. . . .
Sunday morning my wife and I, with J-----, railed into London, and drove
to the Essex Street Chapel, where Mr. Channing was to preach. The Chapel
is the same where Priestley and Belsham used to preach,--one of the
plainest houses of worship I was ever in, as simple and undecorated as
the faith there inculcated. They retain, however, all the form and
ceremonial of the English Established Church, though so modified as to
meet the doctrinal views of the Unitarians. There may be good sense in
this, inasmuch as it greatly lessens the ministerial labor to have a
stated form of prayer, instead of a necessity for extempore outpourings;
but it must be, I should think, excessively tedious to the congregation,
especially as, having made alterations in these prayers, they cannot
attach much idea of sanctity to them.
[Here follows a long record of Mr. Hawthorne's visit to Miss Bacon,--
condensed in Our Old Hone, in the paper called "Recollections of a Gifted
Woman."]
August 2d.--On Wednesday (30th July) we went to Marlborough House to see
the Vernon gallery of pictures. They are the works, almost entirely of
English artists of the last and present century, and comprise many famous
paintings; and I must acknowledge that I had more enjoyment of them than
of those portions of the National Gallery which I had before seen,--
including specimens of the grand old masters. My comprehension has not
reached their height. I think nothing pleased me more than a picture by
Sir David Wilkie,--The Parish Beadle, with a vagrant boy and a monkey in
custody; it is exceedingly good and true throughout, and especially the
monkey's face is a wonderful production of genius, condensing within
itself the whole moral and pathos of the picture.
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