Our Hundred Days in Europe | Page 2

the telephone, the photograph and the spectroscope. I
should hand him a paper with the morning news from London to read
by the electric light, I should startle him with a friction match, I should
amaze him with the incredible truths about anesthesia, I should astonish
him with the later conclusions of geology, I should dazzle him by the
fully developed law of the correlation of forces, I should delight him
with the cell-doctrine, I should confound him with the revolutionary
apocalypse of Darwinism. All this change in the aspects, position,
beliefs, of humanity since the time of Dr. Young's death, the date of my
own graduation from college!
I ought to consider myself highly favored to have lived through such a
half century. But it seems to me that in walking the streets of London
and Paris I shall revert to my student days, and appear to myself like a
relic of a former generation. Those who have been born into the
inheritance of the new civilization feel very differently about it from

those who have lived their way into it. To the young and those
approaching middle age all these innovations in life and thought are as
natural, as much a matter of course, as the air they breathe; they form a
part of the inner framework of their intelligence, about which their
mental life is organized. To men and women of more than threescore
and ten they are external accretions, like the shell of a mollusk, the
jointed plates of an articulate. This must be remembered in reading
anything written by those who knew the century in its teens; it is not
likely to be forgotten, for the fact betrays itself in all the writer's
thoughts and expressions.
The story of my first visit to Europe is briefly this: my object was to
study the medical profession, chiefly in Paris, and I was in Europe
about two years and a half, from April, 1833, to October, 1835. I sailed
in the packet ship Philadelphia from New York for Portsmouth, where
we arrived after a passage of twenty-four days. A week was spent in
visiting Southampton, Salisbury, Stonehenge, Wilton, and the Isle of
Wight. I then crossed the Channel to Havre, from which I went to Paris.
In the spring and summer of 1834 I made my principal visit to England
and Scotland. There were other excursions to the Rhine and to Holland,
to Switzerland and to Italy, but of these I need say nothing here. I
returned in the packet ship Utica, sailing from Havre, and reaching
New York after a passage of forty-two days.
A few notes from my recollections will serve to recall the period of my
first visit to Europe, and form a natural introduction to the experiences
of my second. I take those circumstances which happen to suggest
themselves.
After a short excursion to Strasbourg, down the Rhine, and through
Holland, a small steamer took us from Rotterdam across the Channel,
and we found ourselves in the British capital.
The great sight in London is--London. No man understands himself as
an infinitesimal until he has been a drop in that ocean, a grain of sand
on that sea-margin, a mote in its sunbeam, or the fog or smoke which
stands for it; in plainer phrase, a unit among its millions.

I had two letters to persons in England: one to kind and worthy Mr.
Petty Vaughan, who asked me to dinner; one to pleasant Mr. William
Clift, conservator of the Hunterian Museum, who asked me to tea.
To Westminster Abbey. What a pity it could not borrow from Paris the
towers of Notre Dame! But the glory of its interior made up for this
shortcoming. Among the monuments, one to Rear Admiral Charles
Holmes, a descendant, perhaps, of another namesake, immortalized by
Dryden in the "Annus Mirabilis" as
"the Achates of the general's fight."
He accompanied Wolfe in his expedition which resulted in the capture
of Quebec. My relative, I will take it for granted, as I find him in
Westminster Abbey. Blood is thicker than water,--and warmer than
marble, I said to myself, as I laid my hand on the cold stone image of
the once famous Admiral.
To the Tower, to see the lions,--of all sorts. There I found a "poor
relation," who made my acquaintance without introduction. A large
baboon, or ape,--some creature of that family,--was sitting at the open
door of his cage, when I gave him offence by approaching too near and
inspecting him too narrowly. He made a spring at me, and if the keeper
had not pulled me back would have treated me unhandsomely, like a
quadrumanous rough, as he was. He succeeded in stripping my
waistcoat of its buttons, as one would strip a pea-pod of its