He stands bare-headed, a venerable figure, and a countenance extremely sad and wo-begone, with the wind and rain driving hard against him, and thus helping to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his inward state.  Some market-people and children gaze awe-stricken into his face, and an aged man and woman, with clapsed and uplifted hands, seem to be praying for him.  These latter personages (whose introduction by the artist is none the less effective, because, in queer proximity, there are some commodities of market-day in the shape of living ducks and dead poultry,) I interpreted to represent the spirits of Johnson’s father and mother, lending what aid they could to lighten his half-century’s burden of remorse.

I had never heard of the above-described piece of sculpture before; it appears to have no reputation as a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves any.  For me, however, it did as much as sculpture could under the circumstances, even if the artist of the Libyan Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my interest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the penance.

The next day I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever undertook, to see the very spot where Johnson had stood.  Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its name is pronounced Yuteox’eter) as being about nine miles off from Lichfield, but the county-map would indicate a greater distance; and by rail, passing from one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles.  I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson sending his literay merchandise by carrier’s wagon, journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on market-day morning, selling “books” through the busy hours, and returning to Lichfield at night.  This could not possibly have been the case.

Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects that I saw, with a green field or two between them and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees.  A very short walk takes you from the station up into the town.  It had been my previous impression that the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately round about the church; and, if I remember the narrative aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes his father’s book-stall as standing in the market-place close beside the sacred edifice.

It is impossible for me to say what changes may have occurred in the topography of the town, during almost a century and a half since Michael Johnson retired from business, and ninety years, at least, since his son’s penance was performed.  But the church has now merely a street of ordinary width passing around it, while the market-place, tho near at hand, neither forms a part of it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and surge against the churchyard