The Youthful Wanderer eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 214 pages of information about The Youthful Wanderer.

The Youthful Wanderer eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 214 pages of information about The Youthful Wanderer.
I must here record, one more feature which implies, besides the oratorical powers and progressive originality of the father, an intensity of interest on the part of a daughter, in her father’s views, such as is seldom witnessed.  Miss Alice B. will, from the beginning to the end of every lecture, keep the eye of her father, watching every change of his countenance from the flush of a glowing enthusiasm to the pallor of bitter contempt, catching every syllable he utters, reflecting with beaming smiles every happy hit he makes, and sinking down to the paleness of utter disdain with him, when he comes to the recital of the heartless oppressions of the aristocracy; continually following his remarks with such an interest as if she was seeing and hearing him for the first time in her life.

I have given a somewhat lengthy account of these Radical meetings and rationalistic sentiments, not on account of their popularity in England, for though hundreds of thousands endorse the movement in London and a number of other cities in Great Britain, still they are by far in the minority, at least when the question of religion is taken; but upon the continent of Europe—­in France, Germany, and I had almost added Switzerland and Italy, the case is already different or fast becoming so.  Rationalism is rampant, and the reader should constantly bear in mind, as I may not often return to this topic, that the majority of the intelligent people in most places are of the camp that I have described as holding these meetings on Hyde Park and in the Hall of Science in London.

Those Radical societies have their own hymn-books, and even their children are baptised and the dead buried, according to their own forms and ceremonies, of unbelief.

Of the numerous other parks in London, I have no room to make mention.  Of the British Museum, comprising a collection of books, works of art, antiquities, and curiosities, larger than that of any other museum contained under one roof in the world, costing in the aggregate $12,000,000, and the building $5,000,000, and of the South Kensington Museum fast approaching the British Museum in the vastness of its collection, I can only add, that a complete catalogue of their collections would fill several large volumes, and to examine all their contents would require many weeks.  There are numerous other museums and galleries of art strewn over the great metropolis, each more comprehensive than the pride and boast of many other cities of pretention in the world, but in London they are only regarded as second rate collections.

If a tourist has only a few days to devote to London, he should not fail to pass through Park Lane (along Hyde Park, at the foot of which lives the son of Arthur, the Duke of Wellington, Commander at Waterloo) thence along Piccadilly, passing Charing Cross, Trafalgar Square, the Strand and Fleet Street, and, having visited Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral, will now find

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The Youthful Wanderer from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.