The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1891-08-06
The Historical Associations of Great
Cities.

In St. Giles church, in the city of Lon.
don, lie Chapman. the earliest and best
translator of Homer, and Andrew MARVEL,
the wit and patriot. whose poverty Charles
the Second could not bribe. "Fleet Street" :"
says Blanchard Jerrold, 'holds crowd Of
delightful associations. 1t is not the queens
highway, it is that of johnson and Gold
smith and all their geodly fellowship. The
genius of Lord Bacon haunts Gray's Inn;
that of Selden the Inner Temple; Voltaire
appears in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden;
Congreve in Surrey Street, Strand; John of
Gaunt, in Hatton Garden; and all the wits
of Queen Anne's time in Russell Street by
Drury Lane" With the same eyes the
street loiterer of to-day would SET other
houses: that which Thackeray built. and in
which he died; the house of Dickens; and
that in which Mazzini lived. In his last
days at Pisa one of his neighbOrs thought
him an Englishman. NO" he answered,
sadly, II am an Italian; but l have lived
for forty years in England"
The essential romance of London is fully
suggested in the work of Gustave DOre and
Blanchard JerrOld which was reproduced in
this country. And as the American reader
turns over its striking and beautiful pages,
in which the genius of the artist shows .all
its grace without its grOtesQueness. he can
not help remarking how destitute of the
peculiar charm of association our own great
city of New York is Not only are the
houses gone in which the noted people of
former generations lived and the streets
which they walked changed beyond recOg-
milton, but tie very flames are modern and
local.
In Florence YOU may read upon a
plate set in the front of a house. Here
lived Michael Angelo" and in London the
house of Byron has similar plate. But
with us the house would be pulled down or
the fame would be forgotten before the
plate was engraved. l am not protesting;
I am merely observing.
1t is this want of distance. of depth. and
of imaginative. which perplexes
the story-teller who would lay his scene in
New York. Could anybody write of any
church or churches in the city with the pe-
culiar impression which Dickens produces
by his pictures of the old London churches
in the '.Uncommercial Traveller" It is an
impression not wholly due by any means to
the mere genius OF the author, but in great
part to the essential romance of the subject.
The Sunday afternoon Saunterer going into
such church would see what Dickens saw
So with the strange life of the debtors
prison-the Fleet. the Marshalsea. The
actual, visible London has romance due
to its long history and various associations
This gives a setting, an atmosphere to the
Imagination, which are invaluable to the
author, and which are wholly wanting for
literary purposes to us. This is what Haw-
thorne felt, and expresses in the preface to
the MARBLE Faun." And nothing in our
literature shows more forcibly the charm
and value of this kind OF association than
Hawthorne's "Tales of the Province
House." This was kind of gubernatorial
palace of the colonial days in Boston, lit
tie back from the chief street of that city.
1t was just the building to touch with its