find itself pressed for money, it
could sell its site for thirty-two million seven hundred and seventy
thousand dollars." It is a low building that is not noted for its
beauty. If it were located in New York, probably one of the tall
buildings characteristic of that city would be erected on the site.

The British Museum occupied my time for hours, and I shall not undertake
to give a catalogue of the things I saw there, but will mention a few of
them. There are manuscripts of early writers in the English tongue,
including a copy of Beowulf, the oldest poem in the language; autograph
works of Daniel De Foe, Ben Jonson, and others; the original articles of
agreement between John Milton and Samuel Symmons relating to the sale of
the copyright of "a poem entitled 'Paradise Lost.'" There was a small
stone inscribed in Phoenician, with the name of Nehemiah, the son of
Macaiah, and pieces of rock that were brought from the great temple of
Diana at Ephesus; a fragment of the Koran; objects illustrating Buddhism
in India; books printed by William Caxton, who printed the first book in
English; and Greek vases dating back to 600 B.C. In the first verse of
the twentieth chapter of Isaiah we have mention of "Sargon, the king of
Assyria." For centuries this was all the history the world had of this
king, who reigned more than seven hundred years before Christ. Within
recent times his history has been dug up in making excavations in the
east, and I saw one of his inscribed bricks and two very large,
human-headed, winged bulls from a doorway of his palace.

The carvings from the palace of Sennacherib, tablets from the library of
Asur-Banipal, and brick of Ur-Gur, king of Ur about twenty-five
centuries before Christ, attracted my attention, as did also the
colossal left arm of a statue of Thotmes III., which measures about nine
feet. The Rosetta stone, by which the Egyptian hieroglyphics were
translated, and hundreds of other objects were seen. In the mummy-room
are embalmed bodies, skeletons, and coffins that were many centuries
old when Jesus came to earth, some of them bearing dates as early as
2600 B.C., and in the case of a part of a body found in the third
pyramid the date attached is 3633 B.C. Being weary, I sat down, and my
note book contains this entry: "1:45 P.M., August 20. Resting here in
the midst of mummies and sarcophagi thousands of years old."

From the top of the Monument I took a bird's-eye view of the largest of
all earthly cities, or at least I looked as far as the smoky atmosphere
would permit, and then returned to my stopping place at Twynholm. As I
rode back on the top of an omnibus, the houses of one of the Rothschild
family and the Duke of Wellington were pointed out. My sight-seeing in
Scotland and England was now at an end, and the journey so far had been
very enjoyable and highly profitable. I packed up and went down to
Harwich, on the English Channel, where I embarked on the Cambridge for
Antwerp, in Belgium. In this chapter I have purposely omitted reference
to my association with the churches, as that will come up for
consideration in another chapter.




CHAPTER II.

CROSSING EUROPE.


Immediately after my arrival in Antwerp I left for a short trip over the
border to Rosendaal, Holland, where I saw but little more than
brick-houses, tile roofs, and wooden shoes. I then returned to Antwerp,
and went on to Brussels, the capital of Belgium. The battlefield of
Waterloo is about nine and a half miles from Brussels, and I had an
enjoyable trip to this notable place. The field is farming land, and now
under cultivation. The chief object of interest is the Lion Mound, an
artificial hill surmounted by the figure of a large lion. The mound is
ascended by about two hundred and twenty-three steps, and from its
summit one has a good view of the place where the great Napoleon met his
defeat on the fifteenth of June, 1815. There is another monument on the
field, which, though quite small and not at all beautiful, contains an
impressive inscription. It was raised in memory of Alexander Gordon, an
aide to the Duke of Wellington, and has the following words carved on
one side: "A disconsolate sister and five surviving brothers have
erected this simple memorial to the object of their tenderest
affection."

From Brussels I went over to Aix-la-Chapelle, on the frontier of
Germany, where I spent but little time and saw nothing of any great
interest to me. There was a fine statue of Wilhelm I., a crucifixion
monument, and, as I walked along the street, I saw an advertisement for
"Henry Clay Habanna Cigarren," but not being a smoker, I can not say
whether they were good or not. In this city I had an amusing experience
buying a German flag. I couldn't speak "Deutsch," and she couldn't speak
English, but we made the trade all right.

My next point was Paris, the capital of the French Republic, and here I
saw many interesting objects. I first visited the church called the
Madeleine. I also walked along the famous street _Champs Elysees,_
visited the magnificent Arch of Triumph, erected to commemorate the
victories of Napoleon, and viewed the Eiffel Tower, which was completed
in 1889 at a cost of a million dollars. It contains about seven thousand
tons of metal, and the platform at the top is nine hundred and
eighty-five feet high. The Tomb of Napoleon is in the Church of the
Invalides, one of the finest places I had visited up to that time. The
spot where the Bastile stood is now marked by a lofty monument. The
garden of the Tuileries, Napoleon's palace, is one of the pretty places
in Paris. Leaving this city in the morning, I journeyed all day through
a beautiful farming country, and reached Pontarlier, in southern France,
for the night.

My travel in Switzerland, the oldest free state in the world, was very
enjoyable. As we were entering the little republic, in which I spent two
days, the train was running through a section of country that is not
very rough, when, all in a moment, it passed through a tunnel
overlooking a beautiful valley, bounded by mountains on the opposite
side and presenting a very pleasing view. There were many other
beautiful scenes as I journeyed along, sometimes climbing the rugged
mountain by a cog railway, and sometimes riding quietly over one of the
beautiful Swiss lakes. I spent a night at lovely Lucerne, on the Lake of
the Four Cantons, the body of water on which William Tell figured long
ago. Lucerne is kept very clean, and presents a pleasing appearance to
the tourist.

I could have gone to Fluelin by rail, but preferred to take a boat ride
down the lake, and it proved to be a pleasant and enjoyable trip. The
snow could be seen lying on the tops of the mountains while the flowers
were blooming in the valleys below. Soon after leaving Fluelin, the
train entered the St. Gothard Tunnel and did not reach daylight again
for seventeen minutes. This tunnel, at that time the longest in the
world, is a little more than nine miles in length. It is twenty-eight
feet wide, twenty-one feet high, lined throughout with masonry, and cost
eleven million four hundred thousand dollars. Since I was in Switzerland
the Simplon Tunnel has been opened. It was begun more than six years
ago by the Swiss and Italian Governments, an immense force of hands
being worked on each end of it. After laboring day and night for years,
the two parties met on the twenty-fourth of February. This tunnel, which
is double, is more than twelve miles long and cost sixteen millions of
dollars.

At Chiasso we did what is required at the boundary line of all the
countries visited; that is, stop and let the custom-house officials
inspect the baggage. I had nothing dutiable and was soon traveling on
through Italy, toward Venice, where I spent some time riding on one of
the little omnibus steamers that ply on its streets of water. But not
all the Venetian streets are like this, for I walked on some that are
paved with good, hard sandstone. I was not moved by the beauty of the
place, and soon left for Pisa, passing a night in Florence on the way.
The chief point of interest was the Leaning Tower, which has eight
stories and is one hundred and eighty feet high. This structure,
completed in the fourteenth century, seems to have commenced to lean
when the third story was built. The top, which is reached by nearly
three hundred steps, is fourteen feet out of perpendicular. Five large
bells are suspended in the tower, from the top of which one can have a
fine view of the walled city, with its Cathedral and Baptistery, the
beautiful surrounding country, and the mountains in the distance.

The next point visited was Rome, old "Rome that sat on her seven hills
and from her throne of beauty ruled the world." One of the first things
I saw when I came out of the depot was a monument bearing the letters
"S.P.Q.R." (the Senate and the people of Rome) which are sometimes seen
in pictures concerning the crucifixion of Christ. In London there are
numerous public water-closets; in France also there are public urinals,
which are almost too public in some cases, but here in Rome the climax
is reached, for the urinals furnish only the least bit of privacy. One
of them, near the railway station, is merely an indentation of perhaps
six or eight inches in a straight wall right against the sidewalk, where
men, women, and children are passing.

By the aid of a guide-book and pictorial plan, I crossed the city from
the gateway called "Porto del Popolo" to the "Porto S. Paolo," seeing
the street called the "Corso," or race course, Piazza Colonna, Fountain
of Treves, Trajan's Forum, Roman Forum, Arch of Constantine, Pantheon,
Colosseum, and the small Pyramid of Caius Cestus.

The Porto del Popolo is the old gateway by which travelers entered the
city before the railroad was built. It is on the Flammian Way and is
said to have been built first in A.D. 402. Just inside the gate is a
space occupied by an Egyptian obelisk surrounded by four Egyptian lions.
The Corso is almost a mile in length and extends from the gate just
mentioned to the edge of the Capitoline Hill, where a great monument to
Victor Emmanuel was being built. The Fountain of Treves is said to be
the most magnificent in Rome, and needs to be seen to be appreciated. It
has three large figures, the one in the middle representing the Ocean,
the one on the left, Fertility, and the one on the right, Health. Women
who are disposed to dress fashionably at the expense of a deformed body
might be profited by a study of this figure of Health. Trajan's Forum is
an interesting little place, but it is a small show compared with the
Roman Forum, which is much more extensive, and whose ruins are more
varied. The latter contains the temples of Vespasian, of Concordia, of
Castor and Pollux, and others. It also contains the famous Arch of
Titus, the Basilica of Constantine, the remains of great palaces, and
other ruins. "Originally the Forum was a low valley among the hills, a
convenient place for the people to meet and barter." The Palatine Hill
was fortified by the first Romans, and the Sabines lived on other hills.
These two races finally united, and the valley between the hills became
the site of numerous temples and government buildings. Kings erected
their palaces in the Forum, and it became the center of Roman life. But
when Constantine built his capital at Constantinople, the greatness of
the city declined, and it was sacked and plundered by enemies from the
north. The Forum became a dumping ground for all kinds of rubbish until
it was almost hidden from view, and it was called by a name signifying
cow pasture. It has been partly excavated within the last century, and
the ruined temples and palaces have been brought to light, making it
once more a place of absorbing interest. I wandered around and over and
under and through these ruins for a considerable length of time, and
wrote in my note book: "There is more here than I can comprehend."

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