the modern athens 13

the modern athens 13

After the King had witnessed the devotedness of the Athenian

authorities at the table, it was proper that he should see the devotion

of the people in the church; and here again was one of those scenes

which struck me, and must have struck him, very forcibly, as to the

difference of a free people, and fawning courtiers, corporation fools,

and party slaves.

 

Becoming preparations having been made, and the King having been

furnished with a perspective sketch of the church, and a written

programme of the service, it was agreed that the Very Reverend David

Lamont, D.D., Moderator and Spiritual Head upon Earth of the Kirk of

Scotland, should preach before him, in the name and stead of all his

willing and worshipping brethren, while the “men,” the “leaders,” and

the people, should demean themselves with that decorum, which the day,

the service, and the occasion required.

 

When the services of the Scottish kirk are performed in a becoming

manner, there is a feeling, a sublimity, and a heavenliness about them,

of which one who considers only their simple and unadorned structure

could form no adequate idea; and when I observed the still and unbroken

solemnity of the service, and the effect which it obviously had, not

only upon those who are accustomed to it, but upon those strangers

who, in whatever predilection they had for one religion more than

another, were wedded to the more artificial and gaudy ritual of another

church--a church which had been at enmity with the Scottish kirk from

the beginning, and which, in dislike to the system of sober equality

among the Scottish clergy, and the democratic nature of their church

establishment, have attempted to hold up their form of worship as cold,

meagre, incapable of stirring up devotion in the hearts of men, and,

by consequence, not so gratifying to the Almighty as the more costly

and complicated ceremonial of others,--I could not help believing that,

of all forms of religion, the simplest is decidedly the best, and that

if the object of the propagators of Christianity was nothing but the

cultivation of the minds and the improvement of the morals of society,

they would carefully avoid all artifice and all show. Those, indeed,

who have considered the correspondence that exists between the forms

of religious worship, and the intellectual culture of the great body

of the people, cannot have failed to observe, that pompous shows and

gaudy ceremonies have ever been the concomitants of general ignorance

and superstition, and that a plain and unadorned system of worship, has

uniformly been characteristic of an intelligent people.

 

Scotland is an eminent example of this; and whoever takes the

trouble to investigate the structure of Scottish society will, to a

certainty, find that for half their virtues, and more than half their

information, they are indebted to the presbyterian kirk. Nor is it by

any means difficult to find out the reason: A religion of shows and of

sounds,--of mummeries and of music,--must ever be a religion of the

senses. How gaudy soever the trappings, and how fine soever the music,

they can afford nothing more than a gratification of the senses at the

time. Forms cannot exist vividly but in matter, and when the string

of an instrument ceases to vibrate on the ear, the pleasure which it

affords, however sweet or however delightful, is at an end: they enter

not into reflection; they stimulate not the more rational and permanent

faculties of the mind; and, though they may be made to influence, and

influence powerfully, the passions, while they last, they leave no

lesson which can be useful as a general rule of life. Hence, though the

churches of Scotland be, compared with those of England, rude in the

extreme; though the sacred music of Scotland be often the untutored

attempt of nature, without the aid of flutes, hautboys, and violins, as

in the poorer churches of England, or the solemn notes of the organ,

as in the richer ones; and though the prayers of the Scottish preacher

are generally couched in terms less stately and sublime than those

of the service-book of the English church, yet we have the clearest

proof that can be given of the superior efficacy of the Scottish mode

of worship, in the superior veneration which the people of Scotland,

without any hope or even possibility of earthly reward from it, pay

to the rites and ordinances of religion, and especially to that most

beneficial of all religious institutions, the setting apart of the

sabbath as a day of calm tranquillity and holy meditation.

 

I know not whether the Author of these pages, or the Sovereign of these

realms, was the more delighted with the calm, sustained, and religious

air of the people of the Athens and of Scotland, as they both proceeded

from the palace of the Holyrood to the High Kirk, on the morning of

Sunday, the 25th of August. A countless multitude thronged the street,

and filled the windows and house-tops; they were habited in the neatest

and cleanest manner; and their profound silence formed a wonderful

contrast to the noise of their mirth upon the former occasions. There

was not a cheer, a shout, or even a whisper; but, as the King passed

along, the men lifted their hats, and the whole passed with the most

sustained but respectful reverence. They appeared to respect their

King, but to respect him less than they did the institutions of

their God, and the simple sublimity of that religion which their own

perseverance, faith, and courage, had gained them, in spite of the

efforts of courtiers and kings, by whom its integrity, and even its

existence, were menaced.

 

The extreme decorum of the people upon this day was the more

creditable, that it had been arranged by none of the authorities; and

those who formed the mass of the spectators were chiefly such as, on

account of their distances or their pursuits, could not obtain a sight

of their monarch upon any other day.

 

In the crowd I could distinguish a number, who, from their substantial

blue garments, their broad bonnets, their lank uncut hair, their great

staves, and their shoes dirty, as from a long journey, seemed to be

true whigs of the covenant, who looked upon the descendant of Brunswick

as a chosen one of Heaven’s appointment, whose ancestors had been

the means of preventing that civil and religious slavery which had

threatened them in 1715 and 1745.

 

As seemed to be the case with all parts of the ceremony which were left

to the awkward and inexperienced official men of the Athens, the King’s

accommodation, or at least his attendance in church, was by no means

what it ought to have been. He had brought a hundred pounds to give to

the poor, and he had some difficulty in getting it disposed of; and,

delighted with the unassisted vocal music, which was really very good,

he wished to join in the psalm, but he was unacquainted with the book,

and there was nobody to point out the place for him. Still, judging

from appearance as well as from all that I could hear afterwards, the

King was better pleased with the stillness and solemnity of the Sunday

than he had been with the shows of the other days. One reason of this

no doubt was, that, on the Sunday, the King was not so belumbered by

the aspiring loyalists thrusting themselves not only between him and

the people, but between him and his own ease, comfort, and pleasure,

as they had done in all those acts of the drama, of which themselves

formed a leading or conspicuous part; and, as he had formerly expressed

his high approbation of the appearance, and, which sounded more strange

in the ears of a southern visitor, of the cleanliness of the Scottish

people, he had an equal opportunity of complimenting them upon their

decorum.

 

After the King had paraded, and dined, and heard sermon, there remained

no further lion of Athens to afflict him but the theatre; which was

arranged for his reception, as well as an Athenian theatre could be

expected to be arranged for such a purpose, on the evening of Friday,

the 27th of August.

 

The people of the Athens never have been able, and probably never will

be able, to support a respectable theatrical establishment. The genius

of the Scottish people generally is not theatrical. There are still

many sects of religionists among them by whom the stage is denounced as

a “tabernacle of Satan.” This is by no means confined to the provinces,

or to the more austere or fanatical classes of dissenters; for, at the

time when “I, and the King,” visited the Athens, her celebrated, and

most deservedly-celebrated preacher, of the presbyterian establishment,

was denouncing the sinfulness of stage-plays, both from the pulpit

and the press; and though some of the courtly persons whom fashion

had induced to became churchwardens or elders of his congregation,

threatened to rebuke or leave him, because, in the true spirit of John

Knox, he had preached a homily on kingly duties, in which there was not

much of flattery, while the King was in the Athens, yet they let him

denounce the theatre as he pleased.

 

The more aspiring cast of the Athenians lay claim to very superlative

taste in theatrical matters, as indeed they do in every thing; and

hence, they pretend that they do not patronise the theatre, because

they cannot find a company of players, who come at all up to their

standard of histrionic perfection; and they appeal for proof to the

fact, that when any of the grand stars or comets of the London boards

come to them for a night or two, they throng the theatre with their

persons, and threaten to break it down with their plaudits. All this,

however, proves nothing, but that they are unable to support a theatre,

and that the crowding to see a strange actor for a night or two arises

not from taste but from curiosity. The fact is, that, though England

has produced the very best dramatic poet that ever lived, and some

of the best dramatic performers, yet that the drama, as a matter of

sentiment and feeling, and, as it were, of constitutional necessity,

does not tally with the spirit even of the English people; and, as the

Scotch have all the business habits of the English, together with a

much greater degree of starchedness of character, and incapability of

purse, the theatre cannot possibly flourish among them.

 

The London theatres, excepting in the case of occasional and accidental

runs upon a particular piece, or a particular actor, are uniformly

miserable speculations for the proprietors; and it will be found,

that even the poor support which the theatres in London get, is given

them, not by the people of London so much as by that vast concourse

of strangers who feel at a loss how to spend their evenings. Before

the people, either of the Athens, or of any other part of the British

dominions, can become theatrical, they must have a little more

relaxation from hard labour than they can at present command. The

national debt, and the immense public establishments, are the real

causes why there are not only no Shakspeares now, but why the heroes

of the old Shakspeare have given place to the wooden or real horses of

a more buffooning race. The people must not only work, but work hard,

during the live-long day; and when they have an hour which they can

snatch from the abridged civilities of social life, for the purpose of

looking at a theatrical exhibition, they very naturally prefer that

which costs them no labour of thought, and which makes them laugh,

to that which would impose upon them fatigue of the mind in addition

to fatigue of the body. To say, therefore, that the Athens does not

support the theatre, because she cannot find a _corps dramatique_ that

comes up to her taste, has no surer a foundation than any other of

those airy structures which she builds as the monuments of her glory.

None of the fine arts, as a matter of abstract study and speculation,

and apart from its contributing to the general comforts of life, can

ever prosper in such a state of society as that of England at the

present day; and if they languish in the British metropolis, where

there is the greatest abundance both of money and of idle people, what

must they do among a people who are comparatively so poor and so

plodding as those of the Athens? If a London merchant, who goes to his

place of business at one, and leaves it at three, does not encourage

the drama, and the other fine arts; what can be expected from an

Athenian special pleader, who drudges at Stair and Erskine, and thumbs

Morison’s Dictionary of Decisions, from grey dawn to dark midnight,

except during the hours that he is occupied in gossiping in the large

hall of the parliament-house, or wrangling in the little courts, and

less niches? It is true, that Mr. Clark, now Lord Eldin, could adorn

his brief with drawings, even in those places,--that the Unknown, who

is only a copying machine in his official capacity, can spin a chapter,

or correct a proof sheet,--and that Jeffery has sometimes been caught

writing an article for the Edinburgh Review, during the time that some

long-winded proser was darkening the case on the other side; but still

all this is done more as matter of business than of pleasure; and

would, in almost all cases, be let alone, were it not for the fee that it produces.